Chávez thanks Castro for doctors

[Say_What]

More detail about the cooperation pact between Venezuela and Cuba follows first article.

<clips>

CARACAS - (AP) -- Chatting with Fidel Castro during his weekly television show Sunday, President Hugo Chávez thanked the Cuban leader for sending more than 10,000 doctors to work in poor communities across Venezuela.

Chávez and Castro bantered for about 10 minutes on Venezuelan television and radio after Chávez aides telephoned the Cuban president in Havana. Chávez spoke to Castro on a speakerphone live on air.

Chávez announced the expansion of the Inside the Slum program, which began in April with several hundred Cuban doctors in Caracas slums. There are now 10,169 Cuban physicians nationwide, Chávez said.

''Well, Fidel . . . your support and the support of these true heroes of Cuban medicine has been fundamental and essential,'' Chávez said.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/7493352.htm

---

<clips>

A “Yes” to hope

IT WAS October 30, 2000. In Caracas, Venezuela, Cuban President Fidel Castro and his host, President Hugo Chávez, signed a cooperation pact between the two countries that, among other things, opened the doors to the realization of a dream: that the most humble sons and daughters of the land of Bolívar could count on the most complete medical attention offered by Martí’s motherland.

How could an indigenous person from the state of Delta Amacuro, or the Amazon, or Guárico, have imagined that in a Cuban hospital facility his bone marrow could be transplanted, or that he could be rehabilitated from the immobility he had suffered for years due to lack of an appropriate operation that he could not pay for in his country? A month after the pact’s signing, the first flight of 46 patients arrived at José Martí International Airport in the Cuban capital. One of the most human projects imaginable was inaugurated.

This time, on November 28, 2003, with 48 hours to go to the third anniversary of that first landing, flight number 78 arrived, and on it were 77 patients and 53 companions.

A total of 5,078 patients and 4,487 companions had been reached that, added together, gives a total of 9,465 Venezuelans who have benefited from this human solidarity project.

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2003/diciembre03/vier12/49esper-i.html

[Minstrel Boy]

1. somewhat similar story in Canada

In the Spring, the province of Prince Edward Island was looking to Cuba to fill vacant physician postings. I believe Cuban doctors were already filling vacancies in Nova Scotia.

[Mika]

19. Exchange doctors is nothing new between Nova Scotia and Cuba

http://www.nscuba.org/aid.html

NSCUBA has been sending medical & and material donations to Cuba since 1990. This is one small part of a huge international effort to assist Cuban hospitals and clinics (cited as the best in the "Third World", and in many ways rivalling our own system) cope with the U.S. economic blockade. This blockade (the US innocently calls it an *embargo*) prevents the Cuban government from purchasing materials on the open market by punishing those firms that do business with the island.

Since 1990, NSCUBA has shipped tens of thousands of dollars worth of medical and material aid to Cuban hospitals and clinics. We have also hosted visiting Cuban doctors who have come to Nova Scotia to study and teach at local hospitals.

There's a DUser who posts on some of the Cuba threads who is a member of NSCUBA. :hi:

[Minstrel Boy]

20. thanks!

Didn't know the exchange was that longstanding. Great program!

[ozone_man]

2. Screw the U.S. embargo.

Health care for oil sounds like a good trade to me.

Cuba has better health care then we do by far, so I think we are part way to becoming a 3rd world country. Maybe 30 years from now, Cuba will take pity on us and offer to trade with us too.

[Say_What]

12. Worse than a third world country--a Banana Empire

<clips>

DECLINE OF THE BANANA EMPIRE?

We sure did, Mr. President. How could we have “misunderestimated” your regime’s ability to drive your country two Worlds back to the Third—not just a Third World country, but a full blown Banana Empire. As U.S. imperial reach is extended, the country is ruled by corporations through an unelected executive who continues to gut civil liberties in the name of national security with the complicity of a servile media and a one-party system disguised as two—not to mention economic and environmental degradation. Welcome to Third World politics kiddies!

Let’s begin with the rigged election of 2000. The son of a former President, “Bush the Lesser” (thank you, Arundhati Roy), had his brother Jeb swinging votes in Florida. The blatant politicking and nepotism of that sham was an electoral fiasco that probably even made Mexico’s PRI blush. When the Cuban government offers to send election monitors to Florida, something momentous has occurred.

With the worst still to come, Bush the Lesser assumed power and appointed a recycled cabinet that, for the purposes of this mental exercise, we’ll call a junta. I’ve always been amazed at the way some Latin American dictators—Bolivia’s Hugo Banzer Suárez or Guatemala’s Efraín Ríos Montt, among others—maintained political legitimacy after a well-documented reign of terror. Bush’s neocon cabal, including such Iran-Contra scandal veterans as John Negroponte and Elliott Abrams, seems to have done the same. Abrams helped support some of the most repressive regimes in Latin America and helped conceal their abuses, mostly in countries dominated by the U.S. fruit industry—the so-called Banana Republics. The irony of Abrams’ appointment and title was probably lost on Bush when the one-time Contra supporter was given the post of Senior Director for Democracy, Human Rights and International Operations in 2001.

Then came September 11, sadly an event that is now used to justify the Wars du Jour. As in the Latin American dirty wars of recent decades, national security is now used to rally the population behind illegal and inhumane detentions of citizens and non-citizens alike. As far as we know, today’s “detainees” could be suffering the same torture endured by the desaparecidos of the South.

http://www.nacla.org/art_display.php?art=2288

[Judi Lynn]

3. Cuba gets free oil for doctors? That's deliberate disinformation.

If anyone hears it, it would be wise to do a simple search and get the story.

This rumor has been floated with wild abandon and actually doesn't resemble the truth.

Mexico and Venezuela, since the 1980's, have cooperated in bringing oil to Caribbean islands and seven Central American countries at reduced rates.

Certain U.S. elements tried to force Mexico to deny admittance to Cuba to this group, yet finally Cuba was admitted, anyway.

There's a lot which can be located through any search:

04-08-00 Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez signed an agreement renewing the San Jose Pact, under which Mexico and Venezuela supply Central American and Caribbean countries with crude oil and refined petroleum products at preferential prices.
First implemented in 1980, the San Jose Pact now will need to be renewed on an annual basis. In a joint official statement, Zedillo and Chavez said the agreement demonstrated a willingness to strengthen links with Central American and Caribbean nations and contribute to regional economic development and integration.

http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/news/ntl03327.htm


(snip) Mexico and Venezuela, meanwhile, have jointly provided oil at subsidized prices to Central American and Caribbean countries under the so-called San Jose Pact according to the AP. (snip/)
http://www.hispanicvista.com/html/010410mex.html

[Tinoire]

4. To Bush's great fury of course!

Thanks for bringing this to our attention

[ozone_man]

6. Sounds like I misintepreted this.

So, the preferential oil trade has been a policy for many years. Just a goodwill mission by Castro I guess.

[Judi Lynn]

7. Don't blame you one bit. I thought the same for a long time

because I heard the same stories, probably. It was only recently I learned the situation is actually quite different from what we've been told.

I think the stories are hatched in Miami by the Miami Mafia. They also are the ones who have claimed Castro infects birds which then fly to Florida and spread the Nile Fever Virus, and that Castro had trained sharks which swim to Florida and munch swimmers, etc., etc.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On edit: Here's the disinformation. I checked the article again, and spotted it. You'll also see the fine hand of the propagandist at work elsewhere in the article from Miami. (I'm glad Say_What provided another article, too.):

(snip) The two leaders have developed a strong friendship rooted in their shared disdain for U.S. economic and political dominance and their conviction that free-market policies have failed to lift millions of Latin Americans from grinding poverty.

Chávez invited Castro to visit Venezuela and tour communities benefiting from Inside the Slum. Castro said a visit ''wasn't immediately possible,'' citing a heavy work load. It would be Castro's fourth visit to Venezuela since Chávez took office in 1999.

Chávez's government has sent more than 4,000 needy Venezuelans to Cuba for free medical treatment. Cuban teachers are training 100,000 Venezuelan volunteers for a national literacy campaign.

Venezuela, meanwhile, provides Cuba with crude oil under preferential financial terms. Critics say Chávez's ties with Castro have antagonized the United States, Venezuela's largest oil customer.
(snip)

Meanwhile, indeed. The two actions are not dependent upon each other, according to the San Jose Pact! Isn't this crazy? "Exile" propagandists, as well as ministers of dissinformation, like Otto Reich, with the _Bush administration formerly Reagan, during Iran-Contra, never sleep.

Just keep in mind, Mexico, as well as Venezuela, provides preferable oil prices to 11 Caribbean and Central American countries, including Cuba!

[Say_What]

14. Whaddaya think? Gusano Radio hysterical over this or what?

and now there's plenty of Venegusanos to join in to the hysteria. I don't think this article ran anywhere else except Gusanoville :crazy:

[loudnclear]

5. Castro has been sending docs to poor and ravaged countries for years

Socialism at its best. Sent them to Angola, Hatti, S. Africa, etc.

[Orrin_73]

8. Viva Fidel!!!!

Fidel is one of the true Socialists still alive.

deanforamerica.com
clark04.com
kucinich.us
sharpton2004.org

[Mika]

9. Not only Fidel, but all of the good people of Cuba.

This an accomplishment of the Cuban people, not Fidel.

All of the Cuban people have made this possible (well, almost all :shrug: ), through hard work and material sacrifice. Remember, the Cuban people who are at the tiller of their own ship, and the people of Cuba have chosen socialism (well, a modified version of it :shrug: ).


Viva Cuba!

[reknewcomer]

10. You misspelled dictator

Why a Democrat would root for a communist dictator is beyond me and just about every Dem I know and associate with. We should not encourage dictatorships.

[Say_What]

11. FLAME BAIT

[reknewcomer]

13. Your are right

Praising a dictator is quite the flame bait. Most Dems want nothing to do with dictators.

[Minstrel Boy]

16. Don't mind me,

I'm a Canadian.



Pierre Trudeau visits an old friend, 1976.

[Malva Zebrina]

15. I understand that Cuban doctors have received excellent education

and training in the medical field, being sent to places in the world that would teach thed highest standards. So now I read that 10,000 of them have been sent to help the poor people of Venezuela who are in need of medical care. Cubans, apparently, are getting the medicalcare they need, but this action astounds me. Absolutely.

do you mean to tell me that these doctors are volunteering to help sick people and not making one hundred dollars a minute, well OK that may be an exagerration, let's say, one hundred dollars for fifteen minutes, like the American doctors do? Do you mean to say these doctors are actually working in the field they chose to work in and are not immigrating to the US where they can become very rich by taking care of the sick--as long as the sick and the consultations they seek, can pay a lot of money for it?

[Say_What]

17. Cuba trains American medical students — to work in US

Cuba has 60,000 doctors. More docs per capita than any other country on the planet and they are found around the globe helping people who are less fortunate.

<clips>

Eight young Americans have recently taken up President Fidel Castro's offer of a free medical education in Cuba, much to the chagrin of American anti-Castro groups.

Castro hopes that the 8 students, all from low-income, minority families and communities where health care is in short supply, will be the vanguard of a corps of up to 500 US students taking advantage of Cuba's willingness to train doctors to treat poor Americans. The next 30 students from the US will arrive this summer.

The offer originated last year after Castro met with the US Congressional Black Caucus. Benny Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, complained of the high infant mortality rate and lack of doctors in his district.

Castro responded by offering to educate students from low-income American families who agreed to return to their communities after the 6 years of training. Cuba is paying all costs save for the students' airfare.

The Americans won't be alone in Cuba. More than 3400 medical students from 23 Latin American, African and Caribbean countries are already being trained at Cuba's expense. After intensive Spanish-language training, since all courses are taught in Spanish, the students spend their first 2 years at the Latin American School of Medical Sciences in Havana and then move on to 1 of Cuba's 21 other schools.


<http://collection.nlc-bnc.ca/100/201/300/cdn_medical_association/cmaj/vol-164/issue-10/1477a.asp>

[Mika]

18. Marianne, correct.. but I take exception to a comment

Marianne, you are correct in saying that Cuban doctors are well trained, and caring practitioners. I'm glad to know that some Americans are aware of that.


But, I take exception to your comments;

"do you mean to tell me that these doctors are volunteering to help sick people and not making one hundred dollars a minute, well OK that may be an exagerration, let's say, one hundred dollars for fifteen minutes, like the American doctors do? Do you mean to say these doctors are actually working in the field they chose to work in and are not immigrating to the US where they can become very rich by taking care of the sick--as long as the sick and the consultations they seek, can pay a lot of money for it?"


I understand your sentiment (I think), but your denunciation all American doctors really isn't appropriate or accurate. I am an American doctor. I don't make $400 an hour. I have and do volunteer plenty of my time to patients of lesser means, here and in several countries, including Cuba in the past. As have many of my professional associates. Slandering all of us to make your point really isn't making the point. The point is, that our whole medical system is topsy turvey, and needs to be completely overhauled. Condemning all of us, many of whom are Dems seeking social justice and change, just doesn't further any debate.

Thanks.

[BrotherBuzz]

21. My! Cuba exports doctors....

While the US seems to only export jobs. What's wrong with this picture?

[Mika]

22. What's wrong with this picture? Our party's prez candidates, that's what.

We will never get anywhere as long as both parties prez candidates are apologists for the Bush Doctrine regarding Cuba.


Democratic Presidential Candidates on Cuba
http://www.lawg.org/pages/new%20pages/Misc/prez-candidates1.htm


Only one Dem candidate for president openly calls for an end to the US sanctions on Cuba and Americans.