Cuba& Iran step up bilateral cooperation after US' Rice's 'tyranny' speech

[Mika]

Cuba and Iran step up bilateral cooperation after US' Rice's 'tyranny' speech
http://www.iii.co.uk/news/?type=afxnews&articleid=5175633&subject=economic&action=article

Branded as "outposts of tyranny" by the US administration, Cuba
and Iran have decided to step up bilateral cooperation in banking, farming and
biotechnology, state media reported today.
"We have confirmed the potential that exists and, beyond that, the will and the
determination of both governments to move forward in their relations," Interior
Minister Ricardo Cabrisas told the Communist Party of Cuba's newspaper Granma.

Under the deal, cash-strapped Cuba will get a 20 mln eur credit from Tehran;
food production cooperation will be increased; and equipment to help fight the
effects of the drought plaguing Cuba will be brought in.
Effects of the drought have been serious for a decade in Cuba's east, but in
recent months the crisis has spread nationwide.
The report quoted Iranian Agriculture and Reconstruction Minister Mahmud Hojjati
as saying the credit line could be increased.


In turn, Iran will get a factory to produce Cuban-engineered vaccines and
greater cooperation on biotechnology.

The US administration has accused Cuba of having a worrisome potential
biological weapons capacity, which Havana denies. Washington has offered no
proof to back up the claim.

[Career Prole]

1. Brilliant!

Brilliant!


/sarcasm off

[Mika]

16. Brilliant indeed. Like the EU, Cuba is developing relations w/Iran

Bush can stick his axis of evil up his ass.

[Career Prole]

25. The chimp drew fire for "bring 'em on" but I think by far the most

incendiary and ultimately damning comment he's ever made was "you're either with us or against us".
That one will wind up costing us much more in the end than "bring 'em on" ever did, IMO.
The world's starting to choose sides and no one wants to play on chimpy's team anymore.

[renaissanceguy]

33. For that reason, I hope Blair loses re-election

as I know much of Great Britain and the rest of Europe do not agree with his alliance with Bushie. With these unilateral, blow-up-the-world policies, we don't deserve an ally.

http://www.cafepress.com/liberalissues/479727
http://www.cafepress.com/liberalissues/479742

[Spazito]

2. Damn, that bush feller was right....

he IS a uniter!!

[Skink]

3. I just saw "Thirteen Days"....

It was awesome now maybe we can relive but with a different ending.

[CoffeeCat]

18. LOL! Great observation! (n/t)

[Dirk39]

4. Banking, farming and biotechnology?????????

Do they want to throw eggs, when Rice, Bush and their brownshirts march in?

They should develop some weapons.

I love the cuban communists and other freedom and peace loving nations,if only Castro wouldn't be that moderate.

Food, farming, health care????
Get some nukes, get them fast.

Hello from Germany,
Dirk

[Mika]

7. Agreed, Dirk

Castro is much too "peace and love" these days.

It just won't work with a facist nation right next door with its Nazi leader threatening the world so.

I think its the Euros thing that'll do them in.. like Iraq.

[tanyev]

5. Just trust us....really...would we lie?

Washington has offered no proof to back up the claim.

[VegasWolf]

6. Bush's US; medicore, mendacious, meaningless, and moronic.n/t

[David Zephyr]

8. Bush Really Is a Uniter, Isn't He?

He told us he was. How could we have ever seen him uniting the entire planet against us?

[Mika]

9. How is a Cuba/Iran farm deal "against us"?

I don't get it? :shrug:

Please explain. :hi:

[VegasWolf]

10. Maybe because Iran is part of awol's axis of evil and Cuba sits

just 60 miles off our shores and a bilateral agreement
and close cooperation scares chimp shitless. It makes
sense to me, now that they have oil they are destined to
become card carrying member of the axis of evil.

[Mika]

13. But Cuba constantly buys ag products from us - cash.

Judi Lynn has posted dozens of threads/stories on Cuba purchasing US AG products, as well as stories of US governors traveling to Cuba to pitch their products.

Cuba would like to have closer relations with the US, and is trying.


Cuba is not our enemy.

[Damien]

24. your image

Why boycott Bacardi?

[MHalblaub]

26. Drink 'Havana Club'! - Viva la revolucion! -nt- Cheers!

[Mika]

27. Click on it, and you'll see why.n/t

[Damien]

35. damn it. can't I buy anything anymore?

thanks for the info. I consider myself an ethical shopper; I guess that's one more I'll have to investigate before I buy again.

[leesa]

14. Not to mention Venezuela's exclusive deal with China.

[David Zephyr]

11. Well.

What I mean is that it seems we are witnessing more and more nations forming alliances that exclude the U.S.

Ukraine is now seeking to join the E.U. and even Russia is considering closer ties with the E.U.

Carlos Mesa, the President of Bolivia, is working hard and fast now with the leaders of Brazil, Ecuador and Venezuela to form a counter to the NAFTA designs of the Bush administration.

And here is Iran and Cuba, who are continually maligned by the Bushies, seeking closer cooperation between them.

Bush has united the world in a common view that our beloved country is now a menace to the world bent on militaristic expansion.

[Mika]

15. It is the US (gov) that excludes itself.

As noted before, Cuba seeks normalization of relations with the US.

[Spazito]

23. Canada just signed many major new trade agreements with China...

many countries are reducing their dependence on the US for the sale of their goods and many countries are forming new partnerships and alliances that do not include the US. This is the world's response to bush's policies and megalomaniacal behavior, imo.

[leesa]

12. I am so sick of being right. Years ago I said all the rest of the world

needs to do to defeat the "mighty" US is to freeze them out economically.

The world has showed remarkable restraint up to now.

[Dark]

17. Cuba has a biotechnology industry?! n/t

[Mika]

19. Oh yes, they do

Cuba manufactures and gives medicines to much of the developing and poor world.


Cutting-edge biotech in old-world Cuba
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0417/p14s03-stct.html

Ironically, the 42-year-old US trade embargo might actually have spurred the island's pursuit to science. Imposed in 1960 by President Kennedy after Mr. Castro infuriated the US by nationalizing $1 billion worth of US-owned property in Cuba, the embargo remains in place decades later.

Unable to import some of the medicines it wanted, Cuba began making its own generic drugs through reverse engineering - piracy by another name. From there sprang a state pharmaceutical industry and later, a biotechnology offshoot.

-

At the Western Havana Scientific Pole, scientists at 52 institutes are researching vaccines and therapies for AIDS and Alzheimer's, among others. There are some cooperation agreements - for product sales, joint ventures, contract manufacture and research - with entities in Latin America, China, Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Australia. Cuba has filed applications for 500 patents around the world.

[Judi Lynn]

21. They have made remarkable strides, known everywhere other than here.

Here's an article as an example, which was written in July, 2000, before _Bush stomped into view. There are many others since then you'd find interesting, including a new developement concerning an American firm obtaining permission to start working with Cuba on a specific Cancer drug. (I don't have access to that file right now, as I'm in the process of transferring material from an old computer to a new one, but I can find it, no doubt, if you would like to read about it.)

Published on Thursday, July 27, 2000 in the Manchester Guardian
Cuba Winning Cancer Race
Economic isolation and a passion for healthcare yield a world lead

by Julian Borger in Havana

Clinical trials of a cancer therapy genetically engineered by the Cuban biotechnology industry are due to begin in London next month. It may prove to be a landmark both for medicine's struggle with the disease and Fidel Castro's attempts to break out of Cuba's US-imposed isolation.
Despite a stark lack of resources, laboratories in the impoverished suburbs of the capital Havana have made startling strides in developing revolutionary vaccines and antibodies against meningitis, hepatitis, and lung, breast, head and neck cancers.

But their use in other parts of the world has been hindered up to now by the Helms-Burton Act, the US measure which penalising foreign companies for dealing with Cuba.

That hitherto impenetrable wall is now beginning to crumble in the more general thaw in US-Cuban relations, and western investors have found that Cuban scientists, subsisting on scarcely £10 a month, are ahead in some fields of their colleagues in the US and western Europe in the race to produce genetically engineered medicines.

After months of intensive lobbying, the British pharmaceutical company Smith Kline Beecham succeeded a year ago in persuading Washington to give it an exemption from the act, allowing it to develop and market a Cuban vaccine against the child-killing disease, meningitis B. It is the only such vaccine in the world, and is undergoing trials prior to being launched in Europe.
(snip)

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/072700-02.htm

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Biotechnology in Cuba
The Biotechnology programme focuses on Cuba, which is the subject of a major new technical collaboration initiative. As part of this, the UK ITPO has been actively involved in investigating and assessing a large portfolio of research and investment opportunities in Cuba's life sciences sector.

Over the last twenty years, Cuba has established a prominent position in the biotechnology industry, which has become one of the most important driving forces of the country's economy. Since the 1980s, Cuba has built up world-class expertise in the sector as part of a centralised strategy to boost international trade and to support domestic social development - particularly in areas such as public health and agriculture.

Once described as "Cuba's billion dollar gamble," this government sponsored programme has successfully led to the foundation of more than 100 R&D facilities and pharmaceutical centres, over 150 international patents for new drugs and treatments, and the employment of more than 30,000 workers in the field of scientific development. As a result, Cuba now leads the world in many fields of specialist medical research. It is also one of only four countries to have been accredited by the World Health Organisation for the production of Hepatitis B vaccines.

The most important region of Cuban biotechnology is the area known as Havana's Western Scientific Pole, which comprises 52 scientific institutions and where approximately 4,000 scientists and engineers are working on more than 100 ongoing research projects. This region provides the focus of UNIDO's new investment programme, which will provide in depth support for British companies wishing to explore partnership opportunities.
(snip/...)

http://www.nwda-unido.org.uk/biotechnology.html

[Judi Lynn]

22. Here's info. on a California medical firm doing business with Cuba

What Cubans call "the Special Period" produced one notable success: pharmaceuticals. In the wake of the Soviet collapse, Cuba got so good at making knockoff drugs that a thriving industry took hold. Today the country is the largest medicine exporter in Latin America and has more than 50 nations on its client list. Cuban meds cost far less than their first-world counterparts, and Fidel Castro's government has helped China, Malaysia, India, and Iran set up their own factories: "south-to-south technology transfer."
(snip)

In July, CancerVax, a California-based biotech company, got federal approval to test a Cuban vaccine that stimulates the immune system against lung cancer cells. CancerVax is the first US business to receive such approval. CancerVax staffers saw the research at an international conference, and then spent two years lobbying Capitol Hill and Cuban-American interest groups.

Still, naïveté remains the real obstacle to a Cuban biotech century. Fidel's pharmacists lack slick brochures and golden-tongued sales staff. Foreigners tend to find Cuba overly bureaucratic, especially when closing a deal.

"They just don't get capitalism," a diplomat tells me over coffee in Boston. "The elite may watch American TV and read The Wall Street Journal on the Web, so they have a conversational familiarity. But on a fundamental level they don't get it and don't want to get it. They still think there's something immoral about profit."
(snip/...)

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/cuba.html?pg=2&topic=cuba&topic_set=

[radric]

20. Perhaps they want to exchange knowledge..

on how to handle dissent. I'm sure each has gathered enough data to really make such an exchange fruitful.

[Redstone]

28. Oh, good, another contrarian (no sarcasm)...

Thanks for being perhaps the only one in this thread to point out that the governments of Cuba and Iran are not exactly models of liberalism.

I grow a bit weary sometimes of the "America=Bad, Everyone Else=Good" sentiments. We do have our problems here, as I'll be one of the first to point out, but just because a particular other country opposes our policies, that doesn't automatically make them the good guys.

Anyone here in a hurry to emigrate to Cuba or Iran? North Korea? Anyone?

Let's be realistic here, folks.

Redstone

[robcon]

29. Good point.

They can have each other... a theocracy and a dictatorship, both bent on repression of human rights.

[Mika]

30. WTF do most Americans know about Cuba?

.. other than the rightwingnut anti commie propaganda?


Plenty of the world's poor would jump at the chance to emigrate to Cuba, if they could. (FYI, Cuba doesn't have open immigration.) Hell.. there's plenty of Americans who would give their left one for genuine and high quality pre birth to death health care for their family like the Cuban people have. How do you think Cuba developed their health care system and education system (both ranked among the highest worldwide)? Do you think that Castro forced these on Cubans? Or, did the Cuban people do these things because they wanted it, and have a representative government that facilitated the work in these areas demanded by the people and performed by dedicated Cuban doctors and Cuban educators in accordance to the will of the people? There is much more to Cuba than these two areas of study, but they are representative of Cubans in Cuba, and their representative government.



Cuba is NOTHING like the picture painted by US government propaganda. That is realistic.

Been there. Seen it. (Including during the entire 1997-98 election season.)


Can't speak of Iran or N Korea. I don't know much about those places, so I don't think my opinion, mostly based in ignorance and propaganda, to be valid.

[Judi Lynn]

31. People don't take the time to ask themselves what they really know

about Cuba. There are people who spread stories because they desperately DON'T want Cubans to do just fine without them, and there are people who spread stupid stories for propaganda purposes, and there are others who simply parrot what they've heard without looking into any of it.

It's easy for administrations to say ANYTHING about a country they are determined to keep off limits to American citizens, knowing precious few of them will ever know the difference.

I know of one American traveller who has gone to Cuba multiple times who would go to Cuba right now to live if the U.S. didn't have such strict policy against Cuba. She'd go at the drop of a hat. I've heard other travellers express similar enthusiasm for the country, the people, and they progress they've made out of the condition Batista's domineering, violent, murderous, elitist society created, prior to the popularly supported revolution in 1959.

Once people can go to Cuba, the ones who have been putting out the lies about Cuba will lose total credibility. People are going to wonder why they did it. That should be interesting to witness. They are just treading water now, since each year, more votes are registered in both the Senate and the House of Representatives on multiple attempts to drop the travel ban and aspects of the embargo and the embargo itself arise, indicating the public wants to normalize relations with this abused island, visit the place, get to know the people, and get on with life.

They can't sit on this lie forever. Sooner or later, the truth will finally triumph.

[Dirk39]

32. Why don't you emigrate to Iraq?

It was liberated by the USA.
The evil dictator is toppled.
The U.S. brownshirts were welcomed with flowers.

Let's be more realistic.

Hello from Germany,
Dirk

[Judi Lynn]

34. These people were happy to see the U.S. supported dictator leave

and showed up to celebrate the revolution's success.

I wonder how many flowers they would be tossing at the feet of an invading army!



El Quijote de la Farola
Alberto Korda




Hi, to Dirk
in Germany!

[Mika]

36. The bushco Nazis destroyed anything librul/social that Iraq had

J Paul Bremmer's 100 orders privatized/corporatized 100% of Iraq's infrastructure, destroying what was once a well rounded social infrastructure (compared to many other nations in the vicinity).

[tlcandie]

37. Or Haiti for that matter now that the US has replaced the people's

Aristide?! Or Afghanistan!!! Wherever we step seems like we leave nothing but crap... :cry: