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Embargo? What Embargo?

Sandokan

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[B]From truffles to fox furs, U.S. ships more than food to Cuba[/B]
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/cuba/story/1220161.html

BY MARTHA BRANNIGAN
mbrannigan@MiamiHerald.com
September 5, 2009

When President Obama announced plans in April to ease the embargo by lifting family-travel restrictions to the island and allowing U.S. telecommunications firms wide latitude to do business there, many analysts said the policy changes could significantly expand ties between the estranged neighbors -- assuming Havana responds positively to the overture.

But fairly significant commerce has been going on since the Trade Sanctions Reform and Enhancement Act of 2000 opened the door to U.S. food and medicine exports to Cuba -- despite the tense relationship between Havana and Washington and a trade embargo that has spanned nearly 50 years.

U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba hit a record $711.5 million in 2008, as prices for commodities soared. That makes the United States Cuba's fifth-largest trading partner overall.
Its amazing that they have to import chickens. Is their an easier farm animal to rise than a chicken? And over there seems to be very little sea food. After all, it’s an island. Do fish not bite a hook in Cuba? Cuba has some of the most fertile fishing waters in the Caribbean. Chickens are “self sufficient" and reproduce like crazy, yet they are imported.

Of course there is sea food in Cuba but only for tourist, .the Cubans doesn’t have access to sea food or beef. This has been going on for years, .they eat soy beef instead. The real embargo that the Cubans suffer has a name "Fidel & Raul". As soon as they are removed from power in Cuba, they will have access to everything they need.
 
Code:
[B]From truffles to fox furs, U.S. ships more than food to Cuba[/B]
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/cuba/story/1220161.html

BY MARTHA BRANNIGAN
mbrannigan@MiamiHerald.com
September 5, 2009

When President Obama announced plans in April to ease the embargo by lifting family-travel restrictions to the island and allowing U.S. telecommunications firms wide latitude to do business there, many analysts said the policy changes could significantly expand ties between the estranged neighbors -- assuming Havana responds positively to the overture.

But fairly significant commerce has been going on since the Trade Sanctions Reform and Enhancement Act of 2000 opened the door to U.S. food and medicine exports to Cuba -- despite the tense relationship between Havana and Washington and a trade embargo that has spanned nearly 50 years.

U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba hit a record $711.5 million in 2008, as prices for commodities soared. That makes the United States Cuba's fifth-largest trading partner overall.
Its amazing that they have to import chickens. Is their an easier farm animal to rise than a chicken? And over there seems to be very little sea food. After all, it’s an island. Do fish not bite a hook in Cuba? Cuba has some of the most fertile fishing waters in the Caribbean. Chickens are “self sufficient" and reproduce like crazy, yet they are imported.

Of course there is sea food in Cuba but only for tourist, .the Cubans doesn’t have access to sea food or beef. This has been going on for years, .they eat soy beef instead. The real embargo that the Cubans suffer has a name "Fidel & Raul". As soon as they are removed from power in Cuba, they will have access to everything they need.

You seem to have an axe to grind.

Cuban expatriate?
 
You seem to have an axe to grind.

Cuban expatriate?

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.
 
Why don't you comment about the article? Your question is irrelevant, nothing to do with the Thread.
It's a perfectly valid question. All you seem to post is anti-Cuban garbage.

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.
Ok, so if the embargo is basically non-existent, then why not lift it?
 
It's a perfectly valid question. All you seem to post is anti-Cuban garbage.
It seems that you like garbage, since you keep coming back like the bee to the honey.

In Cuba people earn about $18 dollars a month. They get a miserable government rations that lasts them about ten days. You can certainly buy food in communist Cuba, but you pay just about the same amount of money that a free person would pay in the USA. A hamburger in Cuba cost $3. How can a person making $18 a month at a government job afford a hamburger?
 
It seems that you like garbage, since you keep coming back like the bee to the honey.
What can I say, we all have our vices :)

In Cuba people earn about $18 dollars a month. They get a miserable government rations that lasts them about ten days. You can certainly buy food in communist Cuba, but you pay just about the same amount of money that a free person would pay in the USA. A hamburger in Cuba cost $3. How can a person making $18 a month at a government job afford a hamburger?
So why not lift the embargo?
 
Communism is the social system which institutionalizes envy, which uses pressure and the organized violence of the State to expropriate wealth from those who produce. Everything is shared by everyone and control by the government, there are no incentives to work and compete. A large percent of the Cuban people fake that they work, and the farmers do the minimum, since the regime pay them the minimum.
 
Communism is the social system which institutionalizes envy, which uses pressure and the organized violence of the State to expropriate wealth from those who produce. Everything is shared by everyone and control by the government, there are no incentives to work and compete. A large percent of the Cuban people fake that they work, and the farmers do the minimum, since the regime pay them the minimum.
Rabid anti-Communism aside, you still haven't answered my question; if the embargo isnt working, why keep it up?
 
Rabid anti-Communism aside, you still haven't answered my question; if the embargo isnt working, why keep it up?
It is often said that the trade and investment embargo on Cuba be lifted because it has “failed.” But what is meant by this?

The effect of the embargo on Cuba has partially fulfilled its objectives. It prevented Castro from obtaining loans and lines of credit that would allow him to finance his permanence in power and avoiding the growth of the indebtedness of Cuba without benefit for the population. Presently the Cuban regime’s debt has risen to $22 billion with the countries of the old socialist campus, $29.7 billion with the European Union [5], plus other $8 billions to Japan, Venezuela, Argentina and other countries. This accounts for a staggering debt of $60 billions. Cuba: Lift the Cuba Embargo?
Measured by those parameters, U.S. sanctions have been successful in Cuba, and should be maintained. U.S. policy shouldn’t be used to bail out a failed dictatorship and help it survive.
 
Just as “The Song Remains the Same”, “The question remains the same.”

Namely: What Embargo?

Webster's defines "embargo" as "a government order imposing a trade barrier." As a verb it's defined as, "to prevent commerce."

Yet according to figures from the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. transacted $730 million with Cuba in 2008.
 
Lifting today’s nominal embargo is a good idea that almost all Cuban agree with, any way the embargo doesn’t exist, it’s proven enough, but some people and the dictatorship continues to talk about the embargo to create the impression in the public opinion that it exist. It is the old tactic used by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi regime minister of propaganda whose very famous quote says, “If you tell a lie long enough, it becomes the truth.”

The only effective embargo that today affects the Cuban people is the internal embargo that the dictatorship maintains on the Cubans.
 
The United States government’s embargo has had little effect on the Cuban economy, since it only represents 6% of Cuba’s commerce with the rest of the world. The embargo only affects the American companies and their subsidiaries. The rest of the countries, a 180 since the last count in 2007, and companies are free to conduct business with Cuba and are doing so, as confirmed by imports surpassing $10.00 billions during 2007. In reality there is not such embargo since in the year 2000 the United States Congress lifted the prohibition of the sale of agricultural products and medicines to Cuba, thereby allowing Castro’s regime to buy everything it needs.

From December 2001 up to December 2007, the Castro’s regime had signed contracts for more than $2.00 billions with American companies for the purchases of their products. The U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, based on analysis of official figures of the Castro’s regime, has estimated the import of U.S. agricultural products in $437 millions during 2007. Cuba’s National Statistics Office (Oficina Nacional de Estadísticas. Cuba) placed the United States as Cuba’s fifth business partner at $582 million in 2007.
 
Visions of a post-embargo Cuba
Visions of a post-embargo Cuba | Babalú Blog: an island on the net without a bearded dictator

By Henry Louis Gomez, on February 25, 2010, at 10:38 am

It seems that the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba is the constant thread of the narrative here at Babalu Blog and wherever the issue of Cuba and its dictatorship is discussed. It feels like every day someone new comes along and says, “well it hasn’t worked in fifty years so isn’t time to try something new?” The purpose of this post is not to discuss the origins or intent of the embargo, we’ve discussed that ad nauseam, but rather to look into our crystal ball and see what a post-embargo Cuba would look like without the regime first making any significant changes to its economic and political systems. In other words, giving the castro brothers exactly what they have been asking for since the Soviet Union collapsed.
Cuba is a bankrupt inefficient country that doesn’t generate the wealth necessary to a healthy trade. The embargo was a self inflicted consequence of the treacherous confiscation of US owned property in Cuba, and nothing else. You don’t do business with those who steals from you.

We can eliminate the symbolic “embargo” tomorrow and nothing will change, as the Cuban economy controlled by Castro brothers’ regime wouldn’t have enough hard currency to make a dent into their misery.
 
It seems that you like garbage, since you keep coming back like the bee to the honey.

In Cuba people earn about $18 dollars a month. They get a miserable government rations that lasts them about ten days. You can certainly buy food in communist Cuba, but you pay just about the same amount of money that a free person would pay in the USA. A hamburger in Cuba cost $3. How can a person making $18 a month at a government job afford a hamburger?

I would imagine the answer to your question would be CORRUPTION.

I would urge you to view what is happening in Venezuela, where they also have a pseudo Socialist communist Administration.
 
I would imagine the answer to your question would be CORRUPTION.
Correct answer. If travel restrictions are lifted, we can expect the communist regime in Cuba to do all it can to encourage immoral behavior. Spring breakers will be lured by the promise of unrestricted alcohol and drug sale to minors, the sex trade already a staple of tourism to Cuba will also increase, and all in all we can expect the communists to make a profit at the expense of our citizens, as Lenin said "the end justifies the means."
 
There is something obscene about wanting to have a good time in Cuba, a place where the citizens are restricted in their liberties and movement. You might be free to travel, but "they are not". Where they are put in prison because of their thoughts and beliefs, you will discuss openly your thoughts and religious beliefs, but "they" will not. Where they and their family can be deported to any region at a moments notice, you will be able to board your plane and go home when your visit is over, but "they" can not leave.
 
As long as Fidel Castro is alive and in charge, investments are a huge risk. Cuba owes everyone money, a staggering debt of $60 billions, and does not pay its bills simply because they do not generate any wealth. Since 1992 the Cuba regime hasn’t paid the external debt and therefore cannot obtain more credit from many countries. It would take a real dummy to make any type of investment in Cuba under the present regime.
 
The communist regime of Cuba, wages war against its own people, it will never of its own will return democracy to its people, it will never stop putting people in jail for expressing thoughts freely, it will never lift censorship of the press, it will never allow Cubans to travel freely, it will never allow free elections. The effect of the embargo on Cuba has partially fulfilled its objectives. It prevented Castro from obtaining loans and lines of credit that would allow him to finance his permanence in power and avoiding the growth of the indebtedness of Cuba without benefit for the population.
 
you can't blame america for loosening the embargo, after all, they are a collective punishment, and therefore a war crime
 
The argument for lifting the embargo is made by people who believe that laws that in our country protect property and its lawful owners should not apply to the Cuban citizens, this is why they encourage us to enjoy parading in 50's era cars that were stolen at gun point from their lawful owners, and stay in hotels that were confiscated from their lawful owners, and smoke cigars made in factories that were stolen from their lawful owners, or sip mojitos and daiquiris made from rum brands stolen from their rightful owners.
 
You don’t need to look further; here you have the answer from the “horse” mouth:

It is necessary to impose financial, economic and material restrictions to dictatorships, so that they will not take roots for long years….Diplomatic and morals measures do not work against dictatorships, because these make fun of the Governments and the population”. Fidel Castro (Excerpt from the book “Fidel Castro and Human Rights”, Editora Política, Havana, Cuba, 1988)

What will bring "Change" to Cuba are free elections, the freeing of all political prisoners, and the implementation of a market economy. Everything else is “mental masturbation!”

This is one of the few times that I agree with Castro. In this case a 100%. Keep the embargo until he cry uncle.
 
One thing that constitution expressly mentions about the power of the federal government, it's in the arena of regulating trade. The way the embargo has been structured, it's a trade policy; it is about spending dollars in a foreign country. There are many ways a US citizen can visit Cuba. What's restricted is spending money there as a tourist. There's a reason why people who travel to Cuba legally have to get a license from OFAC (the office of foreign asset control) which is part of the treasury department. The embargo exists because of the Castro brothers expropriation of American assets.
 
The calls for lifting the embargo are coming from all angles and all sides, most of them with the standard syndicated filler language used by the regime in Cuba.

Lifting the embargo will most certainly lead to allowing Cuba credit for its purchases, specifically from agricultural states where farms and other agricultural businesses are heavily subsidized by the US tax payer. When the regime defaults on those credits, the responsibility for repayment will fall upon the American tax payer.
 
The calls for lifting the embargo are coming from all angles and all sides, most of them with the standard syndicated filler language used by the regime in Cuba.

Lifting the embargo will most certainly lead to allowing Cuba credit for its purchases, specifically from agricultural states where farms and other agricultural businesses are heavily subsidized by the US tax payer. When the regime defaults on those credits, the responsibility for repayment will fall upon the American tax payer.

Cuba isn't the only country we feed on a regular basis. Are they the only faulty exception in that instance?
 
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