Obama needs to stop the embargo against Cuba!

[Luissa]

If we continue to trade with China, how can we continue to blockade Cuba?

"The embargo is the perfect example used by anti-Americans everywhere to expose the hypocrisy of a superpower that punishes a small island while cozying to dictators elsewhere."
— Moisés Naím, Newsweek [32]

United States embargo against Cuba - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Baruch Menachem]

the US is the only country that participates.

The only things to buy in Cuba are Rum and tobacco. the only thing to do there is sleep with under age prostitutes.

Everything is owned by the Castro family, for the Castro family.

No good will come of ending our 'embargo' except for a bit more loose change in the Castro family's swiss bank accounts

 

[manu1959]

what would you like us to buy from them.....

 

[Luissa]

It isn't about us buying from them, it is what how the Cuban people can benefit from us.
And if we don't get anything from them, what is the point of the embargo? All it does his hurt the Cuban people.

 

[Skull Pilot]

It isn't about us buying from them, it is what how the Cuban people can benefit from us.
And if we don't get anything from them, what is the point of the embargo? All it does his hurt the Cuban people.

Sorry but I do not believe that the US not trading w Cuba is what is hurting the Cuban people.

The entire rest of the world can trade with them and Cuba is still a shit hole.

Gee, I wonder why that is. Could it be their own corrupt government?

 

[Luissa]

It isn't about us buying from them, it is what how the Cuban people can benefit from us.
And if we don't get anything from them, what is the point of the embargo? All it does his hurt the Cuban people.

Sorry but I do not believe that the US not trading w Cuba is what is hurting the Cuban people.

The entire rest of the world can trade with them and Cuba is still a shit hole.

Gee, I wonder why that is. Could it be their own corrupt government?

Actually the entire rest of the world cannot.

So you think it is fine to trade with China, but not Cuba?

 

[WillowTree]

It isn't about us buying from them, it is what how the Cuban people can benefit from us.
And if we don't get anything from them, what is the point of the embargo? All it does his hurt the Cuban people.

why are we always supposed to benefit some other people? Hell benefit us for a change.

 

[JBeukema]

It isn't about us buying from them, it is what how the Cuban people can benefit from us.
And if we don't get anything from them, what is the point of the embargo? All it does his hurt the Cuban people.

why are we always supposed to benefit some other people? Hell benefit us for a change.

Cuba is one of the world's largest producers of nickel. Among its other mining resources are large deposits of iron ore and copper. Gold, silver, chromium, and cobalt are also mined

Cuba :: Mining and Natural Resources --  Kids Encyclopedia | Online Encyclopedia | Kids Online Dictionary | Britannica

 

[Luissa]

It isn't about us buying from them, it is what how the Cuban people can benefit from us.
And if we don't get anything from them, what is the point of the embargo? All it does his hurt the Cuban people.

why are we always supposed to benefit some other people? Hell benefit us for a change.

It would benefit us also, Willow. For one we already trade with Cuba, if we could do so more freely, just think of the money we could make? In some of the articles I read, they stated we could make a billion a year if we stepped up trading with Cuba. Plus the embargo has done nothing to help the Cuban people, and some say it has just set them back even more. Plus it gives Castro something to use against us.

We also have a law limiting how much non US companies can trade with Cuba.. Why should we be able to tell a foreign company who they can trade with?

 

[B. Kidd]

I have to agree with the thread title because there are alot of great running classic cars to be had from Cuba and I'll stop getting ripped off by border town Mexicans on the price of Cuban cigars.

 

[Skull Pilot]

It isn't about us buying from them, it is what how the Cuban people can benefit from us.
And if we don't get anything from them, what is the point of the embargo? All it does his hurt the Cuban people.

Sorry but I do not believe that the US not trading w Cuba is what is hurting the Cuban people.

The entire rest of the world can trade with them and Cuba is still a shit hole.

Gee, I wonder why that is. Could it be their own corrupt government?

Actually the entire rest of the world cannot.

So you think it is fine to trade with China, but not Cuba?

From a pragmatic point of view, yes it's fine. Cuba has nothing to offer us except for maybe more illegal immigrants and we have enough of those already

 

[JBeukema]

And china offers us what? Is Cuba too close to put the sweatshops?

 

[Skull Pilot]

And china offers us what? Is Cuba too close to put the sweatshops?

So Apple uses Chinese sweat shops?

 

[JBeukema]

And china offers us what? Is Cuba too close to put the sweatshops?

So Apple uses Chinese sweat shops?

Don't know about Apple, but i know Microsoft does

Working in a Chinese sweatshop for HP, Microsoft, Dell and IBM

Underage, Underpaid Workers, Sexually Predatory Security Guards at Troubled Chinese Microsoft Supplier

`Prison-like` conditions for workers making IBM, Dell, HP, Microsoft and Lenovo products



It doesn't say Apple itself runs any (in any recent reports), but one sub-contractor apparently was connected to KYE

Microsoft's hardware business accounts for about 30 percent of the output of the factory in question, which also makes products for companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Best Buy, Asus, Samsung, Logitech and Foxconn (which does work for Apple).

Microsoft sends team to allegedly harsh Chinese factory

 

[midcan5]

I agree, when you consider China is a Communist country who own a great deal of American debt, and have corporations and republican congressmen in their back pocket, why not.

Russia didn't collapse from the cold war it collapsed from inside, due to Gorbachev, a new openness and freedom, and an incompetent oligarchic economic system and time. The poor and downtrodden in Cuba do as well probably or better than the poor and downtrodden in the rest of the world, they may not like a too quick change as the Russians didn't, the wealthy are always Ok. Opening up trade hopefully would go both ways.

http://cubafriendship.net/

 

[JBeukema]

Naturally, they want to make themselves sound good, but their report (in 2006) acknowledged problems:

Apple Answers "Sweatshop" Claims

Apparently, there have been more recent allegations, though I'm not aware of any independent investigation into the latest claims

Yet, amid all the fanfare and celebrations this week, there was one sour, niggling note: reports of a spate of suicides at a secretive Chinese complex where Jobs's iPhone, iPod and iPad - Apple's new state-of-the-art slimline computer - are built and assembled.
With 11 workers taking their lives in sinister circumstances, Jobs acted swiftly to quell a potential public relations disaster.
Stressing that he found the deaths 'troubling' and that he was 'all over it', the billionaire brushed aside suggestions that the factory was a sweatshop.
'You go in this place and it's a factory but, my gosh, they've got restaurants and movie theatres and hospitals and swimming pools,' he said. 'For a factory, it's pretty nice.'
His definition of 'nice' is questionable and likely to have his American workers in uproar if such conditions were imposed upon them...




Workers who fail to respond to the chanting monks or the entreaties of social workers are secretly shipped to Shenzhen Mental Health Centre, a private facility where there are several wards crammed with Foxconn employees.
With the complex at peak production, operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week to meet the global demand for Apple phones and computers, a typical day begins with the Chinese national anthem being played over loudspeakers, with the words: 'Arise, arise, arise, millions of hearts with one mind.'


As part of this Orwellian control, the public address system constantly relays propaganda, such as how many products have been made; how a new basketball court has been built for the workers; and why workers should 'value efficiency every minute, every second'.
With other company slogans painted on workshop walls - including exhortations to 'achieve goals unless the sun no longer rises' and to 'gather all of the elite and Foxconn will get stronger and stronger' - the employees work up to 15-hour shifts.

Revealed: Inside the Chinese suicide sweatshop where workers toil in 34-hour shifts to make your iPod | Mail Online


If true, it sounds like exactly what we'd expect in a Maoist prison, except they're making products for American corporations, to be sold (largely) to Americans. Of course, I'm curious as to how much of FoxConn's earnings go, directly or indirectly, to the Communist Party and those who run China.

 

[JBeukema]

Foxconn suicides: Why higher pay won't work

 

[Toro]

The embargo should be lifted. Its a failed anachronistic policy and contradicts policy elsewhere.

The only reason why it still exists is because of a couple ten thousand geriatric Cubans fighting a war from half a century ago. Its time to join the 21st century.