Thread: Embargo? What Embargo?

When Helping ‘the Cuban People’ Means Bankrolling the Castros
When Helping ?the Cuban People? Means Bankrolling the Castros - WSJ

U.S. legislation to ease sanctions will instead primarily benefit Havana’s state-owned monopolies.

By MAURICIO CLAVER-CARONE
June 23, 2015 7:07 p.m. ET

Three bills full of lofty but disingenuous rhetoric about “supporting the Cuban people” were recently filed in the U.S. Senate to ease sanctions. To have an honest debate about sanctions on Cuba, it’s important to understand how that totalitarian regime conducts business. The bills primarily benefit three monopolies in Cuba, all owned and operated by the Cuban government: Etecsa, Alimport and Gaesa.

Let’s look at each piece of legislation:

• The Cuba Digital and Telecommunications Advancement Act. This bill’s purpose is to provide millions of U.S. dollars to develop telecom infrastructure for the Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba, S.A. (Etecsa), owned by the Cuban government. The company works with the secret police of Cuba’s President Raúl Castro, tapping phone lines, monitoring conversations, censoring the Internet and persecuting Cubans discovered with homemade satellite dishes.

Etecsa is very good at what it does, according to a recent report by Freedom House, a nongovernmental organization based in Washington, D.C., that ranks Cuba, China, Iran and Syria as the world’s most Internet-repressive governments.

The cosponsors of the Cuba Digital and Telecommunications Advancement Act, including New Mexico Democratic Sen. Tom Udall and Arizona Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, argue that foreign investment in Etecsa will lead to greater Internet connectivity for the Cuban people. Apparently they are unaware that Telecom Italia owned a 27% stake in Etecsa from 1995-2011. Or that America’s Sprint Corporation provided Etecsa with its first Internet connection in 1996, and that France’s Alcatel-Lucent laid new fiber optic cable for Etecsa in 2012.

None of those “foreign investments” improved connectivity for the Cuban people. What the investments did was improve the Cuban government’s ability to control its people.
Click link above for full arfticle.

No matter what the Castroit regime agree to in words or in writing, it will continue to act as it has acted for 57 years. It has chosen to restrict the freedom of the Cuban people. Obama’s strategy of given the Castroit regime what they want without getting anything in returned is not working. You don’t undermine the regime by assisting them economically from imploding.

The convertible peso rate is 1.00 CUC = 1.00 USD, and 1 CUC = 26.5 Cuban pesos (CUP). A new resolution published in the official gazette of the regime fixed the salaries of Cubans working for foreign companies at only only 8% and the regime pocketing 92% of the hard currency. According to Granma, the official newspaper of the Castroit regime, these workers will receive the same salary as if they were working for a Cuban company. This mean that the regime will pocket the rest.

In addition to the 92% pocketed by the regime, the employment offices of the regime will charge 20% of the salary of each worker they connect with foreign companies for their service of finding those employees. These new measures were enacted on December 16, 2014, the same day of Obama’s announcement of new trade measures to facilitate business with the Castroit regime.

This income rate of 92% payed by the Cuban workers, is the highest tax in the world. I would like to hear from those progressives that would willingly pay 92% of their salary in taxes and leave under the same conditions that Cubans in the island.

Cuban Gov. to Keep 92% of Worker Salaries
Link: Cuban Gov. to Keep 92% of Worker Salaries - Havana Times.org

The Catroit regime look to the day that the U.S. taxpayers would fund its worker paradise. The regime had sold a Potemkin village, a façade designed to hide the real condition, to the outside world.

Why boycotting Cuba makes sense
Why boycotting Cuba makes sense - The Washington Post

By Richard Cohen

I have an idea. Instead of merely lifting the U.S. embargo on Cuba, let’s impose another. By all means, Washington should end its 54-year-old failed effort to strangle the Castro regime. But what the government couldn’t do, others should attempt: Liberals (and others) should boycott Cuba.

I am old enough to remember when liberals would not visit Spain so long as fascist dictator Francisco Franco remained in power. I concede that this boycott did not hasten Franco’s departure — he died in office — but it was, after all, a worthy statement of principle. At least it recognized that Franco was a bad guy.

The same should hold for Cuba. The embargo has been a failure, but so, too, has been the Castro regime. It has turned the island into an economic basket case — all those cute DeSotos and aging Chevys — and it continues to rule repressively. Cuba has but one political party — the Communist one — and no freedom of the press. Why some people continue to swoon over it should stump me, but it doesn’t. They insist on thinking that any enemy of the United States is a friend of theirs.
Click link above for full article.

The Progressives has always been tolerant of Communism. Most lefties don’t like capitalism and tend to aligned with socialist ideas. They would like to turn the U.S. into a socialist country, an authoritarian nanny state. Fortunately, in the near future, that will not happen.

The Castroit regimen economic and social polices had transformed the island into a hell hole. The economy is in shambles in a country with plentiful natural resources. Cuba is a vivid example of the economic and social failures of the Communist system.

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Cuba to US: We don’t want your food
Cuba to US: We don’t want your food

As the White House tries to open up a trade relationship, Cuba shuts off the spigot. What’s going on?

By Danny Vinik
October 6, 2015


AP Photo

As President Obama’s Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker journeys to Havana tomorrow to promote the idea of a warmer U.S. trade relationship with Cuba, she's shadowed by an awkward fact: The existing trade between the two nations is vanishing, and nobody is quite sure why.

Strange as it might sound for a country under a 53-year embargo, Cuba does buy a significant quantity of American goods every year, thanks to a little-known exception that allows American companies to sell food and medical supplies there. But as the two countries grow diplomatically closer, that business relationship has dropped off sharply.

Agricultural exports to Cuba slid from $710 million to $291 million between 2007 and in 2014. In the first seven months of this year, they’ve fallen to $122 million, a 41 percent drop. In July, the only agricultural product that Cuba imported from the United States was poultry, according to the U.S. Cuba Trade and Economic Council.
Click link above for full article.

According to the World Food Program, the Castroit regime imports about 80% of its food, at a cost of $2 billion a year. Since the year 2000 the U.S. is the larger supplier of food to the island. Under the Castroit regime the agricultural production had remained stagnant

Any foreign money invested in Cuba goes directly to the Castroit monopolies that control every aspect of the economy. The regime 55 years of trade with other nations has not helped the Cuban people. The island is not a socialist paradise. It is a totalitarian hell for the people who have to live there. They remain poor, exploited and without civil liberties.

Originally Posted by Sandokan

Any foreign money invested in Cuba goes directly to the Castroit monopolies that control every aspect of the economy. The regime 55 years of trade with other nations has not helped the Cuban people. The island is not a socialist paradise. It is a totalitarian hell for the people who have to live there. They remain poor, exploited and without civil liberties.

One needs to "poke around" to see what you're talking about. Anyone who hasn't learned Spanish will only see the Potemkin village that you speak of. However, learning Spanish and starting up a conversation with a random "Bitaxista" is very revealing. You know something is wrong when you successfully find someone to give you an all day tour of the city for two bucks (50 CUP).

One positive thing, though. You can sit on a park bench an count how much money you have left and no one will bother you. Walking around with 2000 CUC is absolutely safe in places like Villa Clara or Cienfuegos.

Originally Posted by SDET

One needs to "poke around" to see what you're talking about. Anyone who hasn't learned Spanish will only see the Potemkin village that you speak of. However, learning Spanish and starting up a conversation with a random "Bitaxista" is very revealing. You know something is wrong when you successfully find someone to give you an all day tour of the city for two bucks (50 CUP).

One positive thing, though. You can sit on a park bench an count how much money you have left and no one will bother you. Walking around with 2000 CUC is absolutely safe in places like Villa Clara or Cienfuegos.

The title of the thread is "Embargo?, What Embargo?", and all the articles and replies to it have to do with the embargo. There is no needsto "poke around" to see what I am talking about.