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Embargo? What Embargo?

The Castroit regime enforce several types of apartheid:

1. "Tourist apartheid", which separates regular Cubans from the tourists. Cubans are kept away from tourists by the regime security apparatus that tightly controls most of the tourist resort areas. These areas are off-limits to the average Cubans, which cannot afford most of the hotels even if they have dollars.

2. "Healthcare apartheid". While the elite and tourists have access to fully equipped and stocked hospitals, the ordinary Cubans have only access to crumbling hospitals that lack even the basics: from sheets to medicines. One of the problems with the healthcare system in Cuba is the severe shortage of medicines, equipment, and other supplies, brought about by the centralized planning by the regime that has leads to chronic material shortages and inefficiency.

3. "Information apartheid": Tourists have access to internet and international satellite channels. Cuba’s internet remains one of the most restricted and censored in the world, according to the 2013 Freedom on the Net ranking. Cubans face many restrictions to internet access, and are sent to jail for running Wi-Fi networks. The regime crackdown on bloggers and dissident journalist.
 
The Castroit regime enforce several types of apartheid:

1. "Tourist apartheid", which separates regular Cubans from the tourists. Cubans are kept away from tourists by the regime security apparatus that tightly controls most of the tourist resort areas. These areas are off-limits to the average Cubans, which cannot afford most of the hotels even if they have dollars.

2. "Healthcare apartheid". While the elite and tourists have access to fully equipped and stocked hospitals, the ordinary Cubans have only access to crumbling hospitals that lack even the basics: from sheets to medicines. One of the problems with the healthcare system in Cuba is the severe shortage of medicines, equipment, and other supplies, brought about by the centralized planning by the regime that has leads to chronic material shortages and inefficiency.

3. "Information apartheid": Tourists have access to internet and international satellite channels. Cuba’s internet remains one of the most restricted and censored in the world, according to the 2013 Freedom on the Net ranking. Cubans face many restrictions to internet access, and are sent to jail for running Wi-Fi networks. The regime crackdown on bloggers and dissident journalist.

Back in 2007, I "wandered" away from the tourist areas and started talking to people. About half were willing to talk under the condition if they turn their head away, STOP TALKING. I agreed. I learned a lot by hopping on different "Camellos".

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Six Issues the U.S. Should Not Concede to Cuba During Normalization Talks
Six Issues U.S. Should Not Concede to Cuba During Normalization Talks

By Ana Quintana
February 25, 2015

The U.S. and Cuba will hold the second round of normalization talks on February 27 in Washington, DC. This follows the U.S.’s attempt in late January to negotiate the terms of reestablishing diplomatic relations with the Castro regime. In those talks in Havana, Cuban officials made it clear that the regime will not change its political or economic system, despite the Obama Administration’s many overtures. The regime also demanded an end to the embargo and removal of Cuba from the U.S. list of State Sponsors of Terrorism before restoration of diplomatic relations. Later in January at a summit of Latin American countries, Cuban leader Raul Castro reiterated these points, conditioning further openings with the U.S. on the lifting of the U.S. embargo, the return of Guantánamo Bay naval base, and compensation for “human and economic damage” incurred as a result of the U.S. embargo.[1]
Click link above for full article
The Obama administration practically has wavered on those six issues. The more Obama administration give to the Castroit regime, the more it wants. The regime has a long list of grievances with the United States. One of it is its objection to U.S. support for its political dissidents. An editorial from the regime it said, “The United States” should abandon the pretense of fabricating an internal political opposition, paid for with money from U.S. taxpayers.”
 
On April 16, 2016, Raul Castro in an address to the meeting of the Communist party recalled a conversation with a US official during the visit of Obama, to whom he said: “It’s as if we had two parties in Cuba and Fidel led one and I led the other.” He also said the US was determined to end Cuba’s socialist revolution, and added that the goals are the same, only the methods have changed. The main message is that Obama visit has not change anything.
 
MARK FALCOFF: MORE THOUGHTS ON CUBA
Mark Falcoff: More thoughts on Cuba | Power Line

Mark Falcoff is resident scholar emeritus at AEI. He is the author of several books includingCuba the Morning After: Confronting Castro’s Legacy. He writes further to posts for us on Cuba, most recently, here and here

POSTED ON MARCH 6, 2015 BY SCOTT JOHNSON

The story has kind of disappeared from the headlines, or even the second page, but the efforts of the Obama administration to reestablish relations with Castro’s Cuba CONTINUES apace. All kinds of people are getting into the act–not just unreconstructed Marxists or pie-in-the-sky peaceniks, but hard driving business people hoping to make a buck once the trade embargo is lifted.

At first glance this seems rather odd. What could Cuba buy from the US? What would it use for money? The government is flat broke. The average Cuban has virtually nothing to spend. Presumably the government and its enterprises (hotels, resorts) would get some hard currency from tourism, but at present — because of the lack of a small business community and an unproductive agriculture — it would have to turn around and buy almost all the inputs elsewhere This has been the case for some years now since the country opened itself to Canadian, European and Latin American travelers.

Tourists, of course, must eat (even if Cubans have to depend on sometimes empty ration stores.) This is where American agriculture comes in. Cuba has destroyed what agriculture it had through Soviet-type policies. It is already buying American foodstuffs, but under the current restrictive legislation, it must pay cash. It would naturally like to buy more–on CREDIT .
This is, to repeat, not possible at present.
Click link above for full article.
Mark Falcoff, American Enterprise Institute resident scholar emeritus, hit the target. Agribusinesses have no problem in selling on credit, since the U.S. Treasury Department guarantee their repayment to them in the event of a default. Under these guarantee programs when a U.S. financier extent credit to cover a sale abroad, the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCD), back by the Treasury Department, guarantee to make repayments if the foreign imported default. Under this program, the U.S. exporters always get their money, otherwise they wouldn’t sell to the Castroit tyrannical regime. This sales on credit will bilk U.S. taxpayers out of billions of dollars.
 
NO EMBARGO, NO CRY
No Embargo, No Cry | The Mantle

ORLANDO LUIS PARDO LAZO
MARCH 18, 2015

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The U.S. embargo against the Cuban government is like those recurrent childhood nightmares, for both Cubans living on the Island and abroad. Oh, the Embargo Embargo: limit of our life, fire of our leaders…

During decadent decades the Cuban Revolution has been defined by that urge of surviving in a besieged place, where distrust and the hate speech are officially justified by the tricky threat of a foreign foe, where an invisible U.S. invasion was enough to promote impunity within the Island, including the need of a messianic savior: Fidel, just Fidel—because calling him Castro could be considered a first symptom of dissent.

And public dissent begets personal disaster in dictatorships.

We Cubans are fed with the populist paranoia of Fidel in our mothers’ milk. In turn, this rule of Fidelity feeds a paternalistic State where citizens always behave like children. All responsibilities rely upon the Revolution. Behaviorism in the time of barbarity. Discipline as the substitute of both duty and desire. Meanwhile all our fundamental freedoms were embargoed by the Cuban authorities as a displaced vengeance for the U.S. embargo against them.

At first, with the Soviet satellite republics nourishing the Cuban economy, our Commander in Chief was making jokes about how useless the U.S. embargo was to prevent his Revolution from turning Cuba into a First World nation:

• “There will be enough milk produced in Cuba to fill Havana bay.” (1966).1

• "The effect of the American blockade has been to require us to work harder and better, it has been effective in favor of the Revolution.” (1967).2

• “The language of force does not intimidate us, we have been cured of it, so the blockade is now a subject of scorn and laughter.” (1969).3

• “Happily, we depend on the U.S. for nothing. No trade, no food, nothing.” (1975).4

• “Economic relations with the U.S. would not imply any basic benefit for Cuba, no essential benefit,” (1985).5
Click link above for full article.
“There will be enough milk produced in Cuba to fill Havana bay.” (1966).1

Since 1962, when the ration book was introduced, the rationed one liter of milk supply was only sold to children younger than seven years of age and adults under a medically-prescribed special diet. In 1958 the annual consumption was 119 liter per capita, with a production of 784 million per year. The annual production in 2009 was 567 million, equivalent to 50 liters per capita a year.
 
"The effect of the American blockade has been to require us to work harder and better, it has been effective in favor of the Revolution.” (1967).2

Five decades after the establishment of Agrarian Reform, Cuba is the only country in the hemisphere where all economic indexes have fallen. Cuba's territory is very fertile and is able to provide food to its people. Castro tyranny is the only one responsible that the Cuban people have a rationing on the consumption of fruits, vegetables, tubers, tobacco, coffee and sugar. This is how effective has been “in favor of the Revolution.”
 
“The language of force does not intimidate us, we have been cured of it, so the blockade is now a subject of scorn and laughter.” (1969).3

From 1970 to 1990 Cuba received five billion dollars a year in subsidies from the Soviet Union. With the disappearance of the socialist camp and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early nineties, the Cuban economy suffered a severe blow giving origin to the establishment of the Special Period, which is still in force.
 
“Happily, we depend on the U.S. for nothing. No trade, no food, nothing.” (1975).4

Since 2003 United States has been Cuba’s main supplier of food and agricultural products. The Cuba food import agency Alimport, affirmed that since operations began in December 2001 to date, the island has transacted more than $4.4 billion worth of business with the US. Cuba's National Statistics Office (ONE) placed the United States as Cuba’s fifth business partner.
 
“Economic relations with the U.S. would not imply any basic benefit for Cuba, no essential benefit,” (1985).5

As we can see the Castroit regime uses the embargo for propaganda purposes. Its purpose is to keep U.S. hard currency out of the hands of the regime by restricting most trade and travel.

Since the military controls all tourism-related business ventures in Cuba, lifting the U.S. travel embargo would put billions of dollars directly into the Castroit regime hands.

Lifting the embargo will not topple the Castroit regime, but it would constitute the final step to legitimize the corrupt, incompetent and cruel system it has imposed on the Cuban people for the last 58 years.
 
Only Cubans can make Cuba free
Only Cubans can make Cuba free | Washington Examiner

Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet • | June 3, 2015 | 12:01 am

HAVANA, CUBA — In recent months, the United States has taken steps to recognize the regime of Raul Castro as the legitimate government of Cuba. These steps evince a lack of knowledge of the totalitarian nature of the regime.

Many Americans do not know the extent of the human rights violations committed by the Castro dictatorship. The Castros' victims do not number in the millions like those of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. But their despotic essence is the same.

I can attest that those who work for human rights and democracy in Cuba still receive cruel and inhumane treatment, including torture. Despite the fact that the U.S. removed Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, the regime continues to terrorize its people, and to harbor terrorists from other countries, including the U.S.

I know that government agents spy on me and my family, as well as many other human rights supporters on the island. Here we live with few freedoms. There is no free press, no privacy, no freedom of association. We live within a system that stifles human dignity.
Click link above for full article.
Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet is a black Cuban physician and anti-abortion activist promoter of non-violent civil disobedience. No doubt that a new Cuba will emerge, and brave men such a Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet will lead the way to move forward from the Castros tyranny to a free and democratic government. His suffering will not have been in vain. He is smart and has a lot of following. He could be the leader that brings together the different opposition groups and a peaceful transition of power in the island.
 
Dr. Biscet has called on fellow Cubans to “act moderately, impartially, and with firmness in the defense of our principles without falling into sectarian extremism, but always intransigent in regards to liberty, justice, and democracy for Cuba.” That, is what's it's all about. He is perhaps the foremost Cuban democracy activist, a symbol of the general resistance to the Castroit tyrannical regime.
 
What can I say, we all have our vices :)

So why not lift the embargo?

Embargo? There was an embargo? Cuba imports everything but there's an embargo. I live in Oaxaca, Mexico, and I've met a lot of tourists over the last 18 years going to and coming from Cuba. They were all leftists from the U.S. making a pilgrimage to the socialist paradise. I've also met Cubans fleeing the socialist paradise.
 
Dr. Biscet has called on fellow Cubans to “act moderately, impartially, and with firmness in the defense of our principles without falling into sectarian extremism, but always intransigent in regards to liberty, justice, and democracy for Cuba.” That, is what's it's all about. He is perhaps the foremost Cuban democracy activist, a symbol of the general resistance to the Castroit tyrannical regime.
 
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.
 
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-919130514761.jpg

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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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