[NYTr] An Enduring Madness: US Cuba Policy Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2007 15:15:33 -0600 (CST) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Op-Ed News - Nov 1, 2007 http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_michael__071101_an_enduring_madness.htm An Enduring Madness by Michael Roberts Recently, the United Nations General Assembly voted in near unanimity to lift the 47-year old United States blockade and embargo of Cuba even as US president George Bush loudly rattled his jingoistic saber a little louder in a chillingly militaristic and bellicose diatribe to a hand-picked section of anti-Castro Cubans in Miami. Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe PC)rez Roque in his recent address to the UN said that the near half a century embargo had damaged the Cuban economy at an approximate cost of over $222 billion. He said that the economic blockade represented a US attempt bto subdue the Cuban people through starvation and disease.b Perhaps the true harshness and outdated nature of this blockade/embargo can be better explained by going back in history to the year 1960 and the alarm that the United States government felt over the triumph of an avowed socialist revolution right in its so-called bbackyard.b When Cuba aligned itself with the then Soviet Union, the Dwight Eisenhower Administration in Washington, then engaged in the Cold War, was determined that the Soviets would not get a foothold in the Western Hemisphere b its sphere of national security interest. The United States State Department presented a policy document to Eisenhower that would spell out the aggressive, punitive and inhuman methods that would be used against Cuba for all of 47 years. This document, in its intrinsic form, has not been altered, deviated from or discarded by successive American presidents since Eisenhower. Indeed, under the Bush Administration the Eisenhower Document has been added to, bimprovedb if you will, and tinkered with to the extent that the end-product is a harsh, inhuman document that seeks to punish the people of Cuba simply because they chose a different socio-economic and political path to their development that Amwerica does not like. True, many opponents and critics of the Cuban political system and its leader, Fidel Castro, have argued that the political climate in Cuba is one of a pervasive and enduring dictatorship. The United States and its allies have branded Cuba with the bcommunistb brush that allows successive Administrations to whip up the bred frenzyb at home by throwing bCuban-made red meatb to the most backward and rabid sections of the American population. Over the years the American propaganda machine has literally isolated Cuba resulting in many Caribbean countries, for example, treating it as a giant red pariah. Indeed, the absurd stories about Cuba are laughable today but found real believability in the region in the 1960s, 7os and even 80s. Stories like: nobody can own land in Cuba, Castro kills old people, everybody has to cut sugarcane, Castro will make you marry a donkey etc. helped to reinforce b in the absence of valid, truthful counter-information b the picture of Castro as a ruthless dictator and Cuba as a society gripped in fear and paranoia with a population that is waiting for the American bBig Brotherb to rescue and save it. So let us listen to the language of destabilization written by the United States State Department on how to handle Cubathat was formulated and implemented 47 years ago. It is a "Blue Print" for the destabilization of nations, a playbook for subversion, that finds use even today. Here is what the documents said in part: bThere is no effective political opposition in Cuba...the only predictable measure we have today to alienate internal support for the Revolution is through disillusionment and desperation, based on dissatisfaction and economic duress. Every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. Money and supplies must be denied to Cuba in order to decrease real wages, bring about hunger, desperation and the overthrow of government.b Today, a world ashamed of its enduring, loudly conspicuous silence on this barbaric treatment of Cuba and Cubans is desperately trying to make this dreadful wrong right. But the United States is a superpower and with a neoconservative element in the Bush White House and an Administration with a militaristic ideology there is very little that the compassionate world community of humankind can do at this juncture b except to keep hope alive. In fact, the UN General Assembly vote came weeks after President Bush went throwing red meat about to the Miami Cuban sharks and suggested that Washington was now, in the light of Castrobs failing health, stepping up its actions to force regime change in Cuba. The tone, language and stance of President Bush were taken from the same playbook used to justify his misadventure in Iraq and the harsh rhetoric now directed against Iran. This is the 16th time that the United Nations General Assembly has voted so unanimously on a nonbinding resolution. With a tally of 184 to 4 this vote demonstrated that a number of countries are now supporting what many see as ba criminal embargo.b Predictably, the four who voted with the United States included Israel that is paying back the United States for it blind, consistent and unwavering vetoing of any and all UN resolutions b at the General Assembly or the Security Council b that call for Israel to cease its occupation of Palestinian lands and its aggression against the Palestinian people. Two other South Pacific US bprotectoratesb b another name for colony b Palau and the Marshall Islands - also voted with the United States as expected, while Micronesia (another former US colony) abstained and Albania, El Salvador and Iraq did not vote. In his address to the United Nations the Cuban Foreign Minister detailed the damaging extent of the effects of the embargo and how things has escalated and intensified under the Bush Administration. Perez Roque told the UN General Assembly that President Bushbs new measures bbordered on madnessb and that it was a significant departure from that of the 10 previous United States presidents who maintained the embargo. From penalizing churches doing humanitarian work to economic pressures on businesses that continue to do business with Cuba, to harsher travel restrictions, and limitations on remittances from families in the US to relatives and parents in Cuba, the embargo is now making life very difficult for ordinary Cubans. bCuban children have been particularly harmed by the blockade that President Bush has promised to strengthen,b said the Cuban foreign minister. He pointed out that in response to the US governmentbs threats, the American pharmaceutical company, Abbot, had cut off supplies of the anesthetic Sevorane, which is the best for use in operations on children, forcing Cuban hospitals to use inferior substitutes. Similarly, the US company Saint-Jude, which supplied pacemakers for children suffering from arrhythmia, was compelled to end its exports under pressure from the US Office for Foreign Assets Control, which enforces the blockade. And the US government has not stopped there. No American company can provide Internet service to Cuba and the Administration in Washington has ordered United States-based hotel chains, like Holiday Inn, to cancel contracts with Cuban musicians working at these hotels around the world. Under new Bush Administration rules Americans wanting to visit Cuba as tourists or a Cuban resident in the US wanting to visit a sick relative on the island now risks penalties as severe as a US$250,000 fine or up to 10 years in prison. More ominous, said Cubabs Foreign Minister, is the fact over the past year at least 30 countries have been sanctioned by Washington. Among the examples he cited were the freezing of the assets of the Netherlands Caribbean Bank and the barring of US citizens and companies from doing business with the bank because of its Cuban ties and the fining of the British company PSL Energy Services $164,000 for exporting oil industry equipment to the island. He also listed several companies that were barred from exporting products to Cuba after being taken over by US-based multinationals or because the products included as little as 10 percent American components. Long-shot Democratic Presidential candidate, Rep. Denis Kucinich of Ohio said from the campaign trail late last week, "The United States' Cuba policy is a failure. The unilateral embargo must be lifted. The persistently hostile and aggressive rhetoric must cease. We must lift not only the trade embargo. We must also lift the travel ban. We must cooperate with Cuba on issues of national security." Part of the Bush policies that Mr. Kucinich was talking about includes the following: * Strictly enforcing (via the Department of Homeland Security) an existing US law forbidding Americans from traveling to Cuba for pleasure. * Cracking down on illegal money transfers. * Imposing controls of shipments to the island. * Aggressive campaign to inform Cubans of safer routes to reach the United States. * Increasing the number of Cuban immigrants in the US. * More US radio, television, satellite and internet broadcasts to break the "information embargo" Mr. Castro had imposed on his people. While some supporters of the embargo argue that it denies Fidel Castrobs government much-needed foreign currency and that it was necessary in the era of the Cold War, I reject this rigid, reactionary thinking by saying that the Cold War ended in 1991 and even at its height the embargo did not work for a myriad of reasons. And today any cold-sober analysis of the effects of the embargo would reveal that it has failed abysmally and remains one of the most illogical pieces of American foreign policy ever concieved and enacted and is a hold-over relic of the Cold War past. Indeed, the embargobs long-term effects has been to punish the people of Cuba, deny Cubans access to American food products and medical supplies, and created incredible hardships for ordinary poor Cubans. By prohibiting free trade between American and Cuban businesses successive US Administrations have effectively locked themselves out of a potentially lucrative market right on its doorstep or backyard. Cuba still remains a poor Third World nation of 11 million struggling people - but a large untapped market for goods and services - that poses no threat to the great, big United States. So why continue this senseless embargo? Finally, the United States has become the very thing that it despised and hated: by persisting in maintaining this inhumane embargo, restricting Americansb right to travel and do business with a country that never attacked or harmed it, America now resembles the former Soviet Union that in its heyday was criticized by the United States for doing the very same things that it is doing today. [MICHAEL D. ROBERTS is a top Political Strategist and Business, Management and Communications Specialists in New York Citybs Black community. He is an experienced writer whose specialty is socio-political and economic analysis and local community relations. He has covered the United Nations, the Caribbean and Africa in a career that spans over 32 years in journalism. As Editor of New York CARIB NEWS, a position that hebs held since 1990, he is in a unique position to have his hands on the pulse of the over 800,000 Caribbean-American community in Brooklyn, and the over 2.5 million members resident in the wider New York State community.] * ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us Our main website: http://www.blythe.org List Archives: http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ Subscribe: http://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr =================================================================