Lawmakers Seek to Open Cuba Trade

[cal04]

Source: Associated Press

Lawmakers from both parties proposed opening up agriculture exports to Cuba and ending travel restrictions, putting them at odds with a White House adamantly opposed to easing a half-century-old embargo.

``Our policy is just so wrongheaded,'' said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., who with other farm state lawmakers has long pushed for ending the restrictions on trade with Cuba. His proposed legislation, he said Thursday, is ``a step toward restoring sanity to this economic relationship.''

The trade and travel embargo imposed on Fidel Castro's government comes up almost every year in Congress, but the bipartisan drive to ease restrictions has never been strong enough to overcome anti-Castro lawmakers and White House veto threats.

``The administration opposes any weakening of sanctions on Cuba and believes that these measures are essential until Cuba can realize its rightful democratic future,'' White House spokesman Tony Fratto said.



Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6727375,00.html

[BushOut06]

1. Explain to me why it's okay to deal with China, but not Cuba

I have yet to hear one valid reason for a rethug why it's a good idea to do business with China - whose human rights record is abysmal - and a bad idea to do business with Cuba.

[Lasher]

2. There is no valid reason

But politicians fear the wrath of the Cuban-American vote in south Florida.

[Judi Lynn]

5. It's their idea that if they can't regain control of Cuba, then they will strangle Cuba to death,

any way possible.

It was precisely because they are so loathesome, brutal, greedy, dishonest, violent that the country threw them over, and threw them out in the first place.

Anyone who wonders what kind of people they are should do a quick check at the little ugly kingdom the right-wing reactionaries set up in Miami and maintained by violence and intimidation for so many decades.

It's all there for any one who wants to see it: racism, unbelievable greed, insane levels of homophobia, and megalomania of a level normal people never see in their lifetimes. All from the group of people who were the big fish in the very little bowl when they ran Cuba.

They have controlled all the Cuba legislation up until now. With any luck at all, growing presence in Congress will turn the tide forever, and they will suffer immediate loss of power. When that happens, the perennial treks to Miami for campaigns will dwindle away as Congresscritters like Dan Burton, Joe Lieberman, the _Bushes start looking for their campaign funding elsewhere, and they will all be working in the little Cuban sandwich shops one day. Can't wait.

http://www.bgfoods.com.nyud.net:8090/bgcondiments/images/cuban_sandwich.jpg http://www.lancheros.com.nyud.net:8090/photoblog/2005_Feb09b.jpg

[Lasher]

6. Time is a great healer

At one time the exiles had an intense desire to return to Cuba. These days they might want to go for a visit but none of them really wants to live there. By now all have roots here and life there is a distant memory. More than that, their US descendents have never been there and wouldn't dream of moving to Cuba.

The mechanism is still in place as you have described, and the Cuban-American voter backlash threat is real - if diminished from earlier days. It could be time, however, to end the embargo if we had a leader with the courage to do it. But I don't see that on our horizon.

[Judi Lynn]

7. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, shown here with her fellow Florida Cuban Congressmen,

Mario and Lincoln Diaz-Balart, nephews of ex-wife of Fidel Castro, Mirta Diaz-Balart, has stated during an interview on tv that her family came here expecting to wait a few months, while the United States overthrew the Cuban people's revolution which removed them (like deadly cancers), and then return to resume their lives.

http://www.republicacubana.org.nyud.net:8090/06-10/congresistas.jpg

During that time, the Cuban "exile" community has conducted a non-stop campaign of terrorism against Cuba through any means available, including small raids by armed men, assassinations, poisoning crops and livestock (as testified to in a murder trial by Cuban "exile" terrorist, Eduardo Arocena in New York City), and bombings of hotels, restaurants, and discos, not to mention individual assassinations of Cuban people in other countries, including on the street of Washington, D.C., and New York, in broad daylight.

As recently as a few years ago they were caught in a plot to bomb a large auditorium which was going to be filled with college students listening to a speech by Fidel Castro.

All the men involved were imprisoned in Panama, were pardoned by _Bush friend, President Mireya Moscoso, on her last day of office, before she moved to Miami, and they are all free now, living in Miami, too. Wonderful. One of those men, Luis Posada Carriles, was involved in the first mid-air airliner bombing in history and the murder of 73 human beings on a Cubana airliner, some of them children. He's happy to be living as a free terrorist in Miami today.

It's very doubtful time has had much of an effect on these monsters.

[Vogon_Glory]

13. Posada Carriles Wasn't the First By The Way...

<<One of those men, Luis Posada Carriles, was involved in the first mid-air airliner bombing in history and the murder of 73 human beings on a Cubana airliner, some of them children.>>


Posada Carriles wasn't the first person to bomb a commercial airliner. The loathsome history of blowing up commercial airliners with passengers aboard had already had at least fifteen years pf moral squalor between its inception and Posada's mid-air mass homicide. In November, 1955, a man put a bomb aboard a United Airlines DC-6 to collect money on a relative's insurance policy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_629

[Vogon_Glory]

10. Time Wounds All Heels

Time wounds all heels, too. A lot of the most vociferous right-wing Cuban exiles have come up against their own mortality. They're dying of old age.

I doubt that the travel ban is going to last that much longer. Possibly as long as Boy George is in office, but not much beyond then.

I think that one of the things that is corroding support for the travel ban is the hard-line exiles' habit of accusing any American male speaking out against it of wanting to visit Cuba to go wh*remongering. Such accusations are not only insulting, but they add just enough irritation to encourage politically-apathetic people to actually start working against the travel ban.

[Judi Lynn]

14. When Minnesota's Gov. Jesse Ventura announced he would be going with the agricultural

contingent from his state to a trade fair in Cuba in order to solicit the narrow trade available for them with Cuba, _Bush's Assistant Sec. of State, Latin American affairs, Cuban "exile" Otto Reich archly informed him, through the media, that he should not go to Cuba in search of "sexual tourism."

Recently, the St. Paul Pioneer Press asked Reich if he had any advice for out-going Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura and state business executives who are accompanying him on a trade mission to Cuba this month. Reich told the paper: "First, I would ask them not to participate in sexual tourism, which is one of the main industries in Cuba."

Ventura called the remark "offensive" and said: "At the very least, he and President Bush owe my wife and children a personal apology."

A State Department spokesman rebuffed Ventura's request.
(snip)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2002_09_08.php
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20021021/kornbluh

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
They just can't seem to hold themselves back. Everyone who dares to hold a different view on Cuba, Cubans gets labeled a "Communist," a "Marxist," or "Useful Idiot," and all the filthy other slurs they can manage, and now they attempt to add "degenerate" to any would-be traveler.

Consider the source. Look what wonders they've done for Miami, all the way from FBI-designated "Terror Capital of the United States," to U.S. Census Bureau's assigned title, given several times, "Poorest City in the United States with a Population over 500,000," to citation by HRW for monstrous suppression of free speech concerning Cuban matters, to stunning levels of city government corruption, and election fraud.

[roody]

3. When do we get to realize our rightful

democratic future here in the U.S?

[robcon]

4. Our Cuba policy has been wrong for almost 50 years.

We should trade extensively with Cuba. We've acted as if we're afraid of that tinpot dictator, Castro.

[pampango]

11. Agreed. We trade extensively with every other Latin American

country. Cuba should be no exception. Lots to be gained on both sides.

[Mika]

15. Certain US politicians are afraid of losing Castro as part of their platform.

My god, can you imagine if relations were to be normalized with Cuba? South Florida politicians (D & R) would be grasping for some kind of platform to run on for election. You should have heard the collective sigh of relief in Miami-Dade when it was announced that Raul Castro was to be provisional Head of State when Fidel had surgery. They still have a Castro to demonize.

Normalization would hurt the campaign cash cow for both sides of this issue. That is why the status quo has prevailed (no matter how obvious the failure of such policy has been). Special interests prevail.

Our Cuba policy is a case in point in the argument for public financing of campaigns.

[Judi Lynn]

18. Losing Castro would crush them! It's how they got elected originally,

and why they seem to run virtually unopposed now, for the last so many years.

If the U.S. normalized relations with Cuba, they'd be completely rudderless. Lost! Working at DisneyWorld.

Maybe they could take turns guiding traffic through the Elián museum!

http://www.granmai.cubasi.cu.nyud.net:8090/aleman/fotos/mayo03/wen.jpg http://www.habanaupec.cubasi.cu.nyud.net:8090/Diciem%206/Image1953.gif

[OldschoolDem]

8. Ending the embargo with Cuba is a good call

both countries have much to gain.

[Judi Lynn]

9. The sooner the U.S. public is free to travel without penalty of imprisonment to Cuba

the better.

No doubt a lot of Americans actually believe it's the Cuban government keeping them out. What a shame they don't know more about their own government!

Dan Snow, from Houston, was thrown in the slammer years ago for daring to try to go to Cuba to do some bass fishing.

His website: http://www.cubatravelusa.com/about_us.htm
His travel agency: http://www.cubatravelusa.com/

[Vogon_Glory]

12. Travel Restrictions: Cuban Hard-Liners vs Tokugawas

I'd just had a thought about the travel restrictions. Some of the more perceptive hard-liners have wised up to the fact that Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is likely to be around a while, and so will his financial support for Cuba. As long as Chavez is sending money to Havana, the Cuban government won't collapse for financial reasons. How long would the hard-line Cuban exiles keep those restrictions in place if they had their way? The exile political establishment has already had them in place for the better part of fifty years. Would they go for 75? 100? 150?


The hard-liners look like they might be trying for a record. When Japan's Tokugawa shogunate closed Japan to foreigners in the 1680's, that ban remained in place until 1854. Each year that the hard-liners try to restrict Americans from visiting Cuba, the ratio between the time the Tokugawa's travel restrictions were in place and the American travel restrictions were put in place keeps going down.

[Judi Lynn]

16. Strength in numbers. They started combining forces with expatriot Venezuelans

who have moved to South Florida several years ago, and have been working together with them every time possible.

Only this year they attempted to push through Congress a measure which would extend ALL the perks they receive through the Cuban Adjustment Act, to the expatriot Venezuelans. This would open the gates to a flood of poor Venezuelans who could then show up as cheap labor for their former bosses from that country, all free of US immigration requirements, and subsidized financially, with U.S. taxpayer provided housing, food stamps, welfare, social security, medical treatment, instant green card, immediate legal status by simply claiming to be seeking political asylum.

Polarization is the ticket: increasing the noise against the Venezuelan President to gather support among the Americans who turn to cable news and right-wing radio for their understanding of world affairs will allow them to build an emotional base here among the under-informed.

[Spazito]

17. I suspect the bush admin (and previous admins) have an additional reason for not

wanting to end the embargo or establish any diplomatic relationship with Cuba UNLESS and UNTIL there is a US-friendly government and that reason is the right of Cuba to re-negotiate the treaty that gave the US control of both sides of Guantanamo Bay.

"The current Cuban government considers the U.S. presence in Guantánamo to be an illegal occupation of the area, and argues that the Cuban-American Treaty, which established the lease in 1903, now violates article 52 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, though the issue is still open to argument."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_Naval_Base

As long as the US has NO diplomatic and trade relations with Cuba they can continue to say the treaty of 1903 is still valid.

Edited to add previous admins (both Democratic and Republican) to my header.

[Judi Lynn]

19. Bloomberg: US lawmakers propose easing travel, agriculture sales to Cuba

US lawmakers propose easing travel, agriculture sales to Cuba
Published on Friday, June 22, 2007

By Mark Drajem

WASHINGTON, USA (Bloomberg): The top two US lawmakers on trade have proposed a measure to ease restrictions on travel and farm trade with Cuba, predicting that their long-time demands to ease the US embargo would bear fruit.

House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus introduced a bipartisan proposal that would eliminate US Treasury requirements that US farm producers get paid in advance before shipping their products to Cuba and also end a ban on US travel to the island.

The lawmakers said they hoped to push the bill, which doesn't end the overall embargo on trade with Cuba, through their committees in coming months.

"This is an important first step toward modernizing our Cuba policy," Baucus, a Montana Democrat, said at a news conference in Washington on Thursday.

An end to the almost 50-year-old trade barriers may open a $1 billion-a-year export market for US goods, according to the US International Trade Commission, and revive Havana as an attraction for US tourists about 100 miles off the Florida coast. The Bush administration said in January it opposes lifting the embargo.

More:
http://www.caribbeannetnews.com/news-2185--5-5--.html