Embargo? What Embargo?

[Sandokan]

Americans Forgotten the Claims Against Cuba
Americans Forgotten the Claims Against Cuba

by Carolyn Chester
on May 27, 2014

Presentation Transcript

1. Americans Forgotten The largest uncompensated confiscation of American properties As told by one U.S. Certified Claimant

2. On October 16, 1964, the President signed into law, H.R. 12259, which became Public Law 88-666, title V of the International Claims Settlement Act of 1949, as amended, under which the Commission is authorized to determine the amount and validity of the CLAIMS OF *AMERICAN CITIZENS, *WHO WERE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES AT THE TIME OF CASTRO’S RISE TO POWER, AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT OF CUBA based upon: (1) debts for merchandise furnished or services rendered by nationals of the United States; (2) losses arising since January 1, 1959, as a result of the nationalization of other taking of property belonging to United States nationals; and (3) disability or death of nationals of the United States resulting from actions taken by, or under the authority of the Government of Cuba since January 1, 1959. Subsequently, the Government of the United States terminated relations with the Government of Cuba after all attempts to negotiate these claims failed. President John F. Kennedy John F. Kennedy: Proclamation 3447 - Embargo on All Trade with Cuba Foreign Claims Settlement Commission - U.S. Department of Justice

3. Before the 1959 Castro revolution, Cuba and the United States had many business ties and successful business partnerships. Cuba was one of the most advanced countries in Latin America, and because of its proximity to Florida’s coast, it was easy to transport goods from each other's ports. A passenger ferry ran from Florida to Cuba, making it easy for people to travel routinely back and forth as well. Their successes benefited both countries economically and socially, and Cubans traveled to America and Americans vacationed in Cuba. The United States was the largest buyer of Cuban sugar, making the U.S. consumer vital to Cuba’s economy. Americans lived, worked, and had businesses and industries in Cuba. They were from many different U.S. states and some traveled back and forth between countries. Ranchers sold cattle from Florida, farmers sold wheat from Iowa, and business professionals from major U.S. cities managed their Cuban branch offices. The relationship between the Cubans and Floridians was even more heavily invested because of the mere 90 miles between them. And unlike what Hollywood movies depict, Americans in Cuba were not mobsters or corrupt corporations running Cuba. These Americans were from “all walks of life” and provided goods and services to Cuba for generations, surviving through the turmoil of revolutions and regime changes. American and Cuban Relationships.
Click the link above for full article.

On 1964, the U.S. Congress passed legislation allowing the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission to open up the Cuba Claims program, in order to certify and verify what the American businesses and individual families had lost due to expropriation, and to determine a dollar value of lost assets. After the information was gatherer, 5,913 U.S. citizens had their lost assets certified by the United States Government.

 

[Medusa]

American revolutionaries, like the French revolutionaries that followed, were driven to spread their pro-freedom, anti-monarchist ideology, but unlike France’s First Republic, America’s first republic was not only more moderate, it could quickly stabilize amid its isolation and relative lack of competitors for the continent. Surprisingly rapidly, the United States was moving aggressively west and south to spread their revolutionary state and colonize land held by loosely organized indigenous tribes and a Spanish Empire spread thin and in relative decline.

Early on, America’s founding generation had their eyes (and territorial ambitions) pointed South. Presidents Jefferson and John Adams saw Cuba and Puerto Rico as “natural appendages” of North America that should break away from Spanish influence and join the United States. John Quincy Adams thought Cuba an “apple” fallen from the North American tree and that it should end its “unnatural connection” with Spain and rejoin its source, America. (Smith, 2007, p. 25) Thomas Jefferson had an impressive collection of Iberian writers in his library at Monticello, and actively promoted learning of the Spanish language.

John Quincy Adams echoed Jefferson’s views (p. 46), and as the United States became a power on the world stage competing for land and resources, it sought to seize them without seizing the diverse populations that lived there. “By the late 1830s, the idea of manifest destiny signified a racist nationalism that preferred to incorporate into the Union ‘unsettled’ and ’empty’ lands—such as those taken from Native American peoples and, soon thereafter, Mexico.” (Loveman, 2010, p. 57) After the “Mexican Cession” of 1848, in which Mexico “ceded” 55% of its territory to the United States, the limits of Manifest Destiny were undecided, and the question of further annexation was fiercely debated among the varying factions in Congress, especially in the Senate. Seizing “Mexico proper,” including the entirety of the Yucatan peninsula, and Cuba, were both the subject of heated debates, but ultimately they were just too different for Congress and the public to support annexing. Cuba was too black (Smith, p. 26) and Mexico was too Indian: as the New York World wrote, “Mexicans are Indian, aboriginal Indian, and they must share in the destiny of the Indian.” (p. 49) Neither Mexico nor Cuba were incorporated into the United States, despite an unprecedented surge in U.S. imperialism in the 1890s and early 20th century that brought U.S. borders to their greatest territorial extent after Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii and more were brought under U.S. control. American militarism and expansion were led by William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt at the helm of a newly modernized and powerful army and navy, and like-minded Republicans like Albert Beveridge and Orville H. Platt at the helm in the Congress. T


Did You Know? Imperialist Aggression and Exploitation: The History of U.S. – Latin American Relations – Nick's Crusade

 

[Sandokan]

The mainstream media won't tell the truth about uncompensated confiscation of American properties. The main reason that the embargo was stablished was because of the confiscation without compensation of the U.S. citizens and companies. One of the prerequisites to lift the embargo is the settlement of compensation of the confiscated properties.

 

[Sandokan]

This Blind Cuban Dissident Tells the New York Times What They Have Wrong on Cuba
This Blind Cuban Dissident Tells the New York Times What They Have Wrong on Cuba

Mike Gonzalez / @Gundisalvus

On the day when millions of Americans were exercising their sovereign right to elect their leaders, a blind Cuban dissident who’s never been able to cast a vote in his life was in Washington with a simple message for The New York Times.

“If you end the embargo now like The New York Times wants, Cuba will have 50 more years of misery, 50 more years of state criminality and 50 more years of torture,” Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leiva told think tankers and some Hill staffers at a luncheon. Cuba’s problems, he said, “have nothing to do with the embargo.

The New York Times has for decades echoed Cuban dictator Fidel Castro’s call for an end to the embargo, but has stepped up this campaign to almost an obsessive level since hiring Ernesto Londoño as editorial writer back in July. To many long-time Cuba watchers it is as though the ghost of Times foreign correspondent Herbert Matthews has returned.

More than any other journalist, Matthews is rightly blamed for making Castro palatable to the Eisenhower administration and to America at large. Among his most infamous quotes on Castro was his 1959 observation, “This is not a Communist Revolution in any sense of the term. Fidel Castro is not only not a Communist, he is decidedly anti-Communist.”

One would think that, with this record, the Times would be a bit contrite. But no. Just yesterday it once again echoed another long-standing demand of the Castros, calling for the swap of three Cuban spies serving well-deserved prison sentences here for Alan Gross, the USAID contractor thrown into a Cuban prison for giving computers to members of Cuba’s Jewish community.

Gonzalez Leiva, who describes his two years in a Cuban prison—into which he was thrown for daring to write Fidel Castro a letter asking for freedom—as “the devil having his way with you for [a couple of years],” said the New York Times should send reporters to Cuba and interview dissidents. “Let them interview me,” he said. Better yet, he said, the Times should ask for access to Cuban prisons and interview the political prisoners there.

Cuba’s economy doesn’t work because when a dairy farmer succeeds and goes from two cows to 10, the government comes in and confiscates eight or nine, he said, and in an island surrounded by water Cubans are not allowed to fish. Lifting the embargo, said Gonzalez Leiva, would give the Castros’s communist dictatorship—for Mathews was tragically wrong there—access to international credit markets it needs to survive at this point.

“Communism has made Cuba a parasite, first of the Soviet Union and now of Venezuela. Without communism we would be prosperous once again, as prosperous as Miami,” said Gonzalez Leiva. “Don’t lift the embargo until all political prisoners are out of prison, until civil society is recognized and free speech is allowed.”

It’s a message we should all welcome on this most hallowed day of democracy.

Cuba is an excellent example of how a very successful nation in the western hemisphere has been destroyed by the Castroit regime. Cuban economy’s bankruptcy is the sole responsibility of Castroit regime. It is due to the corruption and ineffectiveness of a military dictatorship that is against private property and free enterprise. Under this system the economy will continuous to deteriorate without any hope of improvement. These and no others are the real reasons of the problems.

 

[Sandokan]

The Castroit regime produces almost nothing and this makes it difficult to get hard currency, making it very hard to buy from other countries since credits had dry up.

Without the Soviet Union to subsidize his Potemkin village, the Castroit regime economy keeps struggling, depending mostly on the money spent by tourist, the trading of doctors for cash overseas and heavy subsides from Venezuela.

 

[Sandokan]

The failures of the socialist system in Cuba are very obvious. Cuban refugees risk their lives trying to get to Florida in makeshifts boats to get to the “evil empire” instead of remaining in the “workers’ paradise” in the island of Dr. Castro. The Castroit regime fails because it destroys the human spirit, just ask the Cuban leaving the island in rafts and home make boats.

 

[Sandokan]

An Epidemic of Editorials
An Epidemic of Editorials / Fernando Damaso | Translating Cuba

Fernando Damas
Posted November 25, 2014

Archive photo

A few days ago the sixth editorial by the New York Times appeared regarding relations between the Cuban and North American governments. I believe that never has a country so small and relatively unimportant merited so much – and such sustained – attention. This smells of strange interests on both shores.

The editorial writer who undoubtedly pulls down an annual salary in the five figures, must feel fulfilled. It is said, although I cannot confirm it, that he was over here seeking official information for his writings. This would not be surprising.

To cast blame on the embargo for all of Cuba’s problems — even for the exodus of our professionals lured by United States government policies — lacks originality. It is merely repeating the same worn arguments made by the Cuban government during almost 56 years in order to sweep under the rug its own errors, economic failures, misguided adventures, blunders, etc., which have resulted in the prolonged political, economic and social crisis that Cuba endures.

It is true that artists, sports figures, doctors and many other professionals seize the slightest opportunity to leave the country in search of better living conditions. The majority of our youth do this, too. But this does not occur only because North American government policies offers them incentives them do do so.

Rather, it is the terrible situation in their country: no housing, miserable salaries — even after raises — and, what’s worse, no real opportunities for bettering their circumstances. Every human being has but one life to live, and it cannot be squandered believing in outdated lectures about the future — always about the future — when what is truly important is the present. This is a concept that apparently eludes the editorial writer.

What’s more, if we truly look at reality, only a portion of Cuba’s medical missions abroad are provided freely. The majority are paid-for by the governments of countries that benefit — a juicy business for the Cuban authorities, who even describe them as better revenue-generators than sugar harvests because they provide greater sums of foreign currency. Between 60 and 75 per cent of the total salary payments made by these governments for the services of Cuban doctors remain in the hands of the State, which then apportions the remainder as wages — and even that comes not entirely as hard cash, but rather as rights for obtaining housing or consumer goods, at the artificially high prices set by the State. Something similar happens with artists and sports figures working abroad.

In any event, although many of these professionals leave the country, the Cuban authorities never lose. This is because after the emigres settle in other countries, they begin sending monetary remittances to their relatives, who then spend them primarily in government establishments where the prices are set high, the stated objective being to maximize the collection of foreign currency.

The editorials will continue and the official Cuban press will go on reprinting them in their entirety, down to the last comma and period. It would be helpful if those who influence public policy and public opinion, whether from the inside or the outside, would not allow themselves to be misled.

Nobody is against change, and even less so if such change were to lead to the restoration of normal relations between the governments. However, this cannot be achieved on the backs of the Cuban people without their true and complete participation.

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

The Times Editorial Board has been beating the drum relentlessly to reward the Castro brothers for their political oppression. Seem that the NYT want us to become more tolerant of the Castroit regime horribly oppressive regime in the hopes that it will allow the Cuban people some basic freedoms. It is very clear is not happening.

 

[Sandokan]

The Castroit regime had said that it will not change its brutal tactics in order to prevent even the most basic forms of dissent. The regime is violently repressing dissidents, opposition leaders and incarcerating intellectuals. The degree to which the regime oppresses its people should be shocking to any freedom loving person. So far the Obama administration had been looking away from what been happening in Cuba.

 

[Sandokan]

The NYT blame the embargo for Cuba’s economic problems. The Castroit regime policies are the only ones to blame for those problems. Due to those policies, Cubans in the island have no dignity, no freedom, no private property, no human rights at all. Changes have been very slow and late, a joke. Lifting the embargo would not deliver freedom to the Cuban people, on the contrary will guarantee the continuation of the regime for many years to come.

 

[Sandokan]

The Cuba Embargo Has Actually Worked Like a Charm
The Cuba Embargo Has Actually Worked Like a Charm | TheBlaze.com

Humberto Fontova

First item on the anti-embargo teleprompter: “But the embargo hasn’t worked. After half a century the Castro regime still stands. So why should we continue this failed policy?’

It’s almost too easy when a glaringly false premise kicks-off a debate. But here we go: Who–besides the Castro lobby–ever claimed “regime-change” was the embargo’s rationale? Has anyone (besides this writer) bothered to research this?…..Okay, here:

On January, 21, 1962 at Punta del Este Uruguay U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk gave a speech to the Organization of American States recommending the members join the U.S. in voting for an economic embargo of Cuba. In this speech there is not a single word–or even an inference–that regime-change was the embargo’s goal. “The United States objects to Cuba’s activities and policies in the international arena not its internal system or arrangements.”

INDEED , Secretary Rusk went out of his way to stress that regime-change was NOT the embargo’s goal.
In brief, the U.S. was trying to contain Soviet-Cuban sponsored international terrorism:

“I’m proud of the path of Osama bin Laden,” snickered Ilich Ramírez Sánchez from a French prison in 2002. Ramirez is also known as “Carlos the Jackal,” and was also known in the 1970s as “The World’s Most Wanted Terrorist.” “Bin Laden has followed a trail I myself blazed,” he CONTINUED in an interview from a French prison with the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat. “I followed news of the September 11 attacks on the United States non-stop from the beginning. I can’t describe that wonderful feeling of relief.”

In 1960 Ramirez was an eager recruit into Cuba’s “guerrilla” (terror) TRAINING camps started by Che Guevara in 1959. Everyone from America’s Black Liberation Army to Puerto Rico’sMacheteros, to South Yemen’s NLF, to Argentina’s Montoneros, to Colombia’s FARC, to Namibia’s SWAPO, to the Black Panthers, to the PLO, to Western Sahara’s Polisaro to THE IRA received training and funding from Castro.

GRANTED , while most were not immediately defeated they were certainly contained. Then for three decades the Soviet Union was forced to pump the equivalent of almost ten Marshall Plans into Cuba. This cannot have helped the Soviet Union’s precarious solvency or lengthened her life span.

Second item on the anti-embargo teleprompter: “But the Cold War’s over, for heaven’s sake! Why then CONTINUE this relic of that era?”

Because international terrorism still rages with slightly different sponsors and Castro’s Cuba is still prominent among them. A DEA report attributes half of the world’s cocaine supply to Columbia’s FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia,) the largest, oldest and most murderous terrorist group in our hemisphere whose murder toll dwarfs that of Al Qaeda and ISIS combinedand includes some murdered U.S. citizens. This same group thanks Fidel Castro for their immense FAME AND FORTUNE . “Thanks to Fidel Castro” boasted late FARC commander Tiro-Fijo in a 2002 interview, “we are now a powerful army, not a hit and run band.”

But let’s forward a bit even from there: A report from Colombia’s military intelligence DAS (Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad) obtained by the Colombian paper, El Espectador two years ago revealed that the FARC maintains a major office in Havana. The report also described a recent visit by FARC officers Hermes Aguilera and Olga Marín to Cuba for some brainstorming with Castro’s DGI. The report mentions that this same Olga Marin “receives a $5,000 monthly stipend through the Cuban BANK account of a Venezuelan government office.”

Furthermore, last summer Cuba was caught trying to smuggle military contraband though the Panama Canal to North Korea, in what the UN SECURITY Council itself denounced as the worst violation of the arms embargo against North Korea to date. The arms embargo was imposed in 2006 by the very United Nations.

Third item on the anti-embargo teleprompter: “But the embargo mainly punishes the Cuban people, and gives Castro an excuse for his economic failures and human rights violations.”

Well, why not ask the Cuban people themselves how they feel about it? GRANTED , polls are difficult to conduct in a Stalinist nation but every atom of observable evidence proves that the Cuban people actually want the embargo tightened.
For full article click the link above.

The purpose of the embargo was not to overthrow the Castroit regime. It was established in retaliation for the confiscation of American properties without compensation. The aimed of the embargo mainly has been to obtain human rights, and economic and political concessions from the regime.

 

[Sandokan]

The Obama administration want, above all, to make peace and to do good. There is an embarrassment with the idea of representing American interests, much less with having the toughness to force through quid-pro-quo policies and programs that might seriously initiate change in Cuba.

All that the actual administration would succeed in doing is to help the Castroit regime to cement its power, and to look once again like a clueless superpower.

 

[Sandokan]

The Cuba Embargo Has Actually Worked Like a Charm
The Cuba Embargo Has Actually Worked Like a Charm | TheBlaze.com

Humberto Fontova

First item on the anti-embargo teleprompter: “But the embargo hasn’t worked. After half a century the Castro regime still stands. So why should we continue this failed policy?’

It’s almost too easy when a glaringly false premise kicks-off a debate. But here we go: Who–besides the Castro lobby–ever claimed “regime-change” was the embargo’s rationale? Has anyone (besides this writer) bothered to research this?…..Okay, here:

On January, 21, 1962 at Punta del Este Uruguay U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk gave a speech to the Organization of American States recommending the members join the U.S. in voting for an economic embargo of Cuba. In this speech there is not a single word–or even an inference–that regime-change was the embargo’s goal. “The United States objects to Cuba’s activities and policies in the international arena not its internal system or arrangements.”
Click link above for full article.

The purpose of the embargo was not to overthrow the Castroit regime. It was established in retaliation for the confiscation of American properties without compensation. The aimed of the embargo mainly has been to obtain human rights, and economic and political concessions from the regime. It is as simple as that.

 

[Sandokan]

The Obama administration want, above all, to make peace and to do good. There is an embarrassment with the idea of representing American interests, much less with having the toughness to force through quid-pro-quo policies and programs that might seriously initiate change in Cuba.

All that the actual administration would succeed in doing is to help the Castroit regime to cement its power, and to look once again like a clueless superpower.

 

[Sandokan]

It is difficult to understand why the Castroit regime has been always able to "blame" the U.S. embargo for everything the embargo does. At the beginning of the embargo, there was some immediate dislocation and adjustments, but in relatively short order things were back to normal; other trading partners (communist block) rush in and fill the gaps. For over 30 years the embargo was a non-issue. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Castroit regime received support from ideological bedfellows such as the USSR, China, Venezuela and Iran and there is already plenty of tourism income from the other major countries of the world.

 

[Sandokan]

Cuba: The Other Embargo
https://desdelahabanaivan.wordpress.com/2015/02/06/cuba-the-other-embargo-ivan-garcia-2/

Ivan Garcia

Photo: Cubans can’t rent or get into yachts or other types of boats in Meliá Marina Varadero, or other hotels or places on the coast. Taken by Cuba Contemporánea.

Last summer, 48-year-old Lisván, owner of a small photographic studio in a neighbourhood in the east of Havana, personally suffered the consequences of the absurd prohibitions that the Castro regime imposes on its citizens.

With the profits made from his business and after saving a part of the money sent to his family from abroad, he stayed for five nights with his wife and daughter in the hotel Meliá Marina Varadero, for 822 pesos convertibles.

“On the beach I struck up a friendship with a group of Canadians. One morning they wanted to invite me to come fishing on a yacht they had rented. But, in spite of being a guest at the hotel, the marina hotel management did not allow it. No Cuban citizen, resident in the island, is allowed to get on a boat with a motor, without government permission” said Lisván.
Click link above for full article.

Cuba is the only country in the Western hemisphere where political opposition is illegal and the regime sanctions political dissidents with years in jail, and where there are still rules enforced by the Castroit regime that prohibit Cubans going where they want to go in their own country.

 

[Sandokan]

Nylons for nothing in Cuba
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...beaf84-912b-11e4-a412-4b735edc7175_story.html

A U.S. and Cuban flag hang from the same balcony in Old Havana, Cuba, Friday, Dec. 19, 2014. (Ramon Espinosa/AP)

By Charles Krauthammer Opinion writer

There’s an old Cold War joke — pre-pantyhose — that to defeat communism we should empty our B-52 bombers of nuclear weapons and instead drop nylons over the Soviet Union. Flood the Russians with the soft consumer culture of capitalism, seduce them with Western contact and commerce, love-bomb them into freedom.

We did win the Cold War, but differently. We contained, constrained, squeezed and eventually exhausted the Soviets into giving up. The dissidents inside subsequently told us how much they were sustained by our support for them and our implacable pressure on their oppressors.


The logic behind President Obama’s Cuba normalization, assuming there is one, is the nylon strategy. We tried 50 years of containment and that didn’t bring democracy. So let’s try inundating them with American goods, visitors, culture, contact, commerce.
Click link above for full article.

Krauthammer’s article establishes the unlikelihood of the regime altering its course in response to the opening, and outlines the non-response from the Castroit regime to the overture; that the embargo was only carried out by the US, since the rests of the countries had economic relations with the regime for decades and it had remains poor and its people enslaved without any human rights.

 

[Sandokan]

Obama, a previous community organizer supposed to be skilled at bargaining, but in this case he was not. His economic benevolence approach would provide the Castroit regime with the means to remain in power. The regime control every aspect of Cubans life, which make very difficult for the Cuban people to regained freedom.

 

[Sandokan]

Cuba: The Other Embargo
https://desdelahabanaivan.wordpress.com/2015/02/06/cuba-the-other-embargo-ivan-garcia-2/

Ivan Garcia

Photo: Cubans can’t rent or get into yachts or other types of boats in Meliá Marina Varadero, or other hotels or places on the coast. Taken by Cuba Contemporánea.

Last summer, 48-year-old Lisván, owner of a small photographic studio in a neighbourhood in the east of Havana, personally suffered the consequences of the absurd prohibitions that the Castro regime imposes on its citizens.

With the profits made from his business and after saving a part of the money sent to his family from abroad, he stayed for five nights with his wife and daughter in the hotel Meliá Marina Varadero, for 822 pesos convertibles.

“On the beach I struck up a friendship with a group of Canadians. One morning they wanted to invite me to come fishing on a yacht they had rented. But, in spite of being a guest at the hotel, the marina hotel management did not allow it. No Cuban citizen, resident in the island, is allowed to get on a boat with a motor, without government permission” said Lisván.

Ten years ago, the prohibitions were even stranger. Cubans could not stay in luxury hotels, rent cars or have a cellphone line.
For full article click the link above.

Cuba is the only country in the Western hemisphere where political opposition is illegal and the regime sanctions political dissidents with years in jail, and where there are still rules enforced by the Castroit regime that prohibit Cubans going where they want to go in their own country.

 

[Sandokan]

A Tally of What Cuba Owes the World
A Tally of What Cuba Owes the World | RealClearWorld

Posted by Carlos Alberto Montaner

Since Castro brought it up...

Cuban leader Raul Castro has presented to U.S. President Barack Obama a set of conditions to re-establish diplomatic relations. Among those conditions, Castro demands compensation for the damages caused to Cuba by the U.S. commercial embargo.

How much are the damages? According to the punctilious economists in the Cuban government, the figure is exactly $116.86 billion. I have no idea how they arrived at such a considerable, but for the purposes of this column, we will accept it as accurate.

This leads us to an inevitable question: How much have the incompetence and the interference of the Cuban revolution cost the world? After all, Cuba's claim carries an implicit acknowledgment that there exist rights of property and lost profits, and that punitive damages should be levied against those who violate those rights or harm innocent victims.
Click the link above for full article.

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. These credits will not be paid and the American taxpayers will be the losers, the ones to pick up the debt, as it happens at the present time with the taxpayers of many countries.

By 2014 the Castroit regime’s foreign debt amounted to $35 billion with The Paris Club, $35 billion to Russia, 10 billion to China, 25 billion to Venezuela, 3.5 billion to Japan and another 8.5 billion with other countries, for a total staggering debt of $117 billion.

 

[Sandokan]

The Castroit regime is demanding that the U.S. pay billions in reparations for the alleged economic damage done by the U.S. embargo, but not a mention by the deadbeat Castroit tyrannical regime of the billions it owes from the private property it has stolen and the countless loans it has defaulted on.

 

[Hawkeye10]

Why don't you comment about the article? Your question is irrelevant, nothing to do with the Thread.

Cuba imports ketchup, mostly from Spain (that is a long way to ship what are basically tomatoes with water and a little salt) and some from Mexico. Can’t these Socialist Genius figure out how to make ketchup? To me it sums it all up in a nutshell, and exposes the complete and utter failure of the Socialist system in even the most basic of industries, and their inability to feed their own population on a tropical island with more land mass than all other Caribbean islands combined.

Castro had a deal with the Soviets that Cuba would send raw materials to the USSR and then they would send back manufactured goods. I have not studied Cuba but over the years I have heard from many sources that this arrangement worked out very well for both sides, the soviets getting access to Cuba for their military. After the Soviet Union disappeared Russia had no interest in Cuba and was not wiling to subsidize Cuba, so Castro was left in the lurch. There was nowhere nears enough money to build all the production facilities that it would take to make all that stuff themselves, so when foreign exchange reserves allowed it the Cubans would go by stuff like ketchup on the open market. Life was hard for a Cuban during these times.

Cut Castro some slack, he did not know that the Soviets were going to be gone anymore than the rest of us did, The Soviets had offered him a great deal and he was no fool, he took it. Then got globbered when the trading partner died unexpectedly.

 

[Sandokan]

Castro had a deal with the Soviets that Cuba would send raw materials to the USSR and then they would send back manufactured goods. I have not studied Cuba but over the years I have heard from many sources that this arrangement worked out very well for both sides, the soviets getting access to Cuba for their military. After the Soviet Union disappeared Russia had no interest in Cuba and was not wiling to subsidize Cuba, so Castro was left in the lurch. There was nowhere nears enough money to build all the production facilities that it would take to make all that stuff themselves, so when foreign exchange reserves allowed it the Cubans would go by stuff like ketchup on the open market. Life was hard for a Cuban during these times.

Cut Castro some slack, he did not know that the Soviets were going to be gone anymore than the rest of us did, The Soviets had offered him a great deal and he was no fool, he took it. Then got globbered when the trading partner died unexpectedly.

On January 26, 1960, Eisenhower publicly announced, that the United States would observe a policy of nonintervention, refrain from reprisals and respect Cuba's right to undertake a social revolution.

On February 13, 1960, Fidel Castro signed a trade pact with the Soviet Union, by which the Soviets agreed to purchase 425,000 metric tons of sugar during the year1960, committed itself to buy a million tons a year during the next four years, and granted a $100 million loan. Castro’s regime agree to buy Soviet crude oil and industrial machinery (Robert E. Quirk, Fidel Castro, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 1995, p. 295).

Castro, in an interview in the communist newspaper Hoy on October 16, 1960, dismissed the notion that the United States could hurt Cuba, since the Cubans could obtain all they needed and wanted from the socialist countries. On October 19, 1960 the Eisenhower administration responded establishing a partial trade embargo against Cuba.

Castro was happy to get rid of America's "pernicious" ties to the island, particularly since the Soviets were willing to provide generous assistance. Fidel Castro boasted, in a Playboy interview in 1967, that rather than hurt Cuba, "the blockade has been effective in favor of the revolution."

Well, Castro betted on the wrong horse and lost. He changed the cow for a goat.

 

[Sandokan]

The infusion of loans by the United States would only replace the Soviet subsidy that the regime no longer receives and the Venezuela subsidy that is winding down, thereby delaying the transition of the Cuban people towards democracy and guaranteeing additional decades of oppression and misery by the Castroit monarchical regime.

 

[Sandokan]

Castroism has been disastrous to Cuban people standard of living, as it has been to Russia, China and other communist regimes. The Castroit regime looks forward to the day when the military apparatus and the massive repressive security service will be maintained at the expense of the United States taxpayers.

 

[Sandokan]

The Truth About 'Tourist Apartheid' in Cuba
https://www.yahoo.com/travel/the-truth-about-tourist-apartheid-in-cuba-110808487252.html

Kim-Marie Evans
February 16, 2015

Contrary to recent headlines, Cuba is not flinging open its doors for tourist travel. Although there have been recent changes in U.S. regulations, it is still technically illegal for an American to be a tourist in Cuba. In fact, during a recent art-buying trip I took to Cuba, I learned there is a term used to describe the visitor situation in the country: “tourist apartheid.” In other words, travelers still remain separate from the general population.

The purpose of my trip was to buy art, but the visit also allowed me to learn more about the lives of “real” Cubans — which is very different from what tourists see and experience. The people I interviewed whispered their answers while glancing over their shoulders. “Who could possibly be listening?” I asked.

The truth is that anyone can be listening.

I took a similar trip to Cuba last year. That was when I learned that freedom is still scarce in the country. During that trip, I was followed by a spy who somehow knew that I was carrying a book by a well-known dissident Cuban blogger — even though I hadn’t shown the book to anyone and had not left it in my hotel room. The ministry of tourism contacted my group leader, who made me surrender the “anti-government propaganda.”
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This article by Kim Marie Evans truthfully describe what is going on under the Castroit regime. This information has not been available to millions of people around the world. They are not aware of the apartheid going on between ordinary Cubans and tourists.