$82 Billion: Cost to Cuba of Illegal and Immoral Blockade
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1165920
For more than 40 years, U.S. policy on Cuba has been characterized by an aggressiveness that has increased in recent times. Now, the island is once again presenting a detailed report to the UN on how the Cuban people are affected by the intensification of economic restrictions against the island.
"We are talking about an economic war against our country," Bruno Rodriguez, Cuba's Deputy Foreign Minister said Tuesday. "It is unfounded, unfair, and, moreover, deeply illegal."
U.S. officials defend the embargo, saying unfettered trade and travel to the island would prop up Fidel Castro's government.
"Because the blockade’s measures include so many elements and affect every nook and cranny of our country’s economy, it is impossible to do a meticulous estimate, but conservatively speaking, it can be affirmed that financial losses for Cuba amount to more than $82 billion," Rodríguez added.
The report also detailed the effects of Bush's further tightening of the laws on families travelling home to Cuba. Just 57,145 Cuban-Americans visited their native country last year, compared with 115,050 in 2003 a 50 percent drop.
In 2004, a total of 77 companies and banking institutions from around the world were fined by the U.S. government for what it considered actions in violation of the blockade laws."
In 2004, 179 countries voted to end the blockade at the UN, which is the longest and cruelest in the history of humanity.
posted by leftside at
8:38 PM
4 Comments:
But they can trade with anyone else in the world. Why would a communist country be dependent upon the imperial nation to support their economy? Because maybe...communism doesn't work without capitalists backing them up. And isn't it credit that Castro wants, so he can refuse to pay it back like so much other debt? With China, Vietnam and Venezuela alone he could stock his country with the goods he needs. He just can't afford it. This crying over the embargo is so much bull****.
Cuba does trade with every other nation. But being excluded from the US market, just 90 miles from Havana, the location of the majority of multi-nationals, potential tourists, even foreign capital, has its seriouis drawbacks. $87 billion a least.
Cuba is anything but dependent on any country today. They WERE however totally dependent on the US before the revolution. And lets remember that Cuba owes NOT 1 DOLLAR to the World Bank, the IMF, the IADB. You may call a report to the UN over the longest and harshest embargo in history bullshit, but I call it something that needs to be fully known by this country's citizens who tacitly allow it to continue for no reason.
You conveniently forget that Fidel kicked the US out of country, became a Soviet satellite and confiscated all the American properties after stating he did not need the United States. He has defaulted on most, if not all of his loans. If anything, it is an embargo, not a blockade. There are no naval ships blocking traffic from any other country besides the US.
If you want to rehash the history of the establishment of the embargo, I am obliged to help you sort out your facts.
There was no problem until the US decided to not to continue to meet its sugar quota from Cuba after the Revolution. Cuba needed a buyer and the USSR stepped up. Then the US stopped selling oil to Cuba. So the USSR stepped up again. But when US oil refinary companies refused to process Soviet oil in Cuba, Cuba nationalized the industry, offering a negotiated just compensation according to the procedures of the old 1940 Constitution. The US (on behalf of the companies) refused compensation on this and other critcal nationalized industies, wanting to provoke Castro. Meanwhile a suspected CIA bomb blows up a ship in Havana Harbor. Counterrevolutionaries and their ties to Wshington are discoverd. Plans to invade Cuba are drawn up by Kennedy. Only then does Cuba resume diplomatic relations with the USSR. The US then imposes trade sactions, which become the embargo. However it was not until 10 months later, with the Bay of Pigs, that Castro proclaims his revolution to be socialist.
And any serious historian will tell you Castro was absolutely NOT a Soviet's satellite. Documents show Castro disagreed with almost everything the Soviets did or didn't do. He blatently went against the USSR on every major foreign policy manuever, including their backing of global revolutions in africa and latin america.
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