No Trade For Dictators

Article By Writer Michael Kraft Author: Michael Kraft
Published: October 16, 2007
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I found this open letter to Ron Paul online regarding policy towards Cuba. The Cuban/American author is explaining why not to lift the embargo against Castro until Cuba is free.

He addresses statements by leftist liberals about talking with these dictators and making compromises with our enemies in communists states.

The most telling line in the explaination is that when you open trade with Cuba ….”you are not doing business with the people of Cuba, you are doing business with the government.”

1. What is good for agribusiness in Texas is not necessarily good for the Cuban people.

2. Doing business in Cuba is not doing business with Cuban business owners. The Cuban government requires that all foreign business done in Cuba be conducted with the Cuban government as intermediary. As revealed by many participants, foreign companies must pay the regime in dollars to get workers, and the regime keeps 90% of the salaries; workers receive just 10%, and they are paid in Cuban pesos. Independent labor unions are forbidden. On August 11, 1989, Carlos Miguel Suarez and Isidoro Padron Armenteros were executed in the city of Sagua La Grande, Cuba. Their crime? Trying to organize an independent labor union.

3. The embargo is working. If it had not been in place, the Cuban government would have had more money to spend on spreading communism and terrorism around the world and on maintaining control of and suppression of the Cuban people. It may even have been able to afford nuclear weapons by now. It is on public record that Castro asked Nikita Khrushchev to use nuclear missiles against the United States during the missile crisis in 1962 and that Che also wanted to use nuclear weapons to destroy the U.S. In addition, the embargo may prove to be a bargaining chip for a future change of government there.

4. Doing business with Cuba does not put pressure on the Castro government to increase freedoms; it merely reinforces the existing elitist system, since the only Cubans permitted to do business with foreigners are the privileged elite, who are chosen by the government. But not even the elite can put pressure on the Castro government, because their status can change in the blink of an eye.

5. Many naively point out the role of free trade in overturning the totalitarian regimes of countries such as China and Russia. But as reported by 60 Minutes on Sunday, September 23, 2007, and many other sources, Russia is resuming its totalitarian police state. The television program 20/20 reported a few weeks ago that Vladimir Putin has created a Hitler Youth–type organization to fight dissent, similar to Castro’s dreaded paramilitary Rapid Response Brigades, which equate to the “Tonton Macoutes” of the late Haitian dictator “Papa Doc” Duvalier. All are used to control, intimidate and create fear among ordinary citizens.

6. The United States has been trading with China since the Nixon era, yet that country remains a totalitarian police state and is a major human rights violator, including the use of slave labor. In addition, most big companies in China, such as China Ocean Shipping Company COSCO, are owned in partnership with or solely owned by the repressive military elite.

7. The unscrupulous businessman’s dream is to convert Cuba into another China in partnership with the repressive Cuban military elite. The Cuban elite in conjunction with American businessmen continues taking advantage of cheap Cuban labor. Currently, via international business agreements, Cuba exports slave labor to other countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe and Africa. For upcoming documentaries I have interviewed ship workers sent to Curacao and doctors sent to Venezuela. I have a relative, a dentist, who was sent to Peru twice.

8. Shortages of consumer goods is one of the tactics used by the Cuban regime to control the citizens: They are so preoccupied with obtaining their next meal that they don’t have the time or energy to complain about the government. In Hugo Chavez’s “Cubazuela” (Venezuela’s carbon copy of the Castro revolution), shortages of consumer goods have been appearing for some time, despite the oil wealth and despite the lack of a U.S. embargo against the Chavez regime.

WE SHOW THE PROOF - here on our site see the pictures of a country that is in the middle of the biggest cash boom in it’s history thanks to gas prices. This is where the money should be going, but it is instead going into the pockets of Chavez and the friends of their communist “revolution”..

9. Cuba does not have the money to pay for what it buys from companies in other countries. Cuba’s credit history is notorious and well documented. U.S. agricultural companies will end up being paid by U.S. taxpayers instead of by the Cuban government.

10. It was immoral doing business with South Africa because of the apartheid regime. Why are you in favor of doing business with Cuba? The records clearly show that Cuba has an apartheid regime. Are you in favor of keeping ordinary Cuban citizens away from beaches, restaurants, hotels, stores, nightclubs and neighborhoods; from participating in business deals, from owning property, etc.? Foreigners in Cuba enjoy all of those rights, but average Cubans are forbidden by law to participate in the pursuit of freedom and happiness.

11. It is immoral to do business with a regime that has caused the deaths of over 100,000 people (documented by Dr. Armando Lago in an ongoing study referred to in numerous publications such as the Wall Street Journal). ….

Why the US should never lift the embargo on Cuba until it is free