Business Officials Want to End Cuban Embargo

USAgNet - 12/17/2003

U.S. agribusiness, shipping and farm representatives in Havana to develop more trade with the island nation called for an end to sanctions on Cuba as they negotiated contracts for the new year. "The Cuban market represents a great opportunity for U.S. agriculture. Cargill supports normalizing relations between our two countries," Thomas Rahn, a senior executive with the world's largest privately held agribusiness, said at the opening of a conference to mark the anniversary.

James Sumner, president of the U.S. Poultry and Egg Export Council, said Cuba was now the sector's eighth largest market.

About 250 Americans are attending the conference. It is the largest gathering of U.S. business interests in the island since a U.S. agriculture trade show in September of last year. The United States now allows agricultural sales for cash. Cuba began buying American farm products in December 2001. Pedro Alvarez, chairman of Cuba's state food importer Alimport, said Cuba would sign $125 million in contracts for delivery in 2004 during the event.

More...
http://www.nola.com/newsflash/international/index.ssf?/base/international-1/107171334513810.xml

Democratic Presidential Candidates on Cuba
Of the ten current democratic hopefuls, Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) is the only one who supports an end to the embargo.

More...
http://www.lawg.org/pages/new%20pages/Misc/prez-candidates1.htm

Continuing the embargo is ridiculous. How long will our foreign and trade policies be held hostage to Florida politics?

Crazy!

the radicals in Miami or the the big money????

is rather hypocritical don't you think?

It's who the Dems are pandering to that's the problem, especially if they expect to win the election.

so there may be some good to come from the agri-corporcrats.

Take a look at the chart,
http://www.lawg.org/pages/new%20pages/Misc/prez-candidates1.htm

while _Bush sits on his kazookis and plots his invasion of Cuba. What a farce.

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Riceland Signs Pact to Sell Rice to Cuba
Tuesday December 16, 2003 9:18am

Havana, Cuba (AP) - Stuttgart-based Riceland Foods has signed a $4.7 million contract to sell rice to Cuba.

The sale comes as part of a larger trade negotiation that is expected to result in $130 million in sales of U.S. food to the communist nation.

Many more contracts are expected through the end of Wednesday as representatives of 147 firms from 29 states and Puerto Rico mark the second anniversary of the first U.S. commercial food shipments to post-revolutionary Cuba. (snip/...)

http://www.katv.com/news/stories/1203/114119.html

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(snip) Havana
Alabama Lining up for Business with Cuba
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(Havana-AP) -- American food producers, including Alabama Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks, are in Cuba lining up the first of what could be 130 million dollars in new sales
contracts.

The first deal was for 4.7 million dollars' worth of rice from Riceland Foods, an Arkansas company. Later, he agreed to buy $700,000 in peas and lentils from North Carolina-based P-S International. (snip/...)
http://www.whnt19.com/Global/story.asp?S=1567172

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KFYR Local News for Thursday, December 18, 2003 North Dakota Companies Looking to Cuba for Sales

KFYR-TV News

State Agriculture Commissioner Roger Johnson and
representatives from nine North Dakota companies are in Havana, Cuba on a three-day buyers' mission.
North Dakota is one of twenty-nine states lining up for Cuban business.
American food producers are hoping for what could be 130 (M) million dollars in new sales contracts.
The contracts are allowed under an exception to the U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba. (snip/...)
http://www.kfyrtv.com/showNews.asp?whatStory=2436

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Great article on an American going to Cuba to examine their health care system:

(snip) Hampton Falls man sees a different side of Cuba

By Rachel Grace Toussaint
news@seacoastonline.com

HAMPTON FALLS - In late October, as the deciduous trees on the New Hampshire Seacoast were baring their branches and winter’s bitter chill was becoming more and more tangible in the autumn air, Louis Bornstein was en route to a tropical island still under communist rule to one of the most eye-opening experiences of his lifetime.
(snip)
"When we came back (to the U.S.), there was a culture shock of the abundance you see here versus the poverty you see there," he said.

Still far more surprising to Bornstein was the inventiveness of the Cubans in the face of a grave lack of resources. What impressed Bornstein most, as a health professional, was Cuba’s affluent health-care system.

"They’ve put a lot of money into being innovative, and a lot of money into medicine," he said.

According to Bornstein, Cuba has a universal health-care system that is three-tiered in its approach to wellness. There are the family doctors, hospitals, and natural health, or poly clinics. Hospitals are used more as a last resort in the case of emergencies, while the other two resources are more highly utilized, Bornstein said.

Patients are referred to the poly clinics, as Bornstein called them, by their family physician, and once there, the patient is interviewed by two physicians who consult with a specialist and come up with the best possible treatment plan (which would include varying modalities all working together holistically). (snip/...)
http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/hampton/12142003/news/65681.htm

On edit:

I've not been to Cuba, to see for myself, so I was surprised when I read the last article and saw the subject states the cops he saw in Cuba DID NOT HAVE GUNS! Now THAT'S INTERESTING. Not exactly the way our right-wing propaganda mill would spin it, is it?

I have been, and am, equally impressed with Cuba's health care system as Louis Bornstein, having seen quite a bit of it in action myself (I'm a doctor). I can imagine how Cuba's h-c system will absolutely shame America's once Cuba can enjoy a little more prosperity, post US travel sanctions.

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"I've not been to Cuba, to see for myself, so I was surprised when I read the last article and saw the subject states the cops he saw in Cuba DID NOT HAVE GUNS! Now THAT'S INTERESTING. Not exactly the way our right-wing propaganda mill would spin it, is it?
"

I have been to Cuba several times, and you are correct, Cuban police don't carry guns. President Castro's security detail does carry concealed weapons. Cubans do enjoy peaceful gun crime free neighborhoods, and their children are never hit by stray gun dealer's bullets, nor are their schools ever searched by armed gestapo with their pistols trained on the children's heads. The Cuban people would simply just not tolerate such lawlessness in their neighborhoods or schools.

Today was the very first time I ever heard it.

Isn't it funny the things that come out once a subject starts being examined long enough?

This is actually too much to take in all at once. I think it's just great. Sure should stimulate some rethinking on the parts of others who didn't know it, too.

And yes, it would be very wise for Cuban President's personal guards to carry guns, consider the many attempts on his life by our own CIA and the thugs in Miami. It still doesn't keep him hiding behind his curtains, however, does it?

with the American majority's wishes to drop the embargo, travel ban, and get on with things:

Miami TV station suspends program after actor met with Castro

Associated Press
Posted December 18 2003, 2:05 PM EST


MIAMI -- A Spanish-language television station has stopped broadcasting the program of an Argentine actor because he met with Cuban President Fidel Castro last week, channel officials said Thursday.

WDLP-TV took Guillermo Francella's comedy show off the air until he describes his stance on the Castro government, station officials said. The program is recorded in Francella's native Argentina, where it is still broadcast.

The majority of South Florida's Spanish speakers are Cuban-American, and most of them oppose Castro's communist government.

``We are supportive of Miami's Cuban-American community, which has had a negative reaction to Francella's visit to Cuba'', WDLP spokeswoman Sonia Colin said. (snip/...)

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/entertainment/news/celebrity/sfl-1218spanishstation,0,3311830.story?coll=sfla-entertainment-headlines

Just found it in an article I found in a search on Frank País, a man who was killed by Batista. Most people are totally unaware that this was going on in Cuba in the 1950's:

(snip) November 1957 General Batista has become a liability for the Eisenhower Administration, which is under considerable pressure to stop sending arms to a government that is bombing and strafing its own people in addition to torturing and killing suspected rebels and their sympathizers. The U.S. government is officially neutral, but it is still supplying arms and training to Batista’s forces and maintains military missions in Cuba until 1959.

February 13, 1958 The United States indicts former Cuban President Carlos Prío Socarrás, who was overthrown by General Batista, and eight other Cubans on charges of conspiring to violate U.S. neutrality laws by financing and taking part in military expeditions to be carried out from U.S. territory against Batista. He is jailed for a brief time.

March 14, 1958 With the fall of General Batista’s regime only a matter of time, the Eisenhower Administration announces an arms embargo. Ambassador Smith complains about this to the State Department.

June 16, 1958 In a decision that later becomes important in U.S.

November 1958 As the revolutionaries move closer to victory, U.S. Ambassador Smith hopes that a free election in Cuba will produce an alternative to both Batista and Castro: but Batista’s candidate for president, Andrés Rivero Agüero, wins an election that even Smith concedes is rigged.

December 9, 1958 A secret emissary from the Eisenhower Administration, William D. Pawley, meets with General Batista to try to persuade him to accept exile at Daytona Beach, Florida, leaving the government in charge of a U.S.-approved junta. Batista refuses.

December 27, 1958 A Cuban Air Force pilot flies a B-26 bomber to Miami and requests asylum because, in his words, “I don’t like to bomb cities and kill innocent women and children.” (snip/)

http://www.oceanbooks.com.au/cuba/cuba1492.html

Jeezuz, it is amazing how brutal the US sponsored dictators were/are. Batista was like the Shah of Iran, or Saddam. Serious killers.

Like many Haitians & Haitian-Americans that I have met say, 'in Haiti, we would take ten Castros for one Aristide'. Of course, that drives the gusanos crazy when they overhear that one. :7