In reference to an earlier posting of mine on travel to Cuba, I note that President Obama has today declared in Mexico that he will only allow this Dutch-American to travel freely to Cuba after the Cuban Government allows its citizens to travel freely abroad! Whaaaaat???

Mr. President, you must stop your apparently never-ending bullshit. All US citizens can travel freely to the People’s Republic of China whose citizens are not free to travel abroad either.

The difference between Cuba and the PRC? We owe money to the PRC but none to Cuba.

Louis: Can I call you Louis?

Wolfensohn wasn’t talking about the whole world, he was talking about Cuba. I was merely offering context to his remarks. He was under no obligation to do the same.

Nor was I disputing the accuracy of the “imperialist” label. Of course leftists agree that the US is imperialistic, but rightists don’t, or shouldn’t, take the label personally. I use “paradise” as an ironic reference to Lenin’s model. Please don’t be offended.

Nor am I disputing Cuba’s progress: I’ll take your word for it.

But back to the thread- Cuba is racist, irrespective of the racism still rampant in the US. If racism disappeared from the US tomorrow, there would still be racism in Cuba.

Fidler: PS- In 2001, the time of Wolfensohn’s comments, the whole world was doing a “great job” thanks to the economic boom.

Reply: Odd that the World Bank president did not refer to this.

Fidler:
Are you personally offended by the use of “paradise.” Should I be personally offended when you call the US “imperialist”?

Reply:
“Paradise” doesn’t offend me, but I do find it to be a detraction from discussing Cuba when the term is applied to a country that no reasonable person would apply. Cuba is not a “paradise” but the latest UN Human Development Report puts it squarely in the middle of countries described as High Development. This report has all the “quantitative” data one would be looking for.

And, frankly, I don’t care what you think about the term “imperialist” as applied to the US but serious scholars like Niall Ferguson have no trouble using such a word.

Proyect:

PS- In 2001, the time of Wolfensohn’s comments, the whole world was doing a “great job” thanks to the economic boom.

Proyect:

First of all, why do you equate me mocking Cuba as a “paradise” with the personal attack implied by “moron”? Are you personally offended by the use of “paradise.” Should I be personally offended when you call the US “imperialist”?

And once again, you support my argument about the ineffectiveness of the embargo: Cuba is improving DESPITE it! But the improvement is all top-down: The government giveth and the people are beholden to it. That’s not freedom.

Besides, Wolfensohn saying that Cuba is making great strides among poor countries is faint praise; like saying Harvard has a world class football team since it’s the best in the Ivy League. I’m the richest guy on my block, too, but still only just above the poverty line- big deal. And “great job” is remarkably unquantitative, coming from an economist.

Why do you believe that the Cuban internet will be an electronic libertarian paradise?

—-

You ask me to drop the epithets. Why don’t you stop using the word “paradise” and I will stop using the epithets. When you put words into the mouths of people in solidarity with the Cuban experiment like “paradise”, you are demonstrating a kind of demagogy—ineffective as it is. Nobody in their right mind calls Cuba a paradise, but we do tend to agree with what the former head of the World Bank said:

http://www.foodfirst.org/cuba/news/2001/wb-ips.html

Learn from Cuba, Says World Bank
By Jim Lobe
Inter Press Service
April 30, 2001

WASHINGTON—

World Bank President James Wolfensohn Monday extolled the Communist government of President Fidel
Castro for doing “a great job” in providing for the social welfare of the Cuban people.

His remarks followed Sunday’s publication of the Bank’s 2001 edition of ‘World Development Indicators’
(WDI), which showed Cuba as topping virtually all other poor countries in health and education statistics.

It also showed that Havana has actually improved
its performance in both areas despite the continuation of the US trade embargo against it and the end of Soviet aid and subsidies for the Caribbean island more than ten years ago.

“Cuba has done a great job on education and health,” Wolfensohn told reporters at the conclusion of the annual spring meetings of the Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“They have done a good job, and it does not embarrass me to admit it.”

Proyect:

Your post proves nothing other than the existence of the embargo and Cuba’s effort to circumvent it by approaching Venezuela for help. That’s not debatable. Of course “—Cuba blames US for Internet restrictions, AP.” I said that I agree that the embargo should be lifted. And good for Cuba for wiring up despite it.

Cuba has libraries, I assume. What’s in them? Do you really believe that access to the internet equates to access to information? Governments block content all the time: All you hear from Chinese dissidents is the difficulty of accessing content and how the government keeps messing with Google. Doesn’t the US government even block content? Why do you believe that the Cuban internet will be an electronic libertarian paradise?

In fact, your last sentence, “The documents disclose plans to separate commercial traffic and governmental traffic upon data arrival” says it all. Can there be any doubt in your mind that the Cuba government, not the electronic frontier, will decide what’s “commercial” and what’s “governmental”, what’s public and what’s privileged, information?

And what does any of this have to do with the main thread- Cuban racism?

Finally, lose the epithets. It’s very unbecoming.

Yes literacy is higher in Cuba than the US- but what are Cubans allowed to read?

—-

What a moronic comment. Cuba is doing everything it can to provide high-speed internet connections to the entire population, drawing upon Venezuelan funding. If the government was so bent on controlling what people read, why would it be blasting full-speed ahead with such a project?

In fact, it has been the god-damned imperialists who have been preventing such access up to now:

From Wikileaks, July 15, 2008

Cuba to work around US embargo via undersea cable to Venezuela

JULIAN ASSANGE (investigative editor)

From Santiago de Cuba to La Guaira : Cuba will be connected to the Internet by 2010
   
“According to the Vice Minister of Telecommunication, Boris Moreno, the government is unable to offer Cubans comprehensive Internet for their new Pcs because the American embargo prevents it from getting service directly from the United States nearby through underwater cables. Instead, Cuba gets Internet service through less reliable satellite connections, usually from faraway countries including Italy and Canada.”

—Cuba blames US for Internet restrictions, AP

Newswire 16 May 2008[1]

Documents released by Wikileaks reveal that Cuba and Venezuela signed a confidential contract in 2006 to lay an undersea fibre-optic cable that bypasses the United States. The cable is to be completed by 2010.

The contract between the two countries, which has been independently verified, adds weight to Cuban statements that the United States economic embargo of the island has forced it to rely on slow and expensive satellite links for Internet connectivity. Cuba is situated a mere 120 kilometres off the coast of Florida. The proposed 1,500 kilometre cable will connect Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti and Trinidad to the rest of the world via La Guaira, Venezuela.

Carrying out the work are CVG Telecom (Corporación Venezolana de Guyana) and ETC (Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba).

The leaked documents have technical details and pictures of the cable, maps, and systems to be used, parties signing the agreement, terms and conditions, costs, and a schedule of charges and compromises. The connection allows for the transmission of data, video and voice (VoIP). According to the contract, the agreement is designed to build a relationship of “strategic value” which will permit Cuba and Venezuela to, among other matters:

  * Increase interchange between the two governments.
  * Foster science, cultural and social development.
  * Increase the volume and variety of relationships between country members of ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for America) and the South American MERCOSUR trading block.
  * Help serve the increasing demand of commercial traffic between Cuba, Venezuela and the rest of the world.

The contract parties state that given the diversity of foreign affairs, they wish to build a new international order, multi-polar, based in sustainability, equity and common good and that an international cable with maximum security protected by international organizations (ITU/ICPC) is crucial.

The documents disclose plans to separate commercial traffic and governmental traffic upon data arrival.

folktruther: Oh yeah, well your mother wears combat boots!

Look, people, we should all agree that the embargo is stupid, makes the US look bad, and turns Cuba into heroic victims fighting the villainous El Norte, and should definitely end. More power to Obama toward that end.

But please, let’s stop deluding ourselves that Cuba is anything but a shit-hole.

Yes literacy is higher in Cuba than the US- but what are Cubans allowed to read? Yes health care is cheaper and more readily available in Cuba than the US, but would YOU go there for open heart surgery? Helms-Burton is not the reason ‘57 Chevies are the best cars on the road there. And finally, you will NEVER see a Barak Obama running Cuba as long as la revolucion lasts.

And there are only two conclusions you can draw about the unrelenting stream of people trying to LEAVE Cuba: either Cuba is socialist paradise on earth in which case those people are insane (pace Fidel for the Mariel prison cleansing), or Cuba is a failure and those people are looking for a better life anywhere but in Cuba. No conspiracy theories are necessary.

And no, Folktruther, rooting for Israel’s survival or for the end to Castroism in Cuba does NOT make me a racist, any more than YOU rooting for Palestianians or Castro makes you a terrorist or a communist. So quit with the name calling and stick to debating. It’s so much more civilized.

rfidler- Zionism fits into a discussion about racism in Cuba because Zionism is a racist doctrine, and you are obviously a racist.  It’s true that you don’t give a shit about Cuba or the Palestinians, but the world is appalled by people like you.  As I am. And I don’t have to fear the bullying of the superior economic and military power of the US, which it passes along to Israel.

You form the typical zionist lemming that is distroying Israel along with the Palestinians that Israel is ethnic cleansing.

“Even without meeting with any of the well-known black dissidents on the island, the visitors from Washington could have observed that the work force in Cuba’s burgeoning tourism industry—arguably the most privileged class, since waiters and cab drivers receive tips in hard currency, which allows them a standard of living far beyond what is possible with Cuban pesos and government rations—is disproportionately white.”

Are you suggesting that waiters and cabbies are the most priveleged class in Cuba today?  If true, it’s a damned shame.  End the U.S. embargo now!

gerard cruz:
Regarding your first paragraph: I wasn’t talking about racism in the US- it’s alive and well. I was talking about racism in Cuba. Answer my question- do you really believe a Cuban-African stands a chance of finding a seat at Cuba’s power table? The question has nothing to do with racism in the US.

And the EU, the largest economy in the world, “resents” the US for Helms-Burton? So what? They should tell the US to pound sand. Who would suffer in that battle of wills? How many other nations in the world would feel the pain if they defied Helms-Burton? Venezuela, Russia? Would we cut off China, India, OPEC, if they told us to pound sand? Over CUBA???

And “Brothers to the Rescue.” Now that opens up a whole new discussion. Why are so many people trying to escape Cuba for the US and not Miami for Cuba? I repeat- Why on earth are they leaving Cuba for the racist, murdering, zenophobic, homophobic, misogynist, torturing, classist, bourgeois, white supremacist US- the very country supposedly causing Cuba all that anguish for all these years. Are those people nuts? Why don’t they go to Venezuela, the new socialist paradise?

Face it. The world doesn’t give a shit about Cuba. Sort of like the Palestinians.

(folktruther: Stay on topic. Where does Zionism fit in to a discussion on Cuba?)

ITW: Hang in there.

Of course there’s racism in Cuba. What are the chances that Cuban power brokers will EVER appoint a black man or woman to any top leadership position?

As for the embargo: The US is the only country in the whole world maintaining an embargo; and ancillary licensing prohibitions are miniscule in any event. Are we the only country producing medical equipment?  We’re the only country in the world who won’t buy Cuban cigars (damn!), sugar, nickel or tourism. The embargo only hurts the US and Cuban emigres.

Gerard Cruz: So the US is the only carmaker in the world??? Why aren’t Cuban streets teeming with new Volvos, Saabs, Peugeots and BMWs????

It is nice to read the words of self-appointed experts.  Almost like Michael Moore’s insulting praise of the healthcare system in Cuba (that, like the Russians, reused i.v. tubes and was constantly short of supplies) and the praise of the agricultural system (that had horses pulling tractors because fuel was dear) and others talking avidly about an educational system that forbade the use of the internet by researchers for fear that they might want to end their isolation.

The Congressional Black Caucus is (with a few exceptions like John Lewis) populated by selfserving folk who are good at organizing but are making more money at the public trough as legislators than they could ever have done having real jobs in the private sector.

But we have newspapers, magazines, teevee and radio toadies who suck up to these folk but would never ever accept a minority member in their families.  And so they glory in their wild praise of folk they despise.

Dihey, tranquilize yourself.  Zionists like Inherit increasingly have to gibber and throw feces because the oppression and irrationality they defend is becoming increasingly obvious to the American people.  There is nothing else they can do.  Since they cannot acknowledge the ethnic cleansing and war policies of Israel, they have to descend to personal abuse to say anything at all.

Inherit, recently accused Ed Harges, an anti-zionist like myself, of supporting a caliphate to rule 750 million people. Here we see in our very own Inherit how an ideological boob is transformed into an ideological dingbat. The Trith of the Dem party.

Take a scientific appraoch to this vilification which, as it becomes institutionalized in Zionists, will evolve into exotic and exciting new forms of invective.  Who knows, maybe he will accuse you of puncturing the dikes of Holland.  You have to understand:

if you support injustice, you must abandon rationality.

Inherit the Wind

Discussants who call contributions of others “crap” are obviously lazy readers and thinkers who prefer to throw around “crap” or other derogatory words to cover their gigantic ignorance or weakness.

I dare you to prove that my points are “crap”. And how can you be sure that Obama will ask the Congress ever to allow me to visit Cuba freely whenever I want to go there? You are just guessing. He may, he may not. I have not the slightest indication of what will happen.

I have long ago given up assuming what politicians might or might not do in the future. It has helped to preserve my sanity when George W. Bush was our president and will do fine today too.

I resent being treated once again as an unreliable American citizen by our current president who claims to be a “uniter” but continues to divide Americans on the basis of their origin.

And Sir, if you did not know, I do my crapping on the toilet. Where are you crapping?

Hey, they got a white (original Spanish occupiers who killed off the natives) black (slaves who replaced the natives after they were killed off to work the salt and sugar businesses) problem. Sound familiar?

No better, no worse than here.

The usual crap from the usual crappers.

People for whom a gradual approach is an inconceivable concept.

People who IMMEDIATELY dismiss the messenger as a shill if he presents a message they don’t like, especially if it attacks a sacred cow or two.

The usual crap.  Doesn’t even make good fertilizer…

The presidential and congressional decrees on travel to Cuba never had anything to do with national security. They were retaliations for the audacity of Fidel Castro of legally nationalizing US companies registered in Cuba and for the Cuban army having trounced the Bay of Pigs invaders.
While the Cuba-travel decrees of president Bush were already constitutionally dubious, president Obama’s recent decree is, in my opinion, in clear violation of article 14 of our Constitution.
What is the justification that ‘Cuban-Americans’ can now freely travel to Cuba while I, a ‘Dutch-American’, cannot? What kind of equal protection is that?
I know that only Congress can liberate me but my cowardly president Obama should have had the audacity to tell Congress “no American citizen can travel to Cuba or send money to Cuba until you send me a bill which allows ALL American citizens to travel freely to Cuba” instead of promulgating a half-baked unconstitutional ukase. This is not the USSR Mr. President! And also, stop emulating Mr. Putin, please.
Audacity to hope is cheap. Audacity to do the right thing is apparently difficult, if not impossible for this constitutional so-called genius named Obama. Where in the Constitution is “Cuban-American” defined? Such an American does not legally exist. How then can a President or the Congress make laws about persons that do not legally exist? This has been and continues to be dangerous nonsense if not a miserable genuflection before an influential group of Floridian voters. That is what it is all about.
The US policy vs. Cuba has been consistently at the level of “if you do not allow me to play with your toy-train then you may not play with mine”.
This is what you should be writing about, you irrelevant Mr. Robinson.

Who would you believe on the condition of racism in Cuba, the Black Caucus or Robinson, a shill for Amerian imperialism?  By Democracy is means policies favorble to the American plutocracy.

Obama is continuing the trade blockade of Cuba, and preventing the US population from visiting there without restrictions.  This blocade includes medicines and instruments from Europe with US parts.  The trade blocade is flatly oppossed by Latin American countries.  American Freedom includes the restrictions of trade and the personal freedom of the American people to travel to Cuba to see for themselves the truth of racism.

Notice the difference in corporate reporter Eugene Robinson’s tone when he assesses the statements of various Cubans.

Robinson writes, “In 10 reporting trips to the island, I have met Afro-Cubans who told me with conviction that they have had opportunities under the Castro regime—especially in health and education—that would have been unimaginable before the revolution [under the Batista regime backed by the U.S. regime].”

Robinson seems less than sure as to whether, although said with conviction, the Cubans’ statements mentioned above are true.

Later in the article, Robinson writes, “I once interviewed a Cuban scholar whose husband, an officer in the military, pooh-poohed her research into racial discrimination—until he had the experience of being detained and harassed by police for no apparent reason other than his dark skin.”

Above, Robinson expresses no doubt as to the occurrence of the incident.

Cubans’ degree of credibility seems to depend on the politics of what is being said.

Eugene Robinson: “That would put the onus on the Cubans to somehow keep hordes of American capitalists and tourists from infecting the island with dangerous, counterrevolutionary ideas.”

I don’t think that Cuba is afraid of capitalist ideas. In fact, in the country where capitalism is king, only 53 percent of the people prefer it to socialism, according to a Rasmussen poll. Cuba is more worried about American money being used to meddle with Cuban politics, as the NED, George Soros foundations et al are fond of doing.

Ask yourself what would happen to SDS’ers who began visiting the Cuban mission in NY to pick up money and marching orders. They would not be put in jail. They would be put under the jail.

Many Black Cubans that came to the US in one of the flotillas of the 80’s found that racism was much worse here and among US based Cubans than it is in Cuba. There are no utopias but Cuba has made more of an effort under worse conditions than the US to eliminate racism and sexism which were a mainstay of the old pre-revolutionary society.

The premise embedded in this article seems to be one of “pushing Cuba toward democratic (read US Style) reforms.” If anything, the US could learn a great deal about democracy from the Cuban system but even that system would operate better if it wasn’t under constant siege. Our own country has eliminated many more rights under far less pressure.

if racism is a serious problem for some cubans, obama should letting us all in there. if all of us were let in, it would go beyond the tourism places.