The cover of the book “Raul Castro: A Man in Revolution ‘Nikolai Leonov.
Generation Y, Yoani Sanchez, 15 July 2015 — The cult of personality has a thousand ways of showing itself. From the face that stares out from every schoolroom wall, to the flattery with which the government journalists refer to certain officials. It would seem, however, that the times of greatest excess in the veneration of a figure had been left behind, to the extent that the memory of Fidel Castro has languished since his forced retirement. However, the pernicious practice continues here, with its exaggeration and ridiculousness.
On Tuesday, the entire National Assembly of People’s Power dedicated itself to the presentation of the book Raul Castro: A Man in Revolution, written by the Russian Nikolai Leonov. A special session of the Parliament had as its sole purpose to attend the launch of this volume, published by Capital San Luis, and with more than 80 biographical photos, some of them previously unpublished.
Out of modesty, or because he had to lead the 11th Plenum of the Cuban Communist Party Central Committee, Raul Castro did not attend the presentation, but this does not detract from the gesture’s devotional character. This was compounded by the use of parliamentarians for purposes not included in their functions. How much did it cost for those deputies who had travel to the Palace of Conventions? With so many problems facing the country, which affect millions of people, how could a day of “the official organ of State power” be squandered to sing the praises of a single man?
Situations like yesterday are proof that the pernicious cult of personality remains intact among us, fostered by those who idolize a few and those who swell with vanity at the flattery.
Generation Y 
About that “acccident”, the very fact that evidence isn’t available or been “lost” is an indictment against the Castristas…
Humberto: Please…don’t embarrass yourself with surveys conducted by an organization who’s mission is a 21st Century version of a Right Wing crusade to bring Corporatism to the World…look at all the wonderful outcomes they have achieved in the Middle East…. :) :) :)
Founded in 1983, the International Republican Institute (IRI) is a United Nations-partnered organisation that conducts international political and institutional programs.
Initially known as the National Republican Institute for International Affairs, the IRI’s stated mission is to “expand freedom throughout the world”. Its activities include teaching and assisting center-right political party and candidate development in their values, good governance practices, civil society development, civic education, women’s and youth leadership development, electoral reform and election monitoring, and political expression in closed societies. It has been chaired by Arizona Senator John McCain since January 1993.
Let see…we have Bill Clinton championing thousand of charities around the World and now we have McCain “showing the World” how Right Wing Parties should set their organizations for continuous domination of the “democratic process…you know….like we have helped Mexico…the Latin American source for cheap labor and oil for the United States….oh!! and a bonus….drug imports for those 93 Million who have stop looking for work or the 50 Millions who live in poverty with their 20 Million children ……..hegemony camouflage by democracy, free speech, free market….and please buy our internet technology, don’t block our corporatism or propaganda…oh!! ….almost forgot!!…..get loans from us …our service economy requires us to tax your resources because the resources we have within our borders are not enough to keep our people under control with unsustainable abundance…..
Most people, including the political class in Western countries, are clueless about what really goes on in Cuba, and anyone who tries to shed some light gets knocked down immediately.
That tactic, to ram a rear corner of a car with another vehicle to make it spin out of the road, is the textbook method used by law enforcement and racing drivers.
The govts of “civilized” countries are so absorbed with being magnanimous and have good relations even with a totally perverse Castro regime, that bad news aren’t acceptable..
DEAR Omar Fundora! THAT TACTIC OF DIVE AND CONQUER HAS BEEN USED BY THE CASTRO OLIGARCHY MAFIA TO MAINTAIN POWER FOR OVER 56 YEARS! BUT NOW WITH THE INTERNET AND INFORMATION FLOWING IN AND OUT OF CUBA IS A DIFFERENT BALLGAME DEAR! WHILE YOU EAT YOUR POPCORN I KEEP POSTING ALL THE DIRTY LAUNDRY OF THE CASTRO CLAN AND THEIR THUGS!
NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH THE REPUBLICAN PARTY OF THE USA! THE INTERNATIONAL
REPUBLICAN INSTITUTE (IRI) : Cuban Public Opinion Survey – A total of 463 Cuban adults between the ages of 18 to 60 years were surveyed to cuestionárseles on various topics ranging from economics, democracy, freedoms and use of technology. In the sample involved 46% of women and 54% of men between the ages of 18 to 60 years, who expressed his disappointment with the majority of political and economic situation in the nation that already has over half a century of communist rule. The questions on the survey was last conducted last February 2011. In the investigation conducted by the International Republican Institute (IRI), 78.2% of respondents would vote for a change of political system a democratic system and political pluralism, freedom of choice, voting and free speech if given the chance. Among other data for 60.7% of Cubans surveyed said the biggest problem in Cuba is the low wages and high cost of living, while 77.0% said that the current government can not solve the country’s problems in the coming years. Also 90.7% said that if they had the opportunity to vote for a change in the economic system that allows them to create companies, owning property in a free market. On the use of technology, 72.6% do not have Internet access compared with 5.0% who said yes to access. While 25.3% said the mobile phone access, but what a great majority, ie 74.7%, said they had no access to cell
Click to access 2011%20April%20Cuba%20Poll%20Final%20Survey%20Slide%20Presentation.pdf
CBS NEWS LOCAL: Carpinteria Author Reflects On Renewed Ties With Cuba ‘Positive Development’
CARPINTERIA, Calif. – Ann Louise Bardach, esteemed author and a resident of Carpinteria, is paying close attention to the new relations between the United States and Cuba.
Her two most famous works, “Cuba Confidential” and “Without Fidel” are must-reads for anyone wanting to understand the island nation.
We had a chance to sit down with her and get her take on the what has become known as “The Thaw.”
“I think it is going to be a positive development,” Bardach said. “it is very popular on the streets with ordinary Cubans, who desperately want a closer relationship with the United States. However, that said, people need to tamp down expectations. The Cubans are not interested in Americans coming to Cuba and sharing the Internet and their ideas about elections and human rights. The Cuban government made the deal because they need the cash. Cuba did not have a future without relations with the U.S.”
Bardach shares insight as to what she believes Americans got out of the deal.
“We did not get an agreement that guaranteed human rights in Cuba,” Bardach said. “We did not get an agreement that guaranteed free open media and internet. We did not get an agreement that protected dissidents. There is no guarantee about there every being a multi-party election, so we didn’t get a whole lot. Except, we got rid of a big headache which was the isolation of Cuba, the Cuban embargo, and the fury of our neighbor and allies in Latin-America who very much wanted this resolved.”
“This rapprochement is about economic issues,” Bardach added. “It is about improving the lives of ordinary Cubans and rescuing a country from isolation and bankruptcy.”
http://www.keyt.com/news/local-author-reflects-on-renewed-ties-with-cuba/34286500
Maybe Tania discovered that she couldn’t do more in Cuba? Maybe she can get more done somewhere else? I don’t know how Yoani does it…
Cubans who had lived and suffered under the the tyrannical Castroit regfime know very well and will never forget that while Fidel was the voice, Raul, Che, and others like Ramiro Valdés were the hammer and sickle of the revolution crushing and decapitating enemies.
Not only is the Castroit regime evil and violent, it is also inept at governing the incredible resources and ingenuity of the Cuban people. They have managed to completely destroy the sugar industry, mining, and now rely on foreign companies to help keep afloat what is left of tourism and tobacco.
For more than fifty five years the Castro family has waged a war against its number one enemy, the Cuban people. They have violently denied the people of Cuba their rights and dignity as human beings. Their army of corrupt thugs harass, arrest, and torture anyone remotely perceived as a threat to the Castro mafia family total hold on power.
A TYPICAL COWARDLY, FASCIST MANNER THE CASTRO STAFF AT THE WASHINGTON DC CUBAN EMBASSY REFUSE TO OPEN THE DOOR FOR Rosa Maria Paya AND EVEN CALLED THE POLICE ON HER! TODAY MARKS DE 3rd ANNIVERSARY OF Oswaldo Pay & Harold Cepero MURDER BY THE CASTRO OLIGARCHY MAFIA!
WASHINGTON POST: Who will stand up for Oswaldo Payá? – Jackson Diehl – March 17, 2013
Two weeks ago a brave young leader of Spain’s ruling Popular Party stepped forward to offer a sensational, firsthand account of how one of Cuba’s leading dissidents, Oswaldo Payá, was killed last summer. Ángel Carromero said a car that he was driving in which Payá was a passenger was rammed from behind by a vehicle bearing official Cuban license plates. He said he was then jailed in inhuman conditions, drugged and threatened by Cuban authorities with death if he did not tell a false story about what happened.
Naturally, Spanish journalists quickly approached Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margello, Mr. Carromero’s comrade in the Popular Party, to ask for his reaction. One might have expected an expression of shock at the revelation that the Castro regime might have deliberately killed one of the world’s best-known advocates of peaceful democratic change, a winner of the European Union’s Sakharov Prize, and then abused and framed a prominent Spanish citizen.
Nope: Garcia-Margello didn’t hesitate to throw the leader of his party’s youth wing under a bus. The foreign ministry, he primly told the reporters, “didn’t have evidence” of Carromero’s account. “The only evidence” it had, he added, was an agreement between the Cuban government and Spain allowing the repatriation of Carromero, which “recognized . . . the legitimacy of the verdict” of a Cuban court that found him guilty of negligent homicide.
In other words, the Spanish foreign minister was saying he thought the Cuban state security service was more credible than a 27-year-old leader of his own party who spoke out, at the risk of his career and his conditional release from prison, because, as he put it in an interview with The Post, “I could not live, being complicit through my silence.”
It’s worth considering why the Spanish government, like the Obama administration and Latin America’s democracies, ignored Carromero’s allegations. If legendary dissident Andrei Sakharov himself had died in a suspicious car accident in the Soviet Union, and a credible Western witness had then offered testimony like Carromero’s, it’s hard to imagine that Ronald Reagan and former Spanish prime minister Felipe Gonzalez would have remained silent.
But first let’s examine the supposed lack of evidence. Carromero, Payá, Cuban Harold Cepero and Swedish politician Jens Aron Modig were driving down a rural road in eastern Cuba last July 22 when the crash occurred. The two Cubans riding in the back seat died, while Carromero and Modig in the front survived.
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/jackson-diehl-oswaldo-payas-death-goes-ignored/2013/03/17/1a601304-8ccb-11e2-b63f-f53fb9f2fcb4_story.html
Humberto: The game is on!!!…….the epic struggle between the Cuban Right and the Cuban Left …round #2…..this is the side show to watch while the U.S. and Cuban government learn to respect each other and get along…..make sure you have plenty of popcorn….
If that per-capita income figure is correct, it’s very easy to figure out how much the Castristas steal from the Cuban people…
That’s what the Communist project is, deconstructing all strength in society in order to take all power and have total control over everything and everyone. That’s no way to create a workers’ paradise…
FOR GODS SAKE Mario AND Omar Fundora! CANT YOU GUYS TAKE A BREAK FROM THE “BAD USA” AND “BAD CAPITALISM” BANDWAGON? GET A BETTER SCRIPT! IN A TYPICAL COWARDLY, FASCIST MANNER THE CASTRO STAFF AT THE WASHINGTON DC CUBAN EMBASSY REFUSE TO OPEN THE DOOR FOR Rosa Maria Paya AND EVEN CALLED THE POLICE ON HER! TODAY MARKS DE 3rd ANNIVERSARY OF Oswaldo Pay & Harold Cepero MURDER BY THE CASTRO OLIGARCHY MAFIA!
LOCAL 10 NEWS MIAMI VIDEO: Cuban dissident’s daughter demands autopsy results from fatal 2012 crash Oswaldo Paya-Sardines’ supporters don’t believe fatal car crash was accident – by Glenna Milberg
WASHINGTON -One day after the Cuban embassy opened in Washington, the daughter of a prominent Cuban dissident is making demands three years after his death. Oswaldo Paya-Sardines was killed in a car crash in July 2012. Now, his daughter, Rosa Maria Paya, wants the Cuban government to hand over his autopsy results. “What they are telling us is a lie,” Paya said.
The letters request her father’s autopsy reports done three years ago. Rosa Paya hoped a new and open relationship would allow their delivery and a push for human rights.
http://www.local10.com/news/cuban-dissidents-daughter-demands-autopsy-results-from-fatal-2012-crash/34281958
As we are chatting and posting here scores of people sleep and live on the streets in the United States. Most “prominent” location: Skid Row in Los Angeles
http://skidrow.org/
Hey, Cuban friends, wake up, periodo especial is over now. You are not the poorest on this planet. How about showing some class solidarity by sending a small donation to the needy brothers in the United States of America. Here is what is most urgently needed:
(1) Set of Full sheets
(1) Full blanket
(1) Full comforter
(1) Pillow
(1) Pillow Case
(1) Deodorant (gender neutral if possible)
(1) Body Wash/Body Soap
(1) Wash Cloths (set of 3)
(1) Toilet paper (pack of 4)
(1) Shave Gel (gender neutral if possible)
(1) Disposable Razors
(1) Shampoo
(1) Conditioner
(1) Bathmat
(1) Bath towel
(1)Soap (pump)
(1) Toothbrush
(1) Toothpaste
(1) Small frying pan
(1) Small saucepan
(1) Dish soap
(1) Dish towel
(1) Flatware/Dining utensil set (2 forks, 2 knives, 2 spoons)
(1) Hard Plastic Plate (microwaveable)
(1) Cooking utensil set ((1) ladle, (1) serving spoon, (1) spatula)
If you have any questions or would like more information about Skid Row Housing Trust program, please contact the Community Relations Manager at
Daniel@skidrow.org
“WE WANT CONFRONTATION NOT DIPLOMACY”
Basulto exalted on local TV after landing back in Miami. “We want confrontation,” Basulto declared, boasting that his bold incursion served “as a message to the Cuban people.
WHY LIFTING THE EMBARGO AGAINST CUBA IS NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE
“I think we should—we should advocate for the end of the embargo” on Cuba, Hillary Clinton said in an interview this summer at the Council on Foreign Relations. “My husband tried,” she declared, “and remember, there were [behind-the-scenes] talks going on.” The way the pre-candidate for president recounts this history, Fidel Castro sabotaged that process because “the embargo is Castro’s best friend,” providing him “with an excuse for everything.” Her husband’s efforts, she said, were answered with the February 1996 shoot-down of two U.S. civilian planes by the Cuban air force, “ensuring there would be a reaction in the Congress that would make it very difficult for any president to lift the embargo alone.”
The history of this dramatic episode is far more complicated than Hillary Clinton portrays it. But she is correct about one thing: Should she become president, it will be far harder for her to lift the 50-year-old trade embargo against Cuba than it would have been when her husband first assumed the office. The person most responsible for that, however, is Bill Clinton.
DEMOCRACY, FREEDOM, FREE SPEECH, FREE MARKET…MORE RESULTS
My heart aches to see the struggle on Skid Row
by: Michael Anderson 17.July.15
This post was originally published on MomsRising.org.
The Housing Trust Fund Project team spent much of the last week of June in Los Angeles and stayed at a hotel directly adjacent to Skid Row. Each team member was profoundly impacted by the experience. If you have not been to Skid Row, it is hard to describe. There are so many people living on the street—by day, there are hundreds of people, and as night falls, it becomes clear that this 10-15 block stretch of the second largest city in the United States is home to thousands.
Every trip to Skid Row has been heart breaking, but for many reasons this trip was the hardest to handle. I broke down sobbing three to four times during my vacation in the week that followed, thinking of all those people who somehow have to survive in the cruelest environments—the young people, old people, so many people of color, so many people with disabilities, so many people that come nightfall the broad sidewalks are practically impassable with everyone sleeping. Every night.
I have an image of a gentle, old man carefully unfolding his tent and setting it up at dusk as my colleagues and I returned from dinner. His actions seemed so normal, practiced, and efficient. How can it be that such an inhumane reality be normal, practiced, and efficient? The tears are rushing back to my eyes. We do not have an answer that is good enough, quick enough. My heart aches.
Michael Anderson is the director of the Housing Trust Fund for the Center for Community Change.
THE TROUBLE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND LATIN AMERICA
(HISTORIC PERSPECTIVE)
Vicente Fox, Mexico’s president, is pushing a comprehensive plan for a major transportation and industrial corridor skewering Central America. In Fox’s vision the corridor would run from Puebla, Mexico to Panama and spilling over into Colombia. According to the Action for Community & Ecology in the Regions of Central America website, the plan calls for “vast displacement of native communities, rampant and uncontrolled ecological devastation, and massive industrial development.” The Zapatistas have denounced the plan. Subcommandante Marcos has declared: “The isthmus is not for sale!”
International trade and development agreements — NAFTA, FTAA and now PPP — have one purpose: to siphon labor and income from the poor, and resources from the land. The corporate rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the earth is crucified.
Thanks to these schemes, in Latin America indigenous people inhabiting land lying above oil and mineral deposits are killed or displaced; those organizing for a living wage and collective bargaining are killed and disappeared; anyone working to reduce poverty, ecological disruption, and the violence and militarism essential to these agreement risks exile or assassination.
The indigenous, the poor and people of conscience resist exploitation. It was on January 1, 1994, the day NAFTA began, that the Zapatistas rose up in Chiapas.
Here’s where the School of the Americas (SOA) comes in. This school at Ft. Benning, Georgia, trains the Latin American soldiers whose job it is to impose neo-liberalism on their own people. They are trained in a US military specialty: counter-insurgency, i.e. civilian-targeted warfare.
Coinciding with the increasingly louder calls for social and economic justice in Mexico, the number of Mexican soldiers at the SOA escalated sharply.? At least 18 high-level officers involved in the government’s ongoing eight-year war against the people in southern Mexico are SOA grads. In Nicaragua, as PPP plans for a transportation corridor across the isthmus advance, soldiers are being sent to the SOA for the first time in 20 years. Without these men with guns there would be no NAFTA, FTAA or PPP
Throughout Latin America, the SOA and the multinational agreements are the military and economic sides of the same coin.
According to SOA Watch, the Pentagon recently told Congress that SOA training supports US policy towards Latin America. This training “seeks to develop stable, free market democracies throughout the region.” The mission of the US Army’s Southern Command (encompassing the SOA) includes “…protecting the supply of strategic natural resources and access to markets.”
SOA training manuals encouraged torture, illegal imprisonment, and “neutralizing.” For decades SOA grads have been involved in the chain of command of virtually every major human rights atrocity in Latin America.
In the US there is a vigorous anti-SOA campaign.? It features recurring nonviolent civil disobedience actions.
170 SOA Watch activists have cumulatively spent nearly 100 years in prison. The campaign thrives on solidarity with these Prisoners of Conscience.
In January 2001 the SOA, after a decade of whistle-blowing agitation, changed its name to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC). But whatever its name, it’s role is the same. It’s still a School for Assassins, a School for Subversion: a terrorist training camp. March 2002
EVIDENCE OF THE TROUBLED RELATIONS BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND LATIN AMERICA
On September 20, 1996, under intense public pressure, the Pentagon was forced to release training manuals that were used at the School of the Americas for years. These manuals advocated torture, extortion, blackmail and the targeting of civilian populations. A Washington Post article from 1996 by Dana Priest broke the story.
The release of these manuals proved what SOA Watch, thousands of Latin Americans and numerous human rights organizations had been saying for years: that U.S. taxpayer money had been used for the teaching of torture and repression.
Material from CIA and Army manuals written in the 1950’s and 1960’s was incorporated into these seven Spanish-language training guides. More than a thousand of these manuals were distributed for use in countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala, Ecuador and Peru, and at the School of the Americas between 1987 and 1991. An inquiry was triggered in mid-1991 when the US Southern Command evaluated the manuals for use in expanding military support programs in Colombia
THE PEOPLE OF THE U.S. FIGHTING RIGHT WING AND CORPORATISM EXPANSIONIST CONTROL OF THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE ( remember the Batista, Machado governments in Cuba…this is the fundamental problem with the Right Wing Model of governance….oppression and exploitation)
SOA Watch has long opposed U.S. militarization in Latin America. But since late last year, we have for the first time supported domestic legislation – the Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act, sponsored by Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA). The frightening face of U.S. police militarization in response to protests in Ferguson, Baltimore and other places has reminded us that we in the U.S. are also at risk of brutal, heavy-handed, policing that crushes dissent, protest, and other fundamental human and civil rights.
Ask your Representative to cosponsor of HR 1232, The Stop Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act, or thank them for already having done so. We don’t believe that this online action alone or simply supporting one piece of legislation will turn the momentum against the Pentagon, arms manufacturers, and irresponsible police departments’ drive to militarize the country. But it’s a start, and we must realize that we must act, and act quickly.
HR 1232 would severely limit the types of equipment the Pentagon could transfer to local police, preventing transfers of high-caliber weapons, long-range acoustic devices, grenade launchers, weaponized drones, armored military vehicles, and grenades or similar explosives in most cases.
Caracas, July 14, 2015 (venezuelanalysis.com) – A group of twenty US social justice activists visited Venezuela last week as part of a delegation in solidarity with the South American nation following escalating US aggression in past months.
Organized by the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), the Marin Task Force on the Americas (TFA), School of the Americas Watch, and Alliance for Global Justice, the delegation comes in direct response to the Obama administration’s executive order this past March branding Venezuela a “national security threat” and imposing a further round of sanctions against top officials.
“When the US sanctions happened, we knew we had to come here and in any way possibly show our solidarity with the Venezuelan people and the Venezuelan government and to say to people, ‘our government’s policies do not represent us,'” explained TFA director Dale Sorensen, who has coordinated solidarity delegations to Venezuela since 2004.
Arriving in Caracas on July 5th in order to join Venezuelans in commemorating their independence and sovereignty, delegates met with a plethora of diverse organizations over the course of their week-long stay, including grassroots movements, political parties, as well as government officials.
With the December 6 parliamentary elections fast approaching, the group had the opportunity to sit down with Tibisay Lucena, president of Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE), which has been celebrated internationally for its fairness and rigor.
“The democratic processes that we’ve been able to observe as an organization and in our individual capacities have been inspirational model that even former United States president [Jimmy Carter] has said the world should follow,” affirmed NLG president-elect Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan, who has traveled to Venezuela several times as an electoral observer.
Nonetheless, the delegates arrived in the midst of new efforts on the part of the Venezuelan opposition to delegitimize the country’s electoral process, pinning recognition of the December 6 outcome on the presence of Organization of American States (OAS) and EU observers.
For Bannan, this call for observation by “political bodies” such as the OAS and the EU in lieu of the CELAC or UNASUR represents a “political request that has nothing to do with a sense of trust or distrust in the electoral system,” especially given that the OAS has been widely criticized for its pro-US bias in judging election outcomes.
While most of the group returned to the US this past weekend, for many delegates, the work is ongoing.
According to Judy Somberg, co-chair of the NLG task force on the Americas, delegates have a responsibility to “go back and educate people in the US who have very little access to good press and widely available information about what’s going on in Venezuela” as well as to continue to build people-to-people solidarity with Venezuelans.
These solidarity efforts are not only indispensable in supporting the Bolivarian Revolution, but also play a crucial role inside the US, serving to “increase people’s understanding of our economic and social human rights and how nonexistent they are in the United States,” says Susan Scott, former head of the NLG International Committee.
In Venezuela, she went on to note, even the most marginalized have access to economic and social rights that people in the US lack.
Overall, delegates remarked that their experience in Venezuela clashed sharply with the near apocalyptic image projected by much of the international corporate media.
“Despite the constant onslaught of negative media that portray Venezuela as a closed, state dictatorship defined by scarcity, repression, and extreme insecurity, that has not all been our experience, quite the opposite, and I think that there are a lot of people who are interested in coming to see for themselves the alternative reality that is this country,” concluded Bannan.
Those Cubans who lived and suffered under the revolution do know and will never forget that while Fidel was the voice, Raul, Che, and others like Ramiro Valdés were the hammer and sickle of the revolution crushing and decapitating enemies.
Not only is the Castroit regime evil and violent, it is also inept at governing the incredible resources and ingenuity of the Cuban people. They have managed to completely destroy the sugar industry, mining, and now rely on foreign companies to help keep afloat what is left of tourism and tobacco.
For more than fifty five years the Castro family has waged a war against its number one enemy, the Cuban people. They have violently denied the people of Cuba their rights and dignity as human beings. Their army of corrupt thugs harass, arrest, and torture anyone remotely perceived as a threat to the Castro mafia family total hold on power.
Omar, it is impossible to use monetary terms to compare poverty in the USA and in Cuba.
If someone says American average income is, say, $30K or $50K p.a. this average includes Warren Buffet and Bill Gates.
If someone says a Cuban makes 600 pesos a month (international readers: 600 pesos is about 155 Yuan, CNY) this does not includes the houses which hundreds of thousands if not millions of Cuban families got from Fidel.
It is pointless to compare numbers. Just show the pictures of American homeless and ask why these people are there?
Cuba Bumped from Human Development Index over Missing DataBy Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 20, 2011 (IPS) – When the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) formulates its annual Human Development Index (HDI), it uses several socioeconomic indicators – including life expectancy, gross national income and literacy – to rank member states and also measure quality of life in these countries.
But a nation widely singled out for its positive achievements in education, health care and life expectancy has been left out of the index, complains Ambassador Pedro Nunez Mosquera, Cuba’s permanent representative to the United Nations.
“My country has disappeared, as if it did not exist any longer,” he told a closed-door meeting of the 130-member Group of 77 (G-77) developing countries early this week.
The ambassador has lodged a protest over the omission of his country from the HDI 2010 released late last year and plans to raise the issue at the next meeting of the UNDP’s executive board later this month.
Addressing delegates at an ambassadorial meeting of the G- 77, the largest single economic grouping at the United Nations, the Cuban envoy said the infant mortality rate in Cuba is 5.2 per thousand and illiteracy has been eradicated.
But still, Cuba does not exist in the eyes of those who compile the HDI, he told delegates Tuesday.
When Cuba inquired about this omission, he said, he was told his country was left out for “technical reasons”.
Cuba was told there are “problems” in measuring Cuba’s gross national income in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP) which is usually compiled by the World Bank.
“But because of the (49-year-old U.S.) blockade, the World Bank has excluded Cuba. I think this is something we have to deplore,” he said.
Asked for a response, William Orme of the UNDP’s Human Development Report Office told IPS that, “No one wants Cuba in the HDI more than we do.”
“The index is our flagship product, and the goal is always for maximum inclusion,” he said.
Explaining the lapse, Orme said Cuba was omitted from the 2010 HDI due to the absence of current internationally reported data for one of the three required indicators: health, education and income (which are used to calculate the composite HDI value, which in turn determines a country’s HDI ranking.)
The missing indicator for Cuba was for income, he said, pointing out that there is no internationally reported figure for Cuba’s Gross National Income adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity (GNI-PPP): the figure used for all countries for the income component of the HDI, and which is normally provided by the World Bank and/or the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Unofficial estimates of GNI-PPP, Orme said, were considered unreliable by the statisticians and economists at the Human Development Report Office, and the U.N. Statistical Commission has advised against the use of such imputed – as opposed to officially reported – figures as human development indicators for HDI calculation purposes.
Ambassador Mosquera said “hopefully the human development office which works under the aegis of UNDP but is independent should abide by (the relevant) resolution of the General Assembly which states they should consult with member states.”
“Cuba was not consulted. Cuba was placed on the index and then disappeared due to a technical error,” he added.
In all, 169 countries and territories were included in the 2010 HDI. But 25 U.N. member states and U.N.-recognised territories, including Bhutan, Samoa, Tuvalu, and Palau, were not included, due to various data gaps. Of those, 13, including Cuba, had been included in the 2009 HDI.
Cuba’s life expectancy is 79 years, with an average of 17.7 for “expected years of schooling”, according to some of the figures published in the 2010 HD report.
In comparison, the life expectancy in the United States (ranked fourth in the HDI) is 79.6 and expected years of schooling 15.7.
Cuba is now and has long been one of the highest achievers in health and education, the two non-income categories of human development, as discussed in a newly published article by HDR research director Francisco Rodriguez on the HDR website feature ‘Let’s Talk HD.’
The HDI is an integral part of the annual Human Development Report commissioned by UNDP and which, according to UNDP Administrator Helen Clark, “relies heavily on knowledge and insights from sister U.N. agencies, national governments and hundreds of scholars from around the world.”
In the 2010 report, which also commemorates the 20th anniversary of the HDR, Clark says “UNDP can take appropriate pride in its backing of this intellectually independent and innovative report for the past two decades.”
But she admits the HDRs “have never been a UNDP product alone”, pointing out that “we can and should continue to be guided by the HDRs values and findings for the next 20 years – and beyond.”
The countries with “very high human development” in 2010 include Norway, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Ireland.
In explaining it further, Orme told IPS the HDR strives every year to include as many countries as possible in its annual Index and “greatly regrets Cuba’s absence from the list this year, as UNDP has expressed to Cuba’s U.N. representatives”.
UNDP is not itself a source or generator of national or international income data or other human development statistics, however.
The hope and expectation is that Cuba can once again be included in the HDI once new statistical reporting on income from the Cuban government is obtained by the relevant international institutions in the field, Orme said.
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=54187
MIAMI HERALD : UN report now accepts Cuban data- Havana was not on a previous development list because of questions about its data- By Juan O. Tamayo
A United Nations agency has returned Cuba to its national development ranking after a year of exile to a separate list that included North Korea and Eritrea because of doubts about data provided by Havana.
The Human Development Report for 2011, produced by the U.N. Development Programme and published earlier this month, ranked Cuba 51st in the world and fifth in Latin America and the Caribbean, behind Chile, Argentina, Barbados and Uruguay. Cuba had the same ranking in 2009.
The UNDP index, which combines economic, education, health and some human rights indicators to rank countries on a scale of national development, ranked Norway first in the world and the United States fourth.
It has been issued annually since 1990, but last year the UNDP left Cuba out of it main rankings list, noting that the manner in which the island computes some of its economic figures makes it too difficult to compare with other countries. Cuba counts the value of government services, such as healthcare and education — a method not used by others.
Instead, the UNDP put Cuba on a list of other countries and territories whose statistics were not comparable, missing or too small to provide reliable indications of development. It included Grenada, Eritrea, Samoa, Iraq, Somalia and North Korea.
The 2010 report added that Cuba was “currently revising and updating its international statistics in order to establish internationally comparable data,” and it expressed hope “that in due time comparable … data will become available.’’
The 2011 report said only that a key indicator of Cuba’s economy, purchasing power parity, had been “estimated” but gave no details of how that was done and did not mention the island had been left off the 2010 list.
Carmelo Mesa-Lago, a University of Pittsburgh expert on the Cuban economy who has complained repeatedly to the UNDP about its acceptance of Havana’s data, said he was surprised by the island’s return to the main list. “Nothing new has happened, in terms of statistics, that would allow them to reach a more reliable estimate,” Mesa-Lago said.
Dissident economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe complained the new ranking was based on official Cuban government figures that don’t appear to match the reality of life on the communist-ruled island. It’s difficult to accept Cuba’s ranking, he said, when the Cuban government regularly violates human rights and is struggling to reform an economy that is all but insolvent.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/11/16/2507081/un-report-now-accepts-cuban-data.html
Humberto: The truth about Cuba’s historical menace to the North has to be told….otherwise everyone’s understanding of life in the United States is what Hollywood and Corporatism wants you to believe it is……
NATIONAL CENTER FOR POLICY ANALYSIS : CUBA ‘S LONG LIE EXPECTANCY – May 1, 2007
Communist regimes are known to falsify and distort statistics, but they rarely get away with it unless Western media play along. They scored a big hit recently with data about Cuba’s storied life expectancy, says Investor’s Business Daily (IBD).
According to 2007 CIA World Factbook cited by the Associated Press (AP):
Cubans live an average of 77.08 years, with men at 74.85 and women at 79.43.
But in its praise-filled report, the AP missed that this actually represents a decline in life expectancy.
The year before, the average was 77.41 with men at 75.11 and women at 79.89.
This may reflect that Cubans aren’t living in steady conditions through their lifetimes, as much of the media asserts, says IBD. With a 1990 cutoff of aid from the Soviet Union, there has been a huge decline in living standards. Sanitation, housing, food and critical vitamin shortages have all become far worse.
Nevertheless, the question remains: How do you have a long life expectancy with increasingly deteriorating conditions? You change the way you count, as Cuba has done, says IBD:
If a newborn doesn’t live more than 24 hours, it often doesn’t show up in infant mortality statistics.
The figure is depressed even further by abortion; at seven in 10 pregnancies, Cuba’s abortion rate is Latin America’s highest.
Cuba also has one of the world’s highest suicide rates, which also doesn’t show up in expectancy data.
Andy S. Gomez, assistant provost of the University of Miami’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, says Cuba’s sunny life span numbers seem to conceal another larger issue — the country’s rapidly aging population. It has 11.2 million people, and only 2.2 million were born after 1992. If its young people emigrate, Cuba’s statistical average life expectancy could be even higher, he said. And that’s nothing to brag about.
Source: Editorial, “Cuba’s Long Lie Expectancy,” Investor’s Business Daily, April 27, 2007.
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=14497
THAT Omar Fundora SURE LOVES HIS “BAD USA” RESPONSES! HE KEEPS IT USING THAT AS A RESPONSE OVER, AND OVER, AND OVER!
“When you leave Cuba,” Mariño says, dealers and curators “don’t give a damn about you anymore. They want the ‘authentic’ Cuban artist who lives in Cuba.” Mariño, 46, predicts money will flow to Cuban artists as U.S. travel to the island brings a boom in art sales. As the tables turn, this focus on Cubans on the island might also dissolve. But Mariño won’t return. “Who can handle that? That’s a crazy country, man.”
BUSTLE: Tania Bruguera Pioneered Performance Art In Cuba — But Will She Be Allowed To Return Stateside? – by Cara McGoogan
But Bruguera disappeared the day before the event, arrested by Cuban political police under the claim that she was working for the C.I.A. She was released within a few days, but the authorities kept her passport and ordered her to remain on the island indefinitely.
More than six months later, Cuban authorities finally handed Bruguera’s passport back to her last week. The next day, the New York Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs announced Bruguera as its first artist-in-residence. The Cuban government have not yet told Bruguera if she will be allowed to return to Cuba and perform in the future if she leaves for New York. As the world watches the U.S. and Cuba re-open their embassies, Bruguera’s future hangs in the balance.
Cuba’s arts council issued a statement on Dec. 30, the day of Bruguera’s arrest, saying they would not support the performance of a subversive piece in this politically significant space.
“It was completely offensive,” Bruguera says. “Political art should be part of the political event and not just a comment that comes after.”
After her arrest, more than 2,200 artists and intellectuals from around the world sent President Raul Castro a letter demanding her release.
While the focus is on artists in Cuba, artists interviewed in New York still choose hustling to make a name for themselves here over returning to Cuba and losing their freedom.
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE!
http://www.bustle.com/articles/97321-tania-bruguera-pioneered-performance-art-in-cuba-but-will-she-be-allowed-to-return-stateside
POVERTY IN CUBA
Poverty in Cuba? Yes. It is difficult to get an unbiased picture of Cuba; some sing its praises, speaking of 100% literacy rates and a country where everyone has easy access to a first-class education, while some vilify it and makes examples of the families who scrape together enough to afford sugar, a repressive political regime and crumbling infrastructure. The reality appears to be a strange mix between the two images, a country that is quite poor but not, as is normally the case, extremely miserable as a result of it.
Cuba, a thoroughly non-Western country, also has a thoroughly non-Western brand of poverty. Poverty in Cuba is severe in terms of access to physical commodities, especially in rural areas. Farmers struggle and many women depend on prostitution to make a living. Citizens have few material possessions and lead simpler lives with few luxuries and far more limited political freedom.
Yet the nation has enviably high literacy rates and a famously good healthcare system. In terms of levels of abject poverty, Cuba has indeed been through worse. They speak of the ‘Special Period’ in the past where some ate anacondas into extinction and the average Cuban lost ten pounds. Journalists comment that while the young are dissatisfied with Cuba’s current state, older generations remain loyal to Castro ideologies because they recall what life was like before the revolution.
In a country with limited resources and a significantly different political and economic ideology, it would be unreasonable to expect Cuba to ever attempt to lift its entire population to the American middle-class ideal. Operating under this mindset, Cuba has been successful in many ways, in managing to provide for its citizens what other countries in the region cannot.
This does not, however, mean that Cuba has achieved an ideal. The people of the country are still struggling in a number of ways; food insecurity, frustration and a lack of basic goods plagues the country while the economy struggles. There are no easy answers with Cuba’s charged political history, though the new Castro leadership offers significant hope for opening the country economically, with all the potential benefits such a move would bring.
Omar,
Cuban poverty is unknown in the USA.
Even during the great depression, poor Americans didn’t go as hungry as Cuban serfs living under Castro’s socialist paradise.
You can post your lies and silly statistics a million times, but it won’t change reality.
Your “socialist” Raul is embracing the worst form of capitalism and you are a PR machine.
Call yourself a socialist all you want, but all you are is a capitalist billionaire’s mouthpiece.
At least under capitalism Cubans won’t go as hungry. So more power to you and Raul.
A TOTAL OF CLOSE TO 20 MILLION CHILDREN ( a number larger than the entire population of Cuba!!!) live in poverty in the United States….the second largest economy in the World…..what are Americans doing with the 17 Trillion dollars in GDP????…..intervention in the internal affairs of other countries and hegemony….
DEMOCRACY, FREEDOM, FREEDOM OF SPEECH, FREE MARKET RESULTS IN THE US
A higher percentage of children live in poverty now than did during the Great Recession, according to a new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation released Tuesday.
About 22% of children in the U.S. lived below the poverty line in 2013, compared with 18% in 2008, the foundation’s 2015 Kids Count Data Book reported. In 2013, the U.S. Department of Human and Health Service’s official poverty line was $23,624 for a family with two adults and two children.
“The fact that it’s happening is disturbing on lots of levels,” said Laura Speer, the associate director for policy reform and advocacy at the Casey Foundation, a non-profit based in Baltimore. “Those kids often don’t have the access to the things they need to thrive.” The foundation says its mission is to help low-income children in the U.S. by providing grants and advocating for policies that promote economic opportunity.
The report examined data from several federal agencies ranging from 2008 to 2013 to assess state-by-state trends of 16 factors of children’s well-being, including economics, education, health and family and community. It found that one in four children — a total of 18.7 million kids — lived in low-income households in 2013; low-income families were defined as those who use more than 30% of their pre-tax income for housing.
However, the numbers are from 2013, and Speer said the outcome may be different now that the unemployment rate has lowered to 5.3%; it was 7.5% in June 2013. Speer said more employed parents would naturally lead to fewer impoverished kids, but she doubted it would change the number of children in low-income neighborhoods.
“It’s a much bigger issue that’s happening relating to residential segregation, the cost of housing and other factors,” Speer said.
The report also examined racial disparities between children living in low-income households. Black, Hispanic and American Indian children were more than twice as likely to live in poverty than white children, the report said.
Deirdre Bloome, an assistant professor of sociology and faculty associate at the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan, said racial segregation by income and housing occurs because of economic differences for individual families.
She said people often live as adults in the same neighborhood where they grew up, making it difficult to achieve upward mobility and desegregated areas.
“Where you grew up is similar to where you end up when you’re an adult,” Bloome said. “That helps perpetuate racial segregation.”
The Spanish Development Finance Institution (COFIDES) will open a 40-million-euro line of credit for Spanish firms doing businesses in Cuba. The line, to be known as the Cuba Funding Line, will be available until 2017 and can be increased.
The announcement was made Monday (June 22) in Madrid by the president of COFIDES, Salvador Marín; Spain’s secretary of state for Trade, Jaime García-Legaz, and the vice president of the Spanish Federation of Business Organizations (CEOE), Joaquím Gay de Montellá. (The photo above shows them, from left to right.)cofides logo2
Marín told the press that the credit line was created “as a result of the opening to the outside that Cuba is experiencing, the incentives to foreign investment that [Cuba] will offer, and the interest shown by Spanish business companies.”
According to a COFIDES press release, the Cuba Line will underwrite the projects of large, medium and small Spanish businesses. The starting fund will contain 40 million euros ($45.37 million) but can be increased “depending on the needs of the Spanish businesses.”
Part of the credit line — from 75,000 euros to 30 million euros ($85,090 to $34.1 million) — will be made available long-term to productive and commercial companies (up to 12 years for productive businesses and 3 years to commercial businesses, with allowable delinquency periods of 4 years and 6 months, respectively.)
Another portion of the credit line — from 75,000 euros to 2 million euros ($85,090 to $2.27 million) — is devoted to projects in the Mariel Special Development Zone. Payment will be due in 3 years, with an allowable delinquency period of up to 6 months.
The projects applying for credit must submit “sufficient guarantees and must have a positive impact in the country.”
The Spanish news agency EFE quoted Marín as saying that most of the projects will require an average investment of 3 million or 4 million euros ($3.4 million or $4.54 million.)
“For every euro of public money invested, up to 9 euros can be raised [in private co-financing],” he told EFE, so the credit line “could mean 400 million euros [$453.8 million] in investments for the Spanish businesses in Cuba.”
Trade Secretary Jaime García-Legaz will be in Cuba July 6-7 at the head of a delegation of business executives selected by the CEOE and the Chamber of Commerce of Spain “to analyze in greater depth the opportunities for business in the region,” Gay de Montellá said.
The CEOE president praised the opportunities offered by the Mariel Zone, calling it “an authentic focus for investments, with major advancements in innovation and logistics. The Zone also offers a series of special policies to attract foreign investment,” he said.
García-Legaz explained that the new credit line will allow Spanish companies to invest in diverse projects in Cuba. The tourism industry will be favored in terms of construction, services and transportation. Renewable energy projects will also benefit from the available loans.
The secretary of Trade pointed to Cuba’s new law on foreign investment, which “guarantees the repatriation of profits to Spain, opens practically all sectors with a possibility of participation of up to 100 percent and grants tax incentives.”
García-Legaz visited Cuba in mid-April and said later that Cuba’s removal from the U.S. list of countries that sponsor terrorism “places Spain in a situation in which we feel — and the [business] companies have let us know — that we must begin a phase of much greater intensity.”
Humberto: Cuba ranks 53 and Mexico ranks 54 in the Quality of Life index for the countries of the World….and Cuba’s is on the rise….the $20/month salary is not an indication of Quality of Life. As a matter of fact, Cuba is not far behind the U.S. which is 31. What matters is:
1. Life Expectancy
2. Healthcare
3. Education
4. Wealth
5. Democracy
6. Peace
7. Environment
Humberto: In recent years, political leaders, policymakers, and academics have criticized the use of traditional macroeconomic indicators, such as per-capita gross domestic product or gross national income, as insufficient for characterizing the quality of life for a country’s population. The assumption that the richer the country, the better off its people are is a useful generalization, but there has been growing recognition among economists and policymakers that traditional economic indicators are not adequate when it comes to characterizing a population’s well-being.
.Raul Castro is impulsive, dogmatic and sometimes brutal, in 1959, during the surrender of Santiago, the second largest Cuban city; Raul presided over the execution of more than 70 soldiers and officers who were machine-gunned and their corpses thrown into a ditch.
There is an aspect seldom commented of Raúl Castro’s life and the fact is that in all the “judicial” processes of great importance that have taken place in Cuba after the triumph of the insurrection, has played a fundamental role. He has been a kind of special prosecutor, a prosecutor with the capacity to sanction.
YOU ALL HAVE INTERNET ACCESS, RIGHT? WHY SHOULD NOT THE CUBAN CITIZENS? LETS NOT BEE HYPOCRITES! THE CASTRO OLIGARCHY WANTS THE EMBARGO LIFTED? GIVE THE CUBAN PEOPLE ACCESS TO THE INTERNET IN RETURN! DUH! ITS CALLED DIPLOMACY! SOMETHING THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION IS NOT VERY GOOD AT!
GLOBAL VOICE: Cuba Si, Google No: Cuban Officials Rumored to Reject Google’s Free WiFi Offer – 17 July 2015 — Top Cuban officials allegedly have rejected an offer from Google to supply the island with free public WiFi throughout the country. Although neither the company nor the Cuban government has explicitly commented on the matter, multiple news sources seem to have drawn this conclusion from an interview in Juventud Rebelde (“Rebellious Youth”), the island’s long-standing youth newspaper. The interview featured Jose Ramon Machado, a contemporary of the Castro brothers, who after forty years at the helm of Cuba’s Union of Communist Youth appears as determined as ever to instill in young Cubans the values and morals of Cuba’s unique brand of Marxism.
When the reporter asked Machado what he thought about the value of the Internet for Cuban youth, Machado’s response was clear:
Internet access is a great opportunity and at the same time a great challenge, because new technologies are novel and vital, not only for person-to-person communication, but also for development. Everyone knows why there isn’t more Internet [in Cuba]. It’s because of the high cost.
There are those who would like to give us Internet for free, but they aren’t doing this so that Cubans can communicate with one another, rather they’re doing it with the goal of penetrating us on ideological grounds, in an effort to make a new conquest. We need to get Internet, but in our own way, recognizing that the imperialist intention is to use it as one more way to destroy the Revolution.
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE!
https://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2015/07/17/cuba-si-google-no-cuban-officials-rumored-to-reject-googles-free-wifi-offer/
MIAMI HERALD: After 50 years, Cuba has little to show – By ANDRES OPPENHEIMER
When it comes to personal income or standard of living statistics, the U.N. Human Development Report — the Cuban government’s favorite statistical source — lists the island’s per capita income at $6,000 a year, although the figure is accompanied by an asterisk indicating that it’s a Cuban government estimate, and that “efforts to produce a more accurate estimate are ongoing.”
In fact, Cuba refuses to calculate its per capita income according to international standards. The same thing happens with its poverty rates. Cuba agrees to use world-accepted statistical methods in those areas where it does well, such as heath and education, but refuses to do so in those areas where it may not do that well. The U.N. report’s world poverty rates table leaves Cuba’s line blank.
”Neither the United Nations nor any other international institution have the foggiest idea what Cuba’s per capita income or poverty rates really are because Fidel ordered that the country use its own methodology,” said Carmelo Mesa-Lago, a retired University of Pittsburgh economics professor who has long been one of the most serious analysts of the Cuban economy.
”The Cuban government’s figures are not credible, which forces everybody else to use them with an asterisk or not to use them at all,” he added.
What is known is that Cubans’ average wage is nearly $20 a month, as recognized by the official media, which would translate to an average income of $240 a year.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2008/12/12/810847/after-50-years-cuba-has-little.html
CNN Obama rewarding oppression in Cuba – By Marion Smith (is executive director of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington) – July 20, 2015
On Monday, for the first time in five decades, the flag of Cuba will fly over an embassy in the United States. But the event is marked by a cruel coincidence — the same week, the United States officially commemorates the plight of those languishing in captive nations around the world, a tradition started more than 50 years ago.
Instead of isolating and pressuring the repressive Cuban regime, policymakers in Washington are rewarding it with increased trade relations and near-full diplomatic recognition. In welcoming the communist Castro regime back into the family of nations — with no reform of the Cuban government — the U.S. government has betrayed decades of sound bipartisan policy inaugurated under President John F. Kennedy.
Today, scores of Cubans still languish in prison for such “crimes” as supporting democracy and a free press. In 2013, Human Rights Watch notes, a group of women who were peacefully demonstrating against the government were arrested, beaten, taken into a bus and dumped far from their homes. Just last month, Cuban human rights advocate Guillermo Fariñas came to Washington to accept the Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom, which we awarded him for his more than two dozen hunger strikes against the communist government in Havana. Countless other dissidents and activists risk their life and livelihood every day resisting the restrictive and repressive regime.
Cuba’s egregious human rights abuses notwithstanding, America is proceeding to “normalize” relations with this wholly abnormal regime, as if the decades-long, bipartisan isolation of Cuba has all been the result of some silly misunderstanding.
Sadly, America’s willful blindness to the tyrannical abuses of other countries is now typical of its foreign policy generally. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent expansionist escapades in Georgia and eastern Ukraine signal the return of a neo-Soviet bluster that threatens stability and peace in the region. Meanwhile, inside Russia, government authorities systematically chip away at civil society and police remain idle as political opponents, minority groups, lesbians and gays are beaten by local mobs. So far, aside from the limited scope of the so-called Magnitsky Act, this bluster and violence have been met with meekness and platitudes from Western and American leaders.
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE!
http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/20/opinions/smith-embassy-cuba-opening/
Omar,
You kept posting about housing collapses in the USA for what reason I don`t know.
You wanted to say it`s just as bad in the USA?
But your own figures show that housing collapses are 25,000 times more common per person in Cuba.
Is that something to brag about?
Maybe you’ll now post about toilet paper or food shortages in the USA?
I guarantee that both of those are much more than 25,000 times more common in Cuba, and it has nothing to do with GDP or average income or any other socialist BS.
It has to do with the totally corrupt medieval dictatorship you call socialism, where the life of an average Cuban serf is worthless to the Castro family military machine.
Neutral observer: I guess I have to show you the math…
GDP USA: 17 Trillion Dollars (764 Billion dollars + this are old numbers for construction)
GDP Cuba: 77 Billion Dollars ( 3.7 Billion dollars for construction)
221 times the GDP of Cuba
800 Billion (estimate for US)/17 Trillion = 5% of GDP (both countries about the same)
3.7 Billiion (estimate for Cuba)/77 Billion= 5% of GDP
800Billion/320 Million people = $2500/ person (see the difference in money available)
3.7 Billion/12 Million people = $308.33/person
The United States can invest in construction (8) times more money per citizen than Cuba. How many buildings in Cuba do you think would be collapsing today if Cuba could spend as much money as the United States can in construction??
My mistake Omar,
I meant that the average US citizen makes 500,000 dollars a month, or 6 million dollars a year, if what you are implying is true – that US citizens are 25,000 times richer than Cuban citizens.
I don’t think that’s true, but you seem to think that’s the reason Cubans are 25,000 times more likely to live through a housing collapse than Americans.
By the way Omar,
If Americans are 25,000 richer than Cubans, then the average salary in the USA is about 500,000 dollars per year (we know Cubans average 20 dollars a year, according to Castro’s government).
So is this the whole reason Cubans are 25,000 more likely to suffer a housing collapse than an American (according to you and Castro, I’m sure the real figures are even worse).
Omar,
Are you now saying the average US citizen is 25 thousand times richer than the average Cuban?
You never said that before. You always tell us how rich Cubans really are.
Are there other reasons a Cuban is 25 thousand times more likely to suffer a housing collapse than a resident of the USA?
After all, cavemen don’t suffer as many housing collapses as Cubans, do they? And cavemen have a very low income.
Simba: I recommend you read the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba latest revision. The Constitution of Cuba was drafted in 1976.
Neutral observer: your math is partially correct…include in your math GDP and income and see how they match up…go ahead…I like to see what you come up with….
Simba Sez:
Omar, is there any chance you can provide the details of the Castro outlaws treaty with the Cuban people that allows them to maintain prisons on the Island, or do anything else for that matter?
A MESSAGE FROM THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY TO THE CUBAN PEOPLE FROM ERNESTO CHE GUEVARA.
(this letter is proof that until the regime change law and the embargo is lifted. Cuba’s sovereignty is still in grave danger- RELATIONS BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND CUBA
IN THE NEW STAGE OF THAW: COMMON SENSE OR IRRESPONSIBLE HASTE?
Carlos Alberto Montaner
Interamerican Institute for Democracy
Miami, June 4, 2015
To Prof. Guillermo Lousteau)
Guevara in his speech “Message to the peoples of the world through
the Tricontinental”:
“In the end, we must take into account the fact that imperialism is a global
system, the last stage of capitalism, and needs to be defeated in a grand
worldwide confrontation. The strategic objective of that struggle must be the
destruction of imperialism. The role assigned to us, the exploited and
backward peoples of this world, is to eliminate the bases of sustenance of
imperialism: our oppressed nations, from which they extract capitals, raw
materials and cheap labor and to which they export new capital —
instruments of domination, weapons and all kind of articles, plunging us in
an absolute dependency. The fundamental element of that strategic objective,
then, will be the real liberation of the peoples; a liberation that will be
accomplished through armed struggle in most cases and will have, in
America, almost unavoidably, the property of becoming a socialist
revolution.
Omar:
According to you, 225 buildings collapsed in the USA over a 12 year period.
The USA has a population of 320,000,000.
According to a Cuban official, there are over 225 buildings collapsed EVERY YEAR in Centro Habana, POPULATION 150,000 !!!!! From personal observation, I know this is pretty much the average across Cuba.
Let’s do the math:
Collapsed buildings divided by population divided by time period Equals:
A Cuban is roughly 25000 times more likely to suffer a building collapse than a resident of the USA.
I’m sure the figures are even worse when fatalities are considered. Most of the US buildings that collapsed were abandoned or unoccupied when the collapses occurred, almost all collapsed buildings in Cuba are occupied.
I think your figures say it all. No socialist wants to risk his neck living like a socialist.
The State Department early Monday morning raised the Cuban flag in its lobby to mark the re-establishment of relations between the two countries after more than 50 years.
President Obama decided to remove Cuba from a list of terrorist-sponsoring nations earlier this year, which paved the way for improved diplomatic relations between the two nations. In addition to flying the flag at State, the U.S. and Cuba will establish permanent embassies in one another’s countries, and Obama has also taken steps to liberalize trade and travel rules between the two countries.
The move has been criticized by many Republicans who say it will only help Cuba, a repressive regime, and that Obama got nothing in return for his concessions.
Signed by the President of Cuba, February 16, 1903; Signed by the President of the United States, February 23, 1903
AGREEMENT
Between the United States of America and the Republic of Cuba for the lease (subject to terms to be agreed upon by the two Governments) to the United States of lands in Cuba for coaling and naval stations.
The United States of America and the Republic of Cuba, being desirous to execute fully the provisions of Article VII of the Act of Congress approved March second, 1901, and of Article VII of the Appendix to the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba promulgated on the 20th of May, 1902, which provide:
“ARTICLE VII. To enable the United States to maintain the independence of Cuba, and to protect the people thereof, as well as for its own defense, the Cuban Government will sell or lease to the United States the lands necessary for coaling or naval stations, at certain specified points, to be agreed upon with the President of the United States.”
have reached an agreement to that end, as follows:
ARTICLE I
The Republic of Cuba hereby leases to the United States, for the time required for the purposes of coaling and naval stations, the following described areas of land and water situated in the Island of Cuba:
1st. In Guantanamo (see Hydrographic Office Chart 1857). From a point on the south coast, 4.37 nautical miles to the eastward of Windward Point Light House, a line running north (true) a distance of 4.25 nautical miles;
From the northern extremity of this line, a line running west (true), a distance of 5.87 nautical miles;
From the western extremity of this last line, a line running southwest (true) 3.31 nautical miles;
From the southwestern extremity of this last line, a line running south (true) to the seacoast.
This lease shall be subject to all the conditions named in Article II of this agreement.
2nd. In Northwestern Cuba (see Hydrographic Office Chart 2036).
In Bahia Honda (see Hydrographic Office Chart 520b).
All that land included in the peninsula containing Cerro del Morrillo and Punta del Carenero situated to the westward of a line running south (true) from the north coast at a distance of thirteen hundred yards east (true) from the crest of Cerro del Morrillo, and all the adjacent waters touching upon the coast line of the above described peninsula and including the estuary south of Punta del Carenero with the control of the headwaters as necessary for sanitary and other purposes.
And in addition all that piece of land and its adjacent waters on the western side of the entrance to Bahia Honda including between the shore line and a line running north and south (true) to low water marks through a point which is west (true) distant one nautical mile from Pta. del Cayman.
ARTICLE II
The grant of the foregoing Article shall include the right to use and occupy the waters adjacent to said areas of land and water, and to improve and deepen the entrances thereto and the anchorages therein, and generally to do any and all things necessary to fit the premises for use as coaling or naval stations only, and for no other purpose.
Vessels engaged in the Cuban trade shall have free passage through the waters included within this grant.
ARTICLE III
While on the one hand the United States recognizes the continuance of the ultimate sovereignty of the Republic of Cuba over the above described areas of land and water, on the other hand the Republic of Cuba consents that during the period of the occupation by the United States of said areas under the terms of this agreement the United States shall exercise complete jurisdiction and control over and within said areas with the right to acquire (under conditions to be hereafter agreed upon by the two Governments) for the public purposes of the United States any land or other property therein by purchase or by exercise of eminent domain with full compensation to the owners thereof.
Done in duplicate at Habana, and signed by the President of the
[SEAL] Republic of Cuba this sixteenth day of February, 1903.
T. ESTRADA PALMA
Signed by the President of the United States the twenty-third of February, 1903.
[SEAL] THEODORE ROOSEVELT