Posted on 09/17/2003 10:45:00 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba on Tuesday charged that the Bush administration was tightening a U.S. embargo on the island despite growing domestic and international opposition, as it launched an annual drive to have the United Nations condemn the policy.
"The economic, financial and commercial blockade the United States has maintained against Cuba for more than four decades has not only been scrupulously applied, but strengthened over the last two years," Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said at a Havana news conference.
In Washington, U.S. National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack did not dispute that view. "President Bush has made very clear that he not only supports the embargo, he supports the strengthened enforcement of the embargo and he has taken stopes to do that under his presidency," he said.
For the last 11 years the U.N. General Assembly has overwhelmingly called for the United States to lift the embargo, last year by a vote of 173-3 with four abstentions.
Perez said he expected similar results this year when the U.N. debates and votes on the embargo Nov. 4.
"Six of every 10 Cubans were born and have lived their lives under the U.S. embargo, which has cost the Communist-run nation a minimum $72 billion," said a Cuban report to the United Nations, distributed Tuesday.
Cuba's report contains numerous recent examples of U.S. efforts to weaken Cuba's economy and of the denial of visas to officials, scientists, athletes and cultural figures invited to the United States to participate in international events.
Perez said U.S. congressional efforts to lift restrictions on Americans traveling to Cuba and eliminate a cap on family remittances were positive, as were rising U.S. food sales under a 2000 congressional loosening of the embargo.
But Perez attributed any U.S. movement away from the embargo to increasing popular opposition in the United States, not President Bush.
Perez said Bush was the most aggressive of ten U.S. presidents that have tried to topple President Fidel Castro since his 1959 revolution.
He cited the U.S. administration's expulsion of Cuban diplomats, stricter enforcement of travel restrictions and increased U.S. radio and television broadcasts into Cuba.
The Bush administration came under pressure from Cuban American groups and conservatives to impose additional sanctions on Havana after Cuba jailed some 75 dissidents last spring in its harshest crackdown in decades.
EU Condemns Human Rights Record in Cuba [Full Text] STRASBOURG, France - The European Parliament on Thursday condemned human rights violations in Cuba and urged President Fidel Castro to release political prisoners.
European Union legislators passed a joint resolution criticizing "the continuing flagrant violation of the civil and political human rights and the fundamental freedoms of members of the Cuban opposition and of independent journalists."
On Wednesday, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, whose country holds the EU presidency, told the legislature that the human rights situation continues to deteriorate on the Caribbean island.
In July, Castro said his country would no longer accept aid from the EU, accusing it of backing the anti-Castro policy of the United States.
EU members have already agreed to reduce high-level governmental visits and participation in cultural events on the island.
Since 1993, the EU has provided over $156 million in aid to Cuba. [End]
Angry US makes life more difficult for Cuba diplomats***WASHINGTON (AFP) - Angered by what it says has been years of discriminatory treatment of US diplomats in Havana, the United States retaliated by slapping new restrictions on Cuban diplomats here. ***
Too Effin Bad!
Wouldn't the word "charges" be more approprite if used while alleging activity that all agreed was BAD??
"Six of every 10 Cubans were born and have lived their lives under the U.S. embargo, which has cost the Communist-run nation a minimum $72 billion," said a Cuban report to the United Nations, distributed Tuesday.
And their point would be what? That the embargo would be acceptable if it didn't cost them anything?
The large audience had mostly come to show support for relaxing the current laws against commerce with Cuba. The embargo, its opponents aver, has not brought positive changes to Cuban society. An American economic presence in Cuba, they say, can only be more beneficial than its absence has been.
An abundant irony is that many people who make this argument are those who still sentimentalize Castro. At the San Francisco meeting, the loudest applause went to a speaker who restated the very litanies the regime has employed for nearly fifty years to justify itself. And in the face of conventional wisdom, one must clarify that the embargo law was never meant to cause reform in Cuba. Its purpose was to turn away from a regime that-under the guise of "socialization" -had just stolen about one billion dollars in U.S. properties.
The heart of the current anti-embargo stand is a plea for "constructive engagement." Its advocates posit that when American citizens come face to face with Cuban citizens, mutual understanding will flower and democratic tendencies will spread. Actually, some of that did happen when Castro's regime opened the door to family visits by Cuban exiles; but business-to-business relations are much more doubtful, because independent enterprise does not exist in Cuba. American companies would be dealing not with Cuban counterparts but directly-and whether they know it or not-with Castro's security forces; a prospect that offers no hope of amelioration to ordinary Cubans.
Unlike U.S. companies, Cuba's enterprises are completely dominated by government officials and informants. Any sign of disloyalty can bring the gravest consequence. Workers have no right to collective bargaining; any attempt to organize among workers is met with ostracism, demotion, dismissal, or with arrest and lengthy imprisonment. Foreign businesses that employ Cuban workers do not pay those workers directly. Payments are made to the state, which keeps nearly all the money and doles out a pittance to workers who receive, on average, about fifteen dollars a month. The fact that even so small an amount is paid in dollars makes the deal attractive to Cubans, who gladly accept jobs in foreign companies.
This setup is a potential boon to offshore investors who can acquire the services of skilled workers without labor troubles, and without concerns about how workers are treated. A further irony-given the extensive support Castro's regime has enjoyed in the West-is that such arrangements, far from fostering a general welfare, have led to the kind of hyper-exploitation that once occurred in pre-capitalist, feudal societies.
Even if our Western countries have no current experience in this regard, we do have words for a condition in which people must do as they are told, say and think as they are told, work as they are told, consume as they are told, live where they are told-with one's only chance for a self-determined life residing in escape. One of those words is serfdom; another is slavery. ***
When I was very young, Castro was old.....now I'm getting old and Castro is STILL AROUND....!!!! One of these days...
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