Previously … Now you can fly to Havana direct from the U.S. without having to be part of a licensed group. You can even use credit cards in places equipped to handle them. Of course prices for tourists are higher than in 2002. But I’d bet that Cuban salaries aren’t.
This was the first of a three-part series. The other parts were about Cuban music and culture. One day maybe I’ll have time to post them.
always looking forward to new postings
Speaking of Cuba, I wonder when the world will recognize that embargos are weapons of mass destruction that can have a genocidal character.
Iraq is a good example. The embargo included the chemicals needed for water treatment facilities.
UNICEF reports that 500,000 children died due to the embargo and the collateral effects of war, mostly from untreated water. The medical journal Lancet put the number at 567,000 children.
In the spring of 2000, a U.S. Congressional letter demanding the lifting of the sanctions had 71 signatures. White House Democratic Whip David Bonior called the economic sanctions against Iraq “infanticide masquerading as policy.” Even with 71 members of congress pointing out the truth, American society continued to pretend it didn’t see anything. Like all genocides, of course, the numbers and their causes are denied even when the facts are substantive.
In October 1998, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Baghdad, Denis Halliday, resigned after a 34-year career with the UN in order to have the freedom to criticize the embargo, saying “I don’t want to administer a program that satisfies the definition of genocide.” Halliday’s successor, Hans von Sponeck, also resigned in protest, calling the effects of the sanctions a “true human tragedy”. Jutta Burghardt, head of the World Food Program in Iraq also resigned in protest.
I know that as an American I’m supposed to be some sort of chipper dumbass who never sees these things, but the murderous effects of the embargo on the wonderful people of Cuba are everywhere apparent. After 50 years of a genocidal embargo, Cuba has relented and let the mass murderer in the door. The rape of Cuba will be only the beginning.