U.S. Embassy cuts hobble influence in Cuba: report

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

WORLD NEWS AUGUST 22, 2018 / 1:54 PM / UPDATED AN HOUR AGO

U.S. Embassy cuts hobble influence in Cuba: report

Marc Frank
4 MIN READ

HAVANA (Reuters) - The United States’ ability to monitor Cuba, defend human rights, conduct consular activities and comply with bilateral agreements is being undermined by a drastic reduction in staff at the embassy in Havana, according to a congressional report.

The administration of President Donald Trump, which has partly rolled back Washington’s detente with Cuba, has sharply reduced U.S. staff in Havana and expelled 15 Cuban diplomats.

The document from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) states that the decision to reduce staffing from more than 50 diplomats to a maximum of 18 - due to a mysterious illness that has affected 26 officials and family members - overwhelmed those remaining at their posts.

“Because of the reduction in U.S. staff, U.S. officials maintain that those officers at post often wear two or three hats in terms of responsibilities,” read the report, issued at the request of New York Representative Eliot Engel, the ranking Democratic member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

While diplomatic and humanitarian visas are being granted, Americans in Cuba can only expect emergency services, the report said.

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Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-usa/u-s-embassy-cuts-hobble-influence-in-cuba-report-idUSKCN1L71XK

[Judi Lynn]

1. This is another point in the plan Trump's following to destroy ALL of President Obama's efforts

to clean up the ugly reputation the US has maintained for decades, held hostage by anti-progressive right-wing fools in the House, the Senate, and in the nastiest racist State Legislatures in the country.

Miami has had control of the Florida legislature since the 1960's, has bled the country annually for a fortune, supporting the radical, corrupt right-wing Cuban landowners, politicians, and other racist trash from the Batista regime, and the Miami reactionaries have had an inordinate influence on virulently racist Congressmen like Tom DeLay, and Jesse Helms, etc, etc., etc. throughout. Republicans, and some Democrats always beat a path to Miami every election season to rub elbows with the right-wing goblins, pick up some financial backing from US-taxpayer-funded "exile" groups, and grab some political steam.

Gotta keep that kinda racist hate alive, instead of coming to maturity, coming to terms with the Cuban people who wanted to be RID of the descendants of plantation owners, sugar cane growers, slave owners, and rulers of almost all the population of a nation of desperately poor people who were kept impoverished by the only work in the country, seasonal agriculture which kept them worked to death during harvest and planting and living without funds the rest of the year.

Sheer bliss to sadistic racists, pure raging, unending hell to the workers. Why did they revolt two different times? Duh.

Trump wants to put all the suffering, the poor health, the illiteracy, the helplessness right back, and hand the reigns to the Spanish-descended assholes just like himself. He wants to erase President Obama's footprints made in welcoming beginning warming relations with the Cuban people, and their Cuban government.

He is going to be erased, himself, as soon as our country becomes fully awake and sober.