Ageing Cuban plane linked to embargo by successive US administrations

[Judi Lynn]

Ageing Cuban plane linked to embargo by successive US administrations
By Rick Gladstone & Frances Robles19 May 2018 — 11:28am

New York: A Cuban state airliner crashed and burnt moments after take-off from Havana on Friday, killing nearly all 114 people aboard the nearly 40-year-old plane.

It was one of the worst airline crashes in Cuba, which has been struggling to operate with a decrepit fleet of planes that it has blamed partly on the long-standing economic embargo imposed by the United States.

It remained unclear what caused the crash, but it came against the backdrop of Cuba's struggle to improve commercial aviation on the island, which has long faced economic constraints from the US embargo.

. . .

The report said that Roberto Pena Samper, president of the Cuban Aviation Corporation, bemoaned that the "embargo placed by successive American administrations prevents" the island "from acquiring the resources necessary to operate a larger fleet of planes and to enhance airport services."

More:
https://www.smh.com.au/world/central-america/ageing-cuban-plane-linked-to-embargo-by-successive-us-administrations-20180519-p4zg9i.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Death, Taxes And The Cuban Blockade

Death, Taxes And The Cuban Blockade
It is not just the rest of the world that is against the Cuban blockade. A majority of Americans – even a majority of Cuban Americans – favor lifting the blockade and normalizing relations with Cuba.

by Matt Peppe

. . .

The blockade against Cuba has been strengthened over the course of the last half century to include various extraterritorial provisions that violate the sovereignty of impartial countries. These include sections of the Torricelli Act that prohibit subsidiaries of U.S. companies in third countries from trading with Cuba. Ninety percent of such trade with Cuba consists of food and medicines. Additionally, the Helms-Burton Act prevents international financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank, from granting credit to Cuba. This violates the policies of these institutions as well as those of other international organizations. [2]

Many foreign companies have been caught in the U.S.’s illegal, extraterritorial web of laws in the past year. An Argentina-based travel agency settled for $2.8 million fine for offering services to people who traveled to Cuba. A large Dutch travel company settled for $5.9 million for similar charges. A Canadian subsidiary of the insurance giant AIG, which sold policies to people traveling to Cuba, was levied a $279,038 fine. Energy drink maker Red Bull was forced to pay a $90,000 fine for sending seven people to Cuba to make a documentary.

. . .

It is civilians in Cuba, especially children, who are suffering the worst. Many antiviral medications are unavailable to minors because of the blockade. North American companies who make these medications don’t respond to requests for their purchase or claim they cannot sell them to Cuba, according to diplomat Jairo Rodríguez, who recently testified at the UN.

Nearly 80 percent of patents in the medical sector are held by American corporations and their subsidiaries. Cuba cannot gain access to these pharmaceutical medications and medical equipment because of restrictions imposed by the U.S. government. [3]

More:
https://www.mintpressnews.com/death-taxes-cuban-blockade/198326/

[Judi Lynn]

2. The US Blockade of Cuba: Its Effects and Global Consequences

The US Blockade of Cuba: Its Effects and Global Consequences
Nicholas Partyka I Geopolitics I Analysis I May 2nd, 2014

It is not possible to discuss almost any aspect of life in Cuba without talking about the US blockade of the island. That the US has an 'embargo' against the island is one of the few things that Americans might know about Cuba. This policy of economic warfare against our hemispheric neighbor has been in place for more than five decades now. In this dispatch, I want to focus on the US blockade policy. We will look briefly at why it exists, its aims, its status under international law, and what its main effects are. Though many Americans may know that there is an "embargo" (though "blockade" is more accurate), few likely know how it works and what its costs are. Attempting to remedy this situation will be the point of this part of the series.

On New Year's Eve 1958, Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba. The next day, the revolutionary government took control of the country. For the better part of a year, the US foreign policy establishment did not know what to make of Fidel Castro and his revolution. Relations remained cordial until Fidel announced the implementation of a set of Agrarian Reform laws. These laws aimed to put land in the hands of poor farmers who had been largely excluded from land ownership under the old regime. Many of the lands nationalized under Fidel's measures belonged to US citizens or companies; e.g. King Ranch. Other nations also had property nationalized in Cuba in the wake of the revolution, but only the US refused compensation, which the Cubans offered.

In a somewhat ironic twist, the Cubans offered compensation for nationalized property on the basis of the property's value as determined by the most recent pre-revolutionary Cuban tax assessments. Now, this would only be a problem for US owners of Cuban property to be nationalized if those owners felt that there was too large a discrepancy between the value of the compensation offered and the market value of that property. This kind of situation would be likely to come about if US owners had massively underreported the value of their Cuban property to Cuban tax officials (perhaps with official blessing of the regime at the time). The response of the US to these compensation matters also has nothing to do with the fact that the then-sitting CIA Director, Allen Dulles, sat on the Board of Directors for at least one large US firm to have property nationalized in Cuba, namely the infamous United Fruit Company.

Before the revolution, underreporting taxable value saved money in taxes and thus put more of it back in the owner's pocket. After the revolution however, this meant that those owners would lose out in a compensation package offered by the new Cuban government as the value of the compensation offered would be substantially less than what the property would be worth on the market. US owners of Cuban property wanted to both receive the real value of their property, but also not thereby tacitly admit what Castro and the Cuban revolution had accused them of, namely taking advantage of Cuba and Cubans for their own private gain. This is a classic example of one not being able to have one's cake and eat it too. The refusal of the US to acknowledge this had lead to the lion's share of the trials and tribulations that have arisen as the US and Cuba attempt to normalize relations.

More:
http://www.hamptoninstitution.org/cuba-project-part-two.html#.WwDL4kgvzIV

[GatoGordo]

3. No blockade.

There is nothing but a US embargo on the repressive Cuban regime.

Companies and countries are free to do whatever business they care to with Cuba. Many, many do. Most don't, because they would rather do business with nations that embrace real democracy.

Cuba can get anything they want, if they are willing to pay for it. They won't, so they don't.

[Judi Lynn]

4. If this embargo has had no effect, it would have been removed long ago.

People who bother to think at all will want to look more deeply into the effects of the embargo on Cuba, in the world's longest economic embargo by the world's most powerful nation against a tiny country of 11,000,000 people, in place since the early 1960's.

[GatoGordo]

5. You need to make up your mind

Blockade or embargo.

[Judi Lynn]

6. As General Assembly Demands End to Cuba Blockade for Twenty-Third Consecutive Year, Country's Foreig

As General Assembly Demands End to Cuba Blockade for Twenty-Third Consecutive Year, Country’s Foreign Minister Cites Losses Exceeding $1 Trillion
United States Delegate Says Cuban Policies to Blame for Economic Woes
GA/11574
28 OCTOBER 2014

The General Assembly today adopted a resolution which for the twenty-third year in a row called for an end to the United States economic, commercial and financial embargo on Cuba.

Exposing an intractable demarcation of the international community, 188 Member States voted in favour and, as in previous years, the United States and Israel voted against. Three small island States — Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia and Palau — abstained from the vote.

By the terms of the text, the Assembly reiterated its call upon States to refrain from promulgating and applying laws and regulations, such as the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, the extraterritorial effects of which affected the sovereignty of other States, the legitimate interests of entities or persons under their jurisdiction and the freedom of trade and navigation.

It once again urged States that had and continued to apply such laws to repeal or invalidate them as soon as possible, in line with their obligations under the United Nations Charter and international law.

More:
https://www.un.org/press/en/2014/ga11574.doc.htm

~ ~ ~

PRESIDENT OBAMA CALLS FOR LIFTING CUBAN EMBARGO IN STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS
BY POLLY MOSENDZ ON 1/12/16 AT 9:56 PM



Presidential hopeful and senator Marco Rubio has opposed Obama's efforts to warm relations with Cuba.
CARLOS BARRIA/REUTERS

"Lift the embargo," President Barack Obama said during his final State of the Union address on Tuesday night, addressing the relationship between the United States and Cuba.

The president has been working to improve relations with Cuba since December 2014, when Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro announced the restoration of diplomatic ties between the two nations. Since then, U.S. and Cuban embassies have reopened in Havana and Washington.

"Fifty years of isolating Cuba had failed to promote democracy, setting us back in Latin America. That’s why we restored diplomatic relations, opened the door to travel and commerce, and positioned ourselves to improve the lives of the Cuban people," Obama said on Tuesday. "You want to consolidate our leadership and credibility in the hemisphere? Recognize that the Cold War is over. Lift the embargo."

President Obama has said he wants to visit Cuba this year and host talks with “those who want to broaden the scope for, you know, free expression.”

More:
http://www.newsweek.com/cuba-embargo-president-obama-state-union-414972

~ ~ ~ ~ ~



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Ending the U.S. Embargo on Cuba at the Grassroots

With Cuba policy under the Trump administration still uncertain, Cuba solidarity activists seek to turn the tide against the embargo at the local and state level.



Peter Miller and Rita Barouch
March 17, 2017



Havana, Cuba (Max Nathan / Flickr)


The length and breadth of the Cuba solidarity movement in the U.S. can be marked from the publication of C. Wright Mills Listen, Yankee: The Revolution in Cuba (1960) through the late Tom Hayden’s last work, Listen, Yankee! Why Cuba Matters (2015), the latter noting some of the ups and downs of solidarity work over the decades. The Venceremos Brigade and Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization’s (IFCO) Pastors for Peace Caravan have been long time and constant institutions in the Cuba solidarity movement and in their own ways emphasize the central solidarity focus on U.S. policy and practice: the embargo. More moderate and broad-based forces, led by the Engage Cuba Coalition, and even conservative forces, driven by the taste of commercial opportunities, have joined the anti-embargo movement in recent years.

But at last November’s annual Cuba Solidarity conference, sponsored by the National Network on Cuba (NNOC), a new strategy for the Cuba solidarity movement was showcased: a push to pass local municipal resolutions calling for an end to the embargo. The idea of introducing and passing resolutions was inspired by a 2015 Bay Area visit from the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) and discussions that followed with local solidarity groups, including NNOC co-chair Alicia Jrapko. Richmond, California, seemed a choice place to start. An official sister city of Regla, Cuba, Richmond has an active Friendship Committee which provides educational, political, and cultural activities pertaining to Cuba and is supported by former Richmond mayor and current city council member Gayle McLaughlin, who also advocated to free the Cuban Five.

The effort to pass local resolutions against the embargo has been championed by others in the Bay Area as well, specifically in Oakland and Berkeley. The initiative has since been endorsed by solidarity activists working with municipal officials and Town Meeting Committees in Brookline, Massachusetts. These successful campaigns were publicized across NNOC as well as through the International Committee’s network. Campaign organizers who attended the 2016 NNOC meeting gave enthusiastic reports of collaborating with supportive municipal government members to draft, introduce, and pass resolutions, and the campaign was endorsed by conference participants, marking a new strategy to change U.S.-Cuba policy from the bottom-up. In January of this year, NNOC listed “encouraging local and state resolutions calling for an end to the blockade” as one of nine priorities for 2017.

And no wonder. The campaigns help reinforce the substantial majority support for ending the embargo, which has been clearly documented by polls, statistically, analytically, and journalistically. That sentiment extends to the influential south Florida Cuban community, a growing number of influential conservatives, and even among many Republicans, nearly half of whom want to end the failed U.S. policy. As Josefina Vidal, General Director for United States affairs at the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations, stated in a 2016 interview, “After Obama we hope that anyone who occupies the White House will adopt a policy that reflects the consensus of American public opinion, including the Cuban community residents in the U.S., which favors improving relations with Cuba by a wide margin.”

More:
https://nacla.org/news/2017/03/17/ending-us-embargo-cuba-grassroots

[Mike Rows His Boat]

7. Clearly you are commenting on this topic that you know next to nothing about.

"Companies and countries are free to do whatever business they care to with Cuba." ~ GatoGordo

Thanks for the clueless RW/ex-Cuban exile talking point.

Why do you come to the Cuba discussions to post only bullshit, lies, and made up shit that exists in your head?

Dealing with US Extraterritorial Sanctions and Foreign Countermeasures
https://www.law.upenn.edu/journals/jil/articles/volume20/issue1/Clark20U.Pa.J.Int%27lEcon.L.61%281999%29.pdf

[Judi Lynn]

8. That's a great reference. I scanned some, will read it all. The embargo is illegal internationally.

Years ago the international community objected strenuously to the expanding power the US was claiming over matters which were absolutely beyond the legal authority and reach of this government. Their reaction was emphatic, unmistakable.

People paying attention to foreign affairs learned about it either when it happened, or through research following these extreme measures created by the US Congress.

People who insist upon foolish, right-wing propaganda, remain blissfully ignorant, or they are purposely resistant to admitting reality, hoping people who don't know the truth won't find out later, and come to realize how treacherous, how duplicitous the perception molding of the public has been throughout this sorry history of aggression against of Cuban people after the revolution.

They have absolutely no idea of the impact of this poisonous, sneaky war against Cuban people, and don't care enough to simply look for the truth, have clearly ignored everything they have heard which should have triggered an alarm with them over the years.

"Don't know, don't care." Not a very good excuse, is it?

Here's another reference:

EMBARGO OR BLOCKADE?
THE LEGAL AND MORAL DIMENSIONS OF THE
U.S. ECONOMIC SANCTIONS ON CUBA

. . .

From an internationalist's perspective, two sticky points of the
U.S. policy stand out. One is its express extraterritorial reach aimed
at regulating the conduct of foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies
which, under international legal principles, are nationals of the state
of incorporation and not U.S. nationals. The other is the tension of
the sanctions with the idea of free trade central to the World Trade
Organization (WTO), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(GATT), and also embraced by the North American Free Trade
Agreement governing U.S.-Canada-Mexico trade. Opponents claim
that the extraterritorial reach of and the barriers to trade created by
the embargo violate international law. Moreover, it has a disastrous
impact on the people of Cuba including establishing a roadblock to
feeding the hungry or treating the sick.6 On the other hand,
proponents of the policy argue that it is a perfectly legitimate
exercise of sovereignty by the world's only surviving superpower
with the valid and laudable objective of strangulating an already
failed economy and bringing democracy (and thus freedom) to the
people of Cuba.7

Two other observations are noteworthy about the embargo. One
is that the Cuban community in the U.S., a politically powerful and
usually united force, is deeply divided on the embargo issue,
especially with respect to the most recent regulations enlarging the
limitations on remittances and family travel to Cuba. Second is that
while the Cuban community generally has been embraced in the U.S.
as a model minority - although that has more to do with the Cold
War politics that praise capitalism and denounce communism than
with any impetus of non-discrimination - many in the Midwest who
want to trade their agricultural products have joined the international
community's (including many states with a long history of alignment
with the U.S.) condemnation of the U.S. action as an invalid exercise
of extraterritorial jurisdiction and thus an impermissible infringement
of states' sovereignty.

. . .

In 1992, thirty years after the initial embargo, the Cuban
Democracy Act53 ("CDA" or "Torricelli Law" ) marked a
Congressional tightening of U.S. economic policy toward Cuba. The
most controversial of the CDA's provisions is the restoration of an
aspect of the 1962 embargo that had been repealed in 1975
prohibiting foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporations from doing
business with Cuba. The extraterritorial reach of the CDA's
provisions, including the prohibition concerning the acts of foreign
subsidiaries of U.S. Corporations, is at the heart of the virtually
universal challenge to their legality under accepted international
norms.

The international community has opposed the embargo in
general, and this provision in particular, on the basis of
impermissible interference with state sovereignty. Annually, since
1992 when the CDA was only pending in Congress, the European
Community (as the European Union (EU) was then known) has
objected in the U.N. General Assembly to the prohibition of foreignowned
subsidiaries, incorporated and domiciled outside the United
States, from trading with Cuba.55 The basis of the objection is that,
under international law, the nationality of a corporate entity is the
state of its incorporation. By including wholly owned subsidiaries of
U.S. corporations in the jurisdictional reach of the CDA, the United
States is seeking to exercise jurisdiction over corporate entities that,
pursuant to international law, are foreign, that is, non-U.S.
corporations.

. . .

However, the impacts of economic sanctions are greater than
lack of access to goods. In the case of Cuba, some argue that the
U.S. embargo has had a deleterious impact on nutrition and health
with a lack of availability of medicine and equipment, as well as
decreased water quality. 12 1 Indeed, the American Association for
World Health (AAWH), in a 1997 report, concluded that

the U.S. embargo of Cuba has dramatically harmed the
health and nutrition of large numbers of ordinary Cuban
citizens.... It is our expert medical opinion that the U.S.
embargo has caused a significant rise in suffering-and
even deaths-in Cuba .... A humanitarian catastrophe has
been averted only because the Cuban government has
maintained a high level of budgetary support for a health
care system designed to deliver primary and preventive
health care to all of its citizens. 1

22
Thus, AAWH concludes that the embargo, limiting availability
of food, medicine, and medical supplies, has a deleterious effect on
Cuban society. Significantly, religious leaders, including the late
Pope John Paul II, opposed the embargo and called for its end. 23
The gravamen of the objection is the humanitarian and economic
hardships that the embargo causes.

More:
https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://results.searchlock.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1219&context=facultypub

[Mike Rows His Boat]

9. Makes one wonder the motive ...

... for posting clear lies and talking points from the staunch RW exiles.

Of course, there are reasons for muddying/flooding the waters of discussion with aforementioned content.

[Judi Lynn]

10. Those right-wingers are going to look so foolish as soon as a sane person becomes the President

and goes right back to getting to work on releasing Cuba from the embargo, and dropping the ban on travel to Cuba by U.S. citizens, at long last.

It IS odd, isn't it, that US citizens have been able to go to China, North Korea, Iran, VietNam, even during the war, etc., etc., etc. but they have always been forbidden to travel 90 miles to Cuba by Washington? What is it about Cuba the U.S. government and reactionary Cuban "exiles" didn't want US citizens to discover by going there in person, anyway?

[EX500rider]

11. The aircraft was a Mexican aircraft, not a Cuban aircraft so sanctions were not a factor.

[GatoGordo]

12. But but but...

SOMEBODY has to take the blame. Because most certainly the Marxist/Leninist Utopia that is CUBA is perfection!

Had Cuban pilots been piloting a Cuban airplane, the craft would have landed not only safely, but the passengers IQ would have increased to 150 and all their health issues would have been cured. Because that's how they roll in CastroLand.