Cuba Travel Firms Say U.S. Harassing Clients

[Say_What]

Back in the USSA. It's starting already--your tax dollars to fight terra' hard at work. The moderate Cuban-Americans are not gonna like this.

<clips>

CANCUN, Mexico (Reuters) - U.S. charter companies that fly some 150,000 people to Cuba annually charged on Saturday that U.S. officials are harassing their clients even though they have permits to visit the communist island.

"Customs and Treasury agents are going to every single flight that departs Miami for Cuba, and they are questioning every single passenger about their licenses and how much money they are taking," said Tessie Aral, vice president of Miami-based ABC Charters, Inc.

Other charter operators meeting with Cuban officials at a three-day travel industry conference in Cancun said their passengers faced similar scrutiny.

Complaints focused on U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Treasury Department (news - web sites) officials at Miami's international airport, where all but two of 30 weekly flights to the Caribbean island nation depart.

<http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20031018/us_nm/cuba_usa_dc_2>

[Osolomia]

1. LOL, hysterical considering who the "clients" are in Miami!

I doubt they expected Bush, or any president for that matter, to finally enforce the law on them.

Damned freeking creapy though to have Homeland Security following your every move in Cuba to make sure you don't deviate from your US government dictated intinerary even if you do have premission from Washington to travel there.

Even creapier is the apathy when a golden opportunity to do something about it is there for the taking with bipartisan majority support if the US public supported it.

[Osolomia]

2. Last chance for those who want to see for themselves

Diversions 10/27/03
Last flight to Havana
By Anna Mulrine
US News & World Report

Demond Simmons, a firefighter in Oakland, Calif., was surfing his favorite jazz Web site when he saw it: an advertisement for a trip to Cuba. He signed up and spent five days walking the streets of Old Havana, listening to jazz bands groove in centuries-old courtyards. But he still can't quite believe that it was legal. "I was surprised--I'd never heard of anyone going, and I never thought it would be this easy."

Tom Popper, director of Insight Cuba, the company that organized Simmons's trip, has heard that before. "Some of my own friends still don't believe that you can go legally," he says. But under new Treasury Department restrictions that take effect in January, people-to-people exchanges--the license under which Americans can join authorized tour groups to Cuba for cultural exchange activities--will start to disappear. The Bush administration cites Fidel Castro's crackdown on dissidents earlier this year and argues that staying at state-run hotels only supports the regime. Trip organizers counter that tourism is one of the few ways to connect with the isolated Cuban people. "With the world the way it is, the more friends Americans have, the better," says Michael Eizenberg, who first visited Cuba as a faculty member at Bentley College. He was hooked: "It was just so beautiful, the drums of Africa fusing with the guitar melodies of Spain." Today he runs eTrav, a Boston-based tour company, which has arranged a trip to the Havana Bienal art exhibition next month; space is still available.

More...
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/031027/misc/27cuba.div.htm

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

3. What is it that this Fuck-wad Administration does not want Americans

to see?

I am really sad that these tyrants have taken over our government.

[Osolomia]

4. Americans have been banned from traveling to Cuba for over 40 years now

One of the first things Jimmy Carter did was lift the travel ban against Americans going to Cuba and one of the first things Reagan did was reinstate it.

It wasn’t until after the Vatican announced the Pope’s visit to Cuba in 1998 that Washington finally gave CNN permission to open a bureau there and other US journalists a general license to go.

It was a result of the Pope’s pleading with the USA to open up to Cuba that Clinton eased the travel restrictions and allowed “people to people” exchanges.

But earlier this year Bush banned such trips by American-Americans to keep his kingmaking Cuban-American “exiles” happy and most of the 2004 Democratic presidential candidates are still pandering to this extremist minority too, as did Gore and Liberman in 2000, despite the bipartisan majority in Congress and 38 state legislatures that want the travel ban lifted now.

38 states X 2 senators each = 76 votes despite Bush’s threatened veto and the complicit Dems.

If you were free to see Cuba for yourself it'd be hard not to notice how much the US government has been blatantly lying through its teeth to you all your life to this day.

Why the US fears Cuba
Hostility to the Castro regime doesn't stem from its failings, but from its achievements

Seumas Milne
Thursday July 31, 2003
The Guardian

… Which only goes to reinforce what has long been obvious: that US hostility to Cuba does not stem from the regime's human rights failings, but its social and political successes and the challenge its unyielding independence offers to other US and western satellite states.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cuba/story/0,11983,1009473,00.html

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

5. Spot on, my friend.

I'm three inches away from selling my home and seeking political asylum in Canada.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Your post couldn't be much clearer

It should make complete sense to the sensible, Osolomia. People tend to listen to folks who have actually been there. It's easy to tell the ones who have from the ones who have posted, claiming to have been there, but having only gibberish to offer, when questioned!
Here's some more info. on the travel ban:

(snip)
II. The Sun-Sentinel
U.S. travelers hurry to beat restrictions
Vanessa Bauza
July 13, 2003

Havana · Sure, she knew the tour was a bit skewed, perhaps too rah, rah.Nevertheless, Margo McAuliffe came away from her 10-day trip through Cuba "a fan."

"I'm the reason they want the travel ban kept," quipped the California retiree, referring to the Bush administration.

"I came here somewhat under the influence that Castro is a bad guy," said McAuliffe, sitting in a Havana hotel lobby. "I felt this was one place I wasn't hearing the truth. I feel our government has an ax to grind." (snip)

(snip) Thousands of Americans have visited Cuba since the "people to people" exchanges were created in January 1999 under the Clinton administration. Alumni associations, museum patrons, steam engine enthusiasts, Little League teams -- they all took advantage of the new licensing category to visit Cuba legally. (snip)

(snip) Meanwhile, the Bush administration has relaxed travel restrictions for Cuban Americans, the bulk of licensed travelers to Cuba, making it easier for them to visit relatives. It also increased the amount of cash they can take back to their families, from $300 to $3,000 each quarter.

Though most of the money is spent in state-owned stores, the Cuban American National Foundation supported the increase, arguing some of it trickles down to dissident groups and helps develop a civil society on the island. (snip/...)

http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-milwaukee/2003-July/001004.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Isn't it CONTEMPTIBLE that one day the Cuban American National Foundation, after years and years of insisting that one thin DIME spent in Cuba would "shore up Castro's regime" suddenly, after Bush increases the limits of money Cuban-Americans can take to Cuba, judges this a great move, as the money "trickes down to dissident groups and helps develop a civil society on the island?"

OUTRAGEOUS. These bastards are so slimey. What a treat knowing Bush is throwing away American interests and rights in the interest of grabbing their whorish votes and campaign contributions.

[Judi Lynn]

9. A giant grimey pot calling a tiny kettle black, after all

(snip) Since taking office in January 2001, the Bush administration has escalated Washington's four-decade-long campaign to destroy the Cuban Revolution by:

• increasing the subversive activity of the US Interests Section in the Swiss embassy in Havana (Washington's unofficial diplomatic outpost in Cuba), including assigning more than $30 million approved by the US Agency for International Development to fund “independent” journalists in Cuba;
  
  
• violating migration agreements signed with Cuba, which allow 20,000 Cubans to emigrate a year to the US, by dramatically cutting the number of immigration visas issued by the US Interests Section in Havana while encouraging illegal emigration from Cuba through boat and aircraft hijackings; and
  
  
• repeatedly accusing Cuba, without providing any evidence, of developing biological weapons and of backing terrorists.

(snip)

http://www.greenleft.org.au/current/558p19.htm

[Osolomia]

7. Only in America!

Posted on Sun, Oct. 19, 2003

MIAMI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
Leader opposes Cuba loophole
A state lawmaker takes his campaign against travel to Cuba directly to tourists taking advantage of an educational exemption to the ban.
By SUSANNAH A. NESMITH
Miami Herald

David Rivera lay in wait by the information desk at Miami International Airport's Concourse E Saturday morning.

His prey: travelers bound for Cuba for a trip organized by the University of South Florida's public radio station.

''She is certainly not some University of South Florida student on a cultural and educational exchange,'' said the state representative, spying a white-haired woman making her way to the ticket counter.

The Miami Republican opposes the educational exemption to the ban on travel to Cuba, saying it is being taken advantage of by travelers looking for a sunny beach, business opportunity or seedier forms of entertainment he called ``sex tourism.''

Helpless to stop the trips, or the dollars travelers bring to the island, he set out to preach about the dark side of sunny Cuba.

''You will only see what the government wants you to see,'' he told a group of retirees. ``The only employer in Cuba is the Cuban government. It's important that you know that.''

The group listened respectfully. But they weren't swayed.

... ... Rivera, recently appointed to the House education appropriations committee, is planning to introduce a bill requiring public colleges and universities in Florida that sponsor Cuba excursions to submit their itineraries and passenger lists prior to each trip.

''Each time, we're going to talk to the university about canceling the trip,'' he said.

More...
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/state/7048706.htm

[Judi Lynn]

8. Another Miami gusano winner

What a hero, hanging around the airport, insulting travellers. Why is this no surprise?


http://www.myfloridahouse.com/legislatorinfo.aspx?mid=4284


What a waste of skin. This article was ALMOST too obnoxious. It's delightful noting that the travellers had seen his grubby kind before, and weren't impressed:

(snip) ''We assume people who do this kind of tour are interesting and curious people,'' explained Bernice Belmont, 74, a retired federal government employee from Sarasota. ``It's a way of trying to find out for ourselves about Mr. Castro.''

She and her husband, William, were eager to assess whether Rivera's dire warnings of poverty and repression were true. And if U.S. policy is doing any good.

'I think a lot of the arguments are passé: `They expropriated U.S. property,' '' said William Belmont, a retired economist parroting Rivera. ``We did the same to the British during the Revolution and it was called patriotism.'' (snip)

When it appeared he was getting NOWHERE with them, he fell back on the ubiquitous CANF/Otto Reich/Diaz-Balart venom, and tried the old "Call them horny bastards" ploy:

(snip) ''You never know what perverts lurk in these groups,'' he said. ``Those people seemed nice, but you never know, do you?''

Urofsky denied the trip was a front for a sex tour or a business excursion. (snip/...)

Omigod!

Hard to imagine anyone would want to go anywhere but the Miami airport, where Rivera dwells, apparently, for a vacation.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

12. That is really something. I sent him the following email:

Subject: Haunting Airports

You should be ashamed of your behavior as evidenced in the recent newspaper article about your bothering American citizens taking a trip to Cuba. It's an embarassment to have State Representatives behaving in delusional paranoid fashion in a public place.

Here's a news flash: Just because soemone doesn't agree with your politics does not mean they are a pervert or are trying to overthrow the government.

Good God, son. Get a life.

[Judi Lynn]

13. That's a GREAT message

After reading it, I tried to create one, too, and ended up getting to wordy, as I got angrier, and angrier.

I really need to learn the art of focusing a great message in well-chosen words, as you did.

Gonna sit on it for a while, until I can zap him, too.

Really glad you brought up the idea to some of us who are still in a Sunday morning fog. This would get a word in to someone who could really use some feedback!

Wouldn't it be great if someone in Miami dared to get him on tape, harassing would-be travellers? I would LOVE to see him caught in the act.

Bullying and insulting travellers is so childish, and so cheap. He should be discouraged, even IF this is acceptible behavior in Miami.

[guajira]

10. So Many Miami Lies!!!

B* has added a new twist to Miami propaganda - "sex trade in Cuba". This is a blatant lie!! Now B* is in Thailand (isn't that country noted for its sex trade?) and he says nothing.

Every country, including the US, has prostitutes, even teenage hookers, but that doesn't make them a sex-trade country. Cuba has been trying to crack down on prostitution for years, but the world's oldest business will always exist to some degree!

Rivera says ''You will only see what the government wants you to see,'' he told a group of retirees. ``The only employer in Cuba is the Cuban government. It's important that you know that.''

More lies!! Go to Cuba, rent a car or camper, and go anywhere you wish to on the island. Stop anywhere, talk to anyone. Those are the facts.

People in Cuba have small businesses, rent rooms in their homes, have restaurants in their homes, etc. Of course they have to be licensed by the government, but so does every business in the US!!!

[Osolomia]

14. Bush, Electoral Politics and Cuba's "Illicit Sex Trade"

October 18 / 19, 2003

Concerned About Prostitution, Mr. President? Try Reno
Bush, Electoral Politics and Cuba's "Illicit Sex Trade"
By NELSON P. VALDES

On October 10, 2003 President George Bush spoke to about 100 rightwing Cuban exiles at the Rose Garden. There he stated his commitment to bringing about "regime change" in Cuba. At one point during his brief speech he stated that, "A rapidly growing part of Cuba's tourism industry is the illicit sex trade, a modern form of slavery which is encouraged by the Cuban government. This cruel exploitation of innocent women and children must be exposed and must be ended. " He used the accusation as the reason to make travel to the island as difficult as possible.

This article will examine the charge and respond to it by noting that although Cuba is not a serious case of prostitution or illicit trafficking of women and children, the United States is.

First, however, we should be conscious of the lack of clarity in the presidential declaration. The statement conflated prostitution and the trafficking of women and children for sexual purposes, as if they were one and the same thing. The disingenuous phrase "illicit sex trade" suggests that sexual prostitution and the "sex trade" are the same thing, which they are not. Prostitution (or sex work) could be consensual. The world wide trafficking in women and children, using force and coercion, is a profoundly different phenomena.

Moreover, the statement accuses the Cuban government of "encouraging" both. But where is the evidence of government "encouragement"? None was presented by the White House, which apparently wants us to assume that the mere existence of prostitution implies "encouragement." If that is the case, then we would have to say that the US government, and all state and city governments in the United States, encourage prostitution -- and that's not even counting Nevada, where the "oldest trade" is legal!

More...
http://www.counterpunch.org/valdes10182003.html

It's one thing for Bush to spew lies and bullshit, quite another for Americans to swallow it hook, line and sinker no questions asked.

[Mika]

15. Isn't Las Vegas prostitution endorsed/sponsored by the government?

The gambling city has a new ad campaign. The "What you do here, stays here" ads are on TV all of the time.

[Judi Lynn]

16. Kaboom! This Nelson Valdez article is right on target

Hope a lot of people read it. It's crucial to examine what it is the propagandists are talking about, and this information goes a long way to putting things in perspective.

The very IDEA of such unbelievable hypocracy is predictable, but still astonishing....

When hit hard with wild charges, most people are so alarmed by the charges, they often remember the charges, and forget to question their validity. That's why propaganda is successful with certain people.

Osolomia, the news that the STATE Department actually has directed foreign visitors' attention to Nevada's brothels is very odd. Also hard to fathom is the convenient memory lapse on the part of the purer-than-the-driven -snow pResident Bush, as he forgot to inform the Nevada citizenry just how damned hacked he is over prostitution!

I'm saving this article for handy reference next time a HINT of this kind of childish insult hurling comes up again. Hooray for Nelson Valdez, well-known New Mexico university professor/lecturer. He can keep them all honest.

[Judi Lynn]

11. New trade negotiations with Alabama and Cuba

(snip) Looking to Cuba
Auburn University eyes Cuba for outreach expansion

Jason Nix
Staff Writer
Saturday, October 18, 2003


The door is now "open, wide open" for Auburn University to begin an outreach program in Cuba, says Diego Gimenez, a Cuban-born Auburn University Extension specialist and associate professor of animal sciences. Gimenez hopes AU will be able to capitalize on a recent opening in the 42-year-old embargo of the Caribbean island nation of over 11 million people.

This door to Cuba began to open slightly in 2000, when Congress legalized the cash sale of agricultural and forest products to the country, which imports $600 million worth of food annually. The first U.S.-to-Cuba shipments, totaling $4.5 million, arrived in 2001. Trade grew to approximately $155 million the next year.

The dollar amount of agricultural trade will likely top this amount in 2003, even though the Bush administration vowed this month to strengthen the embargo, a move popular with many Cuban-Americans. Nonetheless, Gimenez hopes the existing opening in the embargo will remain wide enough, long enough to benefit Alabama farmers as well as AU.

"Seeing other states get their foot in the door has made many of us aware of what Cuba has to offer as a trading partner," Gimenez said. "The state of Alabama has already signed an agricultural trade agreement that will allow us to do business with Cuba. What I'd like to see now is for Auburn University to establish an educational outreach program that would allow us to find out exactly what's there. The time to do this is now."

In August, Gimenez joined an Alabama trade delegation led by State Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks to meet with Cuban President Fidel Castro. The delegation discussed the possibility of reopening trade between the ports of Mobile and Havana. (snip/...)

http://www.oanow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=OAN%2FMGArticle%2FOAN_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031771628303&path=!news!localnews

[0007]

17. Jimmy Carter spoke for me

and that good enough!

[Mika]

18. Did Jimmy speak for you regarding the Afghanistan trap w/Zbigniew B.?

Beware of any US politicians speaking for you.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO210B.html

Most American high school history books describe how the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, "without provocation and with overwhelming force". America then "came to the rescue" of the Afghan "resistance". This happened under president Jimmy Carter.

Yet Carter’s National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski confirms that it was the US and not the Soviet Union which started the war:

"According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention…." (Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Le Nouvel Observateur, 15-21 November 1998)

In other words, the Soviet-Afghan war was triggered on the orders of President Carter, the latest recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.

Jimmy Carter was not only instrumental in unleashing the war (which has been ongoing for the last 23 years), he was also the architect of the CIA’s covert support to Islamic terrorism. In fact, it turns out that prime 9/11 suspect, Saudi born Osama bin Laden, was recruited during that period "ironically under the auspices of the CIA, to fight the Soviet invaders". (See Michel Chossudovsky, War and Globalisation, The Truth behind September 11 , Global Outlook, Shanty Bay, 2002, Chapter 2)

Confirmed by the Afghan Project (http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/afintro.htm ), which has collected hundreds of CIA and State Department documents, cables and memoranda: the CIA "had developed contacts" in the course of 1979 with a number of Islamic terrorist organisations. The objective was to not only unseat the pro-Soviet People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government but also to unleash a war with the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, in April 1979, elected Pakistan prime minister Zulfilcar Ali Bhutto, had been overthrown in a military coup and sentenced to death on the orders of General Zia al-Haq. The Carter administration not only supported Pakistan’s new military rulers, they used them in waging the CIA’s covert war in Afghanistan:

relations between the CIA and the ISI had grown increasingly warm following Zia's ouster of Bhutto and the advent of the military regime,'... During most of the Afghan war, Pakistan was more aggressively anti-Soviet than even the United States. Soon after the Soviet military invaded Afghanistan in 1980, Zia sent his ISI chief to destabilize the Soviet Central Asian states. The CIA only agreed to this plan in October 1984.... `the CIA was more cautious than the Pakistanis.' Both Pakistan and the United States took the line of deception on Afghanistan with a public posture of negotiating a settlement while privately agreeing that military escalation was the best course. (Diego Cordovez and Selig Harrison, Out of Afghanistan: The Inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal, Oxford University Press, New York, 1995. See also the review of Cordovez and Harrison in International Press Services (IPS), 22 August 1995).

In turn, the CIA-sponsored guerrilla training was integrated with the teachings of Islam. The madrasas were set up by Wahabi fundamentalists financed out of Saudi Arabia:

"t was the government of the United States who supported Pakistani dictator General Zia-ul Haq in creating thousands of religious schools from which the germs of Taliban emerged." (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), RAWA Statement on the Terrorist Attacks In the US, Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), http://globalresearch.ca/articles/RAW109A.html , 16 September 2001)

US support to the Mujahideen initiated during the Carter administration led to the pumping of "billions of dollars into the Afghan cause and thousands of Islamic zealots were given specialist training in the US and Britain." (Review of John Cooley’s Unholy Wars - Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, http://www.neue-einheit.com/mixed/terror/bookreview.htm ):

"In the United States they experienced tough courses in endurance, weapons use, sabotage, and killing techniques, communications and other skills. They were required to impart these skills to the scores of thousands of fighters who formed the centre and the base of the pyramid of holy war." (John K. Cooley, Unholy Wars - Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, London Pluto Press, 1999, p. 81.)

As much as he is respected :shrug: he still lied to the American people and the Cuban people when he gave a speech on Cuban national TV by saying that US financed "dissidents" and "journalists" are independents simply expressing themselves.

Yeah right. As Independent as the Mujahadeen were.