Embargo foes see hope in Democratic-controlled Congress

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Fri, Dec. 01, 2006
Embargo foes see hope in Democratic-controlled Congress
By William E. Gibson and Vanessa Bauza

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

(MCT)

WASHINGTON -

~snip~
Proponents for easing travel restrictions and other sanctions, emboldened by this month's congressional elections, foresee a more receptive climate for new policies designed to help Americans connect with the Cuban people. The Cuban-exile lobby, weakened by fragmentation and the departure of allies on Capitol Hill, is looking to President Bush to wield his veto power to protect the U.S. embargo.

"Our job will be tougher now," said U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., a champion of sanctions against Cuba. "The Cuban dictator is going to have strong allies in positions of power in Congress. But I am absolutely convinced that the cause of freedom in Cuba is going to prevail no matter what the efforts are to prolong the dictatorship."

All sides of the long-running U.S. debate say they want to encourage democracy and free-markets in Cuba. While Diaz-Balart and many hard-line Cuban exiles argue that travel and commerce would prop up the Fidel Castro government, advocates for a new policy say American engagement would encourage reforms as Cuba heads toward a post-Castro transition.

"I think we will see some legislation come forward but not as much as we would like," said Alfredo Duran, president of the Cuban Committee for Democracy, a Miami-based group of moderate Cuban-Americans generally opposed to embargo policies.

Easing travel restrictions, especially for Cuban-American families, is the first step, he said. "Cubans need to be part of the 21st century," Duran said, "and the people best able to give them that opportunity and take away their fears are their relatives."
(snip/...)

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/16138565.htm



Alfredo Duran, moderate Cuban-American

and

~~~~ click for images ~~~~

~~~~ click ~~~~

_{George W. Bush} friend, Rep. Lincoln Diaz Balart"

[bowens43]

1. Oh come on....

it's only been 40 or so years. Let's give it time to work!!
(Do I need a sarcasm tag?)

Stay the course etc.....

[Judi Lynn]

2. We can't afford to cut and run when we can smoke'em out!

[Say_What]

3. Cubans don't want help from US, 'idiot' Bush, says key Cuban official

<clips>

HAVANA, Cuba (AFP): Ricardo Alarcon, the high-ranking Cuban official in charge of relations with the United States, on Wednesday ruled out the possibility Cubans want any US help in bringing about change.

Wednesday, Washington showed no sign of willingness to accept leadership by Raul Castro, 75, Cuba's interim leader as his brother Fidel Castro, 80, recovers from intestinal surgery in Latin America's only communist country.

Alarcon said Thursday that "Cubans are not asking anyone for anything, and the last thing they would do is ask that idiot for anything," referring to US President George W. Bush.

His comments came a day after the US State Department criticised the Castro regime change and said Cubans should have the opportunity for democratic change.

"We think the Cuban people need to be given the opportunity to see and have democratic change. We believe that is what the Cuban people would like to have," said Tom Casey, a State Department spokesman, in Washington.

http://www.caribbeannetnews.com/cgi-script/csArticles/articles/000045/004534.htm


Ricardo Alarcon, President of the Cuban Parliament.

[Say_What]

4. Once again, world tells U.S. to end Cuban embargo

For the 15th year in row, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for the US to lift the embargo on Cuba. This years vote: 183 in favor, 4 against, Israel, the Marshall Islands, Palau joined the U.S. in the ‘no’ vote.

<clips>

...Addressing the General Assembly before the vote, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said, “The economic war unleashed by the U.S. against Cuba, the longest and most ruthless ever known, qualifies as an act of genocide and constitutes a flagrant violation of international law and the Charter of the United Nations.”

“Throughout these 48 years, the U.S. blockade has caused economic damage to Cuba of over $86 billion. Economic damage this past year was $4.1 billion,” the foreign minister noted. “But more serious than all that is that the U.S. blockade imposes its criminal provisions on Cuba’s relations with other countries that make up this General Assembly,” Mr. Roque added.

“The Bush administration has escalated its actions against Cuba through the so-called Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, issuing stricter economic sanctions and increasing reprisals for United States companies trading with Cuba,” he told the world body.

Speaking on behalf of the European Union, Finnish Ambassador Kirsti Lintonen expressed the EU’s opposition to the U.S. sanctions on the Caribbean nation.

“The European Union cannot accept that unilateral measures imposed by the United States on specific countries limit the Union’s economic and commercial relations with third countries, in this case Cuba,” she said.

http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_3056.shtml

[Vogon_Glory]

5. One Old Texas Republican Opposes the Embargo

My octogenarian uncle, a decades-long Dallas Republican, opposes the embargo and the travel restrictions for US citizens and resident aliens wishing to visit Cuba. It's not because my Republican uncle had turned into a Fidelista; he's still just about conservative as he ever was. It's just that he sees something very obvious--that the embargo doesn't work and that there's no point in keeping it.

He feels the same way about the travel restrictions, too. They hadn't worked to bring down Castro and there's no point in keeping them.

There are undoubtedly millions more American citizen-voters on both sides of the aisle who undoubtedly feel the same way, although neither the embargo nor the travel restrictions have ever become important enough in political discourse to be brought front and center.

I think that it's time and past time to dump both the embargo and the travel restrictions whether we like the Castro brothers or if we're hoping for a positive post-Castro political and economic transformation in our island neighbor.

There might be enough political momentum to dump the embargo and travel restrictions in the next two years. A lot of Republicans would like to make it easier for their constituents to do business with Cuba, so would a lot of Democrats. Dubya isn't half as popular as he was in 2003, and the right wing of the Cuban exile community has not only lost friends in Congress, but it's made more enemies.

[Mika]

6. A positive transition is underway already without the US.

Cuba's economy is growing at a rate of 12%/year, and its international trade relations are expanding exponentially.

Cuba is making friends worldwide with medical exchanges and educational programs at an expanding pace.

Meanwhile the US is making enemies and alienating friends and trade partners all over.

[Vogon_Glory]

9. Here's to a Cuban Post-Castro Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Here's hoping that a subsequent Cuban administration copies South Africa's example and institutes a truth and reconciliation commission, where both Castro-era officials own up to human rights abuses as detailed by Amnesty International and other sources and the anti-Castro activists based in Florida and elsewhere own up to sponsoring terror attacks against Cuba and of people of Cuban descent both within Cuba and also in the US.

[Judi Lynn]

10. Nelson Mandela praises Cuba for helping South Africa gain its freedom.

I doubt he would see it your way.

Philip Agee, former C.I.A. agent has a few words on the "dissidents" who are attracting the "human rights abuses" charges from hardline right-wingers and people who simply want the former monsters to get back their control of the island:

Terrorism and Civil Society as Instruments of U.S. Policy in Cuba

~snip~
With respect to the imprisonment of 75 civil society activists, the main victim has been history, for these people were central to current U.S. government efforts to overthrow the Cuban government and destroy the work of the revolution. Indeed regime change, as overthrowing governments has come to be known, has been the continuing U.S. goal in Cuba since the earliest days of the revolutionary government. Programs to achieve this goal have included propaganda to denigrate the revolution, diplomatic and commercial isolation, trade embargo, terrorism and military support to counter-revolutionaries, the Bay of Pigs invasion, assassination plots against Fidel Castro and other leaders, biological and chemical warfare, and, more recently, efforts to foment an internal political opposition masquerading as an independent civil society.

TERRORISM

Warren Hinkle and William Turner, in The Fish is Red, easily the best book on the CIA’s war against Cuba during the first 20 years of the revolution, tell the story of the CIA’s efforts to save the life of one of their Batista Cubans. It was March 1959, less than three months after the revolutionary movement triumphed. The Deputy Chief of the CIA’s main Batista secret police force had been captured, tried and condemned to a firing squad. The Agency had set up the unit in 1956 and called it the Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities or BRAC for its initials in Spanish. With CIA training, equipment and money it became arguably the worst of Batista’s torture and murder organizations, spreading its terror across the whole of the political opposition, not just the communists.

The Deputy Chief of BRAC, one José Castaño Quevedo, had been trained in the United States and was the BRAC liaison man with the CIA Station in the U.S. Embassy. On learning of his sentence, the Agency Chief of Station sent a journalist collaborator named Andrew St. George to Che Guevara, then in charge of the revolutionary tribunals, to plead for Castaño’s life. After hearing out St. George for much of a day, Che told him to tell the CIA chief that Castaño was going to die, if not because he was an executioner of Batista, then because he was an agent of the CIA. St. George headed from Che’s headquarters in the Cabaña fortress to the seaside U.S. Embassy on the Malecón to deliver the message. On hearing Che’s words the CIA Chief responded solemnly, "This is a declaration of war." Indeed, the CIA lost many more of its Cuban agents during those early days and in the unconventional war years that followed.

Today when I drive on 31st Avenue on the way to the airport, just before turning left at the Marianao military hospital, I pass on the left a large, multi-story white police station that occupies an entire city block. The style looks like 1920’s fake castle, resulting in a kind of giant White Castle hamburger joint. High walls surround the building on the side streets, and on top of the walls at the corners are guard posts, now unoccupied, like those overlooking workout yards in prisons. Next door, separated from the castle by 110th street, is a fairly large two-story green house with barred windows and other security protection. I don’t know its use today, but before it was the dreaded BRAC Headquarters, one of the CIA’s more infamous legacies in Cuba.

The same month as the BRAC Deputy was executed, on March 10, 1959, President Eisenhower presided over a meeting of his National Security Council at which they discussed how to replace the government in Cuba. It was the beginning of a continuous policy of regime change that every administration since Eisenhower has continued.

As I read of the arrests of the 75 dissidents, 44 years to the month after the BRAC Deputy’s execution, and saw the U.S. government’s outrage over their trials and sentences, one phrase from Washington came to mind that united American reactions in 1959 with events in 2003: "Hey! Those are OUR GUYS the bastards are screwing!"
(snip/...)

http://www.ruleoflawandcuba.fsu.edu/regime-9.cfm

[IndianaGreen]

7. There should be no travel restrictions. Relations must be normalized!

Not one American soldier has been killed or wounded by the Cuban army. Thousands of Americans died in Korea when they fought the Chinese People's Army, and thousands more died in Vietnam when fighting the NVA, yet we have normal relations with both countries.

America should not be held hostage, and our freedoms should not be restricted, on account of a small number of Cuban exiles.

[Mika]

8. Embargo/sanctions remain NOT on account of a small number of Cuban exiles.

As I have said time and again, the US standoff against Cuba is a bipartisan campaign.

Each political side of the issue in the US (a mixed group of Dems and repugs on both sides) gain in campaign capital (read: campaign contributions).

No Castros as bogeymen = no anti Castro industry in Washington and Miami (that contribute to both R's and D's campaigns in exchange for bills to continue the standoff).

No sanctions on Cuba = no anti sanction campaign from big AG and travel industry (that contribute to both R's and D's campaigns in exchange for bills to end the sanctions).

It is in the best interest (meaning: campaign financing) for both political sides to continue the status quo.

America should not be held hostage, and our freedoms should not be restricted, on account of a corrupt undemocratic political system in the US.

An analysis of the Cuba standoff yields an excellent case for campaign finance reform - we need public and equal financing of campaigns instead of corporate/special wealthy interest group financing to eliminate financial political gain from 'wedge issues'.

[Judi Lynn]

11. A new aura of economic prosperity over Cuba

A new aura of economic prosperity over Cuba
published: Sunday | December 3, 2006

David Jessop, Contributor

Three weeks ago, I was in Cuba, a country I have been travelling to since the mid-1970s. My visit took place after a period of international media speculation about the country's future, fed, it would seem, by those who are unable to comprehend that the country and its government is about more than the failing health of one man.

Cuba was not as portrayed. There was a quiet confidence among ministers about the nation's future. There was an almost tangible sense that the country had moved on. A new order existed in all but name. The nation's economy was growing and an internal debate was under way about the ideas that will prepare the way for next generation of Cuban social and economic thinking.
(snip)

Talk to senior Cubans and it is clear the island no longer feels isolated. They believe that they have been vindicated by the socially-led changes in the leadership of governments across Latin America, seeing them as enabling social rather than mercantilist values to become the driving force in hemispheric policy.

All of which is not to minimise the Cuban President's unique role in history, predict where the emotional response of the Cuban people may be to his eventual demise, or to suggest that internal divisions and uncertainties do not exist. Neither is it to express an opinion on the nature of the Cuban system.

Instead, it is to suggest that as in Iraq, the failure to understand the values of an alternative model and culture has caused the U.S. and Europe to have placed an embargo on their ability to relate to or have any role in the changes that are now taking place.
(snip/)

http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20061203/business/business3.html

[Mika]

12. Good article. Great find, Judi.

:thumbsup: :thumbsup: