On March 28 it will be exactly one year since I became a Babalu contributor. In my first post I talked about the differences between trading with China and Cuba. I also mentioned the fact that embargo opponents don’t simply want trade, they want credit for castro.
The last factor I’d like you to consider in comparing China and Cuba is credit. Opponents of the embargo never tell you that Cuba is free to purchase food and medicine from the US on a cash up-front basis and that, in fact, the US is currently the largest supplier of food to Cuba. What embargo opponents are really angling for is credit for Cuba. But Cuba is an incredible credit risk. It owes Russia billions dating back the days of the Soviet Union. It owes almost every nation it trades with. Yet Cuba’s economy is not showing any signs of breaking out of the stagnation it’s been experiencing. China has the second largest economy in the world (or 4th depending on the metric you use) and as everyone knows it has been experiencing significant growth over the last few years. I’m opposed to giving Cuba credit as long as the castro brothers are in power because I’m afraid it will be us, the US taxpayers that will end up subsidizing castro.
Well as Ziva noted in her latest post, Fontova confirms the endgame.
Henry:
Congratulations on your first year as a Babalú contributor.
It has just come to my attention that there is a new Cuban blog like no other which deserves the attention of my fellow Babalusian readers. It’s called Mambi Waaatch.
I have just left my first comment on the new site:
I congratulate you for inaugurating the first openly dishonest blog dedicated to the defense of Fidel Castro and disparagement of Cuban-Americans. Certainly it has been a long time in coming. Fidel Castro has legions of sincere followers in the mainstream media, as innocent as babes-in-arms when it comes to pappa Fidel. But you belong to a higher order of cynicism. You make no pretense about actually believing any of the propaganda yourself, which you don’t, obviously. Instead you uphold the position that Castro is bad for everybody else but good for the Cuban people. Such open dishonesty (or is it openness about dishonesty?) is a welcome change. Once more: kudos and godspeed on your mission to make Castro’s barbarity palatable to Cuba and the world while fully acknowledging that such barbarity is not your own cup of tea. We need more apologists for barbarians like you. Hate the barbarity; love the barbarian. This is the new gospel and you the new evangelists.
http://mambiwaaaatch.blogspot.com/
Arthur Schlesinger Is Dead
The greatest maligner of the Cuban people, the inventor of the myth of pre-revolutionary Cuba as as an economically and socially backward country deserving of a Communist Revolution, is dead. Arthur Schlesinger was also Kennedy’s lapdog for more than 50 years, in life and in death. This “esteemed historian” wrote the infamous White Paper on Cuba of April 3, 1961. The so-called “White Paper” was issued two weeks before the Bay of Pigs invasion and may have convinced Kennedy that Cubans deserved nothing better than betrayal as they were the world’s most barbaric and despicable people, fully deserving of whatever fate befell them. According to The New York Times (April 4, 1961): “President Kennedy devoted many hours to the pamphlet, personally going over it with Mr. Schlesinger.”
Former U.S. ambassador to Cuba Spruille Braden characterized the White Paper on Cuba as “calumny, cheap demagoguery and a despicable act, unworthy of a responsible government and foreign office. The White Paper’s direct and implied animadversions as to the poverty and bad economic conditions of Cuba, prior to the coming of Castro, are inaccurate and evidence the socialistic preferences of its drafters.”
“This document begins by giving approval, i.e. encouraging what it calls the ‘authentic and autonomous revolution of the Americas,’ that is, to promote more fidelismo but without Fidel. For my part, I prefer to see the sound evolution of the Americas without the violence, abuse and waste inherent in all revolutions. Nor do I consider it wise or proper for my government to advocate “authentic and autonomous revolutions” all over the American continents.”
Schlesinger spent the rest of his long deceitful life defending Kennedy’s “indiscretions” and blackening the name and past of the Cuban people.
Schlesinger (R.I.H.) Advised Kennedy to Abandon the Freedom Fighters 2 Weeks Before the Bay of Pigs Invasion
In a memorandum to Kennedy, dated April 5, 1961, Schlesinger advised him to abandon the freedom fighters at the Bay of Pigs:
“On balance, I think that the risks of the operation slightly outweigh the risks of abandonment. These latter risks would be mitigated somewhat if we could manage a partial rather than a total abandonment (i.e., if we could put the men into Cuba quietly).
We might also be able to make some diplomatic capital out of the abandonment. We might have Thompson say to Khrushchev, for example, that we have discouraged an invasion of Cuba; that this shows our genuine desire to compose differences; but that K. should tell his friend to behave, because our patience is not inexhaustible and we cannot hope to restrain the Cuban patriots indefinitely. Conceivably we might be able to turn abandonment to some diplomatic advantage within the hemisphere too.”
http://www.fas.org/irp/ops/policy/docs/frusX/76_90.html
Just google “Cuba’s debt” and you’ll see it’s staggering, in the 10’s of billions if not 100’s. Who the hell is going to pay for that after regime change?
jsb:
Communist Cuba has the largest per capita indebtedness of any country in the world (another of Castro’s “accomplishments”). Who’s going to pay Communist Cuba’s foreign debt? No one. Certainly not a democratic Cuba. That would be akin to the victim’s family having to pay for the bullet that was used to execute their relative. Those who aided and abetted Castro to survive 48 years in power shall receive not one cent of their blood money. In fact, these countries should be made to pay compensation to the Cuban people for the crimes which they underwrote and hoped to profit from. Instead, let’s just balance the money against the blood and declare all debts on either side expunged.
Only accept cash on the barrel from crooks or you have water on the brain.
A good one, TE-P.
Tomás Estrada-Palma:
It may interest you to know that Honduras just sent an ambassador to Cuba for the first time in 45 years. How very sad that in the 45th year of its honorable policy of non-recognition of the Castro regime, Honduras should finally come grovelling to Castro on his deathbed. I mention this to you, of course, because your great-grandfather and namesake lived for a time in Honduras, where he served as a cabinet minister. Indeed, Honduras issued a postage stamp in Estrada Palma’s honor in the 1940s, as I recall. Estrada Palma’s wife and your great-grandmother was also Honduran.