Mobile mayor signs letter endorsing travel, trade with Cuba

[Judi Lynn]

Mobile mayor signs letter endorsing travel, trade with Cuba

The Associated Press
May 27, 2004

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Mobile Mayor Mike Dow has signed a letter calling for President Bush to work with Congress members seeking to lift Cuban travel and sales restrictions.

Dow is one of 33 who signed the May 20 letter issued by Americans for Humanitarian Trade With Cuba. The letter raises concerns about restrictions on Cuban-Americans visiting relatives on the island, allowing one visit every three years and limiting how much money visitors can spend. There are also restrictions on the sale of agricultural products and medicine.

"If we can trade with Vietnam, we can sure trade with little Cuba," said Dow, who served in the Vietnam war.

The United States has enforced an embargo against Cuba for more than four decades after the rise of Fidel Castro's Communist regime. U.S. companies can sell farm and health care products under an exception passed during the Clinton administration. A soybean shipment left the Alabama state docks for Cuba in March 2003, which was the first shipment from Mobile to the island in four decades.
(snip/...)

http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040527/APN/405271050

[Judi Lynn]

1. Good Counterpunch article by Democratic Rep. William Delahunt

May 28, 2004

A Cold, Poll-Driven Calculation
Bush's Cruel New Rules on Cuba
By Rep. BILL DELAHUNT

Divert resources from antiterrorism investigations, mandate burdensome government paperwork and forbid families from helping -- or even seeing -- their relatives. That's the new U.S. policy toward Cuba.

As if four decades of a failed embargo were not enough, the White House just made matters breathtakingly worse. To demonstrate its disdain for Fidel Castro to Florida's hard-line exiles, the White House will now punish those most critical to the future stability of post-Castro Cuba: the moderate Cuban-American community.

The Bush administration recently announced a battery of provocative steps to undermine the Cuban government, but the real impact -- like the existing travel ban -- is mainly on U.S. citizens.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the tightened restrictions on, of all people, Cuban Americans. Until now, they could travel to the island annually and without hassle. The tears of joy at Havana's Jose Marti Airport, as relatives from across the Florida Straits are reunited, are profound testament to the deep devotion of the Cuban people to the sanctity of the family -- and to the hope for a day when the only obstacle to family reunions would be the 40-minute flight.
(snip/...)

U.S. Rep. Bill Delahunt, D-Mass., serves on the House Committee on International Relations and co-chairs the bipartisan Congressional Cuba Working Group.

http://www.counterpunch.org/delahunt05282004.html

[struggle4progress]

2. A lot of Republicans would like the embargo to end ...

because they see business opportunity. Maybe we should steal some old right-wing rhetoric here from the fight over South Africa: "We need 'constructive engagement' with Cuba" because "The sanctions only hurt innocent Cubans."

[Mika]

3. Add Alabama to the evildoers list

What, is it 40+ US states that have signed trade deals with Cuba by now?


Move along.. nothing to see here.



Don't ask questions!

[struggle4progress]

4. kick

:kick: