Cuban Truth Against the Lies

[The Vegan Marxist]

Since cubantruth.info has become inactive, apparently long enough to where the majority of the links given for the facts they present are not working any longer, I've decided to dig around & try to find as much facts on Cuba as I could to bring real information for people who might get within some kind of debate or conversation about Cuba. Understand that this is not to make Cuba seem like a perfect area to be in, for it's not & still has its own problems, but it's to stop the lies made against Cuba, in the hopes of showing that it's not really a bad place to live in:

*Cuba is ranked #1 in literacy rate, coming to almost 100% (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vZW4ud2lraXBlZGlhLm9yZy93aWtpL0xpc3Rfb2 ZfY291bnRyaWVzX2J5X2xpdGVyYWN5X3JhdGU=).

*Although the U.S. has a higher life expectancy rate than Cuba by .66 (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwczovL3d3dy5jaWEuZ292L2xpYnJhcnkvcHVibGljYX Rpb25zL3RoZS13b3JsZC1mYWN0Ym9vay9yYW5rb3JkZXIvMjEw MnJhbmsuaHRtbA==), rating the U.S. at 78.11, & Cuba at 77.45, Cuba before the revolution was at 58.8 on life expectancy rate (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LnVuaWNlZi5vcmcvaW5mb2J5Y291bnRyeS 9jdWJhX3N0YXRpc3RpY3MuaHRtbA==), meaning it went up almost 20 years of life expectancy when Fidel Castro became president of Cuba.

*Cuba has an infant mortality rate of only 5.1 (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vZW4ud2lraXBlZGlhLm9yZy93aWtpL0xpc3Rfb2 ZfY291bnRyaWVzX2J5X2luZmFudF9tb3J0YWxpdHlfcmF0ZQ== ), compared to the U.S. where it's infant mortality rate is 6.3. Another known fact of this was that, before Fidel Castro became president, the infant mortality rate of Cuba was at 60 deaths per 1000 births (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LndvcmtlcnMub3JnLzIwMDkvd29ybGQvY3 ViYV8wOTE3Lw==).

*When it comes to human poverty, Cuba is ranked at 4.1% (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LmhlbGxvY3ViYS5jYS9jb21wYXJlLnBocA ==), compared to the U.S. where it is ranked at 12% (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lm5hdGlvbm1hc3Rlci5jb20vZ3JhcGgvZW NvX3BvcF9iZWxfcG92X2xpbi1lY29ub215LXBvcHVsYXRpb24t YmVsb3ctcG92ZXJ0eS1saW5l).

*If one was to look at the person per doctor rate all around the world, you would find Cuba to be leading the world with a rate of 170, where as the U.S. is at 390 (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vc3RyYW5nZW1hcHMud29yZHByZXNzLmNvbS8yMD A3LzEwLzE3LzE4NS10aGUtZG9jdG9yc3BhdGllbnRzLW1hcC1v Zi10aGUtd29ybGQv).

*The proportion of births that are attended to by skilled health personnel in Cuba is at a remarkable 100% (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lmdsb2JhbGhlYWx0aGZhY3RzLm9yZy90b3 BpYy5qc3A/aT03Nw==), where as the U.S., although remarkable as well, is at 99%.

*The unemployment rate by country has shown that Cuba is at 1.8% (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vZW4ud2lraXBlZGlhLm9yZy93aWtpL0xpc3Rfb2 ZfY291bnRyaWVzX2J5X3VuZW1wbG95bWVudF9yYXRl), while the U.S. remains at 10%, & is growing due to the economic failures taking part in this country.

*Inflation rates in Cuba are at 3.4% (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwczovL3d3dy5jaWEuZ292L2xpYnJhcnkvcHVibGljYX Rpb25zL3RoZS13b3JsZC1mYWN0Ym9vay9maWVsZHMvMjA5Mi5o dG1s), leading the U.S. by .4%, where as it is at 3.8%.

*Although the U.S. is leading in improved sanitation rates with an astounding 100%, Cuba is drawing close to the U.S. with an improved sanitation rate of 98% (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vbWRncy51bi5vcmcvdW5zZC9tZGcvU2VyaWVzRG V0YWlsLmFzcHg/c3JpZD02Njg=).

*When it comes to percentage of women holding parliamentary seats, which I find to be one of the most important issues of equality today, Cuba is ranked #4 at a percentage of 43.2% (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LmlwdS5vcmcvd21uLWUvY2xhc3NpZi5odG 0=). Where as the U.S. is tied with Turkmenistan at rank #71 with a percentage of 16.8%.

Now, known propaganda led by the U.S. against Cuba has ravaged itself all across the nation, where the majority of the country today still believe certain false myths of Cuba & it's former ruler. Let's look at a few of these myths:

Why do so many people leave Cuba and go to the United States?
Actually, by percentage, few Cubans actually leave Cuba, and there are many issues involved. Firstly, before the Cuban Revolution the United States gave very few Cubans visas to come to the United States, but after the revolution the doors were opened wide. Secondly, the United States has held an unjust trade embargo against Cuba for five decades (which has been condemned several times in the United Nations by almost every country in the world) which has caused the people of Cuba to suffer. Finally, the United States enacted the 'Cuban Adjustment Act', the only act of its kind anywhere in the world, which grants residency to anyone, no matter if they are a criminal or not, who leaves Cuba and reaches the United States in any fashion. Imagine if the same act applied to all of Latin America! How many people from other countries would leave for the United States? How many people leave places like Mexico and the Dominican Republic now?

One of the best examples that I could present on this topic would be the Mariel Boatlift (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vZW4ud2lraXBlZGlhLm9yZy93aWtpL01hcmllbF 9ib2F0bGlmdA==). In 1978, President Carter said Cuba was a prison house, and that everyone there was kept against their will. In response, the Cuban government threw open the gates of emigration, allowing thousands to leave for the US. Thousands of convicts answered the call, while the vast majority of Cubans elected to stay. The result? Carter asked the Cuban government to reverse its policy, which was done. So in reality, the US imperialists couldn't handle the consequences of an "open gate" policy while the Cuban revolutionaries had no problem with it. In terms of freedom of movement for residents, Cubans who live in Cuba are allowed to travel and oftentimes do. The fact of the matter is that, when you look at the reasons behind why those that fled when Fidel stated they could did what they did, the reason was that these people were merely communist-hating confused people who feared the idea of communism being implemented in Cuba, due to the anti-communist propaganda being led by the U.S., & does anyone remember the year Fidel Castro came into power? 1959, during the very decade of when the Red Scare was taking form all over the world, led by none other than the U.S., themselves.

Isn't Cuba a dictatorship?
No. There is a one party government in Cuba, but that does not mean that democracy doesn't exist there. In fact, there are more differences in the Communist Party in Cuba than there are between the Democrats and Republicans in the United States! The Cuban people are very active in their work places through their unions, in mass organizations (such as the Federation of Cuban Women) and in local and national elections, where normal working people are nominated and elected by a vote of 50% of more. In the U.S. you need large amounts of money to run for office, and canidates are often elected by only 20% of the electorate. In Cuba 99% of eligable people vote, in the United States less than 50% normally do.

Indeed, this "dictatorship" in Cuba is very strange, because everyone calls the president by his first name, like when they see him in the street, the highest government officials play baseball in their short sleeves with the rest of the people, the entire population is armed, everyone knows how to read, decisions are made by common consent, prostitutes are sent to school and taught another occupation, government officials meet with the workers to discuss salaries and production and the people interrupt the prime minister's speeches to criticize certain ministers or officials!

If one wants to find more information on this topic then I'd recommend: Is Cuba Democratic? (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LmN1YmEtc29saWRhcml0eS5vcmcvZGVtb2 NyYWN5Lmh0bQ==), Let's Talk About Cuban Democracy (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LmN1YmFzb2xpZGFyaXR5LmNvbS9hYm91dG N1YmEvY3ViYXNwZWFrcy9hbGFyY29uLzA1MDNkZW1vY3JhY3ku aHRt), & The Truth About Cuba (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LmJlc3RjeXJhbm8ub3JnL2NhbWVyb25NYX JjZS5UcnV0aEN1YmEuY2Zt).

Aren't human rights poor in Cuba?
As a part of its propaganda campaign, the United States Government and its agencies have continually accused Cuba of human rights abuses. But when the accomplishments of the Cuban revolution are compared to the actions of the U.S. Government, the truth becomes quite clear.

Amnesty International claims that 72 prisoners of conscience are detained in Cuban jails. The truth is that these people were all tried and found guilty of being agents of a foreign power - the U.S. government.

On the other hand, the International Red Cross has reported that up to 40,000 people are detained without charge by U.S.-led occupation forces in Iraq.

Let's also not forget that 5 Cuban anti-terrorists are being held as political prisoners in the U.S. right now.

The five Cubans were sent to Miami as foreign agents to penetrate the exile groups who had been carrying out terrorist acts against Cuba; including blowing up an airplane full of innocent people, and bombing resorts in Cuba.

In June of 1998, the Cuban government presented the FBI with evidence relating to the terrorist activities of these exile groups, which was collected and compiled by the five Cubabs. But instead of arresting the terrorists, the U.S. arrested the five Cubans! They were held in solitary confinment for 17 months, before being accused of "committing acts of espionage," and a number of other sham charges, and sentenced to a number of prison terms from 15 years to two life terms plus fifteen years. The Cuban five sit in high security prisons today, and are denied the right to visits from their family.

But what are small facts in the face of a big lie? In 2003, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said, "I agree with anything that means the condemnation of Cuba."

Revealingly, Cuba is a founding member of the United Nation's Human Rights Council and the United States is not. Cuba has been repeatedly elected to that very same Human Rights Council, while the U.S. hasn't even dared to run as a candiate. In the most recent elections, Cuba was elected to the Council with the overwhelming support of 135 countries, more than two-thirds of the UN General Assembly.

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro himself put it best when he asked, “On what moral grounds can the rulers of a nation in which millionaires and beggars exists; Indians are exterminated; Blacks are discriminated against; women are prostituted; and huge numbers of Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and other Latin Americans are scorned, exploited, and humiliated, speak of human rights?

“How can the representatives of a capitalist and imperialist society based on the exploitation of man by man, combined with egoism, individualism, and a complete lack of human solidarity, do this?

“How can those that train and provide military supplies to the bloodiest, most reactionary, and most corrupt governments in the world, such as those of Somoza, Pinochet, Stroessner, the gorillas in Uruguay, Mobutu, and the shah of Iran, just to name a few, mouth this slogan?

“How can the leaders of a state whose intelligence agencies organized assassination attempts against the leaders of other countries and whose armies dropped explosives in Vietnam equivalent to hundreds of atom bombs, such as those that exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and who murdered millions of Vietnamese without even deigning to apologize to the country or pay indemnity for the lives lost – the leaders of a state that has traditionally intervened in Latin America, subjects the people of this part of the world to its exploiting yoke, and is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of children every year due to illness and starvation – how can they speak of human rights?

“In short, how can the imperialist government that forcibly maintains a military base in our territory and subjects our people to a criminal economic blockade speak of human rights?”

More information on this can be found at: What is Cuba's human rights record really like? (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LmN1YmEtc29saWRhcml0eS5vcmcvZmFxZG 9jcy9DdWJhQW5kSHVtYW5SaWdodHMucGRm) (PDF), ‘End the Blockade, Lies and Aggression against Cuba’ (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LmN1YmFzb2xpZGFyaXR5LmNvbS9hYm91dG N1YmEvY3ViYXNwZWFrcy9yb3F1ZS8wNDAzMTd1bmhjci5odG0= ), Exit U.S., Enter Cuba (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LnptYWcub3JnL2NvbnRlbnQvc2hvd2FydG ljbGUuY2ZtP0l0ZW1JRD0xMDQ3Mg==), & Meet the Cuban Five imprisoned in the U.S. (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LmZyZWV0aGVmaXZlLm9yZy9tZWV0NS5odG 0=)

[ReVoLuTiOnArY-BrOtHeR]

Since cubantruth.info has become inactive, apparently long enough to where the majority of the links given for the facts they present are not working any longer, I've decided to dig around & try to find as much facts on Cuba as I could to bring real information for people who might get within some kind of debate or conversation about Cuba. Understand that this is not to make Cuba seem like a perfect area to be in, for it's not & still has its own problems, but it's to stop the lies made against Cuba, in the hopes of showing that it's not really a bad place to live in:

*Cuba is ranked #1 in literacy rate, coming to almost 100% (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vZW4ud2lraXBlZGlhLm9yZy93aWtpL0xpc3Rfb2 ZfY291bnRyaWVzX2J5X2xpdGVyYWN5X3JhdGU=).

*Although the U.S. has a higher life expectancy rate than Cuba by .66 (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwczovL3d3dy5jaWEuZ292L2xpYnJhcnkvcHVibGljYX Rpb25zL3RoZS13b3JsZC1mYWN0Ym9vay9yYW5rb3JkZXIvMjEw MnJhbmsuaHRtbA==), rating the U.S. at 78.11, & Cuba at 77.45, Cuba before the revolution was at 58.8 on life expectancy rate (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LnVuaWNlZi5vcmcvaW5mb2J5Y291bnRyeS 9jdWJhX3N0YXRpc3RpY3MuaHRtbA==), meaning it went up almost 20 years of life expectancy when Fidel Castro became president of Cuba.

*Cuba has an infant mortality rate of only 5.1 (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vZW4ud2lraXBlZGlhLm9yZy93aWtpL0xpc3Rfb2 ZfY291bnRyaWVzX2J5X2luZmFudF9tb3J0YWxpdHlfcmF0ZQ== ), compared to the U.S. where it's infant mortality rate is 6.3. Another known fact of this was that, before Fidel Castro became president, the infant mortality rate of Cuba was at 60 deaths per 1000 births (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LndvcmtlcnMub3JnLzIwMDkvd29ybGQvY3 ViYV8wOTE3Lw==).

*When it comes to human poverty, Cuba is ranked at 4.1% (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LmhlbGxvY3ViYS5jYS9jb21wYXJlLnBocA ==), compared to the U.S. where it is ranked at 12% (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lm5hdGlvbm1hc3Rlci5jb20vZ3JhcGgvZW NvX3BvcF9iZWxfcG92X2xpbi1lY29ub215LXBvcHVsYXRpb24t YmVsb3ctcG92ZXJ0eS1saW5l).

*If one was to look at the person per doctor rate all around the world, you would find Cuba to be leading the world with a rate of 170, where as the U.S. is at 390 (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vc3RyYW5nZW1hcHMud29yZHByZXNzLmNvbS8yMD A3LzEwLzE3LzE4NS10aGUtZG9jdG9yc3BhdGllbnRzLW1hcC1v Zi10aGUtd29ybGQv).

*The proportion of births that are attended to by skilled health personnel in Cuba is at a remarkable 100% (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lmdsb2JhbGhlYWx0aGZhY3RzLm9yZy90b3 BpYy5qc3A/aT03Nw==), where as the U.S., although remarkable as well, is at 99%.

*The unemployment rate by country has shown that Cuba is at 1.8% (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vZW4ud2lraXBlZGlhLm9yZy93aWtpL0xpc3Rfb2 ZfY291bnRyaWVzX2J5X3VuZW1wbG95bWVudF9yYXRl), while the U.S. remains at 10%, & is growing due to the economic failures taking part in this country.

*Inflation rates in Cuba are at 3.4% (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwczovL3d3dy5jaWEuZ292L2xpYnJhcnkvcHVibGljYX Rpb25zL3RoZS13b3JsZC1mYWN0Ym9vay9maWVsZHMvMjA5Mi5o dG1s), leading the U.S. by .4%, where as it is at 3.8%.

*Although the U.S. is leading in improved sanitation rates with an astounding 100%, Cuba is drawing close to the U.S. with an improved sanitation rate of 98% (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vbWRncy51bi5vcmcvdW5zZC9tZGcvU2VyaWVzRG V0YWlsLmFzcHg/c3JpZD02Njg=).

*When it comes to percentage of women holding parliamentary seats, which I find to be one of the most important issues of equality today, Cuba is ranked #4 at a percentage of 43.2% (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LmlwdS5vcmcvd21uLWUvY2xhc3NpZi5odG 0=). Where as the U.S. is tied with Turkmenistan at rank #71 with a percentage of 16.8%.

Now, known propaganda led by the U.S. against Cuba has ravaged itself all across the nation, where the majority of the country today still believe certain false myths of Cuba & it's former ruler. Let's look at a few of these myths:

Why do so many people leave Cuba and go to the United States?
Actually, by percentage, few Cubans actually leave Cuba, and there are many issues involved. Firstly, before the Cuban Revolution the United States gave very few Cubans visas to come to the United States, but after the revolution the doors were opened wide. Secondly, the United States has held an unjust trade embargo against Cuba for five decades (which has been condemned several times in the United Nations by almost every country in the world) which has caused the people of Cuba to suffer. Finally, the United States enacted the 'Cuban Adjustment Act', the only act of its kind anywhere in the world, which grants residency to anyone, no matter if they are a criminal or not, who leaves Cuba and reaches the United States in any fashion. Imagine if the same act applied to all of Latin America! How many people from other countries would leave for the United States? How many people leave places like Mexico and the Dominican Republic now?

One of the best examples that I could present on this topic would be the Mariel Boatlift (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vZW4ud2lraXBlZGlhLm9yZy93aWtpL01hcmllbF 9ib2F0bGlmdA==). In 1978, President Carter said Cuba was a prison house, and that everyone there was kept against their will. In response, the Cuban government threw open the gates of emigration, allowing thousands to leave for the US. Thousands of convicts answered the call, while the vast majority of Cubans elected to stay. The result? Carter asked the Cuban government to reverse its policy, which was done. So in reality, the US imperialists couldn't handle the consequences of an "open gate" policy while the Cuban revolutionaries had no problem with it. In terms of freedom of movement for residents, Cubans who live in Cuba are allowed to travel and oftentimes do. The fact of the matter is that, when you look at the reasons behind why those that fled when Fidel stated they could did what they did, the reason was that these people were merely communist-hating confused people who feared the idea of communism being implemented in Cuba, due to the anti-communist propaganda being led by the U.S., & does anyone remember the year Fidel Castro came into power? 1959, during the very decade of when the Red Scare was taking form all over the world, led by none other than the U.S., themselves.

Isn't Cuba a dictatorship?
No. There is a one party government in Cuba, but that does not mean that democracy doesn't exist there. In fact, there are more differences in the Communist Party in Cuba than there are between the Democrats and Republicans in the United States! The Cuban people are very active in their work places through their unions, in mass organizations (such as the Federation of Cuban Women) and in local and national elections, where normal working people are nominated and elected by a vote of 50% of more. In the U.S. you need large amounts of money to run for office, and canidates are often elected by only 20% of the electorate. In Cuba 99% of eligable people vote, in the United States less than 50% normally do.

Indeed, this "dictatorship" in Cuba is very strange, because everyone calls the president by his first name, like when they see him in the street, the highest government officials play baseball in their short sleeves with the rest of the people, the entire population is armed, everyone knows how to read, decisions are made by common consent, prostitutes are sent to school and taught another occupation, government officials meet with the workers to discuss salaries and production and the people interrupt the prime minister's speeches to criticize certain ministers or officials!

If one wants to find more information on this topic then I'd recommend: Is Cuba Democratic? (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LmN1YmEtc29saWRhcml0eS5vcmcvZGVtb2 NyYWN5Lmh0bQ==), Let's Talk About Cuban Democracy (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LmN1YmFzb2xpZGFyaXR5LmNvbS9hYm91dG N1YmEvY3ViYXNwZWFrcy9hbGFyY29uLzA1MDNkZW1vY3JhY3ku aHRt), & The Truth About Cuba (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LmJlc3RjeXJhbm8ub3JnL2NhbWVyb25NYX JjZS5UcnV0aEN1YmEuY2Zt).

Aren't human rights poor in Cuba?
As a part of its propaganda campaign, the United States Government and its agencies have continually accused Cuba of human rights abuses. But when the accomplishments of the Cuban revolution are compared to the actions of the U.S. Government, the truth becomes quite clear.

Amnesty International claims that 72 prisoners of conscience are detained in Cuban jails. The truth is that these people were all tried and found guilty of being agents of a foreign power - the U.S. government.

On the other hand, the International Red Cross has reported that up to 40,000 people are detained without charge by U.S.-led occupation forces in Iraq.

Let's also not forget that 5 Cuban anti-terrorists are being held as political prisoners in the U.S. right now.

The five Cubans were sent to Miami as foreign agents to penetrate the exile groups who had been carrying out terrorist acts against Cuba; including blowing up an airplane full of innocent people, and bombing resorts in Cuba.

In June of 1998, the Cuban government presented the FBI with evidence relating to the terrorist activities of these exile groups, which was collected and compiled by the five Cubabs. But instead of arresting the terrorists, the U.S. arrested the five Cubans! They were held in solitary confinment for 17 months, before being accused of "committing acts of espionage," and a number of other sham charges, and sentenced to a number of prison terms from 15 years to two life terms plus fifteen years. The Cuban five sit in high security prisons today, and are denied the right to visits from their family.

But what are small facts in the face of a big lie? In 2003, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said, "I agree with anything that means the condemnation of Cuba."

Revealingly, Cuba is a founding member of the United Nation's Human Rights Council and the United States is not. Cuba has been repeatedly elected to that very same Human Rights Council, while the U.S. hasn't even dared to run as a candiate. In the most recent elections, Cuba was elected to the Council with the overwhelming support of 135 countries, more than two-thirds of the UN General Assembly.

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro himself put it best when he asked, “On what moral grounds can the rulers of a nation in which millionaires and beggars exists; Indians are exterminated; Blacks are discriminated against; women are prostituted; and huge numbers of Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and other Latin Americans are scorned, exploited, and humiliated, speak of human rights?

“How can the representatives of a capitalist and imperialist society based on the exploitation of man by man, combined with egoism, individualism, and a complete lack of human solidarity, do this?

“How can those that train and provide military supplies to the bloodiest, most reactionary, and most corrupt governments in the world, such as those of Somoza, Pinochet, Stroessner, the gorillas in Uruguay, Mobutu, and the shah of Iran, just to name a few, mouth this slogan?

“How can the leaders of a state whose intelligence agencies organized assassination attempts against the leaders of other countries and whose armies dropped explosives in Vietnam equivalent to hundreds of atom bombs, such as those that exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and who murdered millions of Vietnamese without even deigning to apologize to the country or pay indemnity for the lives lost – the leaders of a state that has traditionally intervened in Latin America, subjects the people of this part of the world to its exploiting yoke, and is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of children every year due to illness and starvation – how can they speak of human rights?

“In short, how can the imperialist government that forcibly maintains a military base in our territory and subjects our people to a criminal economic blockade speak of human rights?”

More information on this can be found at: What is Cuba's human rights record really like? (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LmN1YmEtc29saWRhcml0eS5vcmcvZmFxZG 9jcy9DdWJhQW5kSHVtYW5SaWdodHMucGRm) (PDF), ‘End the Blockade, Lies and Aggression against Cuba’ (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LmN1YmFzb2xpZGFyaXR5LmNvbS9hYm91dG N1YmEvY3ViYXNwZWFrcy9yb3F1ZS8wNDAzMTd1bmhjci5odG0= ), Exit U.S., Enter Cuba (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LnptYWcub3JnL2NvbnRlbnQvc2hvd2FydG ljbGUuY2ZtP0l0ZW1JRD0xMDQ3Mg==), & Meet the Cuban Five imprisoned in the U.S. (http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3LmZyZWV0aGVmaXZlLm9yZy9tZWV0NS5odG 0=)


Well done comrade. This information is absolutely true. Keep on the good work brother.

[Axle]

Accurate and well sourced. Thanks.

We should all be keeping this info circulated. The more cracks we put in the foundation of American anti-Communism the better.

[Tablo]

Wonderful compilation. It is nice to see the updated statistics.

[Drace]

On the doctors per person, someone criticized the number of 170 because he said that there are about 70,000 doctors in Cuba of which about 30,000 of them are exported to other countries. So the real number is actually like 270.

[Communist]

This came recently from Communist University (http://domza.blogspot.com/2010/01/cuba-again-still-forever.html) and is a good addition to the original post.


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http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_D4UK2kWf5ik/S0V61nwHc0I/AAAAAAAABtk/65MXuSxpARE/s640/CubaFlag.png (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_D4UK2kWf5ik/S0V61nwHc0I/AAAAAAAABtk/65MXuSxpARE/s1600-h/CubaFlag.png)




The 51st Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution was celebrated on 1 January, 2010





Cuba. Again. Still. Forever.





William Blum, Anti-Empire Report (http://www.killinghope.org/bblum6/aer77.html), USA, 6 January 2009
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More than 50 years now it is. The propaganda and hypocrisy of the American mainstream media seems endless and unwavering. They can not accept the fact that Cuban leaders are humane or rational. Here's the Washington Post of December 13 writing about an American arrested in Cuba:

"The Cuban government has arrested an American citizen working on contract for the U.S. Agency for International Development who was distributing cellphones and laptop computers to Cuban activists. ... Under Cuban law ... a Cuban citizen or a foreign visitor can be arrested for nearly anything under the claim of 'dangerousness'."


That sounds just awful, doesn't it? Imagine being subject to arrest for whatever someone may choose to label "dangerousness". But the exact same thing has happened repeatedly in the United States since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. We don't use the word "dangerousness". We speak of "national security". Or, more recently, "terrorism". Or "providing material support to terrorism".


The arrested American works for Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI), a US government contractor that provides services to the State Department, the Pentagon and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). In 2008, DAI was funded by the US Congress to "promote transition to democracy" in Cuba. Yes, Oh Happy Day!, we're bringing democracy to Cuba just as we're bringing it to Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2002, DAI was contracted by USAID to work in Venezuela and proceeded to fund the same groups that a few months earlier had worked to stage a coup — temporarily successful — against President Hugo Chávez. DAI performed other subversive work in Venezuela and has also been active in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other hotspots. "Subversive" is what Washington would label an organization like DAI if they behaved in the same way in the United States in behalf of a foreign government.6


The American mainstream media never makes its readers aware of the following (so I do so repeatedly): The United States is to the Cuban government like al-Qaeda is to the government in Washington, only much more powerful and much closer. Since the Cuban revolution, the United States and anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the US have inflicted upon Cuba greater damage and greater loss of life than what happened in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. Cuban dissidents typically have had very close, indeed intimate, political and financial connections to American government agents. Would the US government ignore a group of Americans receiving funds or communication equipment from al-Qaeda and/or engaging in repeated meetings with known leaders of that organization? In the past few years, the American government has arrested a great many people in the US and abroad solely on the basis of alleged ties to al-Qaeda, with a lot less evidence to go by than Cuba has had with its dissidents' ties to the United States, evidence usually gathered by Cuban double agents. Virtually all of Cuba's "political prisoners" are such dissidents.



The Washington Post story continued:

"The Cuban government granted ordinary citizens the right to buy cellphones just last year."

Period.

What does one make of such a statement without further information? How could the Cuban government have been so insensitive to people's needs for so many years? Well, that must be just the way a "totalitarian" state behaves. But the fact is that because of the disintegration of the Soviet bloc, with a major loss to Cuba of its foreign trade, combined with the relentless US economic aggression, the Caribbean island was hit by a great energy shortage beginning in the 1990s, which caused repeated blackouts. Cuban authorities had no choice but to limit the sale of energy-hogging electrical devices such as cell phones; but once the country returned to energy sufficiency the restrictions were revoked.


"Cubans who want to log on [to the Internet] often have to give their names to the government."

What does that mean? Americans, thank God, can log onto the Internet without giving their names to the government. Their Internet Service Provider does it for them, furnishing their names to the government, along with their emails, when requested.


"Access to some Web sites is restricted."

Which ones? Why? More importantly, what information might a Cuban discover on the Internet that the government would not want him to know about? I can't imagine. Cubans are in constant touch with relatives in the US, by mail and in person. They get US television programs from Miami. International conferences on all manner of political, economic and social subjects are held regularly in Cuba. What does the American media think is the great secret being kept from the Cuban people by the nasty commie government?


"Cuba has a nascent blogging community, led by the popular commentator Yoani Sánchez, who often writes about how she and her husband are followed and harassed by government agents because of her Web posts. Sánchez has repeatedly applied for permission to leave the country to accept journalism awards, so far unsuccessfully."

According to a well-documented account7, Sánchez's tale of government abuse appears rather exaggerated. Moreover, she moved to Switzerland in 2002, lived there for two years, and then voluntarily returned to Cuba. On the other hand, in January 2006 I was invited to attend a book fair in Cuba, where one of my books, newly translated into Spanish, was being presented. However, the government of the United States would not give me permission to go. My application to travel to Cuba had also been rejected in 1998 by the Clinton administration.


"'Counterrevolutionary activities', which include mild protests and critical writings, carry the risk of censure or arrest. Anti-government graffiti and speech are considered serious crimes."

Raise your hand if you or someone you know of was ever arrested in the United States for taking part in a protest. And substitute "pro al-Qaeda" for "counterrevolutionary" and for "anti-government" and think of the thousands imprisoned the past eight years by the United States all over the world for ... for what? In most cases there's no clear answer. Or the answer is clear: (a) being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or (b) being turned in to collect a bounty offered by the United States, or (c) thought crimes. And whatever the reason for the imprisonment, they were likely tortured. Even the most fanatical anti-Castroites don't accuse Cuba of that. In the period of the Cuban revolution, since 1959, Cuba has had one of the very best records on human rights in the hemisphere. See my essay: "The United States, Cuba and this thing called Democracy".8

There's no case of anyone arrested in Cuba that compares in injustice and cruelty to the arrest in 1998 by the United States government of those who came to be known as the "Cuban Five", sentenced in Florida to exceedingly long prison terms for trying to stem terrorist acts against Cuba emanating from the US.9 It would be lovely if the Cuban government could trade their DAI prisoner for the five. Cuba, on several occasions, has proposed to Washington the exchange of a number of what the US regards as "political prisoners" in Cuba for the five Cubans held in the United States. So far the United States has not agreed to do so.



Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I'd appreciate it if the website were mentioned.



From: http://www.killinghope.org/bblum6/aer77.html (http://www.killinghope.org/bblum6/aer77.html)

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Posted By DomzaNet to Communist University on 1/07/2010 08:11:00 AM --

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[Q]

On the doctors per person, someone criticized the number of 170 because he said that there are about 70,000 doctors in Cuba of which about 30,000 of them are exported to other countries. So the real number is actually like 270.
So they export 30 000 doctors to all across the planet and still do better than the United States at home :)

Also, didn't Cuba had a programme to train hundreds of thousands of doctors in this decade? Does anyone have more info on that?

This thread should be stickied.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Agree with Q, this thread really should be stickied, and added to regularly.

[The Vegan Marxist]

So they export 30 000 doctors to all across the planet and still do better than the United States at home :)

Also, didn't Cuba had a programme to train hundreds of thousands of doctors in this decade? Does anyone have more info on that?

This thread should be stickied.

Actually, based on statistical records, U.S. health care is just a little bit better than Cuban health care, but you've also got to put in mind that they still are able to give their people free health care, & are able to send thousands upon thousands of doctors & nurses to third world countries to help them out. And this is all done, even with the economy not going as good as it should because of the embargo disability by the U.S. government. So, from what I see, Cuban health services are far much better than the U.S. health services.

[Luisrah]

Sticky this please. It's more than worth it :)

[The Vegan Marxist]

Sticky this please. It's more than worth it :)

how does one 'sticky' it? sorry, not aware of this since I've only joined this forum in the beginning of january.

[Luisrah]

how does one 'sticky' it? sorry, not aware of this since I've only joined this forum in the beginning of january.

You can't. I'm asking those who can, which I presume are the moderators and admins or whatever.

[Communist]

.
Cuba and Haiti (http://www.workers.org/2010/editorials/cuba_and_haiti_0225/)
Feb 17, 2010


Many people think it is human nature to be greedy, to put the interests of the individual before the common good — in a word, to live in a dog-eat-dog society. At the same time, they may be moved by suffering and want to help others but usually find themselves stymied. Hey, that’s capitalism, what can you do about it?

Such an outlook leads to a pretty bleak view of the future of humanity.

The media, especially the tabloids and shock jocks that pitch their message to a mass audience, love to dish up examples of the most selfish and destructive behavior. At the same time, they avoid like the plague reporting on societies where socialist revolutions have made it possible for there to be serious planning and development that bring out the best in people.

Take Cuba, for example, and what it is doing to help the people of Haiti recover from the horrible wounds caused by the recent earthquake. If you live in the United States, you won’t read or hear about it in the media. But Cuba is doing more to provide its neighbor Haiti with medical help than any other country in the world.

Many Cuban medical personnel had been working there before the earthquake in facilities set up to treat the poorest people, often in the countryside, but were home on vacation. On news of the disaster, they rushed back, bringing emergency equipment with them.

By early February, Cuba’s International Henry Reeve Medical Contingent was the largest medical relief operation in Haiti, with 1,147 trained medical personnel there — including 411 non-Cuban graduates of Havana’s Latin American Medical School (ELAM), which provides a free medical education to students who agree to use their skills to help the poor in their home countries. Of those, seven were from the United States, two from Nicaragua and 402 from Haiti. Another 200 Havana-trained doctors will have joined this large team by late February, coming from 24 different countries.

Cuba’s Minister of Public Health, Dr. José Ramón Balaguer, presides over a system that provides everyone in Cuba with free, quality medical care. At a ceremony in Havana for the departure of the ELAM teams, Balaguer emphasized the long-term responsibility of the young physicians and their Cuban partners to “help build a public health system that meets the needs of all the Haitian people.”

This is no quick fix, but a long-term program to help develop and train a public health system run by the Haitians themselves.

What is the price tag on all this? Nothing. Cuba leads the way in international solidarity.

ELAM was started in 2005. Since then, it has graduated 7,290 physicians from the Americas, Africa, the Mideast, Asia and Oceania. Immediately following the earthquake, its graduates began e-mailing former classmates and recruited hundreds willing to serve in Haiti.

According to a report from Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba, which helps students from the U.S. attend ELAM, the graduates now volunteering to work in Haiti have come from South America, the Caribbean and North America and as far away as Mali in Africa. Dr. Bechri Ahmed Ali hails from the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic: “But Haiti is where I belong right now.”

“This isn’t an adventure. This is a commitment,” said Dr. Wilberth Barral, a Bolivian ELAM graduate preparing to depart for Haiti. “My classmates are Haitian. Some lost their whole families, fathers, siblings, their homes. They need our help.”

Is it possible to foresee a world in which the people of the United States could help repair the damage done by centuries of colonialism and imperialism, could gladly pay reparations to those nations whose people were kidnapped for the infamous slave trade, whose infrastructures have been destroyed in Pentagon wars, whose labor has been stolen, and whose lands, water and even air have been polluted by profit-hungry U.S. corporations?

There can be such a world. Even now, when the grip of capitalist rule and ideology is so strong, more than half the people in the U.S. contributed to relief efforts for Haiti in its hour of need. The great crime is that the Pentagon dominates the U.S. presence in Haiti, occupying the country and even obstructing medicines from getting past the U.S.-controlled airport in Port au Prince.

Cuba before its 1959 revolution was a playground for the rich and a bloody dictatorship for the poor. That socialist revolution liberated the people from cynicism and despair. It can happen here.
____


© 1995-2010 Workers World (http://www.anonym.to/?http://wwppitt.weebly.com/). (http://www.workersworld.net/wwp/pmwiki.php/Main/Background)
Verbatim copying and distribution of entire
article is permitted in any medium without
royalty provided this notice is preserved.

[RadioRaheem84]

Amazing article. Someone please sticky it! We cannot lose this information.

[un_person]

Great article. Full of information. Thank you very much.:thumbup1:

[RadioRaheem84]

What about more information on the embargo and how it has effected Cuba's economy. There is a lot of right wing stuff out there that claims the embargo had no effect as other nations trade with Cuba.

Also, the issue maybe that while Cubans don't starve to death and have most of their needs met, that people complain about the stagnation they experience. I saw a film about a Cuban poet who just graduated from University of Havana and was making 90 pesos a month, which he claimed "sucks". Granted I find it fascinating that he is working as a poet at all, and the state meets most of his other needs but this is an issue we should address on some of the social problems Cubans face.

[The Vegan Marxist]

What about more information on the embargo and how it has effected Cuba's economy. There is a lot of right wing stuff out there that claims the embargo had no effect as other nations trade with Cuba.

Also, the issue maybe that while Cubans don't starve to death and have most of their needs met, that people complain about the stagnation they experience. I saw a film about a Cuban poet who just graduated from University of Havana and was making 90 pesos a month, which he claimed "sucks". Granted I find it fascinating that he is working as a poet at all, and the state meets most of his other needs but this is an issue we should address on some of the social problems Cubans face.

Here you go.


The Effects of the US ’Embargo’ Against Cuba
Tuesday 7 October 2003 by Rémy HERRERA

In spite of the United Nations repeated injunctions, notably its resolution 56/9 of the 27th of November 2001. The purpose of this expose is to denounce this embargo in the strongest terms for the violation of law it represents, and for its total lack of legitimacy. These measures of arbitrary constraint are tantamount to a U.S. undeclared act of war against Cuba; their devastating economic and social effects deny the people to exercise their basic human rights, and are unbearable for them. They directly subject the people to the maximum of suffering and infringe upon the physical and moral integrity of the whole population, and in the first place of the children, of the elderly and of women. In this respect, they can be seen as a crime against humanity .

The votes of the U.N. General Assembly on the "necessity to lift the blockade against Cuba"

(To see the chart, go to the link below. My windows 7 laptop doesn't have prntscrn on it, so I can't get a copy of it to paste here.)

Imposed since 1962, the US embargo has been reinforced in October 1992 by the Cuban Democracy Act (or "Torricelli Law"), which aimed to restrain the development of the Cuban economy’s new driving forces the by hitting the inflow of funds and goods by: i) the strict limitations of the transfers of foreign currencies by the families in exile, ii) the six-months ban to enter U.S. harbours of all ships that had anchored in a Cuban port, iii) sanctions against firms doing commerce with the island even though under the jurisdiction of a third state. The embargo was systematized by the Cuban Liberty and Democracy Solidarity Act ("Helms Burton Law") of March 1996, aimed to harden the "international" sanctions against Cuba. Its Title I generalizes the ban to import Cuban goods, demanding, for example, that exporters give proof that no Cuban sugar has been integrated in their products, as was already the case with nickel. It conditions the authorization of currency transfers to the creation on the island of a private sector including employment of salaried staff. Still more enterprising, Title II fixes the modalities of a transition to a "post-Castro" power, as well as the nature of the relationship to have with the United States. Title III grants the U.S. tribunals the right to judge demands for damage and interest made by a civil and moral person of U.S. nationality that considers having been injured by the loss of property in Cuba due to nationalization, and claims compensation from the users or beneficiaries of this property. At the request of the old owners, any national (and family) of a third state, having made transactions with these users or beneficiaries, can be sued in the United States. The sanctions incurred are set out in Title IV, which provides, inter alia, the refusal of the State Department to give U.S. entrance visas to these individuals and their families.

The normative content of this embargo -specially the extraterritoriality of its rules, which intend to impose on the international community unilateral sanctions by the United States, or the denial of the right of nationalization, through the concept of "traffic"- is a violation of the spirit and letter of the United Nations Charter and of the Organization of American States, and of the very fundamentals of international law. This excessive extension of the territorial jurisdiction of the United States is contrary to the principle of national sovereignty and to that of non-intervention in the internal choices of a foreign states - as recognized in the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice. It is opposed to the Cuban people’s rights to auto-determination and to development. It also contradicts strongly the freedom of trade, navigation, and movement of capital, all that the United States paradoxically claims everywhere else in the world. This embargo is moreover illegitimate and immoral because it attacks the social benefits realized by Cuba since years and imperils their successes -recognized by many international independent observers (in particular those of the WHO, UNESCO, UNICEF and many NGO). They are its public systems of education, research, health or culture, in plain exercise of human rights. Furthermore, the threat that this coercive operation poses for U.S. nationals and for foreigners extends the practical impact of the embargo to domains completely or partially excluded from the texts, such as food, medicines or medical equipment and exchanges of scientific information.

The harmful economic effects of the embargo

From an official Cuban source , the direct economic damages caused to Cuba by the U.S. embargo since its institution would exceed 70 billion dollars. The damages include: i) the loss of earnings due to the obstacles to the development of services and exportations (tourism, air transport, sugar, nickel; ii) the losses registered as a result of the geographic reorientation of the commercial flows, (additional costs of freight, stocking and commercialization at the purchasing of the goods…); iii) the impact of the limitation imposed on the growth of the national production of goods and services (limited access to technologies, lack of access to spare parts and hence early retirement of equipment, forced restructuring of firms, serious difficulties sustained by the sectors of sugar, electricity, transportation, agriculture…); iv) the monetary and financial restrictions (impossibility to renegotiate the external debt, interdiction of access to the dollar, unfavourable impact of the variation of the exchange rates on trade, risk-country, additional cost of financing due to U.S. opposition to the integration of Cuba into the international financial institutions…); v) the pernicious effects of the incentive to emigration, including illegal emigration (loss of human resources and talents generated by the Cuban educational system…); vi) social damages affecting the population (concerning food, health, education, culture, sport…).

If it affects negatively all the sectors , the embargo directly impedes -besides the exportations- the driving forces of the Cuban economic recovery, at the top of which are tourism, foreign direct investments (FDI) and currency transfers. Many European subsidiaries of U.S. firms had recently to break off negotiations for the management of hotels, because their lawyers anticipated that the contracts would be sanctioned under the provisions of the "Helms-Burton law". In addition, the buy-out by U.S. groups of European cruising societies, which moored their vessels in Cuba, cancelled the projects in 2002-03. The obstacles imposed by the United States, in violation of the Chicago Convention on civil aviation, to the sale or the rental of planes, to the supply of kerosene and to access to new technologies (e-reservation, radio-localization), will lead to a loss of 150 million dollars in 2003. The impact on the FDI is also very unfavourable. The institutes of promotion of FDI in Cuba received more than 500 projects of cooperation from US companies, but none of them could be realized - not even in the pharmaceutical and biotechnological industry, where Cuba has a very attractive potential. The transfer of currencies from the United States is limited (less than 100 dollars a month per family) and some European banks had to restrain their commitment under the pressure of the U.S. which let them know that indemnities would be required if the credits were maintained. In Cuba, the embargo penalizes the activities of the bank and finance, insurance, petrol, chemical products, construction, infrastructures and transports, shipyard, agriculture and fishing, electronics and computing…, but also for the export sectors (where the U.S. property prevailed before 1959), such as those of sugar, whose recovery is impeded by the interdiction of access to the fist international stock exchange of raw materials (New York), of nickel, tobacco, rum…

The harmful social effects of the embargo

The U.S. government’s announcements intimating that it would be favourable to the relaxation of the restrictions concerning foodstuffs and medicines went unheeded and cannot hide that Cuba has been the victim of a de facto embargo in these domains. The reduction of the availability of these types of goods exacerbates the privation of the population and constantly threatens its dietary security, its nutritional stability and its health. A humanitarian tragedy -which seems to be the implicit objective of the embargo- has been avoided only thanks to the will of the Cuban state to maintain at all costs the pillars of its social model, which guarantees to everyone, among others, a staple food for a modest price and a free consumption in the crèches, schools, hospitals, and homes for the elderly. That is the reaffirmation of the priority given by the authorities to the human development, which explains the established excellence of the statistical indicators of Cuba concerning health, education, research, culture… and this despite the extremely limited budgetary resources and the numerous problems resulting from the disappearance of the Soviet bloc. However, the continuation of the social progress in Cuba is impaired by the effective extension of the embargo.

The pressures exerted by the U.S. Departments of State and Trade on the suppliers of Cuba have concerned a wide range of goods necessary for the health sector (medicines destined for pregnant women, laboratory products, radiology equipment, operating tables and surgery equipment, anaesthetics, defibrillators, artificial breathing apparatuses, dialysis apparatuses, pharmaceutical stocks…) and went as far as to prevent the free supply of food for new-born babies and of equipment for unities of paediatric intensive care . The production capacities of vaccines conceived by Cuba are hampered by the frequent lack of spare parts and of essential components that have to be imported, as well as water treatment centres. This embargo provokes today an unjustified suffering of the Cuban people. The shortages affecting many medicines, which are not produced in Cuba, complicate the immediate and complete implementation of the procedures of treatment of breast cancer, leukaemia, cardiovascular or kidney diseases, and HIV for example. Moreover, the U.S. authority’s infringements on individual freedom of movement and scientific knowledge… (restrictions on travel of U.S. researchers, the disrespect of bilateral agreements on Cuban researcher’s visas, refusal to grant software licences or to satisfy the orders from Cuban libraries of books, magazines, diskettes or CD-Rom of specialized scientific literature…) have in fact led to the extension of the embargo to areas formally excluded from it by the law. One of the most fruitful opportunities to develop cooperation between nations on a solidary and humanist basis is therefore blocked.

The embargo is also in contradiction with the principles of the promotion and protection of human rights, which are desired by the U.S. people for themselves and for the rest of the world.

For all these reasons, this unacceptable embargo has to cease immediately.

http://www.alternatives.ca/eng/our-organisation/our-publications/analysis-and-articles/article/the-effects-of-the-us-embargo?lang=fr

[RadioRaheem84]

Wow! And Cuba survives despite all of this? I find it amazing that the little country faces all of these obstacles and still manages to top the charts in a lot areas concerning the well being of their people.

So in essence, the embargo in Cuba is not only a restriction of US goods but it concerns subsidiaries, whole routes changes on trade, negation of foreign investment that has anything remotely tied back to an American company?

This issue is so new to me, help me out with something. So what about other nations or multi-national corporations without American economic ties that want to invest in Cuba? How are they restricted?

[The Vegan Marxist]

Wow! And Cuba survives despite all of this? I find it amazing that the little country faces all of these obstacles and still manages to top the charts in a lot areas concerning the well being of their people.

So in essence, the embargo in Cuba is not only a restriction of US goods but it concerns subsidiaries, whole routes changes on trade, negation of foreign investment that has anything remotely tied back to an American company?

This issue is so new to me, help me out with something. So what about other nations or multi-national corporations without American economic ties that want to invest in Cuba? How are they restricted?

From what I've come to understand, other countries can trade with Cuba. It's just that the embargo ties between Cuba & the U.S. is what's restricting any real effective trade between the two.

[RadioRaheem84]

From what I've come to understand, other countries can trade with Cuba. It's just that the embargo ties between Cuba & the U.S. is what's restricting any real effective trade between the two.

But see this is the point I am trying to understand. If other nations can trade freely with Cuba then what is holding the nation back? How does the negation of trade with the US alone hurt the nation so much when it can trade freely with the EU or nations in Asia?

[Scary Monster]

What about more information on the embargo and how it has effected Cuba's economy. There is a lot of right wing stuff out there that claims the embargo had no effect as other nations trade with Cuba.

Also, the issue maybe that while Cubans don't starve to death and have most of their needs met, that people complain about the stagnation they experience. I saw a film about a Cuban poet who just graduated from University of Havana and was making 90 pesos a month, which he claimed "sucks". Granted I find it fascinating that he is working as a poet at all, and the state meets most of his other needs but this is an issue we should address on some of the social problems Cubans face.

The embargo not only prohibits US trade with Cuba, but it also discourages trade with Cuba from other countries. If a country trades with Cuba, then the US will impose sanctions on that country that's doin business with Cuba. This is why the embargo is thought of as cruel and one of the most unheard of economic actions in world history.

Heres a lil link http://leler.com/cuba/embargo.html. at the bottom of the page are some invaluable emails from cubans, ex-cubans, foreigners and tourists on what they think of the embargo and Castro. Most of the emails from actual Cubans are surprisingly positive about Castro's government and Cuba itself. Others show hatred for the government. Mostly because they blame Cuba's problems on the government rather than the embargo, and also because they have family members or friends that were tortured.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Scary Monster nailed it. Other countries are allowed, freely, to trade with Cuba, but with the threat tactics put forth by the U.S., it ends up operating like a blackmail scheme, "You do what we say, & no body will get hurt. Don't do what we say, then we can fuck your life up."

[RadioRaheem84]

Scary Monster nailed it. Other countries are allowed, freely, to trade with Cuba, but with the threat tactics put forth by the U.S., it ends up operating like a blackmail scheme, "You do what we say, & no body will get hurt. Don't do what we say, then we can fuck your life up."

Makes sense. Have there been any cases of the US laying down the law for trading with Cuba? Chavez seems to have a negotiation going with Cuba. Also, what some companies that have existing businesses there like United Colors of Benetton?

[The Vegan Marxist]

Makes sense. Have there been any cases of the US laying down the law for trading with Cuba? Chavez seems to have a negotiation going with Cuba. Also, what some companies that have existing businesses there like United Colors of Benetton?

Chavez & Venezuela have been attacked by U.S. relations many times, & each time they've failed. I'm not sure about others though.

I'm not sure what you're asking in your second question. Please try wording it better if you can, sorry.

[RadioRaheem84]

The number of 70 Billion has to be higher in lost investments for Cuba. Trade at that price happens in a short time for most nations.

I don't mean to be so picky about the premise of the article. I just want the full facts to stand up to any counter arguments right wingers might throw at us.

[The Vegan Marxist]

The number of 70 Billion has to be higher in lost investments for Cuba. Trade at that price happens in a short time for most nations.

I don't mean to be so picky about the premise of the article. I just want the full facts to stand up to any counter arguments right wingers might throw at us.

So what's your question exactly? Why is it harder for Cuba to reach that much, when many other countries can do so a lot easier?

[x359594]

...The fact of the matter is that, when you look at the reasons behind why those that fled when Fidel stated they could did what they did, the reason was that these people were merely communist-hating confused people who feared the idea of communism being implemented in Cuba, due to the anti-communist propaganda being led by the U.S., & does anyone remember the year Fidel Castro came into power? 1959, during the very decade of when the Red Scare was taking form all over the world, led by none other than the U.S., themselves...

Starting in 1961 other communist and socialist formations were subject to gradual erasure from the political scene by the ORI and its successor organizations, so that a number of socialists, anarchists and dissident communists fled the island. There is a rich exile literature produced by these groups, most of whom elected to live in friendly European states rather than the US where they faced harassment by the government and persecution by the reactionary exile community you describe above.


...There is a one party government in Cuba, but that does not mean that democracy doesn't exist there. In fact, there are more differences in the Communist Party in Cuba than there are between the Democrats and Republicans in the United States!...

I think this assertion is belied by the reform process initiated by Raúl Castro after he assumed leadership of the country. The PCC is undergoing a weeding out of long time apparatchiks and cadres in what Raúl calls a "democratizing process" of the Party – including the need to reflect diverse opinions. This is a tacit admission that, for its first 50 years, the Cuban Revolution did not create a democratic society and did not enjoy a free press, much less tolerate the existence of independent unions and dissident left political formations, whether political parties or informal groupings This is not to deny that the goal is to bring a socialist society into exitence despite all the forces arrayed against it. http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/misc/progress.gif


...Amnesty International claims that 72 prisoners of conscience are detained in Cuban jails. The truth is that these people were all tried and found guilty of being agents of a foreign power - the U.S. government...

The question here is the nature of the trials; those trials did not meet international standards of fair jurisprudence. In addition, after 50 years of persecution, LGBT persons are only just now enjoying full human rights, and the National Center for Sex Education under the leadership of Mariela Castro has led a vigorous campaign to redress the wrongs inflicted on this sector of the Cuban population.

An honest assessment of Cuba must acknowledge the actual state of the country since the Revolution. With the collapse of the USSR, Cubans had to violate basic ethical tenets in order to survive. “Each person for himself” replaced collective sharing. Social morale, already weakening in the 1980s from inflexible bureaucracy and hideous economic inefficiency, grew starkly thinner. In 1991, the state was forced to retract major clauses in its social contract with the people: it could not longer guarantee all an adequate diet, real employment or many of the multiple perks that Cubans alone enjoyed: free rent remained, but the amount of subsidized food per person shrunk drastically.

As Cuban foreign trade plunged by almost 30% and standards of living fell and Cubans began to adopt “survival hustles.” Buying and selling illegally to get certain goods became daily behavior patterns, hardly a stimulant for maintaining high socialist morale.

In addition, Cuba legalized the dollar and adopted foreign tourism as its dubious money earner. As it did so, the gang of exiles that had plotted violence in previous decades, returned with ever fiercer armed attacks. By 1997, hotel and tourist site bombings became frequent. In one bombing, an Italian tourist-businessman died. Violence against tourist locations, reasoned the Miami-based financiers of the attacks, would threaten the fragile basis of Cuba’s main revenue source.

Aside from sagging morale among a significant sector, Cuba faces a dramatic shortage of teachers – 8,000 officially – an agricultural system that forces the government to import more than 70% of its food, a wage structure that makes little sense when measured against productivity or fairness and a parasitic Havana of 2 million people who produce little and consume a lot, albeit not as much as they want.

The Cuban Revolution is facing tremendous challenges, and those of us who want to see it achieve authentic socialism must acknowledge existing conditions there and not indulge in wishful thinking or construct imaginary landscapes of "actually existing socialism."

For English readers the on-line edition of Granma the official periodical of the PCC is a good source of information about present conditions in Cuba: http://www.granma.cu/ingles/index.html .

[RadioRaheem84]

This is what I was looking for:

Case Study Merck Pharmaceuticals and Murex Technologies avoiding business with Cuba because of US Govt.:


Merck
was prosecuted by the US Government for an exchange
of scientific information with Cuba. Merck described the
exchange of information as an opportunity to assist WHO
in its Pan-American health-care activities. There was no
commercial transaction. Merck reports that they believed
that they had a “gentleman’s agreement” with the US
Department of Treasury to keep a low profile about the
incident (Bearse S, Merck, Whitehouse, New Jersey,
USA; personal communication). However, when
President Fidel Castro came to New York City in
October, 1995, to attend the United Nations’ 50th
anniversary celebration, the US Treasury Department
publicised the Merck incident.7 Similarly, when
International Murex Technologies of the USA acquired a
diagnostics company from the UK, Murex banned the
sale of diagnostic products from the UK to Cuba for fear
of reprisals by the US Government and the risk of adverse
publicity (Ramsey S, International Murex Corporation,
Norcross, Georgia, USA; personal communication). As a
result, Cuba had to find a new supplier of diagnostic
products followed by 3–6 months of validation testing in
Cuba before some of the products could be used.http://www.cubasolidarity.net/Kirkpatrick-lancet.pdf

Just one of many many cases involving the US government coming down hard on businesses for even hinting at the fact that trade might be possible. And this is only health and medicine related losses.

http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/js1161.htm

US Govt. seizes on businesses not even located in the United States for doing business with US citizens.

[RadioRaheem84]

Issue of Labor:


Theoretically, the administrator represents the the interests of the worker-peasant state. The Party is so involved with management that in many instances, it becomes somewhat insensitive to the problems of the masses. The trade union does not exist or it has become a bureau for vanguard workers. - Labour Minister Jorde Risquet in 1970, The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course and Legacy by Marifeli Perez-Stable, pg. 128

It wasn't until the early 80s that trade unions functioned properly in nearly 40,000 enterprises and elections selected more than 280,000 leaders. But regardless of the change, Cuba stil relied on the old co-operation between the Party, management and the unions model. As Raul Castro noted in 1973:


...the working class considered as a whole, cannot exercise it's own dictatorship. Originating in bourgeois society, the working classes marked by flaws and vices from the past.....Only through a political party that brings together it's conscious minority can the working class....construct a socialist society. - From the same book.

Cuba is still a Marxist-Leninist society but it does value the input of the workers through the trade unions which it considers the "most powerful link" between the party and the people. This doesn't downplay the democratic initiatives in Cuba at all, as there are plenty of facts and figures in the book I cited that show Cuba as being more democratic than it's neighbors. But the fact of the matter is that Cuba is, was and will always be (unless there is major change) a Marxist-Leninist, state capitalist country.

[Uppercut]

But see this is the point I am trying to understand. If other nations can trade freely with Cuba then what is holding the nation back? How does the negation of trade with the US alone hurt the nation so much when it can trade freely with the EU or nations in Asia?

As I understand it, other nations are free to trade with Cuba all they want to. The problem is that Cuba doesn't exactly produce anything these countries want to buy, except for Cuban cigars, obviously.

Plus, I don't think many capitalist nations would want to buy socialist-produced goods. Cuba is beat in terms of competing with multi-nationals.

[The Vegan Marxist]

As I understand it, other nations are free to trade with Cuba all they want to. The problem is that Cuba doesn't exactly produce anything these countries want to buy, except for Cuban cigars, obviously.

Plus, I don't think many capitalist nations would want to buy socialist-produced goods. Cuba is beat in terms of competing with multi-nationals.

Actually, the reason most countries don't try & trade with Cuba, despite the fact that they are able to, is because of this: http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1675652&postcount=21

[RadioRaheem84]

What is the rational behind the US blocking business with Cuba but not with China, Saudi Arabia, nearly half of the Middle East, Pakistan, Indonesia? Suharto, Shah of Iran, Pinochet, etc. How did they justify trading with them but not Cuba?

[Robocommie]

I read somewhere that before the Cuban Revolution, the US imported 90% of the sugar and tobacco produced by Cuba. 90%. That is staggering. Imagine how much of a dent that would put in an economy to just lose that overnight, especcially since agriculture was the primary industry in Cuba before Castro.

Frankly, to lose that much business to an embargo, it's kind of amazing that Cuba isn't in a situation more like Haiti was, before the earthquake.

[The Vegan Marxist]

What is the rational behind the US blocking business with Cuba but not with China, Saudi Arabia, nearly half of the Middle East, Pakistan, Indonesia? Suharto, Shah of Iran, Pinochet, etc. How did they justify trading with them but not Cuba?

At all honesty, it's a political matter. All those countries that you stated have profitable products willing to trade with the U.S. & want to profit as well from the U.S. Cuba is well known for not caring about the profitization over their citizens, nor through business settlements between them & the U.S. The U.S. know they can get what they want from these other countries, it's like the term, 'I scratch your back if you scratch my back'. Though, they know damn well that if a profitable trade is visible between Cuba, yet it gets in the way of the Cuban people & their lives, Castro would never make the deal.

In other words, if a country is willing to play 'capitalism' then a trade agreement will happen, if not, then just look at how the U.S. treats Cuba.

[RadioRaheem84]

This is a matter where I think that the political class of the US and the business interests differ. The business community dislikes the embargo as much as leftists do but the political class in the US remains adamant on stopping the example of Cuba. This makes me wonder just who really pushes the strings in a bourgeoisie society; the business elites, the owners of the wealth or the political class managing the affairs of the bourgeois? Iraqi Sanctions were also criticized by the business class. This could also mean that you cannot separate politics from the economy.

[The Vegan Marxist]

This is a matter where I think that the political class of the US and the business interests differ. The business community dislikes the embargo as much as leftists do but the political class in the US remains adamant on stopping the example of Cuba. This makes me wonder just who really pushes the strings in a bourgeoisie society; the business elites, the owners of the wealth or the political class managing the affairs of the bourgeois? Iraqi Sanctions were also criticized by the business class. This could also mean that you cannot separate politics from the economy.

Would I be going too far by saying that we, as the working class, are just as responsible since we're not doing as much as we could be doing to help end this embargo between the U.S. & Cuba?

[RadioRaheem84]

Would I be going too far by saying that we, as the working class, are just as responsible since we're not doing as much as we could be doing to help end this embargo between the U.S. & Cuba?

You could blame a lot of things on the working class and our inaction. But we also have lives to live, fear of retribution, no political clout, nothing except our voices and we have yet to mobilize for our interests, why do you expect us to mobilize for the interests of foreigners? This is the state of the working class today.

[The Vegan Marxist]

You could blame a lot of things on the working class and our inaction. But we also have lives to live, fear of retribution, no political clout, nothing except our voices and we have yet to mobilize for our interests, why do you expect us to mobilize for the interests of foreigners? This is the state of the working class today.

Very true, but there's going to be a time, very soon, when it's either going to be us to finally take action, or we fall with the rest of those still suffering & struggling - foreign & domestic.

[Communist]

In Haiti
More than 95,000 patients treated (http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2010/febrero/juev18/haiti.html)

Leticia Martínez Hernández


PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti.— More than 95,000 patients have been treated here to date here by the Cuban medical brigade since the January 12 earthquake, and 4,500 operations have been performed. However, as brigade coordinator Carlos Alberto García says, in looking toward the country’s future, the most important part begins today with the transfer of equipment and medical personnel to two new hospitals in the provinces.

Dr. García explained that one hospital will be set up in the Port Salut commune and another in Corail, both at a considerable distance from the capital.

"The new centers will be in places which have bee lacking the conditions for health care because of a shortage of doctors, equipment, running water and electricity.

These institutions will be open not only during the post-earthquake national emergency situation, but also will continue to provide services on an ongoing basis.

"With the two new hospitals and the seven Comprehensive Diagnostics Centers in various departments, we are taking the first steps toward improving the health system in Haiti," the coordinator stated.

A total of 1,439 Cuban doctors trained on the island are currently working in Haiti, 637 of them graduates from the Latin American School of Medicine. The Cuban medical brigade is providing services in 134 of the country’s 140 communes.

_____

Translated by Granma International (http://www.granma.cu/ingles/index.html)

[FSL]

This is a matter where I think that the political class of the US and the business interests differ. The business community dislikes the embargo as much as leftists do but the political class in the US remains adamant on stopping the example of Cuba. This makes me wonder just who really pushes the strings in a bourgeoisie society; the business elites, the owners of the wealth or the political class managing the affairs of the bourgeois? Iraqi Sanctions were also criticized by the business class. This could also mean that you cannot separate politics from the economy.


These actions are opposed by a small and of lesser importance sections of the bourgeoisie. Most cappies that wouldn't be in a position to immediately profit from trading with Cuba, are very much satisfied with the effort to keep it as poor as possible.

[Glenn Beck]

This is a matter where I think that the political class of the US and the business interests differ. The business community dislikes the embargo as much as leftists do but the political class in the US remains adamant on stopping the example of Cuba. This makes me wonder just who really pushes the strings in a bourgeoisie society; the business elites, the owners of the wealth or the political class managing the affairs of the bourgeois? Iraqi Sanctions were also criticized by the business class. This could also mean that you cannot separate politics from the economy.

Precisely, you cannot separate politics from the economy. The bourgeois dominance over politics mainly manifests through social networks, ideological hegemony, economic influence, and in general what you could broadly speaking term incentives and disincentives. It's not so much a monolithic conspiracy or anything like that. If you'd like you could think of it in terms of the capitalists as a whole being shareholders for the government, which would be like a corporation they own collectively but don't directly control. They leave that up to the CEO (Presidency) and Board of Directors (Congress) or whatever. Sometimes the CEO has more vision than the shareholders, that's what they pay him for after all. So he decides to sacrifice short term profitability for a "political" edge, kind of like a corporation in the economy can sacrifice some revenue in the short term by slashing prices or manufacturing an artificial shortage to create a monopoly. It's not a perfect metaphor but I think it has some use.

As for your question about the effects of the embargo on Cuban society, considering the Cuban economy essentially revolved around exporting sugar (and certain other commodities, mainly raw materials) to the US and importing consumer goods, it is a minor miracle that Cuban trade with the Eastern Bloc managed to pick up the slack so effectively. Even if, say, China and Europe were willing and able to replace the role of the US in trade with Mexico; Mexico would suffer tremendously from in the case of a US trade embargo simply in the case of the massive logistical adjustments that would need to be made. In reality the USSR did not have equivalents for all the commodities that Cuba needed to import. As is the case with many neocolonial countries, including most of Latin America throughout recent history, Cuba was deeply dependent on the USA for consumer goods and the capital goods to maintain its industries. This last factor was a crucial one: you can read accounts of the economic situation immediately after the revolution. They describe the situation something like this: most of the factory managers and senior technicians had left into exile after the revolution, and oftentimes the technicians themselves lived in the US and would be flown over periodically to maintain the factory! The specialized parts, of course, were only made by the particular company within the United States; equivalent parts from other manufacturers couldn't be used. Thus many Cuban factories, mills, etc. were left with nobody who knew how to run them and no source of replacement parts.

Its late and I'm nodding off, which oddly makes me even more long winded than I usually am, so I wrote a whole novel on the most obvious part that doesn't really answer your question! After the fall of the USSR the embargo was tightened with the Helms-Burton and Toricelli acts that attempted to put the coup de grace on the Cuban revolution. The first law is more relevant to the embargo in that it essentially allows the US to sue or sanction any corporation anywhere that trades with Cuba as it pleases. Of course the US doesn't do this every time it gets the opportunity, but it is perfectly capable of selectively applying the law to make things harder for Cuba by forcing corporations to drop them in order to keep their likely much more profitable access to the US market. If you're curious the legal argument for this law is that, taking into account the massive US control over the Cuban economy pre-revolution, practically the entire economy of Cuba is stolen US property, so if you trade with Cuba you are trafficking in stolen goods. It'd be hilarious if it weren't so depressing.

[Communist]

Cuban-trained doctors vaccinate the Haitian population (http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2010/febrero/mier17/doctors-vaccinate-the-Haitian-population.html)


A group of doctors trained in the Latin American School of Medicine in Cuba (ELAM) have joined the vaccination campaign organized by Cuban medical personnel in devastated Haiti.

http://www.granma.cu/fotos%202010/febrero/vacunas-haiti-2-17febre.jpg

The young doctors, from various Latin American countries, began their work in one of the largest improvised camps for victims of the earthquake, assisted by Cuban medical personnel who are providing services in Haiti.

There has been no vaccination campaign to date at the camp, located in the Saint Louis Gonzaga secondary school, despite requests to nongovernmental organizations and other institutions, according to the camp’s coordinator, Elvire Constant.

Latin American and Cuban doctors, assisted by nurses from the island, immunized the population with vaccines for diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough, placing a priority on children and women.

____________________ (http://www.workers.org/cuba/cuba_china_venezuela_0128/index.html)

Translated by Granma International (http://www.granma.cu/ingles/index.html)

[proudcomrade]

Isn't Cuba a dictatorship?
No.

:laugh::laugh::laugh: Oh, that's a good one...tell me another!



The five Cubans were sent to Miami as foreign agents to penetrate the exile groups who had been carrying out terrorist acts against Cuba; including blowing up an airplane full of innocent people, and bombing resorts in Cuba.


...so you admit that they were spies?

Speaking of blowing up airplanes, how about that time when dear old Raulita ordered his forces to shoot down a plane full of Cuban-Americans for flying over the island's airspace armed with a cargo hold full of...pamphlets?



But what are small facts in the face of a big lie?


...couldn't have said it better, myself.




“How can those that train and provide military supplies to the bloodiest, most reactionary, and most corrupt governments in the world, such as those of Somoza, Pinochet, Stroessner, the gorillas in Uruguay, Mobutu, and the shah of Iran, just to name a few, mouth this slogan?

Riiight, and his regime's bloody warmongering in Angola was a positive example of internationalism? :rolleyes:


“In short, how can the imperialist government that forcibly maintains a military base in our territory and subjects our people to a criminal economic blockade speak of human rights?”

How can a dictator who owns multiple armored luxury vehicles and a multiple-story house, lavishing Lacoste suits, champagne and whiskey onto his own sons while the people's food rations are being taken away, speak of human rights?

How can someone responsible for the years-long privation of liberty and physical safety of an unarmed young dissident musician with zero record of attempts against the government, speak of human rights?

How can the cynical bastard stand on an international stage and make bitter jokes about the educational achievements of Cuba's underaged prostitutes, and yet speak of human rights?

How can the tyrant responsible for years of concentration camps for gays, speak of human rights?

While there remain hundreds of prison combines on the island, how can he speak of human rights?

While there remain luxury resorts full of Spaniards and Germans exploiting Cuban youth as sex tourists while the vast majority of the people are shorted food and sent to jail for "predelictive criminal intent", how can he speak of US "imperialism"?

Comrades, stop falling for this relic and his tired old lies. I cannot think of a poorer excuse for a Marxist living and breathing today.

[Robocommie]

Aren't you an authoritarian socialist? Why complain about dictators now?

[proudcomrade]

Why not complain about them?

[The Vegan Marxist]

You're basing your arguments against first the Cuban Five on a topic that had no relevancy on why they were arrested. Then you attack the leader based on a house that he lives in, which if you look at the pictures, has no comparison to the nice homes here in the States. And let's get the 'gay camps' topic straightened out, he is no longer trying to 're-educate' gays or anything like that, & is practically pro-gay now.

[Robocommie]

Why not complain about them?

Because you're an authoritarian socialist?

[Communist]

.
Cuban socialism builds model health system (http://www.workers.org/cuba/cuba_0917/index.html)

By David Hoskins

The 1959 Cuban Revolution overturned the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. The revolution ended Cuba’s status as a U.S. neocolony and made possible a complete overhaul and rebuilding of the medical system in that country along socialist lines.

In 1960 revolutionary physician Che Guevara formally addressed the Cuban Militia. His speech has since been published as an essay titled “On Revolutionary Medicine,” which outlines the socialist view of the relationship between revolution, private property and medicine:

“For one to be a revolutionary doctor or to be a revolutionary at all, there must first be a revolution. Isolated individual endeavor, for all its purity of ideals, is of no use, and the desire to sacrifice an entire lifetime to the noblest of ideals serves no purpose if one works alone. ... The life of a single human being is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest man on earth. ... Far more important than a good remuneration is the pride of serving one’s neighbor. Much more definitive and much more lasting than all the gold that one can accumulate is the gratitude of a people.”

Pre-revolution statistics on the health and well-being of the Cuban people are scarce, as the average person’s welfare was not a priority for the dictatorship. The little bit that can be gleaned from Batista-era government records was communicated by former Cuban President Fidel Castro at a 1989 rally at Havana’s Plaza of the Revolution commemorating the 30th anniversary of the revolution.

At the time of the revolution Cuba’s infant mortality rate exceeded 60 deaths per 1,000 live births. Twelve mothers died during delivery for every 10,000 births. There were 6,000 doctors in the entire country, almost all of whom were concentrated in the capital. Life expectancy was below 60 years of age. Public health services were nonexistent in the countryside, where more than half the population lived.

Since that time Cuba’s health care system, which is 100 percent publicly owned, has developed into a pinnacle of achievement in socialist medicine. Article 50 of Cuba’s Constitution guarantees the right to health protection and care. The constitution provides for free medical and hospital care through a system of rural medical service networks, polyclinics, hospitals and treatment centers for preventative and specialized medicine. Free dental care, health education, regular medical examinations and general vaccinations are also guaranteed.

Cuba’s socialist system has made great advances in improving health quality. According to World Health Organization statistics published in 2009, Cuban life expectancy has increased to 78 years—18 years longer than the average Cuban could expect to live prior to the revolution and two years longer than the regional average for the Americas.

Cuba’s infant mortality rate has been reduced by more than 90 percent, to just five deaths per 1,000 live births. The average regional infant mortality rate is 16 deaths per 1,000. The maternal mortality rate has dropped to just over four deaths per 10,000 births. The decline in delivery-related deaths can be attributed to the fact that 100 percent of Cuban births are attended by skilled health workers. Today Cuba boasts more than 66,000 physicians and is able to send thousands of its own doctors to provide medical care to the world’s poor and oppressed.

“¡Salud!” (http://www.saludthefilm.net/ns/index.html) a 2007 film highlighting Cuba’s health care accomplishments, estimates that this small country has approximately 28,000 health professionals now providing care in 68 countries. Cuban doctors and nurses serve the poorest of the poor in countries like Honduras, Haiti and Guatemala.

Tens of thousands of international students are studying free of charge in Cuba’s medical schools—on the condition that after graduation they provide care to underserved populations in their countries of origin.

These accomplishments fulfill the principles of socialist health care as laid out by Che in 1960. Much of Cuba’s success is a result of the socialist system’s integrated approach to care, which emphasizes health education, affordable housing, proper diet and other preventative measures designed to improve and prolong life.

Cuba is a developing country that has struggled with the loss of its biggest trading partner—the Soviet Union. The former socialist bloc, through the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance, had accounted for 85 percent of Cuban trade. More than 90 percent of Cuban energy needs had been met with Soviet oil and oil byproducts provided at subsidized prices.

With the 1991 defeat of the Soviet Union, the U.S. government saw an opening to attempt to strangle Cuba’s socialist system. In 1992 the U.S. Congress passed the so-called Cuban Democracy Act. The act is a vicious attack on Cuba’s health care system, which the World Health Organization had praised in 1989 as “a model for the world.”

A 1997 American Association of World Health report titled “Denial of Food and Medicine: The Impact of the U.S. Embargo on the Health and Nutrition in Cuba” outlines the difficulties deliberately imposed by the U.S. on Cuba’s health system.

The act imposed a ban on subsidiary trade with Cuba, severely constraining Cuba’s ability to import medicine and equipment from third-country sources. Shippers are discouraged from delivering medical equipment to Cuba by a provision in the act that prohibits ships from loading or unloading cargo in U.S. ports for 180 days after delivering cargo of any type to Cuba.

Licensing and other restrictions restrain even charitable contributions to Cuba.

Despite the severe double blow dealt to the Cuban economy by the Soviet Union’s defeat and the punitive economic blockade by the U.S., Cuba has managed to protect the integrity of its health care system in a way that clearly illustrates the superiority of socialist health care.

______________________


© 1995-2010 Workers World (http://www.workersworld.net/wwp/pmwiki.php/Main/Background). (http://wwppitt.weebly.com/)
Copying & distribution of article
is permitted without royalty
provided this notice is preserved.

[manic expression]

Speaking of blowing up airplanes, how about that time when dear old Raulita ordered his forces to shoot down a plane full of Cuban-Americans for flying over the island's airspace armed with a cargo hold full of...pamphlets?
So you have no problem with agents of the US invading the airspace of a sovereign country in order to spread imperialist propaganda? Why do you slander the Cuban Revolution for the mere act of defending itself from aggression? Why are you so concerned for the welfare of imperialist collaborators who want nothing more than to drag Cuba back into slavery?

[Communist]

.
Coping with global crisis
Cuba’s humane policy (http://www.workers.org/2009/world/cuba_1231/index.html)

By Cheryl LaBash


Where in the world today is unemployment only 1.8 percent, and every 2009 student graduate found a job?

“In Cuba,” reported Raymundo Navarro of the International Department of the Confederation of Cuban Workers (Central Trabajadores de Cuba) at a labor conference in Tijuana, Mexico, in Dec. 2009.

Yet Cuba’s socialist economy is not isolated from the effects of the global capitalist economic crisis. The price of Cuba’s main exports, sugar and nickel, plummeted disastrously while the price of food imports spiked.

Sugar production for export became so impractical when the international price of sugar dropped to two-tenths of a cent per pound that most of the sugar mills were closed, ending 150,000 jobs.

A workers’ study program originally proposed by former president Fidel Castro continues to offer displaced workers 100 percent of their current pay rate while they train for another trade or even decide to enroll in the university, Navarro explained.

In 2009, 186,000 students graduated. Navarro commented, “We openly challenge the bootlickers and imperialists to find one of those students who didn’t get a job — not one could they find. The unemployment level in Cuba is 1.8 percent despite the economy.”

Moreover, not one of those Cuban graduates is weighed down with student loan debt either as all education in Cuba is free.

In a capitalist economy, the only investment worth making is the investment that will bring the highest profit. Investing in human development — especially in the era of a “jobless” capitalist economic recovery — is a liability for the corporations, not an asset.

In socialist Cuba where gains and losses are shared by all, the development of human potential benefits all of society and is valued as an asset no matter the cost.

That’s how and why the Cubans do it.


________________________



© 1995-2010 Workers World (http://www.workersworld.net/wwp/pmwiki.php/Main/Background). (http://wwppitt.weebly.com/)
Copying & distribution of article
is permitted without royalty
provided this notice is preserved.

[S. Zetor]

Here's a re-post of my summary of Peter Roman's book 'People's Power. Cuba's Experience With Representative Government' (1999) that I wrote to a friend once who wanted to know something about the political system in Cuba. I originally posted it almost years ago in another discussion, but I believe it's useful to post it again here.

Personally I'm more interested in the difficult issues concerning the Cuban revolution (which I support), because over time I've grown pretty tired of the same old "Cuba sends doctors", "Cuba has a wonderful health care system". These things are great of course, but after a while you want to know something else as well.

---

There's three levels of representation:

1) the municipal level, where each elected delegate represents a district of around 1500 people, is clearly the arena where people have direct power over almost everything that goes on in their district or municipality. Together the district delegates make up the municipal assembly. "The municipal assembly analyzes, discusses, supervises, monitors, inspects, and controls the social, economic, judicial, and political affairs of the municipality. It selects managers for local enterprises and entities such as public health clinics and schools, and it helps formulate and approves the municipal plan and budget. It also monitors the performance of enterprises [..]"

It is the task of the local delegates to solve people's personal problems, e.g. to get them some help in fixing a leaking roof. When Roman inquired about the issue from Cubans, almost everybody knew their delegate by name, and the practice was that the delegate was at the disposal of his/her electors any time of day (or night), should there be need.

"Unlike the practice in the former Soviet Union, municipal assembly delegate candidates are directly nominated, with no party interference, by the voters from the election district they represent and in which they must reside, and they are elected in secret, competitive elections [with 2-8 candidates standing in each district]. They serve two-and-a-half-year terms and may stand for re-election without limit."

2) the provincial level with the provincial assembly; the delegates are elected by the people of the province in direct, non-competitive elections every five years. "The provincial assembly controls and directs the state economic enterprises and social service entities directly subordinate to the provincial government."

3) the national level with the national assembly; only the national assembly can pass new legislation, and it's elected by the people in direct, non-competitive election every five years.

Concerning levels 2 and 3, "the candidates are nominated by the municipal assemblies from lists compiled by the national, provincial and municipal candidacy commissions. Elections for these positions are direct but not competitive. Candidates must get a majority of the popular votes cast to be elected."

So the elections on levels 2 and 3 are not competitive, which means there is as many candidates as there are seats in the assemblies. The municipal assemblies present the voters in the municipality with a list of around 10 candidates that has been drafted by an elections commission, and the people can either vote for the whole list, or any smaller number of candidates on the list they want [so in effect everyone has several votes at their disposal, not just one]. If a candidate receives less that 50% of the votes cast, he/she won't get elected. In practice every candidate gets more than 90% of the votes cast, which means that almost everybody casts their votes for the whole list. According to Roman, there is no legal or other punishment for not voting for the whole list (but there is social pressure to conform).

Also, the election in Cuba are not "political", i.e. the candidates for any level of government are not allowed to campaign, "i'm so-and-so, i promise to do this-and-that if you elect me". In municipal elections the candidates are often well known in their community, so people have an idea who they are, and their pictures with some biographical information gets posted on walls or telephone poles during election times. But they don't carry political slogans or campaign promises.

It is the same with provincial and national elections, though in this case people don't have very good chances of knowing who the candidates are unless they are rather well-known people. To a great extent they accept the candidates as the recommendation of the candidacy commissions.

"The role of the Cuban Communist Party [..] is essentially that of political leadership. It sets national priorities and long-term goals for the whole society, including the government. It initiates, directs, and encourages the spread of socialist consciousness and behavior; it monitors and assists the organs of people's power in carrying out their
representative and governmental functions; it reviews legislation prior to submission to the National Assembly; and it names and/or approves personnel who fall under the nomenclature system (the right to designate high government officials). According to my research, the party does not usually or officially propose, nominate, or in any other way interfere in the selection of candidates for municipal assembly delegates."

The communist party imposes its vision on society by means of persuasion, not of dictating from above (like in the Soviet Union). People do have a real possibility of rejecting the proposals, but in practice they don't do it. You can say it's because in the end they support the leadership despite grumblings, or you can say they do it because they otherwise feel intimidated or something. I think it's a bit of both, though I of course hope it's more of the former.

A big part of it has to do with the prevailing political culture (and the international position of Cuba), where there is social pressure to conform to the leadership's suggestions.. to do otherwise could easily invite charges of being a counter-revolutionary. On the other hand, I think that's pretty unsurprising in a community under the kind of siege that Cuba is under..

Having non-political campaigns with no false promises, horse-trading and marketing has its good sides, but I can't say it matches my ideal of democratic participation. But then again, I believe one must see that Cuba is not in a situation where it could be soft on the influence of US funded dissidents. Cuban TV broadcasts American series like 'Desperate
housewives' where everybody can see the slick image of what life in America is supposed to be like.. not that it's likely to be like that for immigrants, but that's another story.

Nevertheless, I don't think it's right to dampen the Cuban people's right to discuss politics and different political options in public, but I also have to say that I think in the present situation some controls are better kept in place - otherwise you might end up being as "free" as people in Jamaica or Haiti. I think the communist party leadership, by means of persuasion, not of dictate, is a necessary compromise.. I would exchange the Finnish system for the Cuban system any time.

[Sogdian]

Fidel Castro - The Untold Story (2001)
Documentary about Fidel Castro, covering 40 years of Cuban Revolution.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THu7gop9gHI&feature=PlayList&p=CA7F3EFCCA4F4E5C&index=0&playnext=1

(this is part 1 of 10, the rest on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Sk07OSkAlY&feature=PlayList&p=CA7F3EFCCA4F4E5C&index=1))

[Scary Monster]

So you have no problem with agents of the US invading the airspace of a sovereign country in order to spread imperialist propaganda? Why do you slander the Cuban Revolution for the mere act of defending itself from aggression? Why are you so concerned for the welfare of imperialist collaborators who want nothing more than to drag Cuba back into slavery?

Plus, the Brothers to the Rescue planes that were shot down were repeatedly warned to exit Cuban airspace by the fighter pilots (and even flew next to the planes and dipped their wings towards them to physically warn them), to which none of the cuban-american pilots even acknowledged, and kept flying into cuban airspace.

[Communist]

.
U.S. ignored Cuban advice on hurricanes - twice (http://www.workers.org/2007/world/hurricanes-0621/index.html)
By Teresa Gutierrez
published 2007


A nonfiction book titled “Isaac’s Storm,” written by Erik Larson, vividly details a horrific hurricane that devastated Galveston, Texas, on Sept. 8, 1900. The hurricane killed over 8,000 people—one-sixth of the population, destroyed one-third of the city and sank most of the island under water.

At the time, Isaac’s Storm was the greatest storm ever to hit the U.S. It forever changed the course of history for Galveston.

The book documents a series of errors and miscalculations which, had they not occurred, could have saved lives. One of those miscalculations was a patronizing and colonial view towards an island in the Caribbean that had, in fact, a great deal of knowledge about hurricanes.

That island was Cuba.

In his book, Larson describes how if Isaac Cline—the weather meteorologist in charge of the operations in Galveston at the time of the storm—had paid attention to warnings from Cuba about the impending storm, history would have taken a different course for Galveston and its people. It was not the only mistake, but it was an important one.

Larson writes, “Cuba’s meteorologists had pioneered the art of hurricane predictions; its best weathermen were revered by the Cuban public.” By 1870, the Belén Observatorio in Havana had dedicated itself to finding the meteorological signals that warned of the advance of a hurricane.

No different today

Fast forward to May 23-26, 2007, when a meeting between U.S. and Cuban hurricane experts took place in Monterrey, Mexico, organized by the Center for International Policy.

This U.S.-Cuba Hurricane Summit was the first event of its kind, according to organizers. It was attended by Wayne Smith of the organizing Center; Dagoberto Rodríguez, head of the Cuban Interests Section in the U.S.; several journalists and hurricane experts from Louisiana State University hurricane center; and the emergency management directors of Mobile County in Alabama.

However, a U.S. meteorologist from Miami, Lixion Avilia, was prohibited from attending the conference. The U.S. State Department reportedly detained Avilia in Dallas en route to Monterrey, Mexico, and told him not to attend the U.S.-Cuba Summit.

The Cubans are not only experts in predicting hurricanes. They are vastly superior to the U.S. in protecting their population from these natural disasters. If the U.S. government was truly concerned about the millions of people in the path of ever-more-deadly hurricanes and storms, it not only would have sent more experts to attend this important conference. It would have allowed the conference to take place in the U.S.

Conference organizers were forced to have the event in Mexico so that Cubans could attend.

But the U.S. government is not concerned with the plight of its population. The whole world was reminded of this in August 2005 when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the Gulf Coast region. The human and material loss was enormous, but the real neglect and devastation was the fault of the government, not the hurricanes. Monies that should have been used to shore up the levees were diverted to the war against Iraq.

This was yet another example of the insidious racist nature of this system and the contempt this government has for Black people and the poor.
Two attendees from Cuba at the Monterrey Summit were Dr. José Borges Rodríguez and Dr. Daniel Loriet Andreu representing the Henry Reeve Medical Brigade. This brigade was set to come to New Orleans after Katrina to offer assistance and bring 1,600 doctors and 36 tons of medical supplies. The U.S. government callously barred this aid.

The brigade instead departed for Pakistan and Indonesia, where major earthquakes had taken a terrible toll.

The June 3 Times Picayune from New Orleans writes about the Monterrey Summit: “Since Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana has awakened to the importance of developing evacuation plans that take pets into account.

Cuba builds an extra measure into the island’s emergency planning: Not only are pets sheltered in the face of an approaching storm, provision also is made for packing up and moving refrigerators, televisions and other hard-won possessions. That was one insight exchanged between Cubans and their counterparts in emergency management from Louisiana and other Gulf Coast locations at a hurricane conference last week in this Mexican city of 3.6 million nestled in mountains 180 miles away from Gulf waters.”

Possessions, as well as their owners, were contemptuously disregarded by FEMA and the U.S. government in Louisiana in Katrina's aftermath.

The Cuban government on the other hand—a socialist government that organizes to defend, not defeat the people—handles these things another way.

A well-known and respected Cuba solidarity activist from Houston, Tex., was in Cuba in 2004 and saw firsthand how the Cuban government prepares for hurricanes.

Ernest McMillan wrote to movement activists in 2004:


“Hurricane Ivan is scheduled to make a visit here late tomorrow night or by early Sunday. Jamaica is feeling it now. Looks like my plans for church on Sunday are out! Anyway, you can probably imagine the tension and preoccupation here right now. There is so much spirit of resolve though (that fear and the hype we are typically bombarded with by the U.S. media during similar conditions are non-existent.) The government is treating this as if a military invasion is taking place. Generals, soldiers and even Fidel sit besides meteorologists and public health professionals in an uninterrupted (commercial free) dialog about the many aspects of the approaching cyclone, the multi-sided impact it could have as well as the various precautions being taken. They are mobilizing an intelligent, well grounded citizenry to action. Students secure their classrooms and school buildings. Public works personnel, medical teams and soldiers position themselves in strategic stations throughout the city and countryside in advance of the storm, rather than after the fact as we are accustomed to here.”


This is one reason why Cuban doctors were not allowed to come to New Orleans in 2005. The people of the region would have been awakened to another kind of society, a socialist society.

That idea would have been embraced by a people who were reminded once again that this is a country built on slavery that aims to keep its workers and oppressed down.

A socialist way of handling hurricanes would have sounded damn good.
_____________


© 1995-2010 Workers World. (http://wwppitt.weebly.com/)
Copying & distribution of article
is permitted without royalty
provided this notice is preserved

[khad]

Riiight, and his regime's bloody warmongering in Angola was a positive example of internationalism? :rolleyes:
I only wish they were more warmongering. South Africa needed more death.

[Communist]

50 years of revolution (http://www.workers.org/2009/world/cuba_legacy_1217/)
Cuba’s legacy in fighting racism

By Larry Hales
Dec 10, 2009

On Dec. 1 (2009) a statement began to be circulated entitled “A Declaration of African-American Support for the Civil Rights Struggle in Cuba.”

The statement has 60 signatories—well-respected Black intellectuals, cultural performers and political activists, many of whom were leaders during the Civil Rights era and continue to be today.

http://www.workers.org/2009/world/cuba_1217.jpg
Medical students from around the world are educated in Cuba.
WW (http://www.workers.org/) photo: Kris Hamel

The statement alleges not only racism in Cuban society but systemic racism. It insinuates that racism is a policy of the Cuban government, not merely a lasting vestige of the neo-colonial government before the 1959 socialist revolution.

To anyone who has ever been to Cuba or is in the movement to defend the Cuban Revolution, such a statement seems odd. It seems rather ironic coming from the U.S., despite the existence of the first Black president.

This statement signed by prominent figures is extremely dangerous for the Cuban Revolution and its admirers, defenders and those who look upon it as an example of what is not only necessary but possible when working and oppressed people confront their oppressor.

Such a statement comes at a time when the U.S. is trying to fix its image around the world.

The situation of the people of New Orleans has not changed, and many thousands have still not been able to return to their homes or been allowed to rebuild. They haven’t received the training and materials needed, nor prevailing wages, in order to come back and rebuild what had historically been a Black city.

While the U.S. government sat criminally by and millions around the world watched as tens of thousands of Black people languished in rising waters and oppressive heat, facing roving white bands armed to the teeth and racist police, the Cuban government amassed hundreds of doctors, nurses and other professionals who were ready to descend on New Orleans to assist the people, but their offer was ignored.

Racism permeates U.S. society

Today, the situation for Black people, especially young people, has worsened. Oppressed people in the U.S. are left behind greatly in every category.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while youth unemployment is at an all-time high, it is direr in the oppressed communities. Black youth unemployment is at 32 percent; it’s at 22 percent for Latino/a youth and much higher in Indigenous communities.

These numbers are inadequate, as they don’t account for youth who are discouraged and who have probably never had a job.

Poverty continues to increase: 34 percent for Black youth and 28 percent for Latino/a youth, while for Indigenous youth statistics are difficult to find—though 60 percent of Native people outside of cities are impoverished.

The rates of Black and Latino/a youth who graduate on time with a high school diploma are 59 and 61 percent, respectively. Only 50,000 Black men graduate each year with a bachelor’s degree.

A much higher number of Black men between the ages of 20 and 29 are under correctional supervision or control. As of 2008, one in three or 846,000 Black males were incarcerated. (childrensdefense.org)

The reality of oppressed people is tied to the very foundation of U.S. society. The roots of the rise of U.S. capital are the most naked forms of exploitation—theft of land, genocide, pillage, plunder and racism.

In order to maintain the status quo, racism, sexism, homophobia and other ills are not only tolerated but used by the ruling elite and continue to be written into the laws of society.

Millions of people—undocumented workers—are pushed into the U.S. by imperialism, whether by neo-liberal policies or the military in their homelands, and they fear being rounded up and deported.

Their labor not only makes millions for the capitalists, but taxes collected from them put billions into government coffers. The government uses immigration agents to raid workplaces and homes and allows local police to be deputized so they can be used federally to round up people for having brown or black skin and speaking a different language.

And then there is the current war being waged against Muslims and Arab people, evident in the seizing of mosques and religious institutions by the federal government.

Cuba demonstrates anti-racist solidarity

But Cuba is targeted for racism? This is nothing more than a ploy to further try and undermine the revolutionary government. Cuba has a long history of showing solidarity with liberation movements around the world.

Though it is a resource-poor nation, it has sent tens of thousands of doctors and educators around the world. Cuba’s assistance to the Angolans defeated the South African military and was crucial in breaking the back of apartheid.

Cuba has also shown support to Black people in the U.S. and has given political asylum to a number of Black militants, including Assata Shakur, who has a $1 million bounty on her head from the state of New Jersey.

The Cuban revolution has made great strides in reversing backwards ideas and building a society upon the principles of socialism, where people are in solidarity with one another instead of in competition. This is its greatest weapon and ultimately the greatest weapon any society can use to combat racism, sexism and homophobia.

Afro-Cuban artists have written a letter to the African-American people answering the outrageous claims in the Dec. 1 “declaration” regarding alleged racism in Cuba. The letter can be downloaded in its entirety by clicking on Cuban Solidarity at www.blackeducator.org (http://www.blackeducator.org). It reads in part:

“If the Cuba of these times was that racist nation they want to invent, its citizens would not have contributed massively to the liberation of the African people. More than 350,000 Cuban volunteers fought alongside their brothers of Africa against Colonialism. More than 2,000 fighters from the Island fell in the lands of that Continent.

“A personality of undisputed worldwide relevance, Nelson Mandela, has recognized the role of those volunteers in the definitive defeat of the infamous Apartheid regime.

“From Africa we brought back only the remains of our dead. Cuba has over there in that continent no property, no bank, no mines, no oil wells.

“If the Cuba of today were to feel such disrespect for Blacks, more than 35,000 African youth would not have been trained in our schools over the past 40 years, nor would 2,600 young people from some 30 African nations be studying right now in our universities.

“A people sick with racism would refuse to collaborate in the training of medical doctors and other human resources in health care at the Schools of Medical Sciences founded in Guinea Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, and Eritrea.

They would have turned their back on the Health assistance programs that have saved thousands of lives in Latin America and the Caribbean, where the African Diaspora is significant, and they would have not provided services to the more than 20,000 Haitians and English-speaking Afro-Caribbeans who have recovered their eyesight through surgical operations performed in our country, free of charge.

“It is very probable that the majority of those who signed the document aren’t aware that when the City of New Orleans was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, dozens of Cuban medical doctors and paramedics volunteered to provide help to storm victims in a humanitarian gesture that received no response from the American authorities.”

_____________________




Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World (http://wwppitt.weebly.com/).
Verbatim copying and distribution of entire
article is permitted in any medium without
royalty provided this notice is preserved.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I only wish they were more warmongering. South Africa needed more death.

And you wonder why Socialism has a bad name...

[RadioRaheem84]

Cuba's health diplomacy

[Watch the video report on BBC] (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/world_news_america/8537928.stm)

The Cuban Government trains thousands of foreign medical students every year. It also sends thousands of doctors abroad, to help developing countries.

---

I was almost in tears... Cuban Medical school teaches 10 000 foreign students from poor countries for free and sends thousands of Cuban doctors abroad!!

Long live Cuban Revolution!


Supposedly, seven Cuban doctors and one nurse fled Venezuela for the US because they claimed to have been turned into indentured servants by the Cuban government. There is also the claim that while Cuban doctors are among the best in the world, they're held against their will many of the times.

Hopefully this is just propaganda.

[Communist]

.
Socialist Cuba: Slander and reality (http://www.workers.org/2008/editorials/cuba_0508/)
from 2008

An April 28 2008 Washington Post editorial grudgingly admits the Cuban economy is growing and life for Cuban workers is improving.

It says, “Cuban President Raúl Castro has introduced a handful of micro-reforms.” Cubans can “buy cellphones, computers and microwave ovens.”

The Post points out rightly that the movement is growing, even in Congress, to end the U.S. blockade of Cuba.

But at a time when living conditions for U.S. workers—with incomes slashed by job losses, pay cuts and shortened working hours—are sinking under the weight of skyrocketing food and fuel prices, the Post diverts attention from this bleak reality, as well as the fact that socialist Cuba is moving forward.

How? By pulling out the old and tired false charges that Cuba imprisons 55 “dissidents” and suppresses those who plead their case, the “Ladies in White.”

Only in the course of the present year, 2008, the U.S. government has allocated 45.7 million dollars to pay to its mercenary groups in Cuba and put up provocations.

These are U.S. tax dollars misused to attack Cuba.

Can it also be that the Post editors missed the front page New York Times article (April 23) reporting that 2.3 million people suffer in U.S. prisons?

Quite a number are internationally recognized political prisoners—including five Cubans who tried to prevent loss of life by observing Miami-based paramilitaries planning violence against Cuba. The Cuban 5 now serve life-plus terms in federal prisons.

Did they miss that the police who killed Sean Bell were acquitted?

That people of color, immigrants, white workers and youth are brutalized daily by capitalist state agents, from cops to “homeland security” agents to neo-Nazi/Klan/Minuteman racists?

While the life expectancy for U.S. women is declining, the life expectancy for Cuban women is lengthening, meeting or exceeding that of the U.S.—an astounding accomplishment for a small developing country.

Health care in Cuba is free and universal. Health clinics have been modernized and high-tech clinic facilities are being constructed. Cuba shares its medical accomplishments by sending doctors around the world, building hospitals, clinics and medical schools, and training doctors from other countries.

Education is universal and free, and Cuba has the highest literacy rate in the Americas. In the U.S., an increasingly privatized education system provides substandard education for the working class, particularly in oppressed communities. Schools in Cuba have been renovated, while they crumble in cities across the U.S.

The Post scoffs that Cuban “state workers may get deeds to apartments they have been renting for decades.” But getting a paid deed after decades of paying a very low rent might seem like a better idea for the one out of every 194 U.S. homebuyers who received a foreclosure notice in the first three months of 2008.

From banks to General Motors, which announced 3,500 additional layoffs on April 29, more U.S. workers are losing their jobs. Meanwhile, Cuban unemployment is only 1.8 percent.

As the 50th anniversary of the Cuban socialist revolution nears on Jan. 1, 2009, it is important to review the relentless attempts by U.S. imperialism to turn back the clock: direct military attacks like the “Bay of Pigs” invasion; covert terror bombings of department stores, hotels, an airliner and other buildings in Cuba and other countries; an economic blockade designed to starve the Cuban people into submission; biological warfare against economic targets and human beings; unsuccessful assassination attempts against Fidel Castro; and funding “dissidents” who can be used in a propaganda campaign to hide the profound and widespread support for the Cuban revolution.

Developing the potential of human beings is socialist Cuba’s priority, not profit and exploitation. Cuba’s accomplishments are well known and internationally acknowledged.

Socialism—even socialism attacked every minute by a giant imperialist neighbor to the north—improves life for workers. State Department slanders published as Washington Post editorials can’t erase that.


______________




Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World (http://www.workers.org/wwp/).
Verbatim copying and distribution of this article
is permitted in any medium without royalty
provided this notice is preserved.

[Communist]

.
Cuban Doctors, Field Hospital in Chile
March 03 2010

http://www.prensa-latina.cu/images/stories/Fotos/2010/Marzo/03/medicos-cubanos-chile-terremoto.jpg (http://www.prensa-latina.cu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=167331&Itemid=1)

Santiago de Chile, Mar 3 (Prensa Latina) -
Chile's Public Health Minister Alvaro Erazo thanked today the arrival of a team of Cuban doctors together with a fully equipped field hospital to help in emergency care of victims of last Saturday powerful earthquake.

Erazo indicated the Cuban hospital that includes an operating room and a staff of 27 specialists will be placed in Rancagua, 56 miles south of Santiago.

Cuban Ambassador Ileana Diaz-Arguelles received the hospital on Tuesday, explained the brigade is made up of 11 doctors of different specialties as general medicine, intensive care, orthopedics, internal medicine and anesthetics as well as of nurses and X-ray, pharmacy, medical equipment and blood bank technicians.

The brigade is part of the Henry Reeve Contingent of Doctors Specialized in Disaster Situations and Serious Epidemics.

Chilean Foreign Minister Mariano Fernandez also highlighted Cuba's aid contribution and reported that Bolivia sent a plane with 40 tons of drinkable water and announced that there are two more on their way, after thanking the aid of governments from different countries and, particularly, the Latin American.

Peru sent a 25-doctor brigade and a field hospital that was located in Concepcion city. Argentina sent three field hospitals and Uruguay sent two water treatment plants.

The People's Republic of China also sent a field hospital, desalination plants, tents and one million dollars.

Switzerland, France and Spain sent rescue squads and seismic damage evaluators and satellite communication equipments.

Korea will sent doctors and non-perishable food.

The United States and the OAS sent 60 and 20 satellite phones respectively.

[The Vegan Marxist]

.
Cuban Doctors, Field Hospital in Chile
March 03 2010

http://www.prensa-latina.cu/images/stories/Fotos/2010/Marzo/03/medicos-cubanos-chile-terremoto.jpg (http://www.prensa-latina.cu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=167331&Itemid=1)

Santiago de Chile, Mar 3 (Prensa Latina) -
Chile's Public Health Minister Alvaro Erazo thanked today the arrival of a team of Cuban doctors together with a fully equipped field hospital to help in emergency care of victims of last Saturday powerful earthquake.

Erazo indicated the Cuban hospital that includes an operating room and a staff of 27 specialists will be placed in Rancagua, 56 miles south of Santiago.

Cuban Ambassador Ileana Diaz-Arguelles received the hospital on Tuesday, explained the brigade is made up of 11 doctors of different specialties as general medicine, intensive care, orthopedics, internal medicine and anesthetics as well as of nurses and X-ray, pharmacy, medical equipment and blood bank technicians.

The brigade is part of the Henry Reeve Contingent of Doctors Specialized in Disaster Situations and Serious Epidemics.

Chilean Foreign Minister Mariano Fernandez also highlighted Cuba's aid contribution and reported that Bolivia sent a plane with 40 tons of drinkable water and announced that there are two more on their way, after thanking the aid of governments from different countries and, particularly, the Latin American.

Peru sent a 25-doctor brigade and a field hospital that was located in Concepcion city. Argentina sent three field hospitals and Uruguay sent two water treatment plants.

The People's Republic of China also sent a field hospital, desalination plants, tents and one million dollars.

Switzerland, France and Spain sent rescue squads and seismic damage evaluators and satellite communication equipments.

Korea will sent doctors and non-perishable food.

The United States and the OAS sent 60 and 20 satellite phones respectively.

Cuba sends doctors, the U.S. sends phones....damn, that's a hard choice! :rolleyes:

[Communist]

.
Answering the EU’s attack on Cuba (http://www.workers.org/2010/world/cuba_0325/)

By Cheryl LaBash
Mar 18, 2010

On March 11, using the pretext of a suicide of a prisoner in Cuba, European Union politicians attacked socialist Cuba, once again falsely alleging human-rights violations and demanding the release of a small number of paid U.S. agents imprisoned there. By doing so the EU Parliament not only ignored the overriding 50-year violation of Cuba’s democratic right to self-determination, but joined in it.

Cuba’s 1959 revolution set out to make human development and needs — not corporate or banking profits, not colonial or neo-colonial extraction of wealth and resources — the social priority. To punish Cuba for taking this independent path, Washington has mercilessly enforced an economic blockade and relentlessly attacked Cubans through bombings, invasions, biological warfare and attempts at political destabilization.

http://www.workers.org/2010/world/doctors_0325.jpg
In September 2005, while flooded New Orleans’ Black residents hung onto roof tops, 1,586 Cuban doctors with tons of medical supplies were refused U.S. permission to help. Some deployed later to earthquake-devastated Pakistan and many are now in Haiti or Chile. WW photo

Thousands of Cubans and others have died in the U.S.-sponsored attacks — starting 50 years ago on March 4, 1960, when the French cargo ship “La Coubre” was detonated in Havana harbor. The ship was carrying arms to revolutionary Cuba from Belgium, which was defying U.S. orders to stop the shipment.

Former U.S. Central Intelligence agent Philip Agee has documented how the U.S. planted explosive-laced dolls in a Havana department store, burning it to the ground. On Sept. 4, 1997, Italian tourist Fabio di Celmo died in a Havana hotel bombing. These are but a small sample of the attacks.

Today five Cuban heroes are captives in U.S. prisons for attempting to protect Cuba from attacks orchestrated from U.S. territories. But Washington protects Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, the admitted bombers of Cubana 455 in 1976, the first mid-air destruction of a civilian plane. These two killers are free to roam the streets of Miami.

Amazingly, Cuba has not only developed human well-being internally — it is one of the few countries on track to meet the U.N. Millennium Development Goals despite the impact of hurricanes and the U.S. blockade — but has shared selfless solidarity around the world, opening its medical schools, distributing its literacy methods, and assisting the African continent to decisively smash the racist apartheid regime in South Africa. Today more than a thousand Cuban and Cuban-trained doctors are providing medical aid to Haitian earthquake survivors.

Washington’s admitted policy has been and is to create such desperate conditions inside Cuba that capitalist exploitation can be re-imposed. This policy has failed. And in Latin America especially, Cuba has broken out of the imperialist-imposed isolation.

Intervention by other means

Facing these setbacks, Washington cultivates pseudo-librarians or purported journalists, ladies-in-white, bloggers and others in Cuba who are funded and supported by dollars from the U.S. in an attempt to organize counter-revolution by other means.

That is the origin of the prisoner who in February committed suicide by hunger strike. He did this with the encouragement of U.S. imperialism. Cuban doctors had tried their best to keep him alive, feeding him intravenously in a major Havana hospital.

At a conference to encourage increased educational exchanges with Cuba, former chief of the U.S. Interest Section in Havana, Wayne Smith, said that the United States “is not ‘in the best position’ to speak of hunger strikes, given the U.S. military’s practice of force-feeding hunger strikers at the detention camp for terror suspects in Guantanamo, Cuba.”
(www.laprensasa.com (http://www.laprensasa.com))

The EU has not condemned U.S. human rights violations or demanded the release of U.S. political prisoners like Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal, the Angola 2, and the Scott sisters. Nor has it criticized the conditions for the more than 2 million people imprisoned here, disproportionately African-American and Latino/a, or the beatings and deaths of Black and Brown people at the hands of racist police merely for driving, walking, or living in the racist USA.

The capitalist state here kills death-row prisoners regardless of their innocence. The Pentagon kills wholesale with wars of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Right-wing and social-democratic EU politicians vote for their armies to join the criminal U.S. occupations against the will of the EU populations and they vote to condemn Cuba, in both cases to promote imperialist domination.
_________





Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World (http://wwppitt.weebly.com/). Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

.

[Communist]

.
NEW YORK
Women doctors return from service in Haiti (http://www.workers.org/2010/world/haiti_0325/)

By Dolores Cox
New York
Mar 19, 2010


On March 2, seven U.S. doctors gave a report on their month-long mission of providing post-earthquake medical services in Haiti at a program at Judson Memorial Church in New York City.

The Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO)/Pastors for Peace sponsored the event. IFCO also sent staff to Haiti to provide supportive services and worked with a grassroots coalition of 180 Haitian and Dominican youth.

IFCO is a 43-year-old non-profit agency working for racial, social and economic justice. It administers a scholarship program for medical students who receive training in Cuba at the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana. The school was founded 10 years ago to help countries affected by hurricanes and other disasters.

The U.S. doctors — medical school graduates trained in Cuba — were part of Cuba’s Henry Reeve Brigade, which, in the aftermath of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster in the U.S., offered to send 100 doctors.

The U.S. government refused their help.

Presently, the LASM provides medical training to students from 49 different countries, including the U.S.

Cuba is aware that in a rich country like the U.S. there are students living in poverty who cannot afford medical training, IFCO said.

Immediately after the earthquake, Cuba set up five emergency hospitals in Haiti and had already been training Haitian medical students in disaster response.

The seven doctors are all young Black women, one of whom is Haitian-American. Five of them are from NYC, the other two from Houston, Texas and Oakland, Calif.

They reported that Cuba trains doctors in community medicine, preventive and primary care services, disaster response and work within a public health care system. They were taught to be resourceful and creative when modern medical equipment is not available.

The doctors traveled to Haiti via the Dominican Republic. They showed photos and told of their long around-the-clock shifts working six days a week in a field hospital under a tent, without running water. On their first day, they said, approximately 2,000 people passed through the hospital.

The temperature rose to 100 degrees. They treated patients both indoors and outdoors along with Cuban-trained doctors from other Latin American countries. Medical teams also consisted of pediatricians, surgeons, rehab specialists, psychiatrists and social workers, who worked alongside Haitian doctors and professionals.

In Croix des Boquets the doctors slept on the ground in small tents. They treated thousands of patients, many of whom had never before seen a doctor. Each doctor provided care to at least 100 patients a day. Patients were both earthquake victims and those who had chronic, pre-existing medical problems. Common among these were typhoid, infectious diarrhea, malaria and malnutrition.

They found babies dying from fractured skulls, infection and dehydration. In addition, they each delivered approximately six babies a day. The doctors expressed concern for the psychological trauma of the children, because they are Haiti’s future. Part of the work with children consisted of having Haitian children write their stories in Creole. Their writings were then sent to Cuba, translated into Spanish and shared with Cuban children.

The doctors spoke about the pain and suffering, courage, resilience and graciousness of the Haitian people. They added that the Haitians’ trauma will be long lasting. Currently, the doctors are concerned about the increase in infectious diseases that the rainy season is bringing due to poor sanitation, sewage and lack of shelter.

In total, the doctors saw about 20,000 patients and performed 188 major surgeries. They spoke of how they were all trained to be committed to serve the human race, regardless of color or ethnicity. They added that everyone must be humane enough to collectively help each other and give love, energy, solidarity and dedication to the cause of humanity.

Each doctor emotionally concluded their report by saying how personally affected they were witnessing the disaster’s aftermath. The catastrophe was a watershed moment for them, and that despite the language gap, they communicated through touches, smiles and tears. When they became overwhelmed they gave support and strength to each other.

The Haitian-American doctor said she felt privileged to be able to help her people, but went there very afraid of what she would see. She was able to connect with her family but also lost several family members in the earthquake. She asked that people please not forget Haiti.
____________




Articles copyright 1995-2010 Workers World (http://www.workers.org/wwp/). Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

.

[Communist]

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Cuba Condemns Human
Rights Manipulations

2010-03

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Palais des Nations, Geneva, sessions of HRC (Human Rights Council).

GENEVA, March 16.— Addressing the 13th session of the United Nations Human Rights Committee, Cuban Permanent Representative in Geneva Rodolfo Reyes criticized the political manipulation of human rights by the developed world.

During his speech, Reyes denounced the hypocritical stance of powerful nations that pressure the UN Human Rights Committee to interfere in the internal affairs of countries in the southern hemisphere under the pretext of human rights, reported the Prensa Latina news agency.

“Developed countries attempt to conceal human rights abuses that they commit against their own people and others around the world by manipulating the human rights issue,” said Reyes.

“Their attempts to present themselves as the guardians of human rights, do not exonerate them from their responsibilities for some of the worst acts committed against human dignity and fundamental freedoms.”

The Cuban diplomat drew attention to the fact that the developed countries are pushing for reforms that are in their own best interest and are the major beneficiaries of the present world economic order.

“They have deliberately promoted slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism, plunging southern countries into misery...while perpetrating modern wars of conquest that have caused millions of death worldwide, mainly of civilians,” said Reyes.

The Cuban Permanent Representative in Geneva also criticized the brutal tortures and murders of prisoners held at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the Bagram US military detention center in Afghanistan, and the US naval station in Guantanamo; the illegal CIA flights; and clandestine jails.

He accused the governments of Switzerland, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Belgium of complicity in violating human rights.

Before concluding his speech, Reyes called on the US government to close once and for all the Guantanamo naval station, and called for compensation for the victims of countless US-based terrorist actions.

Finally, Reyes, expressed concern over the climate change issue, widespread abuse of immigrants in the United States and the European Union, and worldwide media manipulation.

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[Communist]

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Prominent intellectuals and artists
in defense of Cuba (http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2010/marzo/vier26/Prominent-intellectuals-and-artists-in-defense-of-Cuba.html)

• Architect Oscar Niemeyer, diplomat and priest Miguel D’ Escoto, philosopher Istvan Meszaros, and various famous musicians condemn the anti-Cuba media campaign Cuba • Asian solidarity organizations reject interference of European Parliament

Pedro de la Hoz


THE media campaign recently unleashed against Cuba has been met with a forceful response from prominent intellectuals and artists, who are calling for respect for the island’s sovereignty and a commitment to the strict truth surrounding events that have been manipulated and distorted by those – one example being European Parliament MPs – who are trying to revert Cuba’s history.

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Puerto Rican Roy Brown

http://www.granma.cu/fotos%202010/marzo/niemeyer-26marzo.jpg
Architect Oscar Niemeyer

The most recent additions to the statement "In defense of Cuba," an initiative from the Mexican chapter of the network In Defense of Humanity, include Brazilian Oscar Niemeyer, a leading figure in global architecture of the last century; Nicaraguan diplomat and priest Miguel D’ Escoto, former president of the UN General Assembly; Hungarian philosopher Istvan Meszaros; Puerto Rican independence advocate Rafael Cancel Miranda; and Spanish novelist Juan Madrid.

A group of well-known musicians who have defined generations with their songs also agree with the description of European interference "not only as an act of interference, which we condemn in virtue of our commitment to the principles of non-intervention and self-determination," but also as the imposition of "a sole model of democracy that, incidentally, is revealing itself to be increasingly insufficient and questionable." They include Uruguayan Daniel Viglietti, Dominican Víctor Víctor, Nicaraguan Luis Enrique Mejía Godoy, Puerto Ricans Roy Brown and Danny Rivera, Argentines Víctor Heredia and Raly Barrionuevo, and Paraguyan Ricardo Flecha.

Lucid and honest voices from the United States – the political analyst Michael Parenti, filmmaker Saul Landau, anthropologist James Early, Italian-American essayist Piero Gleijeses, and actor Danny Glover – all signed the statement which states that "the economic and media harassment to which Cuba is being subjected constitutes an attack on the human and political rights of a nation that decided to take a different road."

Bolivian filmmaker Jorge Sanjinés, his Mexican colleague Jorge Fons, Argentine novelist Vicente Battista, and Spanish dramatist Jaime Losada share the same conviction.

A total of 197 representatives from 20 countries in Asia and the Pacific declared themselves "In defense of Cuba" in a solidarity meeting that took place in Vientiane, the Laotian capital. Among those attending were ministers and parliamentarians from 10 countries. They refuted the interference of European MPs and argued Cuba’s right to construct a just and humane society.




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[Communist]

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Cuban Medical Aid to Haiti

Emily J. Kirk and John M. Kirk, Counterpunch, 1 April 2010

Media coverage of Cuban medical cooperation following the disastrous recent earthquake in Haiti was sparse indeed. International news reports usually described the Dominican Republic as being the first to provide assistance, while Fox News sang the praises of U.S. relief efforts in a report entitled "U.S. Spearheads Global Response to Haiti Earthquake", a common theme of its extensive coverage. CNN also broadcast hundreds of reports, and in fact one focused on a Cuban doctor wearing a T-shirt with a large image of Che Guevara, and yet described him as a "Spanish doctor".

In general, international news reports ignored Cuba's efforts. By March 24, CNN for example, had 601 reports on their news website regarding the earthquake in Haiti-of which only 18 (briefly) referenced Cuban assistance. Similarly, between them the New York Times and the Washington Post had 750 posts regarding the earthquake and relief efforts, though not a single one discusses in any detail any Cuban support. In reality, however, Cuba's medical role had been extremely important, and had been present since 1998.

Cuba and Haiti Pre-Earthquake

In 1998, Haiti was struck by Hurricane Georges. The hurricane caused 230 deaths, destroyed 80% of the crops, and left 167,000 people homeless.[1] Despite the fact that Cuba and Haiti had not had diplomatic relations in over 36 years, Cuba immediately offered a multifaceted agreement to assist them, of which the most important was medical cooperation.

Cuba adopted a two-pronged public health approach to help Haiti. First, it agreed to maintain hundreds of doctors in the country for as long as necessary, working wherever they were posted by the Haitian government. This was particularly significant as Haiti's health care system was easily the worst in the Americas, with life expectancy of only 54 years in 1990 and one out of every 5 adult deaths due to AIDS, while 12.1% of children died from preventable intestinal infectious diseases.[2]

In addition Cuba agreed to train Haitian doctors in Cuba, providing that they would later return and take the places of the Cuban doctors (a process of "brain gain" rather than "brain drain"). Significantly, the students were selected from non-traditional backgrounds, and were mainly poor. It was thought that, because of their socio-economic background, they fully understood their country's need for medical personnel, and would return to work where they were needed. The first cohort of students began studying in May, 1999 at the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM).

By 2007, significant change had already been achieved throughout the country. It is worth noting that Cuban medical personnel were estimated to be caring for 75% of the population.[3] Studies by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) indicated clear improvements in the health profile since this extensive Cuban medical cooperation began.

Cuban medical personnel had clearly made a major difference to the national health profile since 1998, largely because of their proactive role in preventive medicine-as can be seen below.

By 2010, at no cost to medical students, Cuba had trained some 550 Haitian doctors, and is at present training a further 567. Moreover, since 1998 some 6,094 Cuban medical personnel have worked in Haiti. They had given over 14.6 million consultations, carried out 207,000 surgical operations, including 45,000 vision restoration operations through their Operation Miracle programme, attended 103,000 births, and taught literacy to 165,000. In fact at the time of the earthquake there were 344 Cuban medical personnel there. All of this medical cooperation, it must be remembered, was provided over an 11-year period before the earthquake of January 12, 2010.[6]

Cuba and Haiti Post-Earthquake

The earthquake killed at least 220,000, injured 300,000 and left 1.5 million homeless.[7] Haitian PrimeMinister Jean-Max Bellerive described it as "the worst catastrophe that has occurred in Haiti in two centuries".[8]

International aid began flooding in. It is important to note the type of medical aid provided by some major international players. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), for example, an organization known for its international medical assistance, flew in some 348 international staff, in addition to the 3,060 national staff it already employed. By March 12 they had treated some 54,000 patients, and completed 3,700 surgical operations.[9]

Canada's contribution included the deployment of 2,046 Canadian Forces personnel, including 200 DART personnel. The DART (Disaster Assistance Response Team) received the most media attention, as it conducted 21,000 consultations-though it should be noted they do not treat any serious trauma patients or provide surgical care. Indeed, among the DART personnel, only 45 are medical staff, with others being involved in water purification, security, and reconstruction. In total, the Canadians stayed for only 7 weeks.[10]

The United States government, which received extensive positive media attention, sent the USNS "Comfort", a 1,000-bed hospital ship with a 550-person medical staff and stayed for 7 weeks, in which time they treated 871 patients, performing 843 surgical operations.[11] Both the Canadian and US contributions were important, while they were there.

Lost in the media shuffle was the fact that, for the first 72 hours following the earthquake, Cuban doctors were in fact the main medical support for the country. Within the first 24 hours, they had completed 1,000 emergency surgeries, turned their living quarters into clinics, and were running the only medical centers in the country, including 5 comprehensive diagnostic centers (small hospitals) which they had previously built. In addition another 5 in various stages of construction were also used, and they turned their ophthalmology center into a field hospital-which treated 605 patients within the first 12 hours following the earthquake.[12]

Cuba soon became responsible for some 1,500 medical personnel in Haiti. Of those, some 344 doctors were already working in Haiti, while over 350 members of the "Henry Reeve" Emergency Response Medical Brigade were sent by Cuba following the earthquake. In addition, 546 graduates of ELAM from a variety of countries, and 184 5th and 6th year Haitian ELAM students joined, as did a number of Venezuelan medical personnel. In the final analysis, they were working throughout Haiti in 20 rehabilitation centers and 20 hospitals, running 15 operating theatres, and had vaccinated 400,000. With reason Fidel Castro stated, "we send doctors, not soldiers".[13]

Data indicates the significant (and widely ignored) medical contribution of the Cubans. In fact, they have treated 4.2 times the number of patients compared with MSF (which has over twice as many workers, as well as significantly more financial resources), and 10.8 times more than the Canadian DART team. (As noted, Canadian and US medical personnel had left by March 9). Also notable is the fact that the Cuban medical contingent was roughly three times the size of the American staff, although they treated 260.7 times more patients than U.S. medical personnel. Clearly, there have been significant differences in the nature of medical assistance provided.

It is also important to note that approximately one-half of the Cuban medical staff was working outside the capital, Port-au-Prince, where there was significant damage as well. Many medical missions could not get there, however, due to transportation issues. Significantly, the Cuban medical brigade also worked to minimize epidemics by making up 30 teams to educate communities on how to properly dispose of waste, as well as how to minimize public health risks. Noted Cuban artist Kcho also headed a cultural brigade made up of clowns, magicians and dancers, supported by psychologists and psychiatrists, to deal with the trauma experienced by Haitian children.

Perhaps most impressively, following the growing concern for the health of the country, due to a poor and now largely destroyed health care system Cuba, working with ALBA (the Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América) countries, presented to the WHO an integral program to reconstruct the health care system of Haiti. Essentially, they are offering to rebuild the entire health care system. It will be supported by ALBA and Brazil, and run by Cubans and Cuban-trained medical staff. This is to include hospitals, polyclinics, and medical schools. In addition, the Cuban government has offered to increase the number of Haitian students attending medical school in Cuba. This offer of medical cooperation represents an enormous degree of support for Haiti.[15] Sadly, this generous offer has not been reported by international media.

While North American media might have ignored Cuba's role, Haiti has not. A pointed remark was made by Haitian President Mr. René Préval, who noted, "you did not wait for an earthquake to help us".[16] Similarly, Haiti's Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive has also repeatedly noted that the first three countries to help were Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.

Sadly (but not surprisingly), while Cuba's efforts to assist Haiti have increased, international efforts have continued to dwindle. The head of the Cuban medical mission, Dr. Carlos Alberto García, summed up well the situation just two weeks after the tragedy: "many foreign delegations have already begun to leave, and the aid which is arriving now is not the same it used to be. Sadly, as always happens, soon another tragedy will appear in another country, and the people of Haiti will be forgotten, left to their own fate". Significantly, he added "However we will still be here long after they have all gone."[17] This in fact has been the case. Canadian forces, for example, returned home and the USNS Comfort sailed several weeks ago. By contrast, Cuban President Raúl Castro noted: "we have accompanied the Haitian people, and we will continue with them whatever time is needed, no matter how many years, with our very modest support".[18]

A representative of the World Council of Churches to the United Nations made the telling comment that "humanitarian aid could not be human if it was only publicized for 15 days".[19] Today Cuba, with the support of ALBA and Brazil, is working not to build a field hospital, but rather a health care system. And, while international efforts have been largely abandoned, the Cuban staff and Cuban-trained medical staff will remain, as they have done for the past 11 years, for as long as necessary. This is a story that international media have chosen not to tell-now that the television cameras have gone. Yet it is an extraordinary story of true humanitarianism, and of great success in saving lives since 1998. Moreover, in light of Cuba's success in providing public health care (at no cost to the patients) to millions of Haitians, this approach to preventive, culturally sensitive, low cost and effective medicine needs to be told. That significant contribution to this impoverished nation, and Cuba's ongoing commitment to its people, clearly deserve to be recognized. Until then it will sadly remain as one of the world's best- kept secrets.


Notes

[1] "Audit of USAID/HAITI Hurricane Georges Recovery Programme". USAID. 15 May, 2001. Retrieved 10 March, 2010 from <http://www.usaid.gov/oig/public/fy01rpts/1-521-01-005-p.pdf (http://www.usaid.gov/oig/public/fy01rpts/1-521-01-005-p.pdf)>
[2] See entry for "Haiti" on the Pan American Health Organization website, found at http://www.paho.org/english/dd.ais/cp_332.htm (http://www.paho.org/english/dd.ais/cp_332.htm). Accessed February 2, 2010.
[3] William Steif, "Cuban Doctors Aid Strife-Torn Haiti." The State. April 26, 2004, and found athttp://havanajournal.com/culture/entry/cuban_doctors_aid_strife_torn_haiti/ (http://havanajournal.com/culture/entry/cuban_doctors_aid_strife_torn_haiti/)Accessed June 21, 2007.
[4] See entry for "Haiti" on the Pan American Health Organization website, found at http://www.paho.org/english/dd/ais/cp_332.htm (http://www.paho.org/english/dd/ais/cp_332.htm). Accessed February 2 2010.
[5] Anna Kovac, "Cuba Trains Hundred of Haitian Doctors to Make a Difference," August 6, 2007. Located on the MEDICC website athttp:www.medicc.org/cubahealthreports/chr-article.php?&a=1035 (http://www.medicc.org/cubahealthreports/chr-article.php?&a=1035). Accessed February 2, 2010.
[6] Ibid., "Haitian Medical Students in Cuba". Medical Education Cooperation With Cuba. 12 January, 2010. Retrieved 12 January, 2010 from <http://www.mwdicc.org/ns/index.php?p=4&s=33 (http://www.mwdicc.org/ns/index.php?p=4&s=33)>, "La colabaración cubana permanecerá en Haití los años que sean necesarios", Cubadebate. 24 February, 2010. Retrieved 9 March, 2010 from <http://www.cubadebate.cu/opinion/2010/02/24/cuba-estara-en-haiti-anos-que sean-necesario (http://www.cubadebate.cu/opinion/2010/02/24/cuba-estara-en-haiti-anos-quesean-necesario)>, "Fact Sheet: Cuban Medical Cooperation With Haiti". Medicc Review. 15 January, 2009. Retrieved 2 February, 2010 fromhttp://www.medicc.org/ns/index.php?s=104 (http://www.medicc.org/ns/index.php?s=104).
[7] "Haiti Earthquake: Special Coverage". CNN. 20 March, 2010. Retrieved 22 March, 2010 from <http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2010/haiti.quake/ (http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2010/haiti.quake/)>
[8] Tyler Maltbie, "Haiti Earthquake: The Nations That Are Stepping Up To Help", The Christian Science Monitor, Posted January 14, 2010 onhttp://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/content/view/print273879 (http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/content/view/print273879). Accessed January 28, 2010.
[9] "Two Months After the Quake, New Services and New Concerns". MSF. 12 March, 2010. Retrieved 17 March, 2010 from <http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news/article_printcfm?id=4320 (http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news/article_printcfm?id=4320)>
[10] "Canada's Response to the Earthquake in Haiti: Progress to Date". Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada. March 17, 2010. Retrieved 17 March, 2010 from <http://www.internaitonal.gc.ca/humanitarian-humanitaire/earthquake_seisme_h aiti_effort (http://www.internaitonal.gc.ca/humanitarian-humanitaire/earthquake_seisme_haiti_effort)>
[11] "USNS Comfort Completes Haiti Mission, March 9, 2010". American Forces Press Service. 9 March, 2010. Retrieved 11 March, 2010 from <http://www.trackpads.com/forum/defenselink/928304-usns-comfort-completes-ha ti-mission (http://www.trackpads.com/forum/defenselink/928304-usns-comfort-completes-hati-mission)>
[12] John Burnett, "Cuban Doctors Unsung Heroes of Haitian Earthquake", National Public Radio report, January 24, 2010, and found athttp://www.npr.org/templates/story.ph?storyID=122919202 (http://www.npr.org/templates/story.ph?storyID=122919202). Accessed 28 January, 2010.
[13] José Steinsleger. "Haiti, Cuba y la ley primera," La Jornada, February 3, 2010., Data in this section came from the address given by Ambassador Rodolfo Reyes Rodríguez on January, 27, 2010 in Geneva at the 13th Special Session of the U.N. Human Rights Council on Haiti. It can be accessed at "Cuba en Ginebra: 'Ante tan difícil situación humanitaria en Haití no puede haber titubeos ni indiferencia," on the Cubbadebate website: <http://www.cubadebate.cu/especiales/2010/01/27/cuba-en-ginebra-sobre-recons truccion-haiti (http://www.cubadebate.cu/especiales/2010/01/27/cuba-en-ginebra-sobre-reconstruccion-haiti)>
[14] Connor Gorry. "Two of the 170,000 + Cases". Medicc Review. March 8, 2010. Retrieved 10 March, 2010 from <http://mediccglobal.wordpress.com/ (http://mediccglobal.wordpress.com/)>, "Cooperación con Haití debe ser a largo plazo." Juventud Rebelde. 23 March, 2010. Retrieved March 23, 2010 from <http://juventudrebelde.cu/internacionales/2010-03-23/cooperacion-con-haiti- debe-ser-a-largo-plazo (http://juventudrebelde.cu/internacionales/2010-03-23/cooperacion-con-haiti-debe-ser-a-largo-plazo)>, "Haiti: Two Months After The Quake, New Services and New Concerns". MSF. 12 March, 2010. Retrieved 17 March, 2010 from http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news/article_print.cfm?id=4320 (http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news/article_print.cfm?id=4320)>, "Haiti-USNS Comfort Medical And Surgical Support". U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 11 March, 2010. Retrieved 11 March, 2010 from <http:www.hhs.gov/Haiti/usns_comfort.html (http://www.hhs.gov/Haiti/usns_comfort.html)>, Brett Popplewell. "This Haitian Town Is Singing Canada's Praise". The Star. 26 January, 2010. Retrieved 17 March from <http://www.thestar.com/printarticle/755843 (http://www.thestar.com/printarticle/755843)>, "USNS Comfort Leaves Haiti". 13 News. 11 March, 2010. Retrieved 11 March, 2010 from <http://www.wvec.com/internaternalz?st=print&id=87243182&path=/home (http://www.wvec.com/internaternalz?st=print&id=87243182&path=/home)>
[15] In a March 27, 2010 meeting in Port-au-Prince between President Préval and the Cuban and Brazilian ministers of health (José Ramón Balaguer and José Gomes), details were provided about what Balaguer termed "a plot of solidarity to assist the Haitian people". Gomes added "We have just signed an agreement-Cuba, Brazil and Haiti-according to which all three countries make a commitment to unite our forces in order to reconstruct the health system in Haiti. An extraordinary amount of work is currently being carried out in terms of meeting the most basic and most pressing needs, but now it is necessary to think about the future [.] Haiti needs a permanent, quality healthcare system, supported by well-trained professionals [.] We will provide this, together with Cuba-a country with an extremely long internationalist experience, a great degree of technical ability, great determination, and an enormous amount of heart. Brazil and Cuba, two nations that are so close, so similar, now face a new challenge: together we will unite our efforts to rebuild Haiti, and rebuild the public health system of this country". See "Cuba y Brasil suman esfuerzos con Haití," Juventud Rebelde, March 28, 2010 (Translation to English provided by authors).
[16] "Presidente Preval agradece a Fidel y Raúl Castro ayuda solidaria a Haití". 8 February, 2010. Retrieved 9 February, 2010 from <http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2010/02/08presidente-preval-agradece-fidel (http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2010/02/08presidente-preval-agradece-fidel) -raul-castro>
[17] María Laura Carpineta, "Habla el jefe de los 344 médicos cubanos instalados en Haití desde hace doce años". Página 12 [Argentina]. February 4, 2010, found at [email protected] ([email protected]) [18] Ibid. [19] "Press Conference on Haiti Humanitarian Aid," held at the United Nations on March 23, 2004 and found at htto://www.un.org/News/briefings/docs/2004/CanadaPressCfc.doc.htm (http://www.un.org/News/briefings/docs/2004/CanadaPressCfc.doc.htm). Accessed November 21, 2008.



Emily J. Kirk will be an M.A. student in Latin American Studies at Cambridge University in September



John Kirk is a professor of Latin American Studies at Dalhousie University, Canada. Both are working on a project on Cuban medical internationalism sponsored by Canada's Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Professor Kirk co-wrote with Michael Erisman the 2009 book "Cuba's Medical Internationalism: Origins, Evolution and Goals" (Palgrave Macmillan). He spent most of February and March in El Salvador and Guatemala, accompanying the Henry Reeve Brigade in El Salvador, and working with the Brigada Medica Cubana in Guatemala.




More: http://www.counterpunch.org/kirk04012010.html (http://www.counterpunch.org/kirk04012010.html)



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[RadioRaheem84]

Another critique:

Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas

[Communist]

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Cuba and our task
Sep 22, 2010 (http://www.workers.org/2010/editorials/cuba_0930/)

How should those in the United States who support Cuba in its struggle to remain free of imperialist domination react to the news that the Cuban government has made a painful decision to cut hundreds of thousands of state jobs?

Workers World says this should be a spur to greater solidarity with the revolution and stronger efforts to end U.S. imperialism’s destructive economic blockade of the island.

The Cuban Revolution has produced the Western Hemisphere’s most enlightened and humane social policies.

There is no homelessness in Cuba. Under the 1960 Urban Reform law, 85 percent of Cubans own their own homes and pay no property taxes or interest on their mortgages. Mortgage payments can’t exceed 10 percent of the combined household income.

No one goes hungry in Cuba. The population is guaranteed a subsidized basic diet that provides 2,000 calories a day.

Literacy is universal — 99.8 percent among adults, higher than in the U.S. Education is free, from pre-school to college and graduate school.
The infant mortality rate is 4.7 per 1,000 live births, again better than the U.S. rate of 6.0 infant deaths.

Imagine if someone in the U.S. political establishment were to propose subsidized food and housing and free universal health care and education here. What a howl both capitalist parties would put up! Their first words would be, “Who will pay for all this?”

Is it costly? Yes it is. Yet even a poor country, straining to develop its economy, has done it. Furthermore, Cuba has made huge material contributions to countries that are even poorer, sending medical brigades and disaster aid teams to those in dire need around the world. Cuban troops shed their blood in the struggle to end the racist apartheid system and liberate the countries of southern Africa.

Yet at the same time the Cuban people have also had to fight the damaging effects of nearly 50 years of an economic embargo — really a blockade — that not only bars U.S. goods from reaching the island but even penalizes other countries that trade with Cuba. Every year almost every country in the world votes in the U.N. General Assembly to end the U.S. embargo. Polls show that a majority here in the United States are for ending it. Yet just recently the Obama administration not only reaffirmed the blockade but even strengthened some of its provisions.

Because of this, Cuba lacks many needed imports as well as markets in which to sell its exports. Food in Cuba, while adequate to keep the population healthy, is of limited variety. The housing belongs to the people, but it is very difficult to get lumber, paint, furnishings and appliances. The medical system is top notch, but Cuba can’t get drugs or medical equipment from the U.S. or countries that obey the blockade.

The Cuban government estimates that the blockade has cost its economy $751 billion over the last 50 years. This vindictive persecution of the revolutionary island by the imperialist superpower is because Cuba has been trying to build a socialist society in which the state owns and controls the means of production so the needs of the people can be put first, instead of profits for a few.

Cuba is a small island in a hostile, imperialist-dominated world. Its position was made even more precarious by the downfall of the Soviet Union, which had been Cuba’s main trading partner. The USSR had exchanged its oil and other commodities for Cuban sugar and nickel on terms much more favorable than Cuba could get on the world capitalist market.

In the “special period” after the fall of the USSR, the Cuban economy virtually imploded for several years. However, because everyone in the country shared the suffering, including the most powerful officials, there was no lack of confidence in the government or a political crisis. Imagine the situation for the government here if economic output were to be cut in half! But Cuba painfully struggled back, showing modest growth each year and eventually boosted by help from Venezuela in the form of energy.

Nevertheless, the capitalist crisis of the last three years has stunted economic development all over the world and Cuba is not immune, despite its socialist system.

The goal of socialism is clear: to eradicate class divisions in society by eliminating private ownership of the means of production for profit. Socialism has become a realizable goal for the world working class because of the tremendous development of technology and the means of production under capitalism. But where, under capitalism, new technology and greater productivity mean layoffs, pay cuts and eventually a crisis of the system, under socialism they mean a lightening of the workload in production so more people can get employment in services, culture and other social needs.

The gains go to society as a whole, not to billionaire owners.

But what happens when a country trying to build socialism is prevented from getting access to the new technologies? When the world transition to a socialist system is still in its early stages and the countries that have had revolutions are coming out of severe underdevelopment caused by colonialism and imperialism? Cuba, Vietnam and even China are all still trying to “catch up” to the capitalist countries that have amassed wealth for centuries — much of it plundered from them. They have been forced to put on hold some of the goals of socialism just to be able to survive.

Once this is understood, the responsibility of progressives and revolutionaries in the imperialist countries should be clear. We do not diminish our own struggle for socialism by one iota when we say, “Now is the time to redouble our solidarity with Cuba. For Cuba to achieve its socialist goal, we must build unity in the multinational working class here and fight the rapacious capitalist bosses wherever they seek to impose their domination.”
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Copyright 1995-2010 Workers World (http://www.workers.org/). Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

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