Embargo? What Embargo?

China, Cuba, Sanctions and Hypocrisy
Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter: China, Cuba, Sanctions and Hypocrisy

John Suarez

WLRN's Tim Padgett has written an essay concerning Yoani Sanchez, the embargo and American hypocrisy that is a remarkable exercise in rhetorical gymnastics. He condemns "hardliners" who support sanctions but praise Yoani Sánchez while in disagreement with her position on sanctions. At the same time Mr. Padgett acknowledges that he knows that "ome Cuban dissidents do support the embargo, and I respect their arguments – especially since they, like Sánchez, are the ones on the ground in Cuba, if not in its jails."

Argument doesn't hold up

If you argue that persons who advocate a pro-sanctions policy cannot admire and respect a person who is anti-sanctions then you cannot claim the opposite that you respect persons who are pro-sanctions even though you have an anti-sanctions position. Or is it that one can only hold a respectable position by being as you say: "on the ground in Cuba, if not in its jails." With that line of argument the only voices that should be listened to are inside the island. One's position on sanctions whether in favor or against would not be based on the best case put forward but on one's geographic location.

Sanctions are the last nonviolent way of seeking to change an unjust system by refusing to cooperate with tyranny. When discussing the Cuban embargo in the mass media these two aspects are rarely, if ever, touched upon. Academics and the lobbyists for big business, such as USA Engage, often claim that sanctions never work; rather, it is economic engagement that leads towards greater respect for human rights. However, recent history in China, Burma, and Vietnam indicate otherwise. Out of the three only Burma has seen an improvement in its human rights situation and was subjected to tough sanctions while things have gotten worse in China and Vietnam despite normalized relations and trade.

When I met Yoani Sánchez and expressed my admiration for her writings while at the same time my disagreement with her position on economic sanctions she smiled, laughed gently and said that we need to celebrate differences of opinion that it is part of democracy. I am in full agreement with her on that and on the need to "decriminalize discrepancy." The meeting ended with a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

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Sandokan said:

The Castroit regime economic policies have done more to harm the country's economic prospects than anything else. Trade with the island would only benefit the regime, not the Cuban people. Many of the dissidents support the embargo because they fear that ending it would strengthen the dictatorship.

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Sandokan said:

The Castroit regime economic policies have done more to harm the country's economic prospects than anything else. Trade with the island would only benefit the regime, not the Cuban people. Many of the dissidents support the embargo because they fear that ending it would strengthen the dictatorship.

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danielpalos said:

Maybe, but all they are doing is proving Socialism's worth. A capital economy, like the former South Africa, fell in around three years.

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The Embargo and Absolute Power
The Embargo and Absolute Power / Miriam Celaya | Translating Cuba

By Miriam Celaya

Lifting or easing the embargo will strengthen the Castros’ power. No economic benefit justifies the absence of democracy. Lifting the embargo would allow the Cuban government to apply for credit at US banks, and would make it legal for US citizens to visit Cuba as tourists.

HAVANA, Cuba- In the last week, various opinions have circulating about a letter sent to the president of the US, signed by US and Cuban-American intellectuals and political personalities asking for further easing of the embargo. Debating opinions sparked following the publication of the letter shows at once the relevance of relations between both governments in an eventual political transition in Cuba and the complexity derived from the many facets of a too long-drawn-out dispute.

So far, it is not known what strategy would take place in “drawing near” to the regime which would lead to an effective advance in human rights and democracy on the Island. The extreme positions have tinged a controversy which –judging by the signals stemming from it- will probably settle between the Cuban exile community’s economic power interested in investing in Cuba, some US political sectors and the political power of the Cuban regime. And what role do the common Cubans play in all this? That of passive recipients, the same as in the last 55 years.

It is undeniable that, under conditions of absolute power, the lifting or easing of the embargo will reflect its full benefit in favor of the consolidation of power of the Castros and their elite. However, does this mean that the embargo, or -as some sectors propose- its intensification, will be positive for the present and future of Cubans? At a time when the Cuban government is in desperate need of foreign investment capital, wouldn’t it be possible for those participating in the dialogue to establish a rational agenda to foster an evolution to a multilateral political and inclusive scenario for Cubans?

But this leads to other equally important questions: is there at least the intention to create such an agenda? would the opposing sectors and those of civil society be invited or allow to participate in its construction? Who would assume the public engagement of its compliance?

Without getting answers to these essential questions we will not be at the gates of a dialogue aimed at a solution for Cubans, but to an arrangement that would require their demonstration of faith once again, such as the one that made the empowerment of a dictatorship possible 50 years ago. So it is that, even for some of us who have declared ourselves opponents of the embargo as obsolete and retrograde politics, its unilateral and unconditional relaxation could be more harmful than beneficial at this juncture, given the regime’s ability to maneuver advantageously in critical situations. A negotiation, to be effective, requires certain conditions.

On the other hand, the intensification of the embargo would only lead to further hardship for Cubans, to an emphasis on violence in Cuba, the exodus, and the possibility of social chaos of unpredictable consequences. No opposition leader would be able to control such a scenario.

As we can see, is not a simple problem.

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The Cuban Embargo: A Debate of Ideology, Less of Strategy
The Cuban Embargo: A Debate of Ideology, Less of Strategy

José Azel

As Poland struggled to establish a democratic government, more than 100 political parties competed for personal and political power. Lech Walesa humorously captured the situation by commenting, “When two Poles get together, three political parties emerge.” That proportional proliferation of political ideas is about the same for Cubans when discussing how to bring about a change in Cuba’s polity. US foreign policy towards Cuba — specifically the US embargo — is often the cornerstone of this debate.

Thematically, but unfortunately not qualitatively, the disagreement over the embargo is not unlike the great debates on political philosophy surrounding the American and French Revolutions, exemplarily carried out by Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine. The Burke-Paine dispute is richly explored by Yuval Levin in his book The Great Debate.

Both Burke and Paine were men of ideas and of action. Burke was a devoted defender of the inherited traditions of the English constitution who argued brilliantly for a patient and gradual reform of his country’s institutions. In contrast, Paine fervently believed in the potential of Enlightenment liberalism to advance the cause of justice by uprooting corrupt and oppressive regimes and replacing them with governments answerable to the people. As Levin brings out in his book, “Each voiced a worldview deeply at odds with the other over some of the most important questions of liberal-democratic political thought.”

Up until recently, I have always thought of the embargo debate as a disagreement over strategy — about differences over modes of political change. On the one side, there are those of us who, like Paine, believe that in order for Cuba to have a prosperous democratic future it is necessary to replace the oppressive regime with a government answerable to the people. On the other side are those who, like Burke, believe that patient and gradual reforms of the institutions of the communist regime is the best strategy to advance the well-being of the Cuban people.

Superficially, the embargo discussion may be a disagreement over tactics, but it is a dispute rooted more deeply in political-economic thought, illustrating that the Cuban diaspora is not one people in any meaningful political sense. To paraphrase Lech Walesa, when two Cubans get together three political visions for Cuba emerge.

As critics of the embargo correctly point out, this policy has failed to bring about a change in Cuba’s polity; this is not disputed. But critics, in an exercise in casuistry, never quite explain how their idea of a unilateral, unconditional elimination of US economic sanctions will succeed in bringing about such a change. Perhaps that is because a structural change in Cuba’s polity is not a goal they value highly.

Also not to be disputed is the fact that under a totalitarian system, where all economic activity is deemed to be at the service of the state, economic sanctions work to diminish the economic resources available to the regime. The US embargo has accomplished that. Thus, a unilateral, unconditional elimination of economic sanctions would inevitably enhance, to some degree, the economic wherewithal of the Cuban regime. Why support a change in policy that will strengthen a regime that oppresses your countrymen?

Apparently, my friends on the other side of this debate are not comprehensively repulsed by the collectivist policies of the Castro regime. This is not to suggest that they support the Castros or the repressive nature of that regime. I am sure they do not. But it does suggest that at some level, and in some measure, they are intellectually drawn to the pervasive use of the state’s coercive power by self-appointed wise men to drive society towards their preconceived idea of a just society. It suggests an ideological genuflection to Cuban collectivism.

Their political vision, like Burke’s, is pious, gradualist, and reformist. They are distrustful of a citizen’s relationship to his society that is defined by the individual right of free choice. They are willing to accept economic changes mandated by authoritarian rule without democratic reforms to empower the citizenry to freely choose their path. This is abhorrent to those of us that, like Paine, believe that the rights and freedoms of the individual must be the centerpiece of political life. I have now come to believe that, among Cubans, the embargo is just the ideological proxy for this more fundamental political debate.

José Azel
Senior scholar at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami. Azel was a political exile from Cuba at the age of 13 in 1961 and is the author of Mañana in Cuba. Follow @JoseAzel

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Myths About U.S. Policy Toward Cuba
Focus on Cuba

Jaime Suchlicki*
Focus on Cuba, Issue 218

• Ending the U.S. embargo of Cuba will take away Castro’s excuses against the U.S. and about his own failures:

1) The embargo is not the cause of Cuba’s problems. A failed economic system that does not encourage productivity and creativity is the cause. Like Eastern European economies under communism, Cuba’s economic disaster has to do with the system, not U.S. policy.

2) If the embargo is ended, the Castro brothers will continue to claim that the U.S. owes Cuba $40-50 billion for the damages caused by the embargo. If the U.S. pays Cuba the $40-50 billion, Castro will claim damages for the U.S. occupation of Cuba (1899-1902) and on and on.

3) Most Cubans do not believe that the embargo is the cause of their economic problems. Instead of repeating this falsehood, U.S. policymakers should attempt to convince Cubans otherwise.

• Ending the U.S. embargo will improve U.S.-Latin American relations.

1) Cuba is not the main issue dividing U.S.-Latin America. Drugs, migration, intellectual property, and ideological differences over Venezuela are higher on the Latin American agenda.

2) Ending the embargo unilaterally will do little to solve the above problems and will create new ones. A large influx of U.S. tourists to Cuba will have a dislocating effect on the economies of smaller Caribbean islands; will contradict U.S. policy in Latin America which has emphasized democracy and human rights for the past four decades; will accept in Cuba a military dictatorship and condemn Cubans to many more years of repression and misery.

3) Ending the embargo unilaterally will do little to change the Castro brothers’ anti-Americanism and their support for Venezuela, Iran, Russia, and for terrorist groups throughout the world. General Raul Castro is unwilling to renounce these relationships for an uncertain relationship with the U.S.

The periodic public statements that General Raul Castro has made about wanting negotiations with the U.S. are politically motivated and directed at audiences in the U.S. and Europe. In particular, Raul believes that the “correlation of forces” are such in the U.S. that Congress may lift the travel ban and end the embargo unilaterally, without Cuba having to make any concessions. Serious overtures for negotiations are usually not issued from the plaza; they are carried out through normal diplomatic avenues open to the Cubans. These avenues have never been closed as evidenced by the migration accord and the anti-hijacking agreement between the U.S. and Cuba. In the past, both Democratic and Republican administrations have had conversations with Cuban officials and made serious overtures for normalization, only to be rebuffed.

The issue is not about negotiations or talking. There has to be a willingness on the part of the Cuban leadership to offer real concessions-in the area of human rights and political and economic openings as well as cooperation on anti-terrorism and drug interdiction-for the U.S. to change its policies. The U.S., as well as other countries, does not give away major policies without a substantial quid pro quo. Only when Raul is willing to offer meaningful concessions not only to the United States, but more importantly to the Cuban people, then and only then the U.S. should change its policies.

*Jaime Suchlicki is Emilio Bacardi Moreau Distinguished Professor and Director, Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, University of Miami. He is the author of Cuba: From Columbus to Castro, now in its fifth edition; Mexico: From Montezuma to NAFTA, now in its second edition and the recently published Breve Historia de Cuba.

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“The Smartest Woman in the World”: Flunks Her Foreign Policy Exam
“The Smartest Woman in the World� Flunks Her Foreign Policy Exam | FrontPage Magazine

by Humberto Fontova

Worse still, the flunkie in this article title recently served as U.S. Secretary of State. Back in the ’90s when she served as First Lady (co-president, some say) Hillary Clinton was widely known as “The Smartest Woman in the World.” Her husband Bill supposedly coined the term, but Rush Limbaugh ran with it, snarking and laughing. Soon it was household.

In her new book, Hillary Clinton reveals that she prodded President Obama to “lift or ease” (what’s left of the so-called) Cuba embargo. “The embargo is Castro’s best friend,” Clinton explained to a delighted audience at the anti-embargo Council on Foreign Relations last week while promoting her book Hard Choices.

But doesn’t the “Smartest Woman in the World” and former U.S. Secretary of State know that what’s left of the sanctions against Castro’s Stalinist regime are codified into law and can only be lifted by Congress, obviously after a vote? In fact, this codification took place with passage of the Helms-Burton act in 1996, when she was first lady (co-president.)
Click the link for the full article

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Paris Club: Cuba Remains 2nd Most Indebted Nation
Capitol Hill Cubans: Paris Club: Cuba Remains 2nd Most Indebted Nation

at 10:12 AM Wednesday, June 25, 2014

The Paris Club, a group composed of the world's 19 largest creditor nations, has released its annual list of outstanding claims (debtors).

These claims are held either by The Paris Club member States directly, or through their appropriate institutions (especially export credit or official development aid agencies) on behalf of the member States.

Cuba owes $35.193 billion, which makes it The Paris Club's 2nd most indebted nation. This represents a $5 billion increase from 2011.

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Responding to The NYT editorial “End the US Embargo on Cuba”
Responding to The NYT editorial

By Clive Rudd Fernandez
October 14, 2014

Havana’s capitolio building. Photo: Juan Suarez

HAVANA TIMES — I was surprised to read the editorial from the New York Times on October 11, 2014, not because of the subject but because of the unconvincing and poor arguments presented. As a Cuban who’s lived in exile in Europe for more than 20 years, this subject is in my thoughts very often.

The U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, which was imposed on October 19, 1960, should be relaxed by Barack Obama by doing “a major policy shift [that] could yield a significant foreign policy success”.

This argument appears on the first paragraph of the op ed with an implicit message to Barack Obama urging him to do a major policy shift regarding the relations with the Cuban government and as a result he’ll improve his ratings.

This is where I couldn’t believe what I was reading. “Fully ending the embargo will require Congress’s approval. But there is much more the White House could do on its own.” So the op ed is not asking the United States to modify the law; the intention here is to go the less democratic way: the President with his executives powers should do some policy changes to undermine the embargo so much that could render it irrelevant and the objective: to score a political goal for the president!

Few paragraphs down in the text, it reads: “The generation that adamantly supports the embargo is dying off. Younger Cuban-Americans hold starkly different views”. So, I wonder, why the need to bypass the democratic route?

The editorial goes on and states that “a devastated economy has forced [the government in] Cuba to make reforms” and “over the decades, it became clear to many American policy makers that the embargo was an utter failure”. Both statements are clearly contradictory arguments.

The trade embargo affects the Cuban economy to the point that it’s a “devastated economy” so it “has forced Cuba to make reforms”, and on the same text it says that the embargo is not working? As a popular English proverb says: “You can’t have your cake and eat it (too)”.

Another clear contradiction is that the editor is stating that “for the first time in more than 50 years, shifting politics in the United States and changing policies in Cuba make it politically feasible to re-establish formal diplomatic relations and dismantle the senseless embargo”. So the fact that Alan Gross has been unjustly imprisoned in Cuba for nearly five years and that “the authoritarian government still harasses and detains dissidents” is not a deal breaker?

After arguing poorly against the trade embargo the op ed goes to the implementation plan. This is a manual for the President on how to go about executing the policy changes:

“As a first step, the Obama administration should remove Cuba from the State Department’s list of nations that sponsor terrorist organizations” and “Cuba was put on the list in 1982 for backing terrorist groups in Latin America, which it no longer does.”

“Which it no longer does?” How on Earth can the editorial board of the NYT make a statement like this? Most human rights organizations in Europe and the U.S. are at least skeptical on this. Cuba is a closed society where the government persecutes and imprisons investigative journalism; therefore we could assume a statement like this is at least unfounded. On top of that, the Cuban government has gone on record supporting Bashar al Assad in Syria, Hamas in Gaza and various people in power in Iran over the years.
Click link for balance of article

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Implications of Ending the Cuban Embargo
Focus on Cuba

Jaime Suchlicki*
October 20, 2014

If the U.S. were to end the embargo and lift the travel ban without major reforms in Cuba, there would be significant implications:

• Money from American tourists would flow into businesses owned by the Castro government thus strengthening state enterprises. The tourist industry is controlled by the military and General Raul Castro.

• Tourist dollars would be spent on products, i.e., rum, tobacco, etc., produced by state enterprises, and tourists would stay in hotels owned partially or wholly by the Cuban government. The principal airline shuffling tourists around the island, Gaviota, is owned and operated by the Cuban military.

• American tourists will have limited contact with Cubans. Most Cuban resorts are built in isolated areas, are off limits to the average Cuban, and are controlled by Cuba’s efficient security apparatus. Most Americans don’t speak Spanish, have but limited contact with ordinary Cubans, and are not interested in visiting the island to subvert its regime. Law 88 enacted in 1999 prohibits Cubans from receiving publications from tourists. Penalties include jail terms.

• While providing the Castro government with much needed dollars, the economic impact of tourism on the Cuban population would be limited. Dollars will trickle down to the Cuban poor in only small quantities, while state and foreign enterprises will benefit most.

• The assumption that the Cuban leadership would allow U.S. tourists or businesses to subvert the revolution and influence internal developments is at best naïve. As we have seen in other circumstances, U.S. travelers to Cuba could be subject to harassment and imprisonment.

• Over the past decades hundred of thousands of Canadian, European and Latin American tourists have visited the island. Cuba is not more democratic today. If anything, Cuba is more totalitarian, with the state and its control apparatus having been strengthened as a result of the influx of tourist dollars.

• As occurred in the mid-1990s, an infusion of American tourist dollars will provide the regime with a further disincentive to adopt deeper economic reforms. Cuba’s limited economic reforms were enacted in the early 1990s, when the island’s economic contraction was at its worst. Once the economy began to stabilize by 1996 as a result of foreign tourism and investments, and exile remittances, the earlier reforms were halted or rescinded by Castro.

• Lifting the embargo and the travel ban without major concessions from Cuba would send the wrong message “to the enemies of the United States”: that a foreign leader can seize U.S. properties without compensation; allow the use of his territory for the introduction of nuclear missiles aimed at the United States; espouse terrorism and anti-U.S. causes throughout the world; and eventually the United States will “forget and forgive,” and reward him with tourism, investments and economic aid.

• Since the Ford/Carter era, U.S. policy toward Latin America has emphasized democracy, human rights and constitutional government. Under President Reagan the U.S. intervened in Grenada, under President Bush, Sr. the U.S. intervened in Panama and under President Clinton the U.S. landed marines in Haiti, all to restore democracy to those countries. The U.S. has prevented military coups in the region and supported the will of the people in free elections. U.S. policy has not been uniformly applied throughout the world, yet it is U.S. policy in the region. Cuba is part of Latin America. While no one is advocating military intervention, normalization of relations with a military dictatorship in Cuba will send the wrong message to the rest of the continent.

• Once American tourists begin to visit Cuba, Castro would probably restrict travel by Cuban-Americans. For the Castro regime, Cuban-Americans represent a far more subversive group because of their ability to speak to friends and relatives on the island, and to influence their views on the Castro regime and on the United States. Indeed, the return of Cuban exiles in 1979-80 precipitated the mass exodus of Cubans from Mariel in 1980.
Click link above for balance of article.

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Implications of Ending the Cuban Embargo
Focus on Cuba

Jaime Suchlicki*
October 20, 2014

If the U.S. were to end the embargo and lift the travel ban without major reforms in Cuba, there would be significant implications:
• Money from American tourists would flow into businesses owned by the Castro government thus strengthening state enterprises. The tourist industry is controlled by the military and General Raul Castro.

• Tourist dollars would be spent on products, i.e., rum, tobacco, etc., produced by state enterprises, and tourists would stay in hotels owned partially or wholly by the Cuban government. The principal airline shuffling tourists around the island, Gaviota, is owned and operated by the Cuban military.

• American tourists will have limited contact with Cubans. Most Cuban resorts are built in isolated areas, are off limits to the average Cuban, and are controlled by Cuba’s efficient security apparatus. Most Americans don’t speak Spanish, have but limited contact with ordinary Cubans, and are not interested in visiting the island to subvert its regime. Law 88 enacted in 1999 prohibits Cubans from receiving publications from tourists. Penalties include jail terms.

• While providing the Castro government with much needed dollars, the economic impact of tourism on the Cuban population would be limited. Dollars will trickle down to the Cuban poor in only small quantities, while state and foreign enterprises will benefit most.

• The assumption that the Cuban leadership would allow U.S. tourists or businesses to subvert the revolution and influence internal developments is at best naïve. As we have seen in other circumstances, U.S. travelers to Cuba could be subject to harassment and imprisonment.
• Over the past decades hundred of thousands of Canadian, European and Latin American tourists have visited the island. Cuba is not more democratic today. If anything, Cuba is more totalitarian, with the state and its control apparatus having been strengthened as a result of the influx of tourist dollars.

• As occurred in the mid-1990s, an infusion of American tourist dollars will provide the regime with a further disincentive to adopt deeper economic reforms. Cuba’s limited economic reforms were enacted in the early 1990s, when the island’s economic contraction was at its worst. Once the economy began to stabilize by 1996 as a result of foreign tourism and investments, and exile remittances, the earlier reforms were halted or rescinded by Castro.

• Lifting the embargo and the travel ban without major concessions from Cuba would send the wrong message “to the enemies of the United States”: that a foreign leader can seize U.S. properties without compensation; allow the use of his territory for the introduction of nuclear missiles aimed at the United States; espouse terrorism and anti-U.S. causes throughout the world; and eventually the United States will “forget and forgive,” and reward him with tourism, investments and economic aid.

• Since the Ford/Carter era, U.S. policy toward Latin America has emphasized democracy, human rights and constitutional government. Under President Reagan the U.S. intervened in Grenada, under President Bush, Sr. the U.S. intervened in Panama and under President Clinton the U.S. landed marines in Haiti, all to restore democracy to those countries. The U.S. has prevented military coups in the region and supported the will of the people in free elections. U.S. policy has not been uniformly applied throughout the world, yet it is U.S. policy in the region. Cuba is part of Latin America. While no one is advocating military intervention, normalization of relations with a military dictatorship in Cuba will send the wrong message to the rest of the continent.

• Once American tourists begin to visit Cuba, Castro would probably restrict travel by Cuban-Americans. For the Castro regime, Cuban-Americans represent a far more subversive group because of their ability to speak to friends and relatives on the island, and to influence their views on the Castro regime and on the United States. Indeed, the return of Cuban exiles in 1979-80 precipitated the mass exodus of Cubans from Mariel in 1980.
Click link above for full article.

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Cuba should not be rewarded for denying freedom to its people
Cuba should not be rewarded for denying freedom to its people - The Washington Post

Fidel Castro, left, and Cuba's President Raul Castro attend the 6th Communist Party Congress in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday April 19, 2011. (Javier Galeano/AP)

By Editorial Board October 20, 2014

THE OTHER day, Fidel Castro wrote an opinion column for Cuba’s state-run newspaper, Granma, as he has done periodically from retirement. He lavished praise on an editorial in the New York Times that called for an end to the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba. But Mr. Castro had one complaint: The Times mentioned the harassment of dissidents and the still-unexplained death of a leading exponent of democracy, Oswaldo Payá, and a younger activist, Harold Cepero, in a car wreck two years ago.

The assertion that Cuba’s authoritarian government had yet to explain the deaths was “slanderous and [a] cheap accusation,” Mr. Castro sputtered.

So why has Cuba done nothing to dispel the fog of suspicion that still lingers over the deaths? If the charge is slanderous, then it is long past time for Mr. Castro to order a thorough investigation of what happened on an isolated Cuban road on July?22, 2012. So far, there has been only a crude attempt at cover-up and denial.

We know something about what happened, thanks to the eyewitness account of Ángel Carromero, the young Spanish politician who was at the wheel of the rental car that was carrying Mr. Payá and Mr. Cepero to a meeting with supporters. Mr. Carromero, who visited Washington last week, told us the car was being shadowed by Cuban state security from the moment it left Havana. He said his conversations with Mr. Payá as they traveled were mostly about the Varela Project, Mr. Payá’s courageous 2002 petition drive seeking to guarantee democracy in Cuba. Many of Mr. Payá’s supporters in the project were later arrested and imprisoned.

After the wreck, Mr. Carromero was pressured by the Cuban authorities to describe it as an accident caused by his reckless speeding. But he reiterated to us last week that what really happened is that the rental car was rammed from behind by a vehicle bearing state license plates. Mr. Carromero showed us photographs of the damaged car, damage that seemed inconsistent with a wreck caused by speeding. But the precise details of what happened are unknown and need to be cleared up by a credible investigation. Mr. Payá’s family has sought one for two years, without success. When the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States sent a query to Cuba about the case, they got no answer. Nothing.

The U.S. embargo has been substantially relaxed in recent years to allow hundreds of millions of dollars of food and medicine exports, in addition to consumer goods supplied to Cubans by relatives in this country. The question is whether a further relaxation is merited. The regime’s persecution of dissidents is unceasing; it continues to imprison American Alan Gross on false charges. While Cuba has toyed with economic liberalization and lifted travel restrictions for some, we see no sign that the Castro brothers are loosening their grip. Fully lifting the embargo now would reward and ratify their intransigence.

A concession such as ending the trade embargo should not be exchanged for nothing. It should be made when Cuba grants genuine freedom to its people, the goal cherished by Mr. Payá.

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Down With the Embargo, Long Live the Embargo
Down With the Embargo, Long Live the Embargo / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo | Translating Cuba

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

The New York Times is not in favor or against the American embargo of the Cuban government. The New York Times is simply in favor of what in every circumstance is most convenient to the Castro regime.

So it was that the New York Times just published this recycled editorial where they ask for an end to the embargo for the 1959th time, even going beyond American law (they are like frogs in the Fidelista fable, demanding of the White Heron that governs at coups of presidential resolution.

So, in addition, the New York Times in a second act to its distracting editorial, opened its plural debate pages to the one thousand and 959 Cubanologists: and so dissolved all the attention to not speak of what is most important now (and has been for two years), Olympianically omitting the presence in the United States of the witness to a double State murder on the part of the Raul and Fidel regime.

In effect, Angel Carromero is in American territory. However, the last reference on the New York Times to this criminal case of the Castro regime was from last year. The complaint of the Payá-Acevedo family, the complicity of the Spanish judiciary and executive with this announced assassination, the violations and mockery of those uniformed in olive-green on the little Island of the Infamous: none of this is Newyorktimesable. They love only the embargo because they know it works like an engine of little lies.

And because of this I don’t have one ounce of respect for the great media. They are killing machines in exchange for majestic salaries. I prefer the tiny voices of the nobodies. The almost anonymous biographies of the redeemers and their blogs with zero commentaries in every post.

So they killed Harold Cepero and Oswaldo Payá, martyrs to a perverse country where a perpetual power stones you and manipulates you to death with impunity. The Cuban Interior Ministry killed them both on Sunday, 22 July 2012, like two nobodies who are now barely doubtful statistics for the Ph.D.-holding experts of the New York Times. In this Manhattan edifice, so chilling in its supposed transparency, I say: **** you, New York Times.

But, of course, the debate of our exile, historic or recently arrived, follows the rhyme of the New York Times. Some say: lift it… Other say: keep it… and the arguments in both cases were conceived decades ago by the genocidal hierarchs from Havana.

What is laughable about this debate between dinosaurs is that it keeps the commanderesque mummy of Fidel alive and kicking: the dictator makes us dance the mother****ers’ conga every time his cadaverous cojones come out.

Cubasummatum est.

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Cuba hasn’t earned embargo’s end
Cuba hasn

Miami Herald Editorial Board

In October of 1960, the United States imposed an embargo on exports to Cuba covering all commodities except medical supplies and certain food products. That was the beginning of a trade embargo that still endures and still inspires heated debate.

The anniversary of the embargo, plus this week’s upcoming vote in the United Nations condemning it — which the United States will lose, as usual — have prompted calls for a reassessment. Dropping the embargo altogether would require action by Congress. Meanwhile, anti-embargo advocates say, there’s a lot the president can do to soften or minimize its effects and open the door to restoring full ties with Cuba.

We disagree. Such a move would be premature and utterly lacking in justification at this time.

Granted, Raúl Castro has loosened the reins on the tightly controlled economy to permit more individual businesses. Some citizens can own property, and new rules are designed to encourage foreign investment. But it’s only because Cuba has been frozen in time for so long that such minimal change seems so dramatic. The Cuban nomenklatura still runs the Soviet-style planned economy that largely remains in place, and its members remain its major beneficiaries.

Some see vague government statements from Havana welcoming renewed diplomatic ties with the United States as a sign that it’s willing to negotiate longstanding differences. We would attribute that not to any goodwill but rather to Cuba hedging its bets as it nervously watches the slide in oil prices and the rise of political instability in Venezuela.
The Andean country has been the Castro brothers’ main benefactor in the last few years, helping prop up Cuba’s chronically weak economy with cheap oil. But if oil prices continue to drop, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro will need every penny he can get selling oil on the international market. He won’t hesitate to throw Cuba under the bus if it means survival for the Chávez movement in Caracas.

That makes the timing of any move by Washington toward Havana particularly inappropriate. Why throw it a lifeline now?
Yet even if these objections could be met, the greater issue remains unresolved: Cuba is still an unforgiving, authoritarian police state that will stop at nothing to stifle those it deems enemies of the state.

Here’s what Human Rights Watch says: “The Cuban government continues to repress individuals and groups who criticize the government or call for basic human rights. Officials employ a range of tactics to punish dissent and instill fear in the public, including beatings, public acts of shaming, termination of employment and threats of long-term imprisonment.”
Arrests of dissidents are going up, not down. Press freedom? Forget about it.

Nor has the Cuban government bothered to investigate the death of Oswaldo Payá, perhaps Cuba’s most prominent advocate of democracy, nor to allow an independent investigation of his supposed “accident” by anyone else.

Then there’s the case of American Alan Gross, sentenced to 15 years in prison for “acts against the independence or the territorial integrity of the state.” Translation from the Kafkaesque: He was caught bringing a satellite phone to Cuba’s small and beleaguered Jewish community.

Is there any doubt that the Castro brothers remain committed to maintaining their dictatorship over Cuba? Of course not

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