The politics and insanity of the Cuba embargo
Monday, Dec. 3, 2012
The politics and insanity of the Cuba embargo
By CESAR CHELALA
NEW YORK — An open letter to U.S. President Barack Obama:
Dear President Obama:
Like many people around the world, I am heartened by your re-election, which I see as an opportunity to continue and improve on your social policies.
As you know, relations among nations many times have a psychological connection, aside from their obvious historical one. Because of that, relations among or between nations can contribute to the creation either of a climate of antagonism and war or of cooperation and peace. Nowhere is this truer than in the relationship between the United States and Cuba.
Mainly because of internal political considerations, both countries have chosen the path of antagonism. While the influence of the Cuban lobby in Florida dictates U.S. policy toward the island country, keeping alive the antagonism with the U.S. agglutinates the Cuban people's support for the Castro brothers.
The commercial, economic and financial embargo imposed by the U.S. on Cuba has been the U.S. response to Cuba's nationalization of U.S. citizens and corporations' properties in that country. The U.S., which now holds $6 billion worth of financial claims against the Cuban Government, states that this is the appropriate response to these claims. This is a position that is not universally accepted.
More:
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/eo20121203cc.html
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Following the revolution, U.S. saboteurs and Cuban "exiles" operated inside Cuba wreaking havoc against the citizens, even murdering teachers who went into the countryside immediately after the revolution, fanning out throughout the country, meeting with Cubans everywhere and tutoring them personally, often by candlelight after dark, at the end of their workdays, teaching them to read in their massive literacy program.
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Over 270,000 teachers went throughout the country, some of them teenagers. Now Cuba has the 2nd highest literacy ratio in the world, .9 percent higher than the U.S. They have sent teachers throughtout other countries, teaching the same method.
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"Yo Si Peudo" is the name of the Cuban Literacy Program that is now implemented across the world. The program works with coutnries such as New Zealand, Mexico, Canada, and Boliva. In 2006 UNESCO recognized Cuba's innovative methods and recognized its work with over 15 countries to improve social conditions through literacy.
More:
http://nhtoy2011.blogspot.com/2011/10/examining-cuban-literacy-aka-reason-for.html
Owners of Cuban property living in other countries made settlements with the revolutionary government long ago, right after the revolution on compensation for their property. Only owners living in the U.S. declined. It has been a settled matter with the rest of the world for a long time.
It has been a literal crime the way the U.S. has treated Cuba since the people overthrew the U.S.-supported death-squad loving, torture-using murderer of his own people, the U.S. Mafia's Cuban business partner (whose brother-in-law picked up skim payments nightly from the Mafia-owned casinos in Havana), Fulgencio Batista.
Cuban "exile" Eduardo Arocena, one of the many Cuban "exiles" who worked for the U.S. C.I.A. testified in his New York murder trial after he assassinated the Cuban U.N. ambassador in his car as he waited at a red light, that he had personally carried into Cuba himself bio-chemical warfare materials.
Various other "exiles" have been involved in hideous acts of terrorism against the Cuban people over decades of deadly assaults, and bombings, including the first in-air bombing of an airliner. ALL this ugly history has NEVER been noted and discussed by the U.S. corporate media, any more than the other covert warfare on leftists throughout the Americas, at the great expense of hundreds of thousands of human lives.
Your point about a country which the U.S. openly obliterated is so valid. That war was over very quickly by comparison, even though U.S. American lives were actually taken in the process. So much different with Cuba.
Welcome to D.U.
contributed to I would guess by the promise made and kept that many military building and local government buildings would be converted into schools and hospitals.
Cuban Literacy Campaign
The Cuban Literacy Campaign (Spanish: Campaña Nacional de Alfabetización en Cuba) was a year-long effort to abolish illiteracy in Cuba after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.[1] It began on January 1 and ended on December 22, 1961, becoming the world's most ambitious and organized literacy campaign.[2][3]
Before 1959 the official literacy rate for Cuba was between 60-76%, with educational access in rural areas and a lack of instructors the main determining factor.[4] As a result, the Cuban government of Fidel Castro at Che Guevara's behest dubbed 1961 the "year of education", and sent "literacy brigades" out into the countryside to construct schools, train new educators, and teach the predominately illiterate Guajiros (peasants) to read and write. The campaign was "a remarkable success", and by the completion of the campaign, 707,212 adults were taught to read and write, raising the national literacy rate to 96%.[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Literacy_Campaign
