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Someone asked how dissidents, like from the Ladies in White, could have internet access. The US Interests section in Havana grants them internet access as well as to some of the independent journalists so they can get their newstories out.

As far as the embargo goes, please give me a break. Fidel and his cronies have amassed a fortune in all 47 years he’s been in power. Whoever wants to deal with cuba does, and things are available in Cuba - just not for Cubans. Everything is for the tourists or of course for the party members. The embargo is but a dot in the Cuban economy, and a wonderful rhetoric for apologists and of course for Fidel.

As for Chavez and Roosevelt the answer is simple, Rooselvelt got RE-ELECTED every four years. Chavez is calling for NO ELECTION for 25 years. There is just no comparison there. I’d like to see what people would think if Dub-ya said the same thing as Chavez did. All hell would break loose.

No, man. Apparently, you cannot read too well, or something. I said it was because of:
“harsh, inhumane economic sanctions set up by the north.”

Perhaps you agree, Marc, with the U.S. government (who were joined by Israel, Palua, and the mighty Marshall Islands in 2004 in opposing a near unanimous U.N. assembly resolution calling for an end to the U.S. embargo on Cuba).

The last statistics I saw, U.S. non-food exports to Cuba totalled a few million dollars (the bulk of that being donated medicine and old medical equipment). You mention European investors, and that is an interesting story in itself: the U.S. government has for decades discouraged Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to Cuba, but particularly so in recent years, as some European banks have had to restrain their commitment under the pressure of the U.S. which let them know that indemnities will be required if the credits are maintained. As Noam Chomsky has made clear, some moderate successes in Cuba (successes recognized, incidently, by such exotic organizations as the WHO, UNESCO, UNICEF, the Vatican, the National Council of Churches, etc.) have been unquestionably the target and underlying motivation for the U.S. embargo.

Have you ever even been to Cuba, Marc Cooper, in the last few years? Thanks to the embargo, Cubans suffer medical afflictions that were made treatable decades ago. But medical researchers abroad cannot come in because of travel restriction, software licenses are left ungranted, people go without medicine and care available to those in wealthier circumstances, and so on and so forth.

To the extent that imperialists have run roughshod over Cuba, it is because the U.S. embargo have left the Cubans in an untenable position. Your attempts to make a boogeyman out of Castro only serves to cheapen the suffering of the Cuban people, because you deny any of our partial (but key) role in what made and makes Cuba the country that it is today.

I guess its true what they say about the clueless Americans when it comes to international issues.

Social Security. Bush made a half-assed attempt to change it and it went down in flames.

Chavez didn’t had any baton to his on. His father, who was politically involved before Hugi Chavez was elected as a regional governor the same year Hugo won the presidency. Roosevelt’s sons, on the other hand, were given a real push up the ladder at OSS and CIA.