Posted on 10/23/2003 1:06:04 PM PDT by BulletBobCo
Edited on 04/22/2004 12:37:26 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
WASHINGTON
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Maybe he's signing this one b/c he disagrees seriously with lifting the ban (as well as the political implications of it).
"Free" medical care, too bad the hospitals don't have antibiotics or anesthesia.Moscow once guaranteed the cheap oil that kept fleets of buses on the move and powered the aging rail network. Now the country can’t get enough fuel to run its buses or enough credit to replace those beyond repair. In Havana, huge, converted articulated trucks called camellos [camels] carry as many as 300 crushed and sweating passengers at a time. Travelling between cities is even worse.
There are few inter-city buses and in the countryside the converted trucks sometimes carry animals at the same time. The diesel trains that wend their way slowly across the island don’t help much. Carriages are crowded and there are frequent delays. So Cubans from all walks of life hitchhike.
In “Journey Back to the Source,” Alejo Carpentier, the country’s most famous novelist, captures the eerie feeling of going back in time: “The candles lengthened slowly, gradually guttering less and less. When they reached their full size, the nun extinguished them and took away their light. The wicks whitened, throwing off red sparks... Marcial had the strange sensation that all the clocks in the room were striking five, then half-past four, then half-past three ... ”It sometimes seems as if ideological purity has been preserved by driving Cuba back through time, as if Fidel Castro was trying to put into practice the historical regression described by Carpentier. It is all very well to rely on horses, bicycles and lorries for transport but, on top of material shortages, surely it is making life almost intolerably difficult for ordinary Cubans?
‘PROGRAMMED TO SLOWNESS’
When we were still in Havana, Miriam Leiva, a former diplomat and government opponent whose husband is seriously ill in prison, described the grim day-to-day pain of it all. “You get up. You don’t have any milk. You have a piece of bread, but maybe you have eaten it the night before. You go out. You could be two hours or more waiting for transport. You arrive tired at work. You are programmed to slowness. You have to aguantar — to put up with it.”
On the road, many people are obviously aguantando. Tired with blank faces, waiting hopefully under motorway bridges or at crossroads. As we begin the long haul back from Santiago to Havana we pick up a sugar worker who needs to wake at 4:30 a.m. to be cutting sugar cane by 7 a.m. Teachers wax lyrical about plans to reduce class sizes to just 15 students, but Teresa, a 21-year-old teacher who has hitched from her home to buy a pair of jeans in Bayamo, says she occasionally misses her morning class because she can’t get a lift in time.
Everyone, it seems, eventually gets to where they are going. Many of our passengers waited several hours for a lift, but no one we met spent a night under the stars. And most people seem extraordinarily good-natured about it all. We are shocked to learn that David, a surgeon and the owner of a guest-house we stay in, is catching a bus at 4 a.m. the next morning to operate in a city 100 miles away. The next day, returning to pick up our bags, we discover that he made the journey, only to find that the hospital didn’t have the necessary anesthetics. He cheerfully hitchhiked back. “It was my fault. I should have called to check.”
Of course, only the "free" hospitals lack resources.
The pay-with-dollars hospitals are stocked with everything needed for modern medicine, and these hospitals offer cheaper-than-at-home surgeries to tourists, mainly from Europe and Canada.
I guess the US Senate is trying to curb our medical costs by making it easier for Americans to go to Cuba for surgeries and other medical procedures at a cheaper price.
Do you live in a log cabin in the Appalachians?
May God illuminate our way for the freedom of Cuba.
DR. OSCAR ELIAS BISCET GONZALEZ
President of the Lawton Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba
Prisoner of Conscience
More...
http://www.free-biscet.org/
This is why NO ONE should be patronizing CUBA with any enjoyment escapades!
The short answer to your concern: Dictator Castro does not want to do business with the US, and he purposely sabotages any attempt to improve the US-Cuban relations.
For instance, when his friend Jimmy Carter opened up significant communications with Castro's regime and was about to dismantle the US economic boycott of the island, Castro unleashed his illegal Mariel boat lift to help sink Carter's chances of being re-elected.
Another instance of Castro spitting on his friends' faces is his behavior with President Clinton. In 1994, President Clinton signed an immigration accord with Castro that gave Castro almost everything he asked.
Afterwards, President Clinton started high-level negotiations to get rid of the US economic boycott of the Cuban regime. How did Castro pay back to his friend?
Castro murdered 3 American citizens and 1 US resident in international waters by shooting down a tiny airplane with Cuban military MiGs.
Congress reacted by tightening the economic boycott against Cuba, and Clinton had little choice but sign the bill.
Castro uses US economic boycott to justify his mismanagement of the Cuban economy. On the other side of this mouth, Castro claims that US unfair trade practices with Latin American countries is the source of the region's poverty.
Of course, Castro trades with every other country in the world... Canada, Europe, Latin America and Asia.
My toothbrush was made in Malasia, and my soap is made in China. Nevertheless, Cubans do not have access to toothbrushes or soap, except for the Cubans who can buy at the pay-with-dollars-only stores.
And Castro blames the shortage on the fact that he cannot buy those goods in the US????!!!!!
It's dead, Jim.
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