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The embargo didn't work because we were the only country with an embargo still on Cuba. Cuba paid off 4 countries for what they stole but never gave US companies any of the money owed. They are a poor third world country that supports terrorism in the Western hemisphere. If you're ok with those facts then normalize relations with that piece of shit island.
I don't often agree with Barry Hussein's policies but I agree in this case that it's time we at least tried to normalize relations with the quirky socialist country just 90 miles from our borders. Americans can travel pretty much anywhere in the world if they want to risk it but they can't travel to Cuba without permission. You can buy Cuban cigars in Canada but not the U.S. because the Kennedys were mad at the Castros. Now that it's pretty much acknowledged that state supported terrorism is an Islamic concept, the image of the old socialist guerrillas skulking through the jungle wearing surplus American fatigues seems pretty harmless.
From a 2000 state dept report (note-under Clinton)
Cuba
Cuba continued to provide safehaven to several terrorists and US fugitives in 2000. A number of Basque ETA terrorists who gained sanctuary in Cuba some years ago continued to live on the island, as did several US terrorist fugitives.
Havana also maintained ties to other state sponsors of terrorism and Latin American insurgents. Colombia's two largest terrorist organizations, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the National Liberation Army, both maintained a permanent presence on the island.
From a 2000 state dept report (note-under Clinton)
Cuba
Cuba continued to provide safehaven to several terrorists and US fugitives in 2000. A number of Basque ETA terrorists who gained sanctuary in Cuba some years ago continued to live on the island, as did several US terrorist fugitives.
Havana also maintained ties to other state sponsors of terrorism and Latin American insurgents. Colombia's two largest terrorist organizations, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the National Liberation Army, both maintained a permanent presence on the island.
puleeze.
The same place as many on the right. Isn't Putin their hero?Considering Russia relieved them of 90% of their debt recently, and their warships have been seen in dock there in the last year, well you tell me where their alliances lie.
The same place as many on the right. Isn't Putin their hero?Considering Russia relieved them of 90% of their debt recently, and their warships have been seen in dock there in the last year, well you tell me where their alliances lie.
Cuba is probably culturally frozen in the 1950's since the Revolution ended with the pompous idiot becoming supreme ruler. It's probably a good source for classic cars though since the Cubanos had to keep what they had running since around 1959. The only thing Cuba has that the U.S. might need is cigars and maybe sugar. If the Cubans put the gambling casinos back on line it might be Batista redoux.
Missions abroad[edit]
In 2007, one academic study on Cuban internationalism surveyed the history of the programme, noting its broad sweep: "Since the early 1960s, 28,422 Cuban health workers have worked in 37 Latin American countries, 31,181 in 33 African countries, and 7,986 in 24 Asian countries. Throughout a period of four decades, Cuba sent 67,000 health workers to structural cooperation programs, usually for at least two years, in 94 countries ... an average of 3,350 health workers working abroad every year between 1960 and 2000."[5]
Anti-colonialism[edit]
The programme was initiated in 1963 as part of Cuba's foreign policy of supporting anti-colonial struggles. It began when Cuba sent a small medical brigade to Algeria, which suffered from the mass withdrawal of French medical personnel during the independence war; some wounded soldiers and war orphans were also transported back to Cuba for treatment.[6][7] Cuba did this at a time when, following the Cuban revolution, "half of the country’s 6,000 doctors fled".[2] Between 1966 and 1974, Cuban doctors worked alongside Cuban artillery in Guinea-Bissau during its liberation struggle against Portugal.[2] Cuba's largest foreign campaign was in Angola: within two years of the campaign, by 1977, "only one Angolan province out of sixteen was without Cuban health technicians."[8] After 1979, Cuba developed a strong relationship with Nicaragua.[9]
Humanitarianism[edit]
However, alongside internationalism driven by foreign policy objectives, humanitarian objectives also played a role, with medical teams despatched to countries governed by ideological foes. For example in 1960, 1972 and 1990 it dispatched emergency assistance teams to Chile and Nicaragua, and Iran following earthquakes.[2] Similarly, Venezuela's Mission Barrio Adentro programme grew out of the emergency assistance provided by Cuban doctors in the wake of the December 1999 mudslides in Vargas state, which killed 20,000 people.[10]
Cuban medical missions were sent to Honduras, Guatemala and Haiti following 1998's Hurricane Mitch and Hurricane Georges, and remained there semi-permanently.[6] This has been part of a dramatic expansion of Cuba’s international cooperation in health since 1998.[11] The number of Cuban doctors working abroad jumped from about 5000 in 2003 to more than 25,000 in 2005.[11]
In Honduras the medical personnel had a substantial impact: "In the areas they served, infant mortality rates were reduced from 30.8 to 10.1 per 1,000 live births and maternal mortality rates from 48.1 to 22.4 per 1,000 live births between 1998 and 2003."[2] However, as one academic paper notes, "The idea of a nation saving lives and improving the human condition is alien to traditional statecraft and is therefore discounted as a rationale for the Cuban approach."[2] In 2004 the 1700 medical personnel in Guatemala received the Order of the Quetzal, the country's highest state honour.[2] A 2005 attempt by Honduras to expel the Cuban mission on the basis that it was threatening Honduran jobs was successfully resisted by trade unions and community organisations.[6]
Following the 2004 Asian tsunami, Cuba sent medical assistance to Banda Aceh and Sri Lanka.[5] In response to Hurricane Katrina, Cuba prepared to send 1500 doctors to the New Orleans; the offer was refused. Several months later the mission was dispatched to Pakistan following the 2005 Kashmir earthquake there. Ultimately Cuba sent "more than 2,500 disaster response experts, surgeons, family doctors, and other health personnel", who stayed through the winter for more than 6 months.[5][12] Cuba is helping with the medical crisis in Haiti due to the 2010 Haiti earthquake.[13] All 152 Cuban medical and educational personnel in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince at the time of the earthquake were reported to be safe, with two suffering minor injuries.[14] In 2014, Cuba sent 103 nurses and 62 doctors to help fight the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa, the biggest contribution of health care staff by any single country.[15]
Venezuela[edit]
Main article: Mission Barrio Adentro
Cuba's largest and most extensive medical aid effort is with Venezuela. The program grew out of the emergency assistance provided by Cuban doctors in the wake of the December 1999 mudslides in Vargas state, which killed 20,000 people. Under this bilateral effort, also known as the "oil for doctors" program, Cuba provides Venezuela with 31,000 Cuban doctors and dentists and provides training for 40,000 Venezuelan medical personnel. In exchange, Venezuela provides Cuba with 100,000 barrels of oil per day. Based on February 2010 prices, the oil is worth $7.5 million per day, or nearly $3 billion per year.[16]
Other countries[edit]
Cuba has also sent notable missions to Bolivia (particularly since the 2005 election of Evo Morales) and South Africa, the latter in particular after a post-apartheid brain drain of white doctors.[17] Since 1995, a co-operation agreement with South Africa has seen hundreds of Cuban doctors practice in South Africa, while South Africa sends medical students to Cuba to study.[18] In 2012, the two governments signed another deal, increasing numbers on both sides. South African can now send 1 000 students to Cuba for training which, South Africa believes, will help train the doctors it so desperately needs for the implementation of its National Health Insurance Scheme.[19] After the 1999 violence in East Timor, the country of a million people was left with only 35 physicians and 75% of its population displaced. The number later increased to 79 physicians by 2004, and Cuba sent an additional 182 physicians and technicians.[20]
"From 1963 to 2004, Cuba was involved in the creation of nine medical faculties in Yemen, Guyana, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Uganda, Ghana, Gambia, Equatorial Guinea, and Haiti."[5]
Oceania[edit]
In the 2000s, Cuba began establishing or strengthening relations with Pacific Island countries, and providing medical aid to those countries. Cuba's medical aid to Pacific countries has been two-pronged, consisting in sending doctors to Oceania, and in providing scholarships for Pacific students to study medicine in Cuba at Cuba's expense.
There are currently sixteen doctors providing specialised medical care in Kiribati, with sixteen more scheduled to join them.[21] Cubans have also offered training to I-Kiribati doctors.[22] Cuban doctors have reportedly provided a dramatic improvement to the field of medical care in Kiribati, reducing the child mortality rate in that country by 80%,[23] and winning the proverbial hearts and minds in the Pacific. In response, the Solomon Islands began recruiting Cuban doctors in July 2007, while Papua New Guinea and Fiji considered following suit.[23]
In 2008, Cuba was due to send doctors to the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Nauru and Papua New Guinea,[1] while seventeen medical students from Vanuatu would study in Cuba.[24] It was reported that it might also provide training for Fiji doctors.[25]
As of September 2008, fifteen Cuban doctors were serving in Kiribati, sixty-four Pacific students were studying medicine in Cuba, and Cuban authorities were offering "up to 400 scholarships to young people of that region".[26] Among those sixty-four students were twenty-five Solomon Islanders, twenty I-Kiribati, two Nauruans and seventeen ni-Vanuatu.[27] Pacific Islanders have been studying in Cuba since 2006.[28]
In June 2009, Prensa Latina reported that Cuban doctors had "inaugurated a series of new health services in Tuvalu". One Cuban doctor had been serving in Tuvalu since October 2008, and two more since February 2009. They had reportedly "attended 3,496 patients, and saved 53 lives", having "opened ultrasound and abortion services, as well as specialized consultations on hypertension, diabetes, and chronic diseases in children". They had visited all the country's islands, and were training local staff in "primary health care, and how to deal with seriously ill patients, among other subjects".[29]
Principles[edit]
Missions abroad are intended to provide services at low cost to the host country. "Patients are not charged for services, and the recipient countries are expected to cover only the cost of collective housing, air fare, and limited food and supplies not exceeding $200 a month. While Cuban doctors are abroad, they continue to receive their salaries as well as a stipend in foreign currency."[2] Pay for Cuban doctors abroad, while much higher than at home ($23 per month) is still low by international standards ($183 per month).[17] However due to the socialist ideal of their country this monetary discrepancy is merely circumstantial to the practitioners themselves as it is the development and preservation of internationalist humanitarian aid that defines their cause.
Internationalism at home[edit]
Since 1990, Cuba has provided long-term care for 18,000 victims of the Chernobyl disaster, "offering treatment for hair loss, skin disorders, cancer, leukemia, and other illnesses attributed to radioactivity."[2]
In response to the 1998 Hurricane Mitch, Cuba set up the "Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina" ("Latin American School of Medicine"; ELAM) outside Havana, converted from a former naval base. It accepts around 1500 students per year.[2] ELAM forms part of a range of medical education and training initiatives; "Cubans, with the help of Venezuela, are currently educating more doctors, about 70,000 in all, than all the medical schools in the United States, which typically have somewhere between 64,000 to 68,000 students enrolled in their programs."[6]
Following the development of cooperation with Venezuela through Mission Barrio Adentro, Mission Milagro / Operación Milagro was set up to provide ophthalmology services to Cuban, Venezuelan and Latin American patients, both in Cuba and in other countries. "As of August 2007, Cuba had performed over 750,000 eye surgeries, at no cost, including 113,000 surgeries for its own citizens."[2]
You are ignorant of history if you cannot see that the US terrorized Cuba.I don't often agree with Barry Hussein's policies but I agree in this case that it's time we at least tried to normalize relations with the quirky socialist country just 90 miles from our borders. Americans can travel pretty much anywhere in the world if they want to risk it but they can't travel to Cuba without permission. You can buy Cuban cigars in Canada but not the U.S. because the Kennedys were mad at the Castros. Now that it's pretty much acknowledged that state supported terrorism is an Islamic concept, the image of the old socialist guerrillas skulking through the jungle wearing surplus American fatigues seems pretty harmless.
Mostly I agree with you- I have always thought there was something distinctly un-American about telling our government telling us that we are not allowed to visit Cuba.
However- if you don't think that Cuba didn't sponsor terrorism or you think that 'state sponsored' terrorism is unique to Islam- well then you just are ignorant of history.
Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch.Most probably aren't aware of the revolutionaries wanted here that hijacked planes to Cuba, and in which they were given asylum there, and yet to be returned.The embargo didn't work because we were the only country with an embargo still on Cuba. Cuba paid off 4 countries for what they stole but never gave US companies any of the money owed. They are a poor third world country that supports terrorism in the Western hemisphere. If you're ok with those facts then normalize relations with that piece of shit island.
Cuba nationalized all foreign owned businesses. Cuba offered to pay off the US but Philip Bosnal, the US ambasador to Cuba rejected the offer. He also told other countries to reject it. In terms of terrorism, what the US did to cuba can only be described as terrorism. Fifty years of US terrorism against Cuba by Salim LamraniThe embargo didn't work because we were the only country with an embargo still on Cuba. Cuba paid off 4 countries for what they stole but never gave US companies any of the money owed. They are a poor third world country that supports terrorism in the Western hemisphere. If you're ok with those facts then normalize relations with that piece of shit island.
You mean to tell me Cuba has an alliance with someone they've had an alliance with for the last 55 years. We are all shocked!!!Considering Russia relieved them of 90% of their debt recently, and their warships have been seen in dock there in the last year, well you tell me where their alliances lie.
I stopped reading at Jillian,"snore"I don't often agree with Barry Hussein's policies but I agree in this case that it's time we at least tried to normalize relations with the quirky socialist country just 90 miles from our borders. Americans can travel pretty much anywhere in the world if they want to risk it but they can't travel to Cuba without permission. You can buy Cuban cigars in Canada but not the U.S. because the Kennedys were mad at the Castros. Now that it's pretty much acknowledged that state supported terrorism is an Islamic concept, the image of the old socialist guerrillas skulking through the jungle wearing surplus American fatigues seems pretty harmless.
i stopped reading at "barry hussein".
*yawn*
