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Today's
Stories
November
1 / 2, 2003
Saul Landau
Cui
Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off
October 31, 2003
Lee Ballinger
Making
a Dollar Out of 15 Cents: The Sweatshops of Sean "P. Diddy"
Combs
Wayne
Madsen
The
GOP's Racist Trifecta
Michael Donnelly
Settling for Peanuts: Democrats Trick the Greens, Treat Big Timber
Patrick
Cockburn
Baghdad
Diary: Iraqis are Naming Their New Babies "Saddam"
Elaine
Cassel
Coming
to a State Near You: The Matrix (Interstate Snoops, Not the Movie)
October 30, 2003
Forrest
Hylton
Popular
Insurrection and National Revolution in Bolivia
Eric Ruder
"We Have to Speak Out!": Marching with the Military
Families
Dave Lindorff
Big
Lies and Little Lies: The Meaning of "Mission Accomplished"
Philip
Adams
"Everyone is Running Scared": Denigrating Critics of
Israel
Sean Donahue
Howard Dean: a Hawk in a Dove's Cloak
Robert
Jensen
Big Houses & Global Justice: A Moral Level of Consumption?
Alexander
Cockburn
Paul
Krugman: Part of the Problem
October
29, 2003
Chris
Floyd
Thieves
Like Us: Cheney's Backdoor to Halliburton
Robert Fisk
Iraq Guerrillas Adopt a New Strategy: Copy the Americans
Rick Giombetti
Let
Them Eat Prozac: an Interview with David Healy
The Intelligence
Squad
Dark
Forces? The Military Steps Up Recruiting of Blacks
Elaine
Cassel
Prosecutors
as Therapists, Phantoms as Terrorists
Marie Trigona
Argentina's War on the Unemployed Workers Movement
Gary Leupp
Every
Day, One KIA: On the Iraq War Casualty Figures
October
28, 2003
Rich Gibson
The
Politics of an Inferno: Notes on Hellfire 2003
Uri Avnery
Incident
in Gaza
Diane
Christian
Wishing
Death
Robert
Fisk
Eyewitness
in Iraq: "They're Getting Better"
Toni Solo
Authentic Americans and John Negroponte
Jason
Leopold
Halliburton in Iran
Shrireen Parsons
When T-shirts are Verboten
Chris
White
9/11
in Context: a Marine Veteran's Perspective
October 27, 2003
William
A. Cook
Ministers
of War: Criminals of the Cloth
David
Lindorff
The
Times, Dupes and the Pulitzer
Elaine
Cassel
Antonin
Scalia's Contemptus Mundi
Robert
Fisk
Occupational Schizophrenia
John Chuckman
Banging Your Head into Walls
Seth Sandronsky
Snoops R Us
Bill Kauffman
George
Bush, the Anti-Family President
October
25 / 26, 2003
Robert
Pollin
The
US Economy: Another Path is Possible
Jeffrey St. Clair
Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology to China
James
Bunn
Plotting
Pre-emptive Strikes
Saul Landau
Should Limbaugh Do Time?
Ted Honderich
Palestinian Terrorism, Morality & Germany
Thomas Nagy
Saving the Army of Peace
Christopher
Brauchli
Between Bush and a Lobotomy: Killing Endangered Species for Profit
Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Archives of Terror
Diane
Christian
Evil Acts & Evil Actors
Muqtedar Khan
Lessons from the Imperial Adventure in Iraq
John Feffer
The Tug of War on the Korea Peninsula
Brian Cloughley
Iraq War Memories are Made of Lies
Benjamin
Dangl
and Kathryn Ledebur
An Uneasy Peace in Bolivia
Karyn
Strickler
Down
with Big Brother's Spying Eyes
Noah Leavitt
Legal Globalization
John Stanton
Hitler's Ghost Haunts America
Mickey
Z.
War of the Words
Adam Engel
Tractatus Ridiculous
Poets'
Basement
Curtis, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Project Last Stand
October
24, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft's
War on Greenpeace
Lenni Brenner
The Demographics of American Jews
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Rockets,
Napalm, Torpedoes and Lies: the Attack on the USS Liberty Revisited
Sarah Weir
Cover-up of the Israeli Attack on the US Liberty
David
Krieger
WMD Found in DC: Bush is the Button
Mohammed Hakki
It's Palestine, Stupid!: Americans and the Middle East
Harry
Browne
Northern
Ireland: the Agreement that Wasn't
October
23, 2003
Diane
Christian
Ruthlessness
Kurt Nimmo
Criticizing Zionism
David Lindorff
A General Theory of Theology
Alan Maass
The Future of the Anti-War Movement
William
Blum
Imperial
Indifference
Stew Albert
A Memo
October
22, 2003
Wayne
Madsen
Religious
Insanity Runs Rampant
Ray McGovern
Holding
Leaders Accountable for Lies
Christopher
Brauchli
There's
No Civilizing the Death Penalty
Elaine
Cassel
Legislators
and Women's Bodies
Bill Glahn
RIAA
Watch: the New Morality of Capitalism
Anthony Arnove
An Interview with Tariq Ali
October 21, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Beilin Agreement
Robert Jensen
The Fundamentalist General
David
Lindorff
War Dispatch from the NYT: God is on Our Side!
William S. Lind
Bremer is Deaf to History
Bridget
Gibson
Fatal Vision
Alan Haber
A Human Chain for Peace in Ann Arbor
Peter
Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Hanging of Thomas Russell
October
20, 2003
Standard
Schaefer
Chile's
Failed Economy: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Chris
Floyd
Circus Maximus: Arnie, Enron and Bush Maul California
Mark Hand
Democrats Seek to Disappear Chomsky
& Nader
John &
Elaine Mellencamp
Peaceful
World
Elaine
Cassel
God's
General Unmuzzled
October
18 / 19, 2003
Robert
Pollin
Clintonomics:
the Hollow Boom
Gary Leupp
Israel, Syria and Stage Four in the Terror War
Saul Landau
Day of the Gropenfuhrer
Bruce Anderson
The California Recall
John Gershman
Bush in Asia: What a Difference a Decade Makes
Nelson P. Valdes
Bush, Electoral Politics and Cuba's "Illicit Sex Trade"
Kurt Nimmo
Shock Therapy and the Israeli Scenario
Tom Gorman
Al Franken and Al-Shifa
Brian
Cloughley
Public Propaganda and the Iraq War
Joanne Mariner
A New Way to Kill Tigers
Denise
Low
The Cancer of Sprawl
Mickey Z.
The Reverend of Doom
John Chuckman
US Missiles for Israeli Nukes?
George Naggiar
A Veto of Public Diplomacy
Alison
Weir
Death Threats in Berkeley
Benjamin Dangl
Bolivian Govt. Falling Apart
Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Bob Dylan
Fidel Castro
A Review of Garcia Marquez's Memoir
Adam Engel
I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert, Guthrie and Greeder
October
17, 2003
Stan Goff
Piss
On My Leg: Perception Control and the Stage Management of War
Newton
Garver
Bolivia
in Turmoil
Standard
Schaefer
Grocery Unions Under Attack
Ben Terrall
The Ordeal of the Lockheed 52
Ron Jacobs
First Syria, Then Iran
David
Lindorff
Michael
Moore Proclaims Mumia Guilty
October
16, 2003
Marjorie
Cohn
Bush
Gunning for Regime Change in Cuba
Gary Leupp
"Getting Better" in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
The US Press and Israel: Brand Loyalty and the Absence of Remorse
Rush Limbaugh
The 10 Most Overrated Athletes of All Time
Lenni
Brenner
I
Didn't Meet Huey Newton. He Met Me
Website of the Day
Time Tested Books
October
15, 2003
Sunil
Sharma / Josh Frank
The
General and the Governor: Two Measures of American Desperation
Forrest
Hylton
Dispatch
from the Bolivian War: "Like Animals They Kill Us"
Brian
Cloughley
Those
Phony Letters: How Bush Uses GIs to Spread Propaganda About Iraq
Ahmad
Faruqui
Lessons
of the October War
Uri Avnery
Three
Days as a Living Shield
Website
of the Day
Rank and File: the New Unity Partnership Document
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
October 14, 2003
Eric Ridenour
Qibya
& Sharon: Anniversary of a Massacre
Elaine
Cassel
The
Disgrace That is Guantanamo
Robert
Jensen
What the "Fighting Sioux" Tells Us About White People
David Lindorff
Talking Turkey About Iraq
Patrick
Cockburn
US Troops Bulldoze Crops
VIPS
One Person Can Make a Difference
Toni Solo
The CAFTA Thumbscrews
Peter
Linebaugh
"Remember
Orr!"
Website
of the Day
BRIDGES
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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Weekend
Edition
November 1 / 2, 2003
Cui Bono?
The
Cuba Embargo as Rip Off
By SAUL LANDAU
OPINION: "U.S. law forbids Americans
to travel to Cuba for pleasure. That law is on the books and
it must be enforced. We allow travel for limited reasons, including
visit to a family, to bring humanitarian aid, or to conduct research.
Those exceptions are too often used as cover for illegal business
travel and tourism, or to skirt the restrictions on carrying
cash into Cuba. We're cracking down on this deception."
G. W. Bush, October 10, 2003
FACT: Administrative regulations don't
prohibit Americans from traveling, but from spending money in
Cuba, unless licensed to do so for research, media reporting,
or family visits. "Freedom of movement is the very essence
of our free society, setting us apart.it often makes all other
rights meaningful." Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas,
(concurring) Aptheker v. Secretary of State, 378 U.S. 500, 520
(1964).
For more than four decades, I've read
false, stupid and downright zany reports about the US embargo
and travel ban on Cuba. On October 10, when President Bush announced
his new and tougher measures against Fidel Castro's regime in
order to "hasten the arrival of a new, free, democratic
Cuba," I almost laughed.
These steps are "only the beginning,"
Bush said, "of a more robust effort to break through to
the Cuban people." Had he forgotten the last forty-four
years and ten months of other  presidents' robust efforts? Enough, I
said. It's time to offer my own observations on the subject.
The objective of the pro-embargo advocates
has no relation to foreign or domestic policy or fostering change
in Cuba. Rather, a small group of rich and extreme right wing
Cubans - some of whom have clear connections to terrorism - use
anti-Castroism to control US policy and thereby increase their
own power and fortunes.
Since President Reagan effectively privatized
US Cuba policy in 1981 and handed it to his supporters in the
Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), the embargo has become
a lynchpin of their domestic clout.
They discovered that by contributing
to strategically placed Members' campaign coffers CANF and its
affiliates could direct the voting behavior of Members of both
Houses - and both Parties. The Castro-hating millionaires who
run CANF have elevated the embargo and travel ban to the realm
of the sacred. They repeat their "not one cent for the dictator"
dogma despite the contradictions between their words and their
own behavior.
Some of these pious hardliners acknowledge
sending money regularly to their relatives in Cuba. Indeed, thanks
to the generosity of the Castro-hating exiles, remittances have
become Cuba's highest source of foreign exchange. But here, the
embargo-travel ban ideology enters the world of the mysterious.
Castro somehow would use money from investors and unlicensed
tourists -- as distinguished from US Treasury licensed travelers
--for Evil purposes, but money sent as remittances to relatives
on the island is Good money, used for humanitarian purposes.
"We do not want to enrich the tyrannical
government of Fidel Castro," lectured National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice to the media on October 13. She said
the ban would stop Castro from using "these monies to fund
his tyranny, his crackdown on dissidents."
Yet, Rice supports the continuation of
the policy of Cubans in the United States sending remittances
-- money, which, just like that spent by unlicensed tourists,
ends up in Cuba's Central Bank. Castro then decides how to spend
it.
Picking up his cue from La Rice, Richard
Newcomb, Director of the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign
Assets Control, which monitors the embargo and travel ban, testified
the next day before the House Government Reform Subcommittee
on Human Rights and Wellness. Tourist travel, he lectured, may
seem harmless, but is an "important source of revenue for
the Castro regime. A dollar paid to a tourist hotel in Cuba goes
mostly to the regime, leaving only pennies in worthless pesos
for the workers" (Does the approximately one billion dollars
spent by non-US tourists in Cuba go for Good or Evil?).
How ironic that so much moral language
emerged over an embargo dying a natural death under President
Carter! By the late 1970s, US travel to Cuba had increased and
businessmen had begun to explore investment possibilities.
Then, the CANF hardliners resurrected
it and made anti-embargo and travel ban rhetoric the base of
their political dogma. But Cuban sources reveal that some of
the loudest anti-Castro ranters have secretly invested in small-time
capitalism on the island. $50 thousand to a brother-in-law in
Havana buys an eight burner stove, fancy glasses and dishes and
a paint job and plumbing - all that's needed to convert a old
rickety house into an attractive private restaurant (paladar).
Similar arrangements lead to the emergence of car, bike and computer
repair shops and services for tourist enterprises. Lifting the
embargo would invite unwelcome competition for these cockroach
capitalists.
Change in US Cuba policy might also cost
CANF its pet enterprises. CANF bigwigs exercise personnel and
content control over Radio and TV Marti, the illegal US-government
transmissions into Cuba (Castro jams the TV Marti signal).
Despite the hold exercised by the embargo
lobby, the logic of the post Cold War world should demand that
Washington change its failed embargo policy. In the October 4
Washington Post, former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev advised
Bush that "the only way to get out of this time warp is
to replace the current policy with a policy of constructive engagement
similar to the one being pursued toward other so-called Communist
countries."
Arizona Republican Congressman Jeff Flake
complained that "at some point, we need to concede that
our current approach has failed and try something new."
Reasonable and logical appeals miss the
political point. Change in Cuba would weaken CANF's controls
of the policy from which it derives political strength.
The embargo has unquestionably hurt Cuba,
which claims that over forty-one years, the policy has caused
$72 billion of damage to the island's economy. Ardent embargoites
blame Castro for the suffering, but Washington's policy players
care little about Castro the human rights violator. They still
want to punish Castro the disobedient. Recall, how President
Nixon, 1970-3, ordered the CIA to help overthrow Salvador Allende's
government in Chile because of his noncompliant politics, not
because he violated human rights.
Castro, however, had dodged the punitive
bullet for decades (including CIA assassins' bullets). After
1990, as the Soviet Union collapsed and Cuba no longer received
assistance, its economy went so far south that the day of reckoning
seemed near - for the near sighted.
"Experts" like The Miami Herald's
Andres Oppenheimer foresaw "Castro's Final Hour," to
quote his 1992 book title. Former National Security Staffer on
Cuba Jose Sorzano adored the embargo and travel ban. "The
beast [Cuba] is wounded," he announced with a grin, "it's
time to go in for the kill."
Smelling blood, CANF heavies leaned on
President Bush (41) to increase pressure. In 1992, Congressman
Robert Torricelli - a major recipient of CANF leaders' largesse
-- authored a bill to tighten the embargo by penalizing nations
like Canada that traded with the island. Torricelli's act refused
foreign ships that entered Cuban ports the right to dock at US
ports for six months. The 1996 Helms Burton bill further restricted
trade with Cuba. Nevertheless, Cuba's economy rebounded.
Now, George W. Bush, the tenth US president
to face Fidel Castro since Eisenhower, declares he will finish
the job. Realists dismiss Bush's dubious Cuba pledge, recalling
his education oath ("not a child left behind,") and
his promise to get Osama bin Laden ("we'll smoke 'em out,").
An October 15 Newsday editorial typifies
media response to Bush's "new" measures. The writer
yawns over "this kind of rhetoric on Cuba from a sitting
president - particularly a Republican one." Bush is simply
"revving up his re-election campaign machine with an eye
toward the . influential Cuban- American voting bloc. which despises
any candidate. soft on Castro. Florida, of course, gave Bush
the electoral votes he needed to become president."
The editorial assumed that Republican
strategists need to "start placating the anti-Castro crowd,
which has been grumbling lately that Bush has paid too much attention
to creating democracy in the Middle East and hasn't done enough
to foster democratic change in Cuba."
Do these attention-starved Castro-phobes
want democratic change in Cuba? Such a claim belies their political
nature. They, like Bush, have not read or simply disregard the
U.N. Charter's admonition to blatantly interfering in the internal
affairs of another country. CANF leaders have bankrolled terrorists
like Luis Posada Carriles, who took credit for bombing a Cuban
commercial jet and killing its 73 passengers and crew over Barbados
in 1976 and in fomenting bombing plots at tourist sites in Cuba
in the 1990s.
Some of those named as backers of this
kind of terrorism in Cuba by the NY Times applauded Bush's "new"
measure. They feel they have even succeeded in convincing the
Administration heavies, who appear oblivious to law, to mobilize
the newly formed anti-terrorist apparatus to harass travelers
to Cuba. On October 14, Condoleezza Rice said the President had
directed "Homeland Security to .really begin to enforce
these travel restrictions."
So, instead of fighting the war on terrorism
"Customs and Border Protection inspectors have stepped up
their efforts by examining nearly all of the charter flights
departing from Miami," OFAC boss Newcomb reports.
The embargo and travel ban do hurt Cuba,
and they also deprive US citizens of money Congress could otherwise
invest in Medicare and other needed benefits. That Bush claims
such dubious measures as means to further democracy compounds
his political transgression and insults a diverse exile community.
Saul Landau
is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. He teaches at
Cal Poly Pomona University. For Landau's writing in Spanish visit:
www.rprogreso.com.
His new book, PRE-EMPTIVE
EMPIRE: A GUIDE TO BUSH S KINGDOM, has just been published
by Pluto Press. He can be reached at: landau@counterpunch.org
Weekend
Edition Features for Oct. 25 / 26, 2003
Robert
Pollin
The
US Economy: Another Path is Possible
Jeffrey St. Clair
Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology to China
James
Bunn
Plotting
Pre-emptive Strikes
Saul Landau
Should Limbaugh Do Time?
Ted Honderich
Palestinian Terrorism, Morality & Germany
Thomas Nagy
Saving the Army of Peace
Christopher
Brauchli
Between Bush and a Lobotomy: Killing Endangered Species for Profit
Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Archives of Terror
Diane
Christian
Evil Acts & Evil Actors
Muqtedar Khan
Lessons from the Imperial Adventure in Iraq
John Feffer
The Tug of War on the Korea Peninsula
Brian Cloughley
Iraq War Memories are Made of Lies
Benjamin
Dangl
and Kathryn Ledebur
An Uneasy Peace in Bolivia
Karyn
Strickler
Down
with Big Brother's Spying Eyes
Noah Leavitt
Legal Globalization
John Stanton
Hitler's Ghost Haunts America
Mickey
Z.
War of the Words
Adam Engel
Tractatus Ridiculous
Poets'
Basement
Curtis, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Project Last Stand
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