Cuban Embargo: Stupid idea or failed policy?

[Arrian]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


Do you think it was wrong for FDR to be a president for life?

I think our government made the right decision in creating term limits to prevent another FDR type situation. FDR did some good things, but he also displayed an alarming tendency to grasp for more and more power (court stacking, for instance).

I think it's easy to try and say Castro just wanted power for himself, but the reality is the U.S. is trying to destroy the revolution in Cuba. You need to place it within the general context of U.S. Latin American relations. Five years before the revolution, the U.S. overthrew the elected government of Guatemala. Since then, 200,000 people have been murdered by their government. Six years after the Cuban revolution, the U.S. invaded and overthrew the elected government of the Dominican Republic. The U.S. had its hands in military coups in: Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and elsewhere. Altogether, maybe as many as half a million people were killed by the actions of our government and their friends in Latin America. That doesn't include torture, imprisonment, and general misery, as well as the wasted lives of people who weren't able to carry through with programs to aid the poor.

The government of Cuba, alone of all the progressive left wing government, survived. Alone, Cuba was the only country in Latin America in the 80s that the U.S. state department reported did not have death squads. This wasn't just a matter of who was in power or the U.S. government acting despicably. This was a matter of survival for tens of thousands of real human beings. Nor have we stopped interfering with the Caribbean and Latin America. The CIA is believed to be behind the 2004 coup in Haiti. There is a lot of evidence that the U.S. was behind the failed coup against Chavez. Our troops have been aiding the military in Columbia, which has the worst current human rights record in Latin America!

While I think you overstate some of your case, by and large I'm with you on this stuff. Though I'd still like to see that evidence of the CIA's supposed involvement in the coup attempt in Venezuela (and Haiti, for that matter). If it's credible, I'll believe it.

Columbia, yeah. But won't somebody think of the children!11! War on Drugs!

Cuba is a society under siege, which faces an existential threat. Most Americans (I'm not saying you) believe that the brutal and murderous Israeli occupation of Palestine is justified. The Cuban government is no where near as violent or viscous as Israel, and the threat it faces isn't Qasam rockets and suicide bombers, but B-52s and the U.S. Marines. It's not an idle threat, either.

I disagree that Cuba, today, faces B-52s and the Marines. I've little doubt that more subtle efforts (CIA, etc) are still a real threat to be concerned with, but "under siege" strikes me as exaggeration, and an awfully convenient excuse for political repression (I readily grant that Cuba is far, far better about said repression than some good "friends" of ours in the region). We're not going to invade Cuba, for a variety of reasons ranging from public perception of Cuba to the legacy of Dubya. I could be wrong, and a longer view of history suggests possible naivete on my part. But that's how I see it. Unless, of course, Castro decides he wants nukes...

As for Israel/Palestine... oy, that's a whole 'nuther kettle of fish. That's more than a simple threadjack, so let's leave it out, ok?

-Arrian

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
But if Cuba is so harsh, why don't the tens of thousands of doctors they send around the world defect? In fact, I just read that one of the problems they have is that some of their doctors leave their posts and try to return to Cuba instead.

Maybe because they're being sent to crapholes like Bolivia?

[Wezil]

Originally posted by Kidicious

Democrats? You actually think that they are the opposition? People can vote in Cuba. They just can't vote for capitalism.

Every government in the world has an opposition Kid (and Che since you are on the same silly tangent). How that opposition is treated is what we are talking about. In my country and yours the opposition try to take power through the ballot box. Calling for such reforms in Cuba lands you in jail. As someone else asked you (and you dodged) - Who was the opposition candidate (IE non-commie) in the last Cuban election?

This will the last time I explain this same point to you (what? three times now?).

Just trying to see exactly how drunk and or stoned you are right now. Your posts aren't making that much sense. 1984?

I was ill actually, but still made a hell of a lot more sense than the argument you were putting forward.

Like this. I don't know what that is suppose to mean.

Okay, I can see how you missed this point. Looking back it is not clear.

I was mentioning the fact there are Cuban refugees all over the world and that opposition to the regime was significant. You responded that there is opposition to the US regime. I made the leap to Americans around the world. My bad.

Alright, yes you have opposition as well, and the peaceful opposition have no problems (the thugs on Che's list are another matter entirely). Again, it is the how the opposition is treated that is the issue.

[Wezil]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
You started off by trying to make a comparison to South Africa, where upon Kidicious made the statement there was not a democratic opposition to justify an embargo. You actually never claimed there was a democratic opposition, just opposition. In the context of the previous conversation, then, the statement means that the existence of an opposition justifies the embargo.

Only if you are bat**** insane. I don't think either of us is that far gone.

Kidicious' statement is very likely false, but as a great number of the opposition in Cuba receive funds and equipment from the U.S., their commitment to democracy can be questioned. The Miami Cuban commitment to democracy can easily be shown to be false (as well as the New Jersey Cuban opposition). Any attempt to counter their message is not met by surveillance and jailing, but by violence. Opposing the official exile line can get you killed. I have personally been attacked by a Cuban mob for saying that a Cuban terrorist, Luis Posada Carilles, ought to go to jail. The record of violence and murder in Miami alone shows what a lie "democratic" opposition is.

Yes democracy can be messy at times, particularly in the early days. The sooner they start down the path the sooner the will achieve true freedom.

Most of them are accused of violence, because that's the charge, that if it sticks, guarantees a long sentence. Assata Shakur, not on the list because she escaped to Cuba, for example, was accused of murder for being in the car with someone who did in fact kill someone else. The state doesn't even bother to argue she pulled the trigger. Merely being there was enough.

I'm not into playing commie conspiracy theories. Thanks anyway.

Because non-violent crimes don't keep you locked up for decades. One of my university professors was imprisoned for building a bomb, except he was teaching class and was talking with the students at the time he was supposed to be doing this. Since I was in the class, I can personally vouch for the fact he was not where the state claimed he was. The aforementioned case of Geronimo Pratt, whe spent three decades in prison for a pair of murders he could not possibly have committed, and who was, finally released when suppressed evidence came to light. Leonard Peltier is a famous political prisoner, problably the most famous political prisoner we have . . . except maybe for Mumia Abu Jamal (who I personally believe is guilty).

More conspiracies. Btw, Peltier was a specific person I had in mind when I mentioned Americans not considered a political refugee by this country. Your romantic view of him is not universally shared.

Given that I live in South Florida and you don't, I'd say you are hopelessly naive. I get to actually talk to Cubans and also read the papers and see what people say when they get here.

And most people calling for change in Cuba don't get jailed.

It's been mentiond a couple times in this thread now how the Regime is "popular". How do we know? Because they assemble for patriotic events, smile and wave flags? Read The Joke if you want to know how representative that can be. And again, why do we not have any posters from Havana to tell us how they feel? Since you dodged the question earlier, the answer is obviously b/c they are not free to.

If the regime is so damn popular why can they not tolerate a free opposition and a free vote? Surely the Castro's would win an overwhelming majority. Or would they?

Does it justify embargoing a whole people?

If you follow this line of reasoning you would be opposed to any embargo, anywhere. Why punish a people for the acts of their government, yada, yada.

In most states, it's very difficult or impossible for non major party candidates to get on the ballot. Why, because the two main parties wrote the rules. Since our system doesn't have run-off elections, any 3rd party candidate generally throws the election to the opposite end. We don't have proportional representation.

Anyway, I don't mock them. Maybe Perot, but he was a kook.

At the end of tha day that is still your choice. The Cubans have no such choice.

One doesn't have anything to do with the other. It was U.S. actions that drove Cuba in to the arms of the USSR. Cuba might very well have been democratic had the U.S. not decided to terrorize and threaten Cuba.

Yes, US foreign policy could have been better but to imply the Castro regime is only bad b/c of external forces is the same apologetic crap I've been hearing from commies for decades. Excuses they are called.

I would remind you of what I'd written earlier, about how the U.S. government basically overthrew nearly every government in Latin America. Cuba was one of the few who didn't end up with a bloody military dictatorship. It may be a dictatorship, but it is neither bloody nor military. If we can trade with regimes that even carried out a policy of genocide (Guatemala), we can carry out trade with governments that are far, far less oppressive. The reason we don't isn't because Cuba is a dictatorship, but because Cuba is "Socialist."

I'm not arguing your nation's hatred of the Castro regime can go overboard and like others have pointed out in this thread it is hypocritical in the extreme when you consider some of the nations the US considers "friends".

My original point and statement was:

Some people feel the US should not be doing business with a nation with human rights abuses as bad as Cuba. Unfortunately this is not applied evenly (ie the Saudis).

From a moralistic point of view there is merit to the embargo.

You don't think Cuba abuses human rights. I can't see how we will ever agree on anything else on the issue with such differing starting positions.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Wezil
Every government in the world has an opposition Kid (and Che since you are on the same silly tangent). How that opposition is treated is what we are talking about. In my country and yours the opposition try to take power through the ballot box. Calling for such reforms in Cuba lands you in jail. As someone else asked you (and you dodged) - Who was the opposition candidate (IE non-commie) in the last Cuban election?

Just calling for reforms in Cuba doesn't land you in jail necessarily, although calling for capitalism there is illegal. If you have ties to the US or certain groups there you will, however, land in jail.

I think you are overreacting to how people are treated in Cuba. People are generally treated very good, but if you want trouble you can find it, just like in the US. I can call for revolution, but when I start cross the line I'm going to cause a lot of trouble for myself.

Okay, I can see how you missed this point. Looking back it is not clear.

I was mentioning the fact there are Cuban refugees all over the world and that opposition to the regime was significant. You responded that there is opposition to the US regime. I made the leap to Americans around the world. My bad.

Alright, yes you have opposition as well, and the peaceful opposition have no problems (the thugs on Che's list are another matter entirely). Again, it is the how the opposition is treated that is the issue.

Sorry to here of you illness. I hope you feel better.

[Wezil]

Originally posted by Kidicious

Just calling for reforms in Cuba doesn't land you in jail necessarily, although calling for capitalism there is illegal. If you have ties to the US or certain groups there you will, however, land in jail.

I think you are overreacting to how people are treated in Cuba. People are generally treated very good, but if you want trouble you can find it, just like in the US. I can call for revolution, but when I start cross the line I'm going to cause a lot of trouble for myself.

A distinction needs to be made between violent and non-violent actions. We tolerate commies on the ballot here even though the system they propose would radically change our form of government. People are free to vote for them if they wish. Now, if the commies advocated storming parliament or some other act (your "crossing the line") then they will be arrested.

Sorry to here of you illness. I hope you feel better.

Thank you. Yes and no. Some symptoms are better some are worse but I'm dead tired. I had to work sick today and unexpectedly ended up spending 4 HOURS at a dead stop on an expressway in addition to my 4 hour drive.

[Mercator]

I'd say the embargo more than failed. It was probably counterproductive. Had the US continued trading with Cuba, Cuba would've been at least as capitalist as China is right now.

Castro wouldn't have had quite as much reason to stand up against "the enemy", especially after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the Cuban people would've been craving Coca Cola and McDonald's etc. by now.

[Wezil]

Hey Che, one of your downtrodden was in the news today. Let's have a look shall we?

Originally posted by chegitz guevara

Tre Arrow
CS# 05850722
Vancouver Island Regional Correction Center
4216 Wilkinson Rd.
Victoria, BC, V8Z 5B2
Canada

https://www.trearrow.org

PORTLAND, Ore. - Fugitive environmental activist Tre Arrow is back in the United States to stand trial on conspiracy and arson charges after nearly four years in a Canadian prison.

Arrow, 34, formerly Michael James Scarpitti, was indicted by a federal grand jury in April 2004 following his arrest in Victoria, B.C., on local charges of shoplifting, assault and obstructing a police officer after a security guard caught him trying to steal a pair of bolt cutters.

Arrow pleaded guilty to the Canadian charges but fought extradition by seeking asylum, claiming he faced political persecution in the United States.

The 14-count indictment charges Scarpitti with taking part in the destruction of several concrete-mixing trucks at Ross Island Sand and Gravel Co. in Portland in April 2001. He's also accused of destroying logging trucks at Schoppert Logging Co. in Eagle Creek near Mount Hood in June 2001.

Arrow, who legally changed his name from Scarpitti, has said trees told him to make the change. He earned fame among activists when he scaled the offices of the U.S. Forest Service in Portland in the summer of 2000 to protest logging on Mount Hood, perching on a ledge for 11 days.

He often walked barefoot to show his concern for the Earth, and adhered to a strict raw-food diet.


Arrow also ran for Congress as a Green Party candidate, winning nearly 16,000 votes. He was injured in October 2001, suffering a broken pelvis when he fell 20 metres from a tree after a two-day standoff with police and loggers in the Tillamook State Forest.

Scarpitti was brought to Portland by the U.S. Marshals Service and faces arraignment in U.S. District Court on Monday, according to the U.S. Attorney's office in Portland.

The B.C. Supreme Court approved his extradition in July 2005 but Scarpitti objected, leading to an April 2006 order by the Canadian Minister of Justice that he surrender to U.S. authorities.

The B.C. Court of Appeal denied his next appeal of the extradition on Oct. 19, 2007, and Scarpitti sought no further review in Canada.

Three other defendants in the case - Jacob Sherman, Jeremy Rosenbloom, and Angela Cesario - pleaded guilty to arson charges and have completed service of their 41-month federal prison terms.

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2008/02/29/4885567-ap.html

[BeBMan]

What's wrong with trees telling people what to do???

[Wezil]

Nothing. Just don't listen to them!

[GePap]

Just wanted to add this little it about the effects of the US's moronic Cuba policy:

A Wave of the Watch List, and Speech Disappears
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: March 4, 2008

Steve Marshall is an English travel agent. He lives in Spain, and he sells trips to Europeans who want to go to sunny places, including Cuba. In October, about 80 of his Web sites stopped working, thanks to the United States government.

The sites, in English, French and Spanish, had been online since 1998. Some, like www.cuba-hemingway.com, were literary. Others, like www.cuba-havanacity.com, discussed Cuban history and culture. Still others — www.ciaocuba.com and www.bonjourcuba.com — were purely commercial sites aimed at Italian and French tourists.

“I came to work in the morning, and we had no reservations at all,” Mr. Marshall said on the phone from the Canary Islands. “We thought it was a technical problem.”

It turned out, though, that Mr. Marshall’s Web sites had been put on a Treasury Department blacklist and, as a consequence, his American domain name registrar, eNom Inc., had disabled them. Mr. Marshall said eNom told him it did so after a call from the Treasury Department; the company, based in Bellevue, Wash., says it learned that the sites were on the blacklist through a blog.

Either way, there is no dispute that eNom shut down Mr. Marshall’s sites without notifying him and has refused to release the domain names to him. In effect, Mr. Marshall said, eNom has taken his property and interfered with his business. He has slowly rebuilt his Web business over the last several months, and now many of the same sites operate with the suffix .net rather than .com, through a European registrar. His servers, he said, have been in the Bahamas all along.

Mr. Marshall said he did not understand “how Web sites owned by a British national operating via a Spanish travel agency can be affected by U.S. law.” Worse, he said, “these days not even a judge is required for the U.S. government to censor online materials.”

A Treasury spokesman, John Rankin, referred a caller to a press release issued in December 2004, almost three years before eNom acted. It said Mr. Marshall’s company had helped Americans evade restrictions on travel to Cuba and was “a generator of resources that the Cuban regime uses to oppress its people.” It added that American companies must not only stop doing business with the company but also freeze its assets, meaning that eNom did exactly what it was legally required to do.

Mr. Marshall said he was uninterested in American tourists. “They can’t go anyway,” he said.

Peter L. Fitzgerald, a law professor at Stetson University in Florida who has studied the blacklist — which the Treasury calls a list of “specially designated nationals” — said its operation was quite mysterious. “There really is no explanation or standard,” he said, “for why someone gets on the list.”

Susan Crawford, a visiting law professor at Yale and a leading authority on Internet law, said the fact that many large domain name registrars are based in the United States gives the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, control “over a great deal of speech — none of which may be actually hosted in the U.S., about the U.S. or conflicting with any U.S. rights.”

“OFAC apparently has the power to order that this speech disappear,” Professor Crawford said.

The law under which the Treasury Department is acting has an exemption, known as the Berman Amendment, which seeks to protect “information or informational materials.” Mr. Marshall’s Web sites, though ultimately commercial, would seem to qualify, and it is not clear why they appear on the list. Unlike Americans, who face significant restrictions on travel to Cuba, Europeans are free to go there, and many do. Charles S. Sims, a lawyer with Proskauer Rose in New York, said the Treasury Department might have gone too far in Mr. Marshall’s case.

“The U.S can certainly criminalize the expenditure of money by U.S. citizens in Cuba,” Mr. Sims said, “but it doesn’t properly have any jurisdiction over foreign sites that are not targeted at the U.S. and which are lawful under foreign law.”

Mr. Rankin, the Treasury spokesman, said Mr. Marshall was free to ask for a review of his case. “If they want to be taken off the list,” Mr. Rankin said, “they should contact us to make their case.”

That is a problematic system, Professor Fitzgerald said. “The way to get off the list,” he said, “is to go back to the same bureaucrat who put you on.”

Last March, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights issued a disturbing report on the OFAC list. Its subtitle: “How a Treasury Department Terrorist Watch List Ensnares Everyday Consumers.”

The report, by Shirin Sinnar, said that there were 6,400 names on the list and that, like no-fly lists at airports, it gave rise to endless and serious problems of mistaken identity.

“Financial institutions, credit bureaus, charities, car dealerships, health insurers, landlords and employers,” the report said, “are now checking names against the list before they open an account, close a sale, rent an apartment or offer a job.”

But Mr. Marshall’s case does not appear to be one of mistaken identity. The government quite specifically intended to interfere with his business.

That, Professor Crawford said, is a scandal. “The way we communicate these days is through domain names, and the Treasury Department should not be interfering with domain names just as it does not interfere with telecommunications lines.”

Curiously, the Treasury Department has not shut down all of Mr. Marshall’s .com sites. You can still find, for now, www.cuba<240>-guantanamo.com.

[Zevico]

Just calling for reforms in Cuba doesn't land you in jail necessarily, although calling for capitalism there is illegal

Why? You call for communism or socialism in the US. You aren't arrested for it.

I think you are overreacting to how people are treated in Cuba. People are generally treated very good, but if you want trouble you can find it, just like in the US. I can call for revolution, but when I start cross the line I'm going to cause a lot of trouble for myself.

You've dodged the question for the THIRD time now kid. Who was the opposition candidate in the last Cuban election?

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Zevico

Why? You call for communism or socialism in the US. You aren't arrested for it.

50 or so years ago you could have been.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Zevico
Why? You call for communism or socialism in the US. You aren't arrested for it.

Communist countries are not trying to change the government of this country by financing my political activity.

[Patroklos]

But if Cuba is so harsh, why don't the tens of thousands of doctors they send around the world defect? In fact, I just read that one of the problems they have is that some of their doctors leave their posts and try to return to Cuba instead.

Because Castro would murder your relatives





Or maybe not