The Cuban government is reluctant to open internet access to the people, despite of they already have the needed bandwith through a submarine cable from Venezuela. Is really fascinating how the Cubans have developed a higly optimized offline distribution channel to share dowloaded content like websites, software, video games, tv shows, movies, with almost the same comsuption patterns of the connected world.
This is a loable move from Obama admnistration and can have a pontentially impact on the near future of cuban internet. The White House fact sheet (http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/12/17/fact-s...) said:
"Telecommunications providers will be allowed to establish the necessary mechanisms, including infrastructure, in Cuba to provide commercial telecommunications and internet services, which will improve telecommunications between the United States and Cuba."
If Cuban government allow this kind of companies to do business on or with Cuba, that could be huge. But if happens, this could be very slow, sadly.
Disclosure: I'm the cofounder of some Cuba related startups, a classifieds ads site censored by the Cuba government https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUmPkb44n_w, they block us by ip and dns, despite of the censorship, revolico is one of the most visited sites in the country, taking into account that cuba has a 5% internet penetration. Also a atypical remittances platform https://www.fonoma.com and crowfunding site for cuban artists shutted down by the USA goverment because of the kind of restriction that they are softening today http://www.yagruma.org
The word you are looking for is laudable BTW.
Replace the X with my username. david.gutierrez.X@gmail.com
Un abrazo.
While I hesitate to predict that this change will be all for the good, I do believe that the poorest in Cuba will benefit significantly from increased trade.
1: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/S-F-spendi...
- average life expectancy in Cuba is almost the same as the USA (and higher than Mexico, Belize, Bahamas, Brazil, etc.).
- literacy rate in Cuba is higher than that in the USA
- Physicians per 10,000 people: Cuba has 67, USA has 24
In the Ebola crisis, Cuba has been leading from the front.
The US figure reflects very long careers; late retirements; investment in large teams of trauma specialists due to high war, car crash, and gunshot wound rates; a high percentage of women physicians working part time; and a high concentration of expensive specialists with no documentation that they improve outcomes and paid for by large federal government subsidies.
The actual amount of primary physician and general surgery time available to Americans is very low compared to other countries with similar numbers of doctors. Most countries also allow as many as half the cases administered by fully licensed doctors with 12-20 years of post-secondary schooling in the USA to be handled by nurses and pharmacists. Prescriptions for sniffles or heartburn, basic non-controlled medications, simple physical assessments, and vaccinations are handled by professionals the USA would consider nurses or pharmacists or unlicensed assistants in most first world countries. In the USA those jobs take the time of physicians.
And that is the top reason, among many other unrelated ones, that health care is so much more expensive in the USA. US doctors are fewer and have more responsibilities and thus must be paid extraordinarily to work very long hours and not retire at the usual ages or else some must go without care. It's not an accident; medical societies have blocked medical school expansion for decades until recently as the population grew.
Cuba, on the other hand, appears to be counting nurse practitioners as physicians. That's fine to do because they're highly qualified, but it makes the numbers not comparable across countries.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Perfect-Latin-American-Idiot/pro...
2nd highest in the world, behind Monaco (70): http://kff.org/global-indicator/physicians/
For comparison: Sweden (38), UK (27), Japan (21), Canada (20)
Makes you wonder if that number has any significance at all. Japan has 1/3rd the number of doctors, but the highest life expectancy in the world.
As engineers we would never compare uptime statistics from a small, niche startup serving a couple thousand people to uptime statistics from, say, Google. Why do we immediately ignore these principles outside of engineering?
Edit: wording
That said, I do hope it does help some people in Cuba who have fallen victim to unnecessary stresses caused by the embargo.
Nothing trickles down to the poorest, spontaneously, almost anywhere in the world.
The Cuban revolution could ignore this for 30 years, because of their ties with the USSR and emphasis on redistribution of existing resources; and then the old problems came back once the USSR crumbled. Now they are trying to build an economic identity around healthcare and education, and without the embargo (which stops technology from entering the country) they might actually succeed in ways that will hopefully inspire other islands.
I will be very careful with that statement. Cuba government is very good at propaganda and making people to think that.
In Venezuela we have a first hand experience about that since there is a lot of "collaboration" between both countries (basically oil in exchange of medical and education services). The result is a lot of cases about medical malpractices.
Also education is very opinionated with a strong emphasis in political indoctrination.
This is, unfortunately, not a problem unique to Cuba. I had this very same reaction when my wife and I vacationed in Jamaica. To get to this lush, tropical all-inclusive resort, you spend two hours riding in a minibus across bumpy barely-paved roads through some of the most abject poverty I've witnessed anywhere. It was very difficult to reconcile the insulated world of endless food and finely manicured lawns inside the resort with the world you witness just outside its gates.
If, on the other hand, people are able to eek out improved standards of living, in general, with savings on food costs, they can increase health and education spending and get into a virtuous cycle of increased living standards.
There's a bigger context necessary.
Trade with the US for DR has not helped much - US dumps Agro products (Powdered milk, meat) and bans Sugar.
Cuba actually has an incredible socialized medicine healthcare system, and the US embargo specifically carves out an exception for cancer pharmaceuticals developed and manufactured there. Its not that far fetched that you would see medical tourism take off from Florida with its vast retiree population.
If I were in the travel business in Florida, I'd start advertising now to get your name out there, and fly to Havana to have a conversation with Raúl Castro about how much yearly revenue you could be bringing in (all in USD I might add). About $39 billion/year is spent in Florida on Medicare; taking only a small piece of that is an incredible proposition for a country the size of Cuba.
Most discussions seems to center around the doom and gloom of quality dropping and prices increasing as the US/Cuban cigar market opens and the demand for CC increases.
No discussion on the legality of owning CC changing amusingly. As apparently everyone forgets that smoking a Cuban Cigar can be considered an act of treason currently.
"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court."
Like most of the Constitution, I'm sure that there's way more to understanding this section than reading the written words. Nonetheless I'm skeptical of the claim that smoking a cigar could be considered treason.
> Criminal penalties for violating the Regulations range up to 10 years in prison, $1,000,000 in corporate fines, and $250,000 in individual fines. Civil penalties up to $65,000 per violation may also be imposed.
Seasoned critics can name the nationality of a cigar just by touch its actually very cool to see (I'm nowhere near that good lol a few different countries are too similar for me).
And the "golden age" of Cuban cigars is often cited as before WW2 so either way its long pasted.
In the U.S. you will find the same brands like Partagas, but they're made with blends from other countries than Cuba, and they are really inferior. I tried a bunch of them and Cubans wins everytime.
Longer-term, I also expect fierce legal battles over the ownership of houses on Cuba.
I expect the Cuban government will concede on a few national-level items (like legitimacy of the Guantanamo base) in exchange for the US government publicly affirming that any ownership claim from US businesses and individuals pre-revolution will be considered null and void. Anything else would be complete madness. Apart from difficulty in tracking original documents (which were likely destroyed during and after the revolution), handing nationalised assets to US citizens would mine the economic power base of the ruling elite in Cuba.
Consider hotels: they power one of the few sizeable economic activities on the island, i.e. tourism; but any hotel built before the revolution (and there are quite a few, all around the island) would have to revert to (likely US) previous owners, instantly transferring a lot of wealth out of the island. Not gonna happen.
The USA and OPEC flood the market with oil (literally), crashing prices and sending the Ruble into a spiral. Just as Cuba starts to worry about Russian support going forward, the USA swoops in to provide some economic bracing.
This seems like it's all a concerted effort to double-down on the embargo and slap Putin where it hurts the most.
"During the [July 2014] visit, Putin agreed to write off $32 billion in Russian debt to Cuba, leaving just over $3 billion left to pay over the next 10 years. This was a significant economic weight lifted from Havana, whose gross domestic product shrank by up to a third with the loss of direct aid and subsidies from Moscow after the Soviet Union fell. Putin and Raúl Castro also agreed to new deals in energy, health and disaster prevention and help with building a vast new seaport. Moscow is also now exploring for oil and gas in Cuban waters, right in the U.S.’s backyard."
http://www.newsweek.com/2014/08/22/russia-and-cuba-get-back-...
There are a ton of good reasons to improve relations, and few reasons not to.
I think it's tempting to connect the dots. But they're just dots.
Cuba will happy accept economic aid from the US (in the form of lifted sanctions) in the light that the Russian oil industry faces the possibility of collapse. Everyone expects a sudden humanitarian/tourist opening, but I don't believe that's going to be as quick.
"Since some people take sense 2 to be the opposite of sense 1, it has been frequently criticized as a misuse. Instead, the use is pure hyperbole intended to gain emphasis, but it often appears in contexts where no additional emphasis is necessary." [1]
Apparently they have a university dedicated to IT stuff[1] but I don't read Spanish and I couldn't really find any projects/research page on there. The only thing that seems to be portrayed is a Linux distro called Nova.[2]
On the university site, there's a few hidden links to Cuban Mozilla fans[1], a digital publication for open source software [2], a youth-targeted site for open-source users[3] (seems down), and a women-targeted site for IT [4]. Note that there's more, but everything seems to be down at the moment, it might be the HN effect
[1] http://firefoxmania.uci.cu/ [2] http://swlx.cubava.cu/ [3] gutl.jovenclub.cu [4] http://haciendoweb.upr.edu.cu/
I'd recommend formally renouncing your Cuban citizenship (and getting the documentation to certify this) if you want to be 100% sure there are no hassles.
It seems like people commonly raise the fact that Cuba still jails political dissidents. However, while accurate, it ignores the many MANY countries the US hasn't embargoed which do similar or worse.
For one example, the US and Saudi Arabia are "best buddies" but yet the Saudi government is often doing extremely anti-freedom stuff. I mean this is the only country on earth where women are forbidden from driving.
So my point is less "Cuba is the good guy" and more "if they're going to continue the embargo then keep it consistent, hit Egypt, Pakistan, China, Yemen, and so on" for it also.
Cuba has a huge tourism industry. A lot of the business that serve tourists are state owned. Where does this money go? Everything from hotels to restaurants are state owned. Who is profiting here?
I think at this point its less personal and more choice. Cuba chooses to run its govern and keep their people in poverty, the US chooses to keep them on an embargo list. Comparing this to Mexico is a poor example. There is ample current trade with Mexico that if cut off, would hurt the country. The US has not traded with Cuba for a LONG time but has traded with most other world super powers. Nobody here to blame but the Cuban government.
How much of the economic misery is due to the Castro government and how much is due to the US embargo?
Cuba's main problem is its leadership. The US coaxing it to a free market system that respects human rights and property rights is only good for Cuba. The Castros were more than willing to continue to starve their people and become the West's North Korea.
>John Oliver has a very interesting piece on his HBO show.
Maybe you should get your opinions from something other than lowest common denominator appeal comedians. Start here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba
and here:
http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2013/country-chapters/cuba
and here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cuba-country-of-c...
Please stop romanticizing the Castro regime.
Iirc, any vessel that trades with Cuba is restricted from trading with the USA within some time window. So clearly most Caribbean nations choose to focus their trades with the big USA partner.
Regarding human rights, as others have mentioned, we don't embargo countries that have far worse records.
The Cuban embargo is nothing but an antiquated relic of the Cold War that hurts the citizens of Cuba without having much impact on causing change in the government. And ironically it only serves to strengthen the government by giving the people an easy scapegoat for its problems.
Have you been to Cuba? I've been twice. Incredible experience and I highly recommend it.
U.S. policy usually tends to favour business. That's why the economic sanctions on Cuba were bound to be removed sooner or later. At present, there are some products (e.g. compressors and other items requiring a large foundry to produce) that are very difficult and expensive to get in Cuba because most companies that produce them are either American or owned by American companies. Smaller companies from countries such as Canada have made a practice of "bootlegging" for the Cubans. In recent years it has not been uncommon for a compressor skid to be produced in Texas, shipped to Alberta via rail, shipped to the East coast through Canada via rail, and finally shipped to Cuba.
The reason sanctions against Cuba are finally being dropped is probably related to the death or extreme old age of most everyone who can remember having property snatched away from them when the Cubans nationalized everything after the revolution. Subsequent generations of Cubans and americans have been brought up to distrust each other though. It won't be as easy as some think for U.S. companies to march back into Cuba and set up shop again. Companies that have been quietly running mines and building power plants for the Cubans over the last few decades will likely have the edge. It's going to take time and patience for trust to be restored.
However, that is not the entire story. If we (US) were really that concerned about the lost property of the Cubans expelled by Castro, we would also look inward and ponder the fate of the British supporters kicked out in 1776; the KMT supporters kicked out by Mao; etc.
If we can trade with China, Russia, etc. then there's no reason we can't trade with Cuba. In fact, the opening of the borders with USSR is often listed as one of the key factors in bringing it down; so why not do the same with Cuba?
I do find it interesting that in recent years, Bacardi has been playing up its Cuban heritage. I suspect that they're itching to get back, but that whole issue of returning confiscated property stands in the way. Will Cuba end up with something like the Treuhandanstalt in post-reunification Germany?
Freed from any need to cooperate; now that Republicans are in control; with Congress its going to be fun. Why do I say no need, with Reid in charge of the Senate he had to play by party rules, he is free of that.
Some moves will definitely be for the good, some may not be. Regardless it should be chaotic if not fun to watch
And while that's technically only a "section" of the Swiss embassy, a glance at a photo of the place makes it pretty clear that there's a bit more going on.
The ambassador's freedoms are quite limited. Eg, at some point he was not allowed to leave the confines of the DC beltway. Diplomatic immunity be damned. Really sucked for us planning an event in my Baltimore uni for him to speak at, where the travel restriction came into effect just days before and we had to resort to video conf.
But my point is that this is all just paper. Out in the real world, the US can (and probably will) pretty much just swap out the plaque outside the "US Interests Section" with one that says "US Embassy", with the chief and their assistants magically transformed into diplomats.
To see what I mean, Ctrl-F dueling on http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cigar_brands
From the Bacardi wikipedia:
"Ospina describes how the Bacardi family and Company left Cuba after the Castro regime confiscated the Company’s Cuban assets on 15 October 1960; in particular, in nationalizing and banning all private property on the island as well as all bank accounts. However, due to concerns over the previous Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista the company had started foreign branches a few years prior to the revolution; the Company moved the ownership of the Company's trademarks, assets and proprietary formulas out of the country to the Bahamas prior to the revolution as well as constructing plants in Puerto Rico and Mexico after Prohibition to save import taxes for rum being imported to the US. This helped the company survive after the communist government confiscated without compensation all Bacardi assets in the country."
"More recently, Bacardi lawyers were influential in the drafting of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act which sought to extend the scope of the United States embargo against Cuba. In 1999, Otto Reich, a lobbyist in Washington on behalf of Bacardi, drafted section 211 of the Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency Appropriations Act, FY1999 (Pub.L. 105–277), a bill that became known as the Bacardi Act. Section 211 denied trademark protection to products of Cuban businesses expropriated after the Cuban revolution, a provision keenly sought by Bacardi. The act was aimed primarily at the Havana Club brand in the US. The brand was created by the José Arechabala company and confiscated without compensation in the Cuban revolution. The Havana Club trademark had been registered by the Cuban government in the United States without permission of the rightful owners. The new law invalidated the trademark registration. Section 211 has been challenged unsuccessfully by the Cuban government and the European Union in US courts; however, the act has been ruled illegal by the WTO (August 2001). The US Congress has yet to re-examine the matter."
Basically, Cuba stole some brands after the revolution, so the U.S. said "fuck you, you can't trademark a brand you stole from its rightful owners". The EU and WTO have a problem with that, but luckily the U.S. has never given a shit what the EU or WTO says.
This is an executive action.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban%E2%80%93American_Treaty#C...
Not quite; some restrictions have been lifted but this is not yet a done deal:
"Although the decades-old American embargo on Cuba will remain in place for now, the administration signaled that it would welcome a move by Congress to ease or lift it should lawmakers choose to."[1]
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/18/world/americas/us-cuba-rel...
