Castro calls Obama speech "formula for hunger"

[AlphaCentauri]

Source: Reouters

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuban leader Fidel Castro on Monday called Democrat Barack Obama the candidate most advanced on social issues running for U.S. president but said his speech on Cuba last week was a "formula for hunger."

In one of his periodic newspaper columns published in Communist Party newspaper Granma, Castro said he had "no personal rancor" toward Obama, but "if I defended him I would do a huge favor for his adversaries."

Obama, speaking before an influential Cuban-American group in Miami, said Cuba deprived its people of civil liberties and free elections, and vowed to maintain, with modifications, a 46-year-old U.S. trade embargo against the island.

Obama has called for lifting restrictions on travel to Cuba and the amount of money people in the United States can send to relatives in Cuba.

"Obama's speech can translate into a formula of hunger for the nation (Cuba), the remittances like alms and the visits to Cuba as propaganda for consumerism and the unsustainable lifestyle that he sustains.



Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN2633744220080526

---

The wise man speaking

[QC]

1. This will make for a very interesting discussion!

:popcorn:

[tidy_bowl]

2. Obama needs Florida to win.....

....and the Cuban population is a big part of that state's electorate. Castro knows that Obama has to say those things about Cuba so he can win Florida and the Presidency. He is only chiding him a little bit because as he says if he defends Obama that would give Obama's adversaries valuable ammo to defeat him.

[AlphaCentauri]

6. Obama needs Florida, Florida needs Obama

well, florida needs also those millions for the TV and Radio projects and other projects that make a good living for a few floridans.

[indimuse]

11. NO! FL does NOT NEED BO!

3rd generation here...NEVAH!As well, my sister is married to a Cuban man/ HUGE FAMILY...they were ALL BIG Bushy's...Not anymore. The entire family and close friends AL want Hillary...desperately! Can't stand Obama! Are you LOCO?

[ngant17]

20. Florida has a strong Obama contingent

all across the state.

OTOH there are plenty of the backwoods redneck-Neanderthals in the state, living perennially in the Confederate past, or whatever they mix up with rightwing politics and religion these days, to make it pointless to try and appease them.

There were Cuban-Americans who enthusiastically supported Janet Reno when she ran against Jeb Bush for governor of Florida, I ran into them when she was campaigning in S. Florida, so it would be a mistake to think that all Cuban-Americans are repugs these days.

The old exile cliques are dying out in Miami, they can't use their money for favoritism when they are gone. Cuba is largely self-sufficient for resources in this day and age, and the only real damage the embargo does is to a promotion of a negative image of the US government

The majority of the US people have never supported the restrictions, it was always implemented against the will of the US people, and the US business community has no use for it either. It's a strange freak of history, and it was continued only because of JFK's untimely death in Nov. 1963.

[AlphaCentauri]

40. can't expect more from ex Bushy's lovers, Hillary means continuity in foreign polices.

[haymakeragain]

44. Oh darn, ex-bushies aren't going to vote for Obama. I wonder if they voted for Hillo

in the primary.

[maxomai2]

18. Does he?

MyDD (hardly a bastion of Obama love) has Obama winning with an estimated 290 electoral votes without Florida. And for that matter, without Wisconsin or Michigan, either -- and there's no way he loses both WI and MI.

[New Dawn]

23. Obama does not need Florida to win

If John Kerry had won Iowa and Ohio in 2004, he would have become president. Florida is not necessary to win and it already receives far to much attention in elections compared to other battleground states.

[ohio2007]

3. back from his dirt nap ?

who has taken over el presidente's blog rantings?

[QC]

4. Obama advocated lifting the embargo when he was running for Senate.

Now he wants to keep the embargo.

He was right the first time.

[Freddie Stubbs]

12. He must have had a Huckabee-like conversion

[Dave From Canada]

13. He's running for President now. I guess that's more of his so-called change.

[Igel]

15. "Change is good," my mother always says.

Pisses her off to no end when I ask if things changed in the US when Clinton exited office and * took over.

"They most certainly did, things really went downhill."

" 'Change is good', right? "

My opinion: "Change" is a weasel-word, a placeholder for some real content. It means what the hearer wants because the speaker underspecifies it's meaning. Polls showing just that Americans want "change" say something about * and not about what they want changed or how they want things changed. Going from median wage of $40k to a median wage of $60k or $20k is change; having 200% inflation is change.

[Spouting Horn]

32. fidel is the last one

who wants the Embargo lifted.

It has been his strongest crutch for almost 50 ears.

[Judi Lynn]

33. Why would you imagine they all protest the embargo?

?v=0







It IS a good idea to remove the embargo. It's the only honorable choice.

[ronnie624]

36. I guess that's one way of looking at it. lol. n/t

[theFrankFactor]

5. But...

for consumerism and the unsustainable lifestyle that he sustains.

There's a problem with that statement.

[DavidDvorkin]

7. Possibly a clumsy translation.

[Bob Dobbs]

9. The unsustainable lifestyle we sustain is temporary.

And we are coming to the end of the cycle.

Bad stuff coming soon.

[Igel]

16. Yup. Pronoun's wrong. "It".

"Sustains" is a bit suspicious, too.

http://www.granma.cu/espanol/2008/mayo/lun26/reflexiones26.html
"El discurso del candidato Obama se puede traducir en una fórmula de hambre para la nación, las remesas como limosnas, y las visitas a Cuba en propaganda para el consumismo y el modo de vida insostenible que lo sustenta. "

I'd go with "for consumerism and the unsustainable lifestyle that it supports." I.e., consumerism maintains/supports the unsustainable lifestyle. Not a novel insight.

[robinlynne]

22. almost. It's the unsustainable lifestyle that supports (it) consumerism.

[ckramer]

8. Cuban-American group == Chalabi Iraqi group

They should not be trusted concerning matters of their old country.

[Bob Dobbs]

10. They are the reason a revolution happened in Cuba.

Economic elite.

[Blaq Dem]

14. Didn't they use to control drugs and prostitution in Cuba?

Cuban-Americans who escaped Cuba in the 60's were mainly criminals. They ran Cuba into the ground. They're anxious to get back in to reclaim their property. Of course, they should never be trusted.

Recall how they reacted with Elian Gonzales and his insane Floridian relatives?

[Vogon_Glory]

17. A Formula For Hunger For Cuba--Not Necessarily

I am for ending most US trade restrictions with Cuba. The restrictions have failed and failed miserably at what they were meant to do--to cause the overthrow of the current Havana regime through economic strangulation. Despite the trade restrictions, Cuba not only survived the Cold war as a client state of the Soviet Union, but survived the "special period" largely on its own, and has now found a new enabler in Caracas. I don't see that the embargo is ever going to work as currently structured, and I expect that the military blockade of Cuba that some of the hard-line Cuban exiles want would be resolutely opposed by American citizen-voters from across the political spectrum.

Having said that, I see the Havana regime as continuing to use US trade restrictions as an excuse for its own economic shortcomings. Clearly centralized Marxist-style socialism has failed to appreciably grow the Cuban economic pie all that much from where it was in 1958. Instead, the Havana regime's ideologues and their fear of the inevitable differences in wealth and property that a market economy brings about has kept Cuba in the poor-house and has driven a lot of its citizens overseas to better themselves economically. Marxist-style socialism may have its advantages as far as distributing the fruits of production, but as a working ideology, Marxist-style socialism has fared second-best at actually producing the fruits of production in comparison with capitalist and conservative social-democratic regimes.

Cuba could markedly improve its standard of living, raise its economic productivity, and continue to defy both Washington policy makers as well as the hard-line exiles through implementing genuine market reforms. If the current Cuban government were to allow small businesses and small farmers to buy and sell their goods without fear of total confiscation of their goods by crooks and ideologically-motivated bureaucrats, Cuba could not only thrive like Vietnam but also continue to thumb its nose IN WEALTH AND STYLE at Washington, the CANF, and other groups trying to force Cuba to resume its position as a economically-dominated US client state.

[Joe Chi Minh]

19. On the other hand, you, yourself, might profit from reading this latest update

of Joe Bageant's correspondence:

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2008/05/amish-mennonite.html

It's not that everyone can become farmers, but that treadmill consumerism as a way of life is sterile and plain mad. "Thumb its nose at Washington IN WEALTH AND STYLE"? It's been doing that since 1958! True wealth, not the gew-gaws of demented capitalist affluence. And what do you mean by "its position as an economically-dominated US client state"! The embargo? Doesn't sound like a client state to me.

[Vogon_Glory]

25. Thank You For Sharing From The Ivory Tower

<<..."Thumb its nose at Washington IN WEALTH AND STYLE"? It's been doing that since 1958! True wealth, not the gew-gaws of demented capitalist affluence...>>

Thank you for sharing from your ideologue's ivory tower. I'm sure that if the many Cuban guajiros who have dared the Florida Straits or who have crossed the Caribbean over to Mexico had shared your viewpoint or had merely taken boat trips to buy a DVD player at the Sawgrass Mall, they would have quietly returned to la Patria instead of staying in the land of Yuma.

[Joe Chi Minh]

27. Well, you always get plenty who think that all that glitters is gold.

And I dare say there are some now homeless and/or sick and without insurance cover.

Mind you, I did hear there are a lot of Cuban doctors working throughout South America. Fools! Miami's the place, isn't it?

[Vogon_Glory]

39. And Ideologues Overlook The Obvious

"Well you always get plenty who think that all tat glitters is gold"

And there are a lot of ivory-tower ideologues who think that state-imposed impoverishment is virtuous.

<<I did hear there are a lot of Cuban doctors working throughout South America.>>

And as many Marxist ideologues discovered as early as 1914, ties of culture, family, and friendship, as well as patriotism, are powerful bonds, which is why many of those physicians return home.

It takes a lot of stress to cause individuals to forsake ties of family and friendship and culture to take to the open seas in a small boat or raft to take their chances in a strange land and a foreign culture. Even amateur social scientists can't help but observe that there are severe stressors to motivate people to emigrate from their homelands in sizeable numbers. Look at Haiti as well as C-U-B-A.

[Joe Chi Minh]

42. Nay, look at the UK! We're told we've never been more prosperous,

yet Brits are leaving in record numbers.

Stresses, my eye! There's no people in the Western hemsisphere more stressed out than the American people (not even we, Brits), and it's entirely down to the manifold evils inflicted by your runaway corporatism, such as your atrocious, public health-care system, and mass homelessness, not to speak of its false propagada, that you people need such things as a cell-phones that makes pancakes, because their neighbours have them. A deliberate and intensive cultivation of open-ended covetousness, aka the American Dream - now further out of reach for most than most other countries in the Western world, or the Far East, to name but two regions.

What a shameful allegation! Haiti, is under the iron heel of the US. Or hadn't you noticed? I can't imagine that you are naive in the ways of the world, so I can only attribute your ignorance to the grossest cynicism. Shame on you!

Incidentally, I'm not a Marxist ideologue, but I do believe that Christ's Beatitudes and Sermon on the Mount were not intended to be taken as beautiful, but fanciful poetry.

[Judi Lynn]

43. Cuba is under the heel of the U.S., too, and suffers from constant threat of the continuing raids

kidnappings, murders, bombings from Cuban "exiles," a practise which has NEVER ended, even as they have started "outsourcing" some of their murderous acts to poor people from Central America, allowing THEM to take the chances of getting caught, and going to jail, and maybe even getting the death penalty.

Even as the U.S. chokes the life out of the Cuban economy with the embargo, it offers a full array of inducements to them to emigrate, and receive instant legal status here, (no INS agents to harrass them) and instant work visa, access to social security, Section 8 US taxpayer-financed housing, food stamps, financial assistance for education, medical treatment, etc., etc., etc. No other national group is allowed these benefits. Only Cubans, even as the embargo crushes them at home.

You're right on the Beatitudes, and the other truly moving parts of the Bible: they are COMPLETELY ignored by US fundie idealogues, who are spiritually, psychologically resistant to accepting their meaning.

[Joe Chi Minh]

47. Some of these right-wingers on here just leave a really bad taste in your mouth,

because of the extraordinary bluntness/blindness of their moral perception. Imagine taking common decency and humanity for some kind of flakey pastoral conceit!

[FlaGranny]

48. A little off subject, but

if there were a world-wide catastrophe of some sort, I bet Cuba would be a survivor and fare a lot better than the United States or the UK.

[Joe Chi Minh]

49. Yes, I bet. Perhaps it would be a bit like that little allegory about the

respective eating arrangements of the people in Heaven and Hell, as well. You know - the Heaven's people feeding each other with the yard-long utensils. Solidarity.

[RainDog]

21. Harpers had a good article about Cuba after the USSR failed

and they no longer got subsidies from the USSR to keep them going.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2005/04/0080501

Even tho Clinton increased the severity of the trade embargo on Cuba in 1992 and 1996, they turned to sustainable agriculture to survive. The article talks about the lessons they may have for others as peak oil, etc. impact our way of life. It's pretty amazing that they recovered their caloric intake like they did.

Cuba also has a bunch of ocean-front luxury hotels built by Europeans who will no doubt make quite a bit of money when travel restrictions are eased in the U.S. and U.S. companies buy them out.

[Judi Lynn]

26. Cuba, which retains control of ownership of all the hotels, may be sensitive to American ownership

of any part of their tourism industry, considering the fact the American Mafia controlled it until 1959, and United Fruit and other American companies controlled almost everything else, during the years in which Cuba was known as the "Whorehouse of the Caribbean."

The first thing they did was drive all the mafia out of Cuba, and completely emptied the hotels of all traces that they had ever been there.

Can't begin to imagine they would dream of allowing American ownership there again.

Compensation was offered to the American owners long ago, which they declined, although owners in other countries settled at the time and concluded all business with them.

[Vogon_Glory]

28. I'm Sure That American Hotel Management Are Watching Them, Too

I'm certain that while the embargo and travel restrictions are continuing, American hotel management companies like Marriott, Wyndham, and Hilton are keeping an eye on how the Havana regime treats Sol Melia and Riu. I wouldn't be surprised if Marriott or Hilton has some junior executive occasionally writing analyses and forwarding memoes as to whether Sol Melia and Riu make adequate profits, whether the Cuban government-owned hotel operation interferes with corporate decisions and whether those decisions are good or bad for their foreign partners' bottom lines or not.

I believe that a post-embargo Cuban government could find a way to do business with a US hotel management firm. I suspect that the leading US contenders for a return to Cuba would probably be either a US firm that wasn't in Havana during the Batista era or a US firm that kept its nose clean before Fidel Castro nationalized their properties. Alternately, some Cuban hotels are likely to affiliate with something like Best Western, which has a worldwide reservation network.

Most of the Batista-era high-rise hotels I saw were rather small and old-fashioned compared to the piles most US hotel chains run up in major metropolitan areas these days. I shouldn't be surprised if Hilton decides that it doesn't want its old place back in the family.

[Vogon_Glory]

30. And Where Are All The Mafia-Friendly Hotel Managers Now?

I wouldn't be surprised if someone in the state-owned Cuban tourism sector has been studying US hotel operations and have taken notice that most of the senior US hotel management staff who were involved in running US hotel properties in Cuba in the 1950's have gone to Boot Hill the same way a lot of the pre-1959 Cuban political and economic elite have gone.

[RainDog]

34. they already have deals with European and Arab hoteliers

http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2008/03/20/us_embargo_on_cuba_benefits_europe_canada_firms/

European, Latin American, Israeli and Arab investors already have a foot in the door in Cuba in the cigar, rum, citrus and hotel industries. With no American competition to worry about, they are looking at a windfall when U.S. sanctions are eventually lifted.

...(Lifting) The travel ban could send millions of Americans to Cuba, reviving its stagnant tourist trade and filling beach resort hotels run by foreign firms such as Spanish hotel chain Sol Melia, which manages 24 of them.

The Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Company last year began building a $75 million 200-room 5-star hotel on Cayo Largo del Sur, Cuba's most beautiful key.

--

Europeans ignore Helm-Burton and do biz with Cuba

Sol Melia owns (or did at the time of this article) 6 hotels in Cuba

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A07E0DC1F39F93BA25754C0A960958260

--

Raul Castro allows Cubans to stay in foreign 5 star hotels (how big of him) Apparently they could prior to the fall of the USSR, but were not allowed when Cuba starting allowing foreign investments b/c they were so broke.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/31/america/cuba.php

[ronnie624]

37. Thanks. This will be an interesting read. n/t

[Philipsanchez]

24. Politico believes Obama is Fidel's favorite candidate

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0508/Castro_blasts_and_praises_Obama.html

[Vogon_Glory]

29. Fidel Castro Has Repeatedly Shown That He Can Think Circles Around the GOP

As I posted on another thread, I've learned to approach Fidel Castro's writings with wary respect, whether I agree with or disagree with the premises or the conclusions. Fidel Castro has repeatedly demonstrated that when it comes to US--Cuba relations or US--Western Hemispheric relations, he can think circles around the Republicans and the paid "scholars" in right-wing think tanks. I don't have to like him to make that conclusion, I just happen to believe that it's self-evident.

I doubt that Fidel Castro would find thinking circles around Ben Smith to be much of a challenge. That's what happens when reporters get to write about the smartest son of a b_tch in the room.

[RainDog]

35. tell me why we should give a damn what Fidel thinks.

do you think it makes sense to say that, because Fidel recognizes that Obama is not a conservative we should all run away in fear? I thought ppl stopped the drop and put your head between your ass after McCarthy-era fear-mongering.

[UTUSN]

31. Yeah, Fidel: Attack somebody, endorse somebody -- that 'll HELP whomever (NOT)!1 n/t

[Algorem]

38. didn't Obama already throw Granma under the bus?

[Aramis]

41. If Castro is concerned about Cuban hunger, he should free the Cuban people.

[Judi Lynn]

46. Cuba has the highest longevity, lowest infant mortality stats in Latin America. That means HEALTHIER

for those who can't grasp things easily.

Don't be shy about trying to educate yourself on the facts before over-committing yourself to conversations which may involve reality.

[Aramis]

50. Huh...oh, propaganda. I didn't comment on their health--I commented on the lack of freedom in Cuba.

"My policy toward Cuba will be guided by one word: 'libertad,'...The road to freedom for all Cubans must begin with justice for Cuba's political prisoners, the right of free speech, a free press, freedom of assembly, and it must lead to elections that are free and fair,...That is my commitment."

"I won't stand for this injustice; you will not stand for this injustice, and together we will stand up for freedom in Cuba. That will be my commitment as president of the United States of America."

-- Barack Obama



"I would call on the new leadership in Cuba to take immediate action to demonstrate its good faith and understanding. Release political prisoners, permit free assembly, and host open and competitive elections..."

-- Hillary Clinton


Judi Lynn, are you sure you are in the right place? :shrug:

[haymakeragain]

45. Castro's a wiley old fellow ain't he? Notice how he nailed the flying monkey righties

square on the head? "if I defended him I would do a huge favor for his adversaries."

He probably knows the loonies better than most.

I think Obama will find a way to open Cuba when he becomes POTUS.