Category: Cuba

Cuba

John Kiriakou: A Trip to Cuba – scheerpost.com

Cuba is a 45-minute flight from Miami. American Airlines flies there six times a day. I urge all of you to make the trip, if you are able. I’ve been to 70 countries around the world. But rarely have I had my eyes opened, rarely have I been so enlightened, like on this trip to Cuba. Go to Cuba. Experience the culture, the music, the poetry, and the history. Learn how the Cuban people live and see how resilient they are.

Our government is simply wrong on Cuba. We would benefit from full diplomatic relations right now. We would benefit from a close working relationship with the Cuban government and the Cuban people. The Cuban people love Americans. Almost everybody in the country, literally, has a relative living and working in the United States. It’ll be a lot of work, but it can be done. And we would all be better off for it.

 

Source: John Kiriakou: A Trip to Cuba – scheerpost.com

Cuba

Does Cuba Have a Future? | The Smirking Chimp

Their choice has never been free due to the over 60 year blockade by America

Over 220,000 Cubans streamed out of the country toward America, many of them through Nicaragua and then across the Mexican border, a dramatic increase from the 39,000 in 2021. Leading the rush to the exit are young people, who represent the future of the country. It’s not quite as large a demographic drop as in Venezuela, which has lost over a quarter of its population since 2015. But combined with a low birth rate and an aging population, the outflow of Cubans threatens the long-term viability of the country.

Source: Does Cuba Have a Future? | The Smirking Chimp

Cuba

Cuba and Vietnam, What’s the Difference? – CounterPunch.org

Map of Cuba

What the Pentagon and the CIA have never been able or willing to recognize is that the last thing the Cuban people want is to be ruled again by the U.S. government. Notwithstanding the horrors of living under socialism, given a choice between socialism and U.S. rule, most Cubans would pick socialism any day of the week. Given a choice between economic liberty and socialism, I think most Cubans would pick economic liberty, just so long as the U.S. government butted out of their lives.

Source: Cuba and Vietnam, What’s the Difference? – CounterPunch.org

Cuba

Cuba is Not a State-Sponsor of Terrorism – CounterPunch.org

Cubans actually came and worked here in Australia’s remote communities. They reported the worst conditions ever seen among the world’s impoverished people. Strange it never made headline news here in Australia

Cuba, a country of 11 million people, has been under an illegal embargo by the United States government for over six decades.

Despite this embargo, Cuba’s people have been able to transcend the indignities of hunger, ill health, and illiteracy, all three being social plagues that continue to trouble much of the world.

Due to its innovations in health care delivery, for instance, Cuba has been able to send its medical workers to other countries, including during the pandemic, to provide vital assistance. Cuba exports its medical workers, not terrorism.

Source: Cuba is Not a State-Sponsor of Terrorism – CounterPunch.org

Cuba

Cuba Calls Biden’s Blockade the Most Punishing

“The current U.S. government, the one of Joseph Biden, of all those that the Cuban Revolution has known, is the one that has most aggressively and effectively applied the economic blockade,” Carlos Fernández de Cossío, vice minister of foreign affairs of Cuba, declared in a speech last month. “It is the one that punishes the most, the one that causes the most damage to the daily life of Cubans and the economy as a whole.”

Source: Cuba Calls Biden’s Blockade the Most Punishing

Cuba

US Youth Observe Cuba’s Elections—and Learn About ‘Real Democracy’ – scheerpost.com

Cuba’s poverty isn’t the fault of its political system but rather the 65-year trade embargo placed on it by America. The embargo has failed to destroy the nation’s resilience.

Coming from the fundamentally undemocratic US Empire, it was the first time that many participants saw a functional electoral system in which the masses actually participate, and in which the majority truly rules.

Source: US Youth Observe Cuba’s Elections—and Learn About ‘Real Democracy’ – scheerpost.com

Cuba

The Entire World, Yet Again, Is Demanding an End to the US Blockade of Cuba

Every year, nearly the entire globe condemns the US embargo against Cuba as a human rights disaster at the UN General Assembly. And every year, the US government ignores the international community’s pleas.

Source: The Entire World, Yet Again, Is Demanding an End to the US Blockade of Cuba

Cuba

Cuban Adjustment Act of US Still Privileges Cuban Migrants, Hurts Cuba – scheerpost.com

The U.S. leadership class likely has little regret. The U.S. intention, after all, is to cause distress in Cuba leading to regime change. Moreover, U.S. economic blockade of Cuba, occupation of territory in Guantanamo, destabilizing interventions inside Cuba, and the CAA, taken together, add up to attack on Cuba’s independence and national sovereignty. The silence of the media and of political activists on these matters takes on an ominous quality, that of complicity with crimes.

The community of nations enabled the United Nations to deal with international crimes. Under the United Nations Charter, the Security Council may confront “any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression” of one nation against another. The General Assembly in 1965 unanimously approved Resolution 2131 which states that, “No State has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any State.”

What situations would these authorizations be applied to, if not to the instances recited here of U.S. aggression against Cuba?

Source: Cuban Adjustment Act of US Still Privileges Cuban Migrants, Hurts Cuba – scheerpost.com

Cuba

Cuba’s Gay Rights Vote Is a Victory for Socialist Values

A referendum to end discrimination against gay couples in marriage and adoption just won big in Cuba. That’s a victory for the core values underlying the socialist project.

Source: Cuba’s Gay Rights Vote Is a Victory for Socialist Values

Cuba

Cuba Prepares for Disaster | The Smirking Chimp

Projecting potential future damage led Cubans to to realize that by 2050, rising water levels could destroy 122 coastal towns. By 2017, Cuba had become the only country with a government-led plan (Project Life, or Tarea Vida) to combat climate change which includes a 100 year projection.

Source: Cuba Prepares for Disaster | The Smirking Chimp

Cuba

Hemispheric Gangsterism: The US Embargo Against Cuba Turns 60 – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Prior to inking the prohibition of the importation into the US of all goods of Cuban origin and all goods imported from or through Cuba, Kennedy had a particular vice that needed feeding. The resourceful press secretary Pierre Salinger was ordered to scour Washington and gather as many Cuban cigars (the H. Upmann Petit Upmann was a favourite) as he could by the morning. The mission was a success: 1,200 cigars were found. Acting with suitable presidential hypocrisy, Kennedy could then authorise the proclamation. As Salinger recalls, “Kennedy smiled, and opened up his desk. He took out a long paper which he immediately signed. It was the decree banning all Cuban products from the United States. Cuban cigars were now illegal in our country.”

Source: Hemispheric Gangsterism: The US Embargo Against Cuba Turns 60 – » The Australian Independent Media Network

Cuba

Cubans Don’t Want Regime Change

All Cubans want is to escape America’s 60 plus years of oppressive sanctions.

The US hoped the protests in Cuba would overthrow Cuba’s government. That didn’t happen. Talking to average Cubans on the island reveals why: Despite criticisms of the government, many Cubans want to further the revolution, not scrap it.

Source: Cubans Don’t Want Regime Change

Cuba

U.S. announces Cuba sanctions as Biden meets with Cuban American leaders

Image: A man is arrested during a demonstration against the government of Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel in Havana, on July 11, 2021.

The Biden administration imposed new sanctions against two top Cuban officials and the Cuban National Revolutionary Police for their role in the crackdown against anti-government protesters in Cuba.

Source: U.S. announces Cuba sanctions as Biden meets with Cuban American leaders

Cuba

Cuba and the US: The Difference Between Dictatorship and Tyranny | The Smirking Chimp

Biden isn’t Trump but he is America and should feel SHAME

For that reason, although by all Western standards it can be said that Cuba is a dictatorship, it is necessary to remember that the United States is the tyranny that created it, a brutal tyranny that has been going on for at least two hundred years. Cuba was the first great defeat of that arrogance and, for some reason, it has managed to resist for 60 years.

Source: Cuba and the US: The Difference Between Dictatorship and Tyranny | The Smirking Chimp

Cuba

If Biden Wants to “Stand With the Cuban People,” He Can Ease the Cruel Blockade | The Smirking Chimp

The Cuban Pandemic suffering over 60 years of the American Virus

The corporate media have been bashing the Cuban government in response to the recent protests in Cuba, while President Joe Biden claims, “We stand with the Cuban people.” But they ignore or minimize the leading cause of economic suffering in Cuba: the U.S.’s illegal and punishing economic blockade that Biden has left in place.

Source: If Biden Wants to “Stand With the Cuban People,” He Can Ease the Cruel Blockade | The Smirking Chimp

Cuba

US and Israel Vote ‘No’ as 184 Nations Condemn American Blockade of Cuba | Common Dreams News

Cuba Embargo

“The U.N. vote… on Cuba was a chance for President Biden to show global leadership,” said CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin. “He failed miserably.”

Source: US and Israel Vote ‘No’ as 184 Nations Condemn American Blockade of Cuba | Common Dreams News

Cuba

Biden Should Make Normalizing Relations With Cuba “A Priority” | The Smirking Chimp

Biden would do well to heed the warning and with the stroke of a pen, lift trade and travel restrictions and allow unrestricted remittances. These measures would quickly infuse more money into Cuba’s economy and alleviate the needless suffering Cubans are experiencing at the hands of an administration that does not consider the well-being of 11 million Cubans “a priority.”

Source: Biden Should Make Normalizing Relations With Cuba “A Priority” | The Smirking Chimp

Cuba

Hunger as a Weapon: How Biden’s Inaction Is Aggravating Cuba’s Food Crisis | The Smirking Chimp

There is no excuse for delay. No long, drawn out policy review is needed to recognize that there is a food crisis in Cuba due in part to U.S. policies, and that helping alleviate it is a moral obligation—an extension of the responsibility to protect. Moreover, these are actions Biden promised he would take during the presidential campaign. Every day he delays is another day that Cubans go hungry.

Source: Hunger as a Weapon: How Biden’s Inaction Is Aggravating Cuba’s Food Crisis | The Smirking Chimp

Cuba

Why Does Washington Keep Punishing Cuba? | The Smirking Chimp

For sixty years the US punishment policy has been inflicted on Cuba, a small Caribbean island some 90 miles from Florida which has been malevolently victimised by successive administrations — bar one — in Washington.

Source: Why Does Washington Keep Punishing Cuba? | The Smirking Chimp

Cuba

Cuban doctors arrive in Panama to boost COVID fight | Coronavirus pandemic News | Al Jazeera
Cuban medical personnel arrive at Tocumen International Airport in Panama City, on December 24 [Aeropuerto Tocumen/AFP]
Trump sanctions Cubans and makes them suffer for Florida votes

Panama’s health ministry has said more than 200 Cuban doctors arrived on Thursday morning to reinforce the Central American nation’s healthcare system and help in the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cuban doctors arrive in Panama to boost COVID fight | Coronavirus pandemic News | Al Jazeera
Cuba, Uncategorized

Lessons From Cuban Police | The Smirking Chimp

Contrary to the image of brutal and repressive communists, police in Cuba offer an instructive example for activists in the United States. Police live in the cities they patrol. They generally treat citizens with respect. As I documented in my book Dateline Havana, police beatings of criminals are rare and police murders are nonexistent. Cuba has one of the lowest crime rates in Latin America.

via Lessons From Cuban Police | The Smirking Chimp

Cuba, Uncategorized

Leading by Example: Cuba in the Covid-19 Pandemic – CounterPunch.org

The response of socialist Cuba to the global SARS-CoV2 pandemic has been outstanding both domestically and for its international contribution. That a small island nation, subjected to hundreds of years of colonialism and imperialism and, since the Revolution of 1959, six decades of the criminal United States blockade, can play such an exemplary role is due to Cuba’s socialist system. The central plan directs national resources according to a development strategy which prioritises human welfare and community participation, not private profit.

Leading by Example: Cuba in the Covid-19 Pandemic – CounterPunch.org

Cuba, Uncategorized

We Should Applaud the Cuban Health System — and Learn From It

Despite 60+ years of blockade by America Cuba’s health system runs rings over Americas.

They called it internationalism and said it was their revolutionary duty to repay their debt to society. They quoted Che Guevara: “The life of a single human being is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest man on earth.”

via We Should Applaud the Cuban Health System — and Learn From It

Cuba, Cuban doctors, Uncategorized

Cuba’s Welcome to a Covid-19-Stricken Cruise Ship Reflects a Long Pattern of Global Humanitarian Commitment | The Nation

Cruise-coronavirus-getty-img

While America Sanctions, Cuba Assists (ODT)

Cuba’s Welcome to a Covid-19-Stricken Cruise Ship Reflects a Long Pattern of Global Humanitarian Commitment | The Nation

Cuba, Uncategorized

US bans cruise ship travel to Cuba amid new restrictions – BBC News

A man holds a Cuban flag with a cruise ship in the background

In a statement, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross added: “Cuba remains communist, and the United States, under the previous administration, made too many concessions to one of our historically most aggressive adversaries.”
Media caption Life after Castro – ‘We have to continue the revolution’

Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, who travelled to Washington in 2015 to re-open the Cuban embassy, criticised the latest move as “an attack on international law”, adding that it was “aimed at suffocating” the country’s economy.
The White House announced in April that Cuban-Americans and US businesses could sue companies who use or own property that was seized from Americans during the 1959 Cuban Revolution.

The US is the most aggressive Country on the planet with a military presance in 164 different nations. It has a secret deployment of 59,000 troops being paid but unaccounted for in places unknown. Currently it’s cosing up to far greater and mor serious dictatorships both Right and left far more aggresive than CUBA. Nth Korea Saudi Arabia Egypt, Ukraine, Hungary Israel etc. American surveillance is the biggest on the planet despite the fact they are the worst. (ODT)

How many does Cuba have other than Doctors, Health professionals and teachers. This is an embargo that has been in effect for over 60 years why. To protect the US Health and Pharma Industries for one. American companies would flood to Cuba if the embargo was lifted along with consumers. (ODT

US bans cruise ship travel to Cuba amid new restrictions – BBC News

Cuba, Uncategorized

Cuba snubs Trump’s anti-socialist crusade with massive constitution vote — RT Op-ed

Cuba snubs Trump’s anti-socialist crusade with massive constitution vote

“Today, we went out en masse as Cubans to the polls, but we also cast a vote to be a better country and I think at this moment, the world needs it,” Lopez Labrada said.

As optimistic as Cubans are about the steps taken with a new constitution, many are aware that they may have to rely on their past in order to secure their future.

via Cuba snubs Trump’s anti-socialist crusade with massive constitution vote — RT Op-ed

Cuba

US imperialism intensifies hostility towards Cuba

Leading figures in the Trump administration have described Cuba as a serious national security threat to the United States in a further return to Cold War rhetoric.

While Cuba has remained a preoccupation for the US intelligence services for sixty years, the Trump administration is clearly aiming at escalating diplomatic hostilities between Washington and Havana.

via US imperialism intensifies hostility towards Cuba

Cuba

“Sonic Attacks” in Cuba: Who Benefits?

Consider this. The United States government doesn’t know who’s responsible for the so-called acoustic attacks on its embassy personnel in Havana. Then consider this. Cuban president Raúl Castro didn’t simply claim his government had nothing to do with the incidents, he did the unthinkable and invited the FBI to investigate. FBI agents haven’t been able to figure it out. Neither have American acoustics specialists or medical experts. Even Canada’s Mounties, whose own diplomats reported similar attacks, are stymied.    More

Source: “Sonic Attacks” in Cuba: Who Benefits?

Cuba

US orders over half of Havana embassy staff to leave over ‘specific attacks’

The United States has ordered 60 per cent of its staff to leave the US Embassy in Havana because of “specific attacks” on diplomats.

I don’t believe it do you ? This is a story coming from a government that once thought of putting a cream in Fidel’s shoes that would vapourize  and have his beard fall out in order to destroy his charisma . A government that has had a 50 year trade embargo on Cuba that impoverished it. Yet Cuba remains the first nation to send Doctors and engineers and others to help when disaster hits nations other than itself. Cuba has some 3000 people in its jails and is accused of being harsh. How many millions languish in American jails a  a poverty and racist business you can invest in on Wall st? (old dog)

Source: US orders over half of Havana embassy staff to leave over ‘specific attacks’

Cuba

Trump and his Cuban promises | Cuba | Al Jazeera

Obama came and went, the baseball game was a success, and within weeks the Jose Marti International Airport in Havana became as congested as any airport can be, largely thanks to the several new flights arriving from the United States on a daily basis. Havana and the rest of the island saw an almost immediate economic boom, chiefly fuelled by American tourists arriving in droves, to bathe in the sun of Cuba’s Caribbean beaches and to degust mojitos and daiquiris in their places of birth. All appeared to be rosy. Then, Trump happened.

Source: Trump and his Cuban promises | Cuba | Al Jazeera

Cuba

Cubans see opportunities and risks in post-Fidel era – RN – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Cuba’s embrace of tourism and development offers enormous economic opportunities but threatens the island’s egalitarian ethos.

Source: Cubans see opportunities and risks in post-Fidel era – RN – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Cuba

Ten of Fidel Castro’s Mistakes which Socialists Shouldn’t Repeat – Havana Times.org

In the wake of Fidel Castro’s death, many people are writing about his revolutionary legacy for the Left and socialism on the whole. The most important part of this legacy is the following 10 serious mistakes he made which should not be repeated by socialists if they hope to contribute to social progress.

Source: Ten of Fidel Castro’s Mistakes which Socialists Shouldn’t Repeat – Havana Times.org

Cuba

Reflections on Fidel, Cuba, Internationalism and Tamils – Havana Times.org

My rebirth from being a US Dreamer to an internationalist occurred because of the Cuban revolution, because of what Fidel and Che taught me when I was an airman “defending” the United States against all the bad guys.

Source: Reflections on Fidel, Cuba, Internationalism and Tamils – Havana Times.org