Elderly Cubans starve as drought brings cut in rations (* creates famine)

[cAMP]

Elderly Cubans left to starve as drought brings cut in rations
The Sunday Times July 18, 2004 Matthew Campbell
(note - subscription required)

PENSIONERS in Cuba are being left to starve in government-run homes as food shortages caused by inefficient distribution and drought sweep one of the world’s last communist strongholds.

Cuban journalists say that the elderly are reduced to exchanging rations of tobacco and toothpaste for food, while residents of old people’s homes — or “grandparents’ homes” as they are known — make do with the odd bowl of rice or potatoes.

“Even people being admitted to hospital have to provide their own food,” said Eric Driggs Gonzalez, humanitarian aid co-ordinator for the Institute of Cuban Studies in Florida.

The food shortage has made it increasingly difficult for people who depend on government rationing to obtain basic supplies. The lack of some items even in normally well supplied “dollar stores” has raised fears of a crisis similar to one in the early 1990s when malnutrition was accompanied by an outbreak of eye disease.

EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

[cAMP]

1. Sorry if I was supposed to xcerpt...

but many people do not realize that shrub is fighting more than one war

[Moderator]

19. cAMP

You need to excerpt up to four paragraphs of the article, irrespective of how important you may think it is.

[Mika]

2. Key point: Journalists reporting for Cubanet.org..

.. are less trustworthy than Chalabi's Iraqi "exiles" and "sources".


Cubanet.org is fully NED/USAID funded & run by the CANF and the Diaz Balart brothers.


Every year we hear the BS stories from the miamicuban "news" sources for over 40 years about the constantly deteriorating conditions in Cuba, but yet Cuba's infant mortality stats and longevity rates are better than the entire Caribbean and those of the latin Americas - matching or exceeding the US's, Canada, and Switzerland.

If you were to believe Cubanet.org's reporters then you should believe that Cuba is worse than Somalia or Sudan by now.

Cuba stats here

[Vogon_Glory]

5. Nevertheless, In 1993 The Cuban Economy Almost Collapsed

Whatever may be the tales from Cubanet, I do remember listening to Cuban government officials--in Cuba, and these were NOT CANF mouthpieces--saying that things were so bad after the cut-off of Soviet aid at the end of the Cold War that the Cuban economy nearly did collapse.

This is not to say that I approve of the blockade--not at all. It's a geopolitical failure whose only end result will be to write finis to the political aspirations of right-wing Cuban exile politicos and to firmly bind Cuba to the European Union. In the meantime, the blockade and the tightening of cash transfers can very well kill off a number of people. Exiles may have to decide wether Dubya is worth their relatives' lives.

I still firmly believe that a larger, less-regulated private sector in Cuba can do the same thing for the island that mainland China's peasants and farmer's market people did in the 1970's--raise the standard of living in Cuba and grow the Cuban economy that measures like the tightening embargo would have less and less effect.

As is typical with right-wing Republicans and the Boosh regime in particular, the right-wing controlled US government is making another botch of handling the transition of Cuba from the Castro era to the post-Castro era, just as the US botched in Afghanistan after the Soviets left and just as Bush-the-Father failed in Iraq, and as George Minor is bungling in Iraq.

The US is paying in sundered family relationships and lost economic opportunities. The Cuban people are not only paying in sundered families, but increasingly with their lives and health.

[Mika]

6. That was long ago (11 years)

Soviet aid? It was really Russian trade that was ended - extorted by the US in turn for US aid and investment to/in Russia.

Imagine if the US was cut off from trade (er, aid) from Canada.

Cubans did suffer then, but only because of the sacrifices made to keep their infrastructure intact. Do you understand that Cuba's health care stats didn't implode, nor did Cuba's education stats deteriorate at all in that short time of crisis. As a matter of fact, during the "special period' that you mention Cuba increased the teacher to student ratio, as well as increased their doctor to citizen ratio to higher than that of the USA.

Yes they did suffer then, but it was not at the expense of their children nor their sick or poor nor the sanctity of their social infrastructure.

Look at the devastation that Bush's government is creating in those very important social endeavors - health and ed. All unwanted and undemocratic.

--


As to the less regulated private sectors in Cuba, it is happening. Small stores, restaurants, small farms, farmers markets, bed and breakfasts, small foundries, scuba and bicycle rental shops, and much much more. Ask anyone free enough to have been to Cuba in the last ten years.

[Vogon_Glory]

12. Cuba's Present Private Sector STILL Being Choked

Starry-eyed apologetics for current Cuban state-socialists' policies aside, the Cuban private sector is STILL being choked by Compañero Micawber ideologues who think that "something will turn up" to save state socialism and that act as if the private sector is a temporary phase. These small businesses are still being harassed by state inspectors, very high taxes, and licensing hassles.

People who claim that current Cuban economic policies help small business are playing as fast and loose with the truth as real-estate developers who ballyhoo the wilderness areas their strip malls and subdivisions are bulldozing under.

North America and the Caribbean have at least two countries that show the folly of running to one ideological extreme or the other when it comes to economics--Cuba, where state socialist ideology hamstrings a private sector that could substantially boost its citizens' standard of living without choking off opportunities for better education and social mobility, and the USA, where private sector ideologues so devoted to their theories that they are more than willing to return the US to a class-ridden, race-fractured society with a social-darwinist mindset riven by chasms in class, race, education, and income.

The US deserves better. So does Cuba.

[Mika]

14. Well, when Cuba stops threatening the US and lifts the embargo..

.. maybe then the US will have a little more 'wiggle room' to experiment and open up. As you know, Cuba's embargo and sanctions and threats of a "transition government" on the US are choking us.
<sarcasm off>

[Judi Lynn]

25. Cuba has been living with terroristic raids and attacks for over 44 years

launched from this country, with and without direct awareness of the CIA. A lot of people apparently don't know about this. It's easy to learn, as the information has always been around. It just hasn't been covered by our own press, imagine that!

Look at what happened when 9/11 was thrown into our experience. Immediately the Bush regime started locking up and controlling all elements of American life, and withdrawing previous "freedoms." There was no mistake that when "threatened" they wasted no time at all closing us down, to the point it's as if we're living through the worst of the Cold War all over again, as Elton John pointed out when he said that even American artists have been terrified to give voice to their own opinions now.

Miami "exile" hardliners have boasted openly that the U.S. government's not going to do anything to them if they are caught in violent actions against Cuba. They've conducted violent assaults on Cuba and Cuban citizens even outside the country for over 4 decades.

We won't know how far Cuba can come or what it can do until we formally remove the travel ban, the embargo, and criminalize violence against Cuba and its citizens.

Good points made today, Mika. You've brought up some truths no one has ever mentioned, and they are all critically important. So much gets lost when people rely on slipshod information from propagandists.

[Mika]

26. VERY good point you make, JudiLyn

Bushco is quickly dismantling infrastructure that has taken America decades to build all for war and security profits to his cabal, all the while a vast majority cowers. Compare that to the bravery of the Cuban people and their leadership in the face of US supported Batista and subsequent US supported invasions and terra attacks, not to mention the embargoes. They have built in 40 years, from scratch, a world class country, post dictatorship.



Our brave AWOL President Bush rides in bulletproof cars and behind bulletproof barricades and scores of machine gun toting security everywhere he goes, in the air on the ground etc - including IN America.

Cuba's greatest living revolutionary war hero, President Castro rides an open jeep, stops at farmers markets to buy fruit and such and walks/talks among the Cuban people without security - only a driver for his jeep. He leads peace rallies on foot on many of the rallies along the Malecon. He speaks without bulletproof shields at the largest of rallies, and is welcomed virtually everywhere he goes.

[Judi Lynn]

27. They've got a president who actually DID risk his life for his beliefs

as he and the others lived in the Sierra Maestra mountains, starting with a small, small number after some of them had been killed off, some of them tortured, etc.

If people took the time to start reading they would know that Fulgencio Batista bombed the hell out of "his own people" with the planes and bombs Eisenhower sent him, and shot up the place with all the tanks he sent him, too, like this one.







(I just saw the second and third photos today for the first time, and had to include them.)

They'd also know that Fulgencio Batista actually shut down the newpapers for a period of time, censored the magazines coming into the country with blackouts on certain articles, blocked an election, suspended the constitution, used death squads, and ran Cuban affairs, both as a Cuban President twice, once in the '30's, once in the '50's, and between the two decades, from behind the scenes while using front men as Presidents while actually calling the shots himself. He was regarded highly by all the Presidents, starting with FDR (who didn't know him as the monster he became later). Oh, not to mention, used citizens' taxes to build some of those elaborate hotels for the American Mafia to use for their gambling, etc.

And some people who don't read a lot haven't the slightest idea this was going on at all.

[Mika]

7. The US "is making another botch"?

The US seems to botch every government it is involved in.

The US should stay the fuck out of other countries sovereign affairs. Period.

[Vogon_Glory]

13. A Lovely Principle, But Not One We Should Always Adhere To

Non-intervention in other countries' affairs is a lovely principle, but there are times where non-intervention is absolutely indecent. Would non-intervention in the Balkans have stopped Slobodan Milosevic's genocidal campaigns against Bosnian Muslims and Albanians? Did US non-intervention in Rwanda and Burundi have stopped the killings of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Tutsis and also those Hutus who opposed genocide?

[Mika]

15. Hide and highlight

Just as you have listed some regions that theoretically might have benefited from intervention - from the UN.

But there is a list as long as your arm of US interventions that were and are murderous, brutal, undemocratic and unwanted. A look at the history of the Latin Americas and the Caribbean is ample evidence.

Cubans know Americas' history in the L-As and Caribbean. Cubans seek trade and a cooperative relationship, not sovereign interference. They will manage their own country just fine.

[Judi Lynn]

16. You're right. There couldn't be a better example of Bush stupidity

than his having Ashcroft announce he had raised the bounty on a Colombian drug dealer, and Cuba caught the guy. _Bush has shoved away Cuba's offers to cooperate in drug investigations, etc. and now Cuba has their guy. Cuba holding Colombian drug kingpin
U.S. has $5 million reward for his arrest, but no extradition pact
Sunday, July 11, 2004 Posted: 0000 GMT (0800 HKT)


HAVANA, Cuba (CNN) -- Cuba's Foreign Ministry said Saturday that it was holding one of Colombia's top drug kingpins, Luis Hernando Gomez Bustamante.

Bustamante, alias Rasguno, was captured when he entered the country July 2 on a false passport.

The top figure in the Northern Valle drug cartel was being held at an Interior Ministry center for crimes against state security, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

U.S. authorities describe Northern Valle cartel as Colombia's largest and most-feared narcotics organization. The heir to the now-defunct Medellin and Cali cartels is accused of smuggling hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States during the past decade.
(snip/...)http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/americas/07/10/colombia.druglord/

[cAMP]

8. Re: Journalists reporting for Cubanet.org...

Thanks for explaining this. I had no idea about them.

[Liberal Veteran]

3. Hmm...So Rummy is War. Bush is Famine. Cheney is Death.

Which one is Pestilence? Powell?

Hmm...maybe Ashcroft?

[haele]

31. Frist is Pestilence...

With his ties to "health" organization and his "leadership" position in Congress - he's the primary symptom of the disease encompassing him, Delay, and all the other neocons with "compassionate-conservative-familyvalues-keep-Amurikka-pure-for-real-Amurikkans" faces - a many-headed, many-pronged attack on Congress and society, a disease for which there is no inoculation against save access to the truth. Like influenza, STD's, et all, they constantly employ a low level shifting of locative "pain and suffering" and rely on the natural tendency of most people who either haven't developed symptoms or appear to be recovering to deny there's a serious problem to be dealt with professionally until it's too late to cure without expensive, traumatic, or invasive procedures.

I've seen so many people in denial, so many people who want to believe that no matter what these people do, as long as the kool-aid flavored "Nyquil" seems to work, there isn't a total loss of control by the People and that this is only a temporary respite before the collapse of the body Public to the mercy of the Neocons.

Ashcroft is more like one of the seven deadly sins - Wrath or Pride, most likely.

Haele

[Zorra]

4. Just ol' Bu$h killing more poor people.

[dumpster_baby]

9. You cannot believe anything corporate media say about socialist countries

This news about Cuba may or may not be true. But you absolutely cannot trust mainstream media to tell you the truth about it. Chomsky et al have shown us this.

[FreedomReload]

10. So Castro Shares None Of The Responsibilty????

Typical.

[lottie244]

22. Responsibility for what? For the US embargo?

On the contrary, it is 'typical' go call what the US does 'good' while what anyone else does 'evil.' It is typical to remain blind to the truth that is before you.

[Judi Lynn]

11. Cuba to help Caribbean fight Aids

Last Updated: Friday, 16 July, 2004, 10:15 GMT 11:15 UK



Cuba to help Caribbean fight Aids


By Stephen Gibbs
BBC correspondent in Cuba


Cuba has one of the world's lowest infection rates
The Cuban government has offered to train nurses and doctors throughout the Caribbean as part of the region's fight against Aids.
Cuba also says it will provide anti-retroviral drugs to its neighbours at well below market prices.

The offer has been enthusiastically accepted by representatives of Caricom - the Caribbean regional grouping that has been meeting in Havana.

Only sub-Saharan Africa has higher HIV infection rates than the Caribbean.

But Cuba, the region's largest island, has largely escaped the disease.
(snip/...)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3899657.stm

[indepat]

17. Is there a rational person alive who does not see something like this,

a lack of food, clothing, shelter, medical care and medicines for maybe tens of millions of American seniors some years out as Greenspan's values, that of slashing social security benefits to pay for W's tax cuts benefiting mostly the most affluent and large corporations, come to fruition?

[Mika]

18. FYI, there are NO homeless in Cuba

Shelter, health care, and education are fundamental rights in Cuba. I've been to many places in Cuba over decades, and I have never seen homeless people roaming the streets or living under bridges, nor are there street children huffing glue or selling crack on the street corners as there are all over the US and many Latin American and Caribbean countries.

[lottie244]

21. Same thing my aunt told me who is married to a Cuban

No homeless, medicine (what little they have) milk, education...free.

[Mika]

23. Nothing is free

The Cuban people have worked hard, and continue to do so, to create the world class systems they have. They have made many material sacrifices to ensure that no one falls between the cracks of their social systems and that they are secure and living in a peaceful environment for themselves and, most importantly, for their children.

[lottie244]

20. You can thank the US embargo and sanctions for this hardship in Cuba

Just think what Cuba could have been without the US embargos and sanctions. We could not afford to have a true communist or socialist agenda succeed...'it wouldn't be prudent.'

Shame, shame on the US.

[Mika]

24. Cuba has succeeded

Despite the hardships induced by the extraterritorial Helms-Burton law (the hard line embargo), Cuba has surpassed most of the western world in its ed and health care standards and stats and environmental preservation. Yes, Cuba could have done much better, but Cuba has succeeded - and excelled. Their first step in this long process was to cast off the shackles of US hegemony.

Cuba has suceeded. Its Americans who refuse to push for their rights to see it for themselves.


Its not only the repugs. Kerry supports the long term status quo.


Kerry's stated policy on Cuba:
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/8848574.htm

Under a Kerry administration Cuba will remain under US sanctions

Under a Kerry administration we will still be travel banned unless our travel is deemed politically worthy by US gov jackboots


Mr Kerry, Tear down the wall!

[juajen]

28. Let's get him elected first

I am just as mad as you with our "Cuba" policies. I think, however, the push for reform and an end to sanctions should come after we get him elected, not before. I like John Kerry, but I have many differences with his stated policies.

[Mika]

29. Why not now? Doesn't make sense

The majority of Americans want to end the embargo.

Doesn't Kerry want the majority support that a sensible Cuba platform would bring?

Kerry espouses real family values, but he hypocritically supports the embargo on Cuba and travel sanctions on Americans.

Americans support engagement and familial contact.

Poll: Americans on Cuban Sanctions
http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=770


Just why would Kerry seek to appease the hard line faction within the Cuban-American community who are in the stark minority?



So, I say again..


Mr Kerry, Tear down the wall!

[wickerwoman]

33. More electoral magic.

The hard-line Cuban Americans are, of course, the minority, but they all happen to live in some important districts in Florida which Kerry needs to fight for in the next election. We won't know Kerry's real policy on Cuba until he's a lame duck.

[Mika]

34. Hello? The MAJORITY of Cuban-Americans are against Bush's policy

NOW is the time for Kerry to strike with a real family values platform. Family unification and our constitutional rights. Cuban-Americans are up in arms, and sick and tired of the "failed" policy that has mainly hurt their families who choose to live in Cuba.

Kerry has a chance to strike a chord of harmony and normalization that will resonate within the C-A community. They are ready for it NOW. I live in Miami and I'm pretty tuned-in to the pulse here (as well as Cuba).


Please Mr Kerry, Tear down the wall!

[Snoggera]

30. * didn't create the famine

But through his policies is allowing the famine to intensify.

Compassionate Conservatism in action.

[daleo]

32. This has the feel of right wing propaganda about it

Mondo Times gives the Times of London the following ratings:

Content: Average (6 votes)
Political Bias: Conservative (6 votes)
Credibility: Moderate (5 votes)

http://www.mondotimes.com/1/world/uk/142/4217/10401

This is kind of an interesting site.

[Judi Lynn]

35. Not only is this an underhanded, vicious trick to play on Cubans

when they refuse to allow the U.S. to control them, it's a damned OLD tactic:

We must impose a harsh blockade so that hunger and its constant companion, disease, undermine the peaceful population and decimate the Cuban army.

http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/bmemo.htm

This is taken from a memo sent by John C. Breckenridge,
Department of War
Office of the Undersecretary
Washington D.C.
December 24, 1897

It's about time to get off those peoples' backs.

[Judi Lynn]

36. This area will be next on Bush's list

Posted on Sun, Jul. 18, 2004


Delegation assesses trade opportunities with Cuba
Associated Press


ABERDEEN, S.D. - Agricultural trade with Cuba is increasing, but it will be some time before it gets substantial imports from South Dakota, according to two participants on a trade mission to the communist country.

Aberdeen lawyer Jeff Sveen and Frederick farmer John Sumption were part of an 18-person group that went to the island nation in March on a trip organized by the South Dakota Value-Added Agriculture Development Center.

Sveen and Sumption said political problems will keep South Dakota and Cuba from being big trading partners in the near future, but the long-term potential is better.

For the most part, the United States cannot trade with Cuba, the result of a trade embargo. But there are exceptions made for agriculture.
(snip/...)

http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/9185428.htm

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

I heard some Congress person, can't remember which one, or if it may have been a Senator, say that _Bush and his people have been relentlessly looking for a way to destroy this one vital link the Cubans have to our food producers.

That's one BIG reason _Bush would be doing far more good in leaving Washington.

If Bush goes all out against the American farmers he's going to have a real battle with BOTH Republicans and Democrats in both the House and Senate who jointly favor normalizing relations with Cuba.

[Mika]

37. Once again..

Where is the Dem party on this family values/family farmers/American worker issue?

I just cannot believe that the Dem party is silent on this issue - aside from supporting continuing the sanctions, travel ban etc.