In Haiti, Cuban doctors stayed when no one else would

[eablair3]

you got to just love some of the statements in this article by the head of the Cuban-American National Foundation.
______________

In Haiti, Cuban doctors stayed when no one else would

BY TRACEY EATON

The Dallas Morning News


PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - (KRT) - At the height of the bloody revolt in this country, all the hospitals and clinics in the capital closed but one, a makeshift emergency room operated entirely by Cuban doctors.

"We're here to help the people," said Juan Carlos Chavez, chief of a 535-person Cuban medical brigade in Haiti. "We don't take sides. We don't get mixed up in politics."

Over the last 41 years, the Cuban government has sent tens of thousands of doctors to dozens of nations as part of its vaunted doctor diplomacy program. Some say it's evidence of the Castro government's unselfish commitment to health care. But others charge that doctor diplomacy is simply a way for Cuba to bring in desperately needed hard currency. The bulk of the money paid by the nations goes to the government, not the doctors, they say.

"These doctors are in essence slave labor. They're sold on the international market to fill a need in the Third World. But the net beneficiary is the Cuban regime," said Joe Garcia, head of the Cuban American National Foundation, an influential anti-Castro group in Miami.

snip

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/8153873.htm

[La_Serpiente]

1. Use this if you don't want to sign up for the registration

http://www.bugmenot.com/

[eablair3]

4. thanks

thanks for posting that. I didn't realize that it was a registration site. I didn't have to register when I clicked on the link at Google to read it, but did when I clicked above.

Thanks for that site. I didn't know about it, but it looks to be real handy.

[MSchreader]

2. Oh, those evil, awful, cruel Cuban Communists!

How dare they keep offering medical services to poor people of color! And they don't even check to see if their HMO will cover it! Gawd, how ... barbaric! :eyes:

---

On another note:...

"These doctors are in essence slave labor. They're sold on the international market to fill a need in the Third World. But the net beneficiary is the Cuban regime," said Joe Garcia, head of the Cuban American National Foundation, an influential anti-Castro group in Miami.

First of all, calling these medical personnel "slave labor" is pure falsification. They are either volunteers or people who agreed to serve overseas in exchange for going to medical school.

Secondly, such a claim is quite rich coming from the gusano CANF organization -- especially since one of the first things a post-Castro/CANF regime would do is abolish the program.

Martin

[Judi Lynn]

3. Oh, jeezus. Only the spokesman for the Cuban American National Foundation

would ever be found speaking like this, with the exception of our most retarded, perverted right-wing dingalings:

"Cuban life in general is so miserable that only Cuban professionals would think that it is a step up to practice medicine in Haiti, Zaire, Mozambique and other impoverished Third World nations," Mr. García said.
(snip)

He'd better live it up now. His world is getting smaller, the old, corrupt, violent original Battistiano Cubans who had to run from the Revolution are dying out, and the new Cubans arriving from Cuba are generally FAR less politically motivated, and they are open to normalizing relations with Cuba. He's the representative of a dying breed of bustards.

From the article:

The Cubans tended patients nonstop despite the threat, Mr. Chávez said. They cleared out a large storeroom, cleaned the floors and brought in a half dozen cots. Soon the patients started arriving, many bleeding, limping and near collapse. There were 22 gunshot victims on Feb. 29 and March 1 alone. And as the week progressed, Cuban doctors treated more than 100 people, Mr. Chávez said.

Looters rushed the hospital grounds at one point and stole six cars and trucks, but they left the Cuban doctors alone.

"The people have always protected us," Mr. Chávez said. "We're here to take care of people's health."
(snip)

Can also be found at:
http://www.dallasnews.com/s/dws/news/world/stories/030704dnintcubandoctors.651ce.html
in case you've registered there.


These don't sound like slaves. They sound like conscientious people realizing their place in the world as healers, not @$$####$. They surely make the Miami Battistianos look like crap.

[eablair3]

5. US arms criminals & overthrows the demo elected Presdent and Cuba send Drs

The U.S. likely armed the opposition criminals and overthrew the democratically elected leader of Haiti and kidnapped him so that he can be held against his will in some remote African country where the leaders took power by coup a year earlier and answer to the U.S. Now, death squads are operating in Haiti killing people and committing massacres.

And, all the while, ... Cuba had been and is supplying a 535 medical doctor brigade to tend to Haiti's poor in Haiti's hospitals and clinics.

Now, something is wrong with this picture, is it not?

Or, maybe it's just accurate?

I'm sure BushCO will remedy this. If Haiti was paying Cuba for the services of these doctors, do you think that the "new" Haiti will continue to pay? So, will this mean that the medical brigade will no longer be in Haiti?

___________

I had to laugh at the CANF guy, Garcia who said:

"These doctors are in essence slave labor. They're sold on the international market to fill a need in the Third World. But the net beneficiary is the Cuban regime," said Joe Garcia, head of the Cuban American National Foundation, an influential anti-Castro group in Miami.

"Cuban life in general is so miserable that only Cuban professionals would think that it is a step up to practice medicine in Haiti, Zaire, Mozambique and other impoverished Third World nations," Mr. García said.

Said Mr. García: "Cuba has more doctors than it has heads of lettuce."

[Judi Lynn]

6. You would expect this from an organization created by the Reagan admin.

Tax-free, even, they actually sponsor terrorism on Cuba. Of course you know this, but there are always newcomers to this information!

CUBA: Three Guatemalans Accused of Terrorism Stand Trial
By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Oct 31 (IPS) - Three Guatemalan nationals accused of terrorism in Cuba face sentences of 20 to 30 years in a trial that opens Thursday, according to diplomatic and legal sources.
Nadel Kalam Musalam Barakat, Jazid Iván Fernández and María Elena González were arrested in March 1998 in the Jose Marti international airport smuggling explosives into the country.

Guatemala's ambassador to Cuba Hugo René Guzmán told IPS that the three individuals, who are accused of committing ''crimes against state security,'' were being defended by Cuban lawyers.

The Guatemalan government expects a fair trial, said the ambassador, who preferred not to speculate on the outcome of the proceedings, the start of which has coincided with the international crisis triggered by the Sep 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

Months after the arrests, the Interior Ministry found evidence that the three Guatemalans were involved in planning attacks ''ordered and financed by the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF)'', the most fervently anti-Castro organisation of the Cuban exile community in Miami.
(snip/...)

http://www.oneworld.org/ips2/oct01/23_13_058.html

You may remember the late head of the CANF, Jorge Mas Canosa viewed himself as being the future President of Cuba. He's mentioned in this signifigant snip on the CANF:

When accused of buying influence, Mas responds repeatedly that the practice of U.S. democracy includes having a powerful lobby and being able to give "contributions" to political leaders. Where does CANF get its funds? First, it collects $5,000 to $10,000 (sometimes more) per year from its wealthy members. CANF also collects money from that same Congress to whose members it donates. In 1983, two years after the founding of CANF and at the initiative of the Reagan Administration, Congress created the National Endowment for Democracy to promote "democratic" institutions around the world. NED has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to CANF front groups--the European Coalition for Human Rights in Cuba, for example.
(snip)

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/JBFranklins/canf.htm

Nice work if you can get it!

[Mika]

15. Joe Garcia of the CANF is a lifelong registered Dem

I've heard him say that many times with my own ears on local TV and radio in Miami.

Reagan might have created the CANF, but the Dem party has sucked at that teat from day one.

Bush, Kerry will fight for Cuban-American vote
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/columnists/andres_oppenheimer/8156676.htm

According to several pollsters, South Florida's Cuban exile voters will be courted heavier by both parties than in the 2000 elections, mostly because they tend to turn out in huge numbers, and because the Bush-Cheney campaign can no longer take them for granted.
-
Democratic Party strategists now believe that if Sen. John Kerry, the presumptive party nominee, can raise the Cuban exile vote for his party to 25 percent or 30 percent -- a realistic goal, considering that President Bill Clinton got 36 percent of the Cuban exile vote in 1996 -- he could carry Florida, and get a good shot at winning the national election.
-
WHO'S TOUGHER?

Does this mean that we're likely to see a Bush-Kerry race on who's tougher on Cuban dictator Fidel Castro?

Maybe so. Bush is likely to announce steps to halt the rising U.S.-Cuban trade and travel ties, and will probably try to cast Kerry as ''soft on Cuba.'' Kerry, in turn, will have to prove that he's no Castro friend.

He said earlier this week in South Florida that he supports the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba -- a ''Stalinist, dictatorial state,'' he told WPLG-ABC 10 political reporter Michael Putney

[JoeKSimmons]

7. Question about Cuban doctors

Are Cuban doctors free to move with their families to another country like America or the EU and pratice medicine? Does Cuba still restrict the ability of its people to move to another country in general?

[Judi Lynn]

8. I don't know any Cubans in the personal sense

but I do know, from reading, that Cubans do move to other countries.

I have read of Cubans moving to Spain and taking work there. The articles I read didn't appear to imply they were seeking refuge there, as their trips were planned well in advance, and they didn't "defect."

I have heard that it is expected that the doctors, who receive YEARS of free medical training are expected to use their education helping people in poor countries, just as they ask the American students who get scholarships to study medicine in Cuba to spend a number of years working in America, as in ghettos, and other blighted areas, among the poor who cannot afford "conventional" American health insurance.

I do know that there have been a few Cuban doctors who "jumped ship" while stationed abroad, but they weren't the subject of retaliation, and from what I've gathered, are able, at some point to send for their families to join them.

ON edit:
Maybe you recall the story, and I'll bet you do, of a Cuban doctor and his nurse who decided to leave Cuba, while serving somewhere in Africa a couple of years ago. They asked for asylum in some embassy, which refused them, if I remember correctly. Then they moved in with some friends until they could get on board a plane for the U.S. After they got to the U.S., the doctor, who had left his wife in Cuba with their kids, had to experience the loss of his wife in a motorcycle accident, and sent for his kids. The Cuban government took longer than he liked, and he chewed up the scenery in Miami, with daily bulletins to the local newspaper, and got the entire right-wing Cuban Battistianos bouncing off the walls. Eventually, the children showed up at the airport, where he and his nurse raced to greet them, with cameras going off around them.

No news from any of them after that. No news is good news?

That's one example I'm aware of.

[eablair3]

9. cubans

I don't know the answer to your question, but I do know of doctors in Europe that cannot move to the U.S. due to immigration restrictions of the U.S. As far as practicing medicine, I'm fairly certain that the doctor has to pass the applicable licensing requirements. A doctor I know from Europe who was in this position told me that.

And, I do know that it is illegal for Americans to even travel to Cuba, let alone move there. But, some do anyway. I had read a while back that Cuba was offering to train American medical students for free if they would just say that they intended to return to the U.S. as doctors and serve the poor and the rural poor where there weren't too many doctors.

[Mika]

12. Miami-Dade has many doctors trained in Cuba

Once they have fulfilled their required exchange of duty for their education in Cuba, Drs can apply for one of the 20,000+ per year legal US immigration visas.

In order to practice in the US, Cuban doctors need to fulfill the US edu requirement including required residencies - in addition to passing the US medical board exams.

Cuban expat communities exist almost worldwide.. except that most aren't of the virulent anti Castro Miami variety.

[Minstrel Boy]

13. Cuban doctors practice in rural Canada

and many have trained at Canadian hospitals.

[Judi Lynn]

10. Researchers Say U.S. Barred Them From Cuba (medicine)

Researchers Say U.S. Barred Them From Cuba
By KAREN W. ARENSON

Published: March 9, 2004


The United States government stopped a group of about 70 American medical school professors, doctors and other scientists from attending an international symposium on coma and death in Cuba this week, several doctors said yesterday.

Scientists say the prohibition against the trip, with only a few days' notice, is the latest step by the Bush administration to limit their work with people in countries like Cuba that are seen as hostile to the United States.
(snip)

The Cuba conference was the Fourth International Symposium on Coma and Death, which starts today. About 200 scientists from around the world were to participate.

Dr. E. Roy John, a professor at New York University's School of Medicine and director of the Brain Research Laboratories there, who was scheduled to deliver two papers, said he had been particularly interested in sessions on bringing people out of comas through more active treatment. Dr. John and other researchers said that in areas like molecular biology and mathematics, Cuba was "world class."
(snip/...)

~~~~ link ~~~~
Free Registration Required! (N.Y. Times)

[AP]

18. What's that oft-repeated phrase? "If it could have saved just ONE life...

...we should do it."

I guess not when it comes to medical researchers sharing knowledge.

[Judi Lynn]

11. More information on Cuba and American medical students

You can be completely sure that this is the next area _Bush is going to try to destroy:

U.S. medical students spend first week in Cuba learning Spanish and visiting tourist sites

Associated Press - Wednesday August 28, 2002
Vivian Sequera, Associated Press Writer


HAVANA, Cuba - A group of 23 American students began intensive Spanish courses this week before starting their six-year medical program on the communist-ruled island.

The group arrived Aug. 20 at the Latin American School of Medicine, with more than 6,000 students from 24 countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and the United States.

The new students, between 21- and 27-years-old, come from seven U.S. states.

"Everybody at home believes I'm crazy to come to Cuba," said Myrna Morales, 27, from Brooklyn, New York. "My parents think I should be buying a house and car ... but I want to study medicine."
(snip/...)

http://www.aegis.com/news/ap/2002/AP020848.html

[keithyboy]

14. All i can say is: Long live Castro!!!

If we only ever had a man with half his courage.

[Mika]

16. Long live Cuba!

Its the Cuban people who do these good works together, not one man -Castro.

Its the Cuban people (doctors, assistants, and their families, and all of the Cuban people who support them and their cause in the Haiti case) who have the courage, Castro being one of them.

Focusing on that one man is the mistake that the opposition wants you to make, in order to obfuscate the unity and bravery of the entire Cuban nation.


Viva Cuba!



Only ONE candidate for US president
openly states that he would end the
unjust policy of sanctions and embargoes
against Cuba AND Americans.

That candidate is Dennis Kucinich.

[AP]

17. Only an American paper could turn this into a bad thing.

[Mika]

20. Only in the USA. Period

Its not just the US press, its both major political parties too.


Pandering for dollars


Charts from opensecrets.org





CANF founder and Clinton fundraiser Jorge Mas Canosa & Bill Clinton

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

21. How about, only in the USA?

[Mika]

24. Done

Thanks for pointing out that glaring faux pas. :thumbsup:

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

19. I have a funny anecdote about Cuban doctors.

Last weekend I met a Venezuelan chick who told us that Cuban doctors are poisoning poor people in Venezuela. You know 'cause Hugo Chavez is evil incarnate. After almost falling from my chair laughing I asked her for some evidence. Anything, really that could back her bullshit story. Of course, she had nothing. So that tells me that these sick sick rich people have gone from claiming medical incompetence. To outright criminal intent from these doctors. I've given up arguing with a certain element in the Hispanic community that reminds me very much of Miami Cubans.

[Judi Lynn]

25. Reminiscent of the rumors the CIA circulated in Cuba

which sent Cuban parents running to get their kids on planes outta Cuba, lest they should be stolen by the Cuban revolution. I have heard people saying some of those dim people actually believed their kids would be sent to Siberia. Sad, isn't it?

This describes a book which came out a coupla years ago, and stirred up some real feeling in the "exile" community:

When Castro took power in 1959, the Cuban middle class became divided. Many knew of the corruption that had attended the previous Batista regime, but then again many had benefited from it. Many were sympathetic to Castro's stated aims, but also knew his administration would mean a lessening of U.S. corporate involvement in Cuba, and an end to their privileged positions and status. A rumor started circulating that Castro intended to take children away from their parents and make them wards of the state, the better to indoctrinate these ninos and ninas with Castroism. Pedro Pan was a reaction to this. Better to send children to the USA where relatives or Cuban Americans could care for them until the threat to private family parenting
was squelched.

Fans of Fidel charged that Pedro Pan was a CIA plot. It would deprive Castro of many promising youngsters and slander the aims of La Revolucion. Anti-Castro Cubans and Cuban Americans positioned Pedro Pan as a grand humanitarian gesture, in the tradition of the kindertransport in Europe during World War II. To Torres's credit, she refuses to get caught up in either partisan camp. She presents the evidence for both views. She documents the Jacobin nature of Castro's upheaval and mourns family friends who were imprisoned or disappeared. But she also tracks enough of the 14,000 to raise some disturbing questions. Some of these powerless children were abused by the very people responsible for their welfare. And even more
felt a profound dislocation from the land of their birth, a dislocation that still haunts many decades afterwards.

Torres went back to Cuba. She visited elderly people in Miami and elsewhere who had Pedro Pan institutional memory. She even sued the CIA in a vain attempt to get them to disgorge their records. She effectively demonstrates that no side has "clean hands" in this struggle, where the ultimate victims were those too young to realize what was happening to them.

So why did I open this review with a statement that THE LOST APPLE illuminates a subject beyond its seeming scope? Because of the wealth of detail that Torres adduces suggesting covert U.S. intelligence involvement in Pedro Pan. The CIA had the power to grant visas and used this power to create maximum disruption for the new Cuban government. The CIA had money it could use to encourage the policies it favored. The CIA was way more involved in destabilizing Cuba than it ever let on, yet refused to admit this to the American taxpayers who funded their operations. America criticizes other countries for using the weak or the young as political pawns, but stoops to the same hypocritical behavior when this serves its interests. American intelligence may well have brought us to the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 by its officious intermeddling in Cuba before Castro declared his allegiance to communism and the USSR. THE LOST APPLE does not prove this audacious statement, but it adds one more set of circumstances that, in total, allow this chilling inference to be made.
(snip/...)

http://www.samizdat.com/rinkreview35.html

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

(Although this reviewer seems skeptical about the CIA's involvement, it HAS actually been bourn out through people who've come forward to talk about it. It was definitely a plan hatched here, and there was a well-known priest who just died recently who acted as the manager of the Pedro Pan program, and got all those kids herded to the States.)

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

On edit: More on the Pedro Pan operation on Cuban kids

The operation started in December 1960, when James Baker, the headmaster of an American school in Havana who has since died, met with the Rev. Bryan O. Walsh, a Miami priest with the church's social service agency, and told him that parents in Cuba were concerned about their children's welfare. The two agreed that if Baker could get children out of Cuba with student visas issued by the U.S. Embassy in Havana, the Catholic Church would care for them.

When the U.S. Embassy closed in January 1961, Walsh turned to the State Department, which gave him blanket authority to issue "visa waivers" (essentially a permit to travel to the United States without a visa) to children 6 to 16. Older children had to undergo security clearances.

Walsh sent the waiver forms to Cuba, often in diplomatic pouches. The forms were filled out for the children, who were then allowed to travel to the U.S. When the organizers in Cuba ran out of forms, they falsified them.

With some exceptions, the children of Pedro Pan say they are grateful to have grown up in this country, but they also wonder what their lives would have been like if they had never been separated from their parents.
(snip/...)

http://64.21.33.164/CNews/y98/jan98/13e5.htm

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

On edit, again. Ah, the plot thickens!

In 1961, the CIA, counter-revolutionary emigres in the
US and elements in the Catholic church circulated the rumour that Fidel
Castro's revolutionary government was about to negate all parents' rights
over their children and institutionalise all children in Cuba over the age
of five.

A fake law was printed and distributed at Catholic churches around the
country. CIA-run radio stations broadcast urgent "warnings to Cuban
mothers". As a result, a wave of panic swept the island and more than 14,000
children were shipped unaccompanied to the "safety" of Miami in what became
known as "Operation Pedro Pan".

Castro vehemently denied the existence of such a law, denouncing it as a
hoax. He pointed out that such a plan would be totally impracticable and an
impossible drain on revolutionary Cuba's resources.

The "humanitarian" concerns of the US government that led to Washington
waiving visa requirements of these Cuban children did not extend to their
parents whom the CIA wanted to keep active in the anti-Castro opposition in
Cuba.
(snip/...)

http://www.blythe.org/nytransfer-subs/2000cov/Elian_Only_the_Latest_Peter_Pan_Victim

[Vladimir]

22. Yes of course

providing affordable health care to the third world is a crime.
War is peace
Freedom is slavery
The Truth is a lie
Communism is evil
The savages need enlightenment
Bring it on

V

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

23. You forgot:

cluelesness and apathy = steady leadership