Make America Great For Who?

June 29, 2024

“What does Make America Great Again”, actually mean anyway? I believe I understand what people want it to mean, especially the “trumpets”, but I realized today, it really makes no sense. This reflection was brought about because of a customer who came into the bookstore the other day wearing a red hat with this slogan on it…..so a trumpet, I assume. People unfortunately repeat such slogans without giving them enough thought, losing themselves in the process. This is a form of programming, to ensure a slogan is repeated often enough, no one questions it’s true purpose.
I began reflecting on how an argument could easily erupt if I spoke of my feelings on this subject, my anger is very close to the surface when it comes to the trump-man. The family who came in, the man wearing the hat seem to be religious, which is fine, I don’t believe in religion, but understand the need to follow one of the many available. However, this also brought up how the trump-man has accepted support from the evangelical groups, lapping up the unwarranted accolades given to him from this group. It seems they are striving to pair region with the power of government, (a dangerous game to play) or start a civil war. I believe they would be happy with either.

Religion has been behind many wars or take overs, which is one of the reasons I do not follow any religion. In Louisiana they have passed a law to have the Ten Commandments in every classroom and in Oklahoma they are pushing to have the bible taught in grades 5 through 12 in every school. My children would be removed from school if this happened while I was a parent. Religion divides us, promotes discrimination, segregation and together with government views, causes more fights than most anything else. With the great diversity of culture in every country now, how is it possible anyone can think introducing one religion in every classroom will solve racial or cultural tensions already at a high? The trump-man goes along with the craziness because he loves the attention and he knows a good grift when he sees or hears it. He is not spiritual or religious man and seems to have broken all the commandments anyway, so how can he be a promoter of these moral values. And whose moral values are they really? We were all given free will and a conscience – the commandments should not be forced on anyone, in my opinion. I do not feel Moses heard the word of God because I believe the commandments are imbedded in our DNA which is another term for consciousness.

If the story I read years ago written by a French archeologist, has any truth to it, then Moses committed murder himself which is why he fled into the desert. He led the Jews out of Egypt, not because he was saving them from the tyranny of Ramses, but because of his own fears for what he’d done. The Jews were highly respected by the Egyptians for their skills, and were paid well. They were not slaves – Moses did not free them, he led them out of safety. It seems to me the Jews have suffered ever since.

So who is Make America Great Again really supporting? Actually, who was America great for before? Does saying this mean there was no poverty, no health care issues, no racial conflicts, no ignorance or entitled behaviour in America before? Was it a perfect place for one and all? Are we talking North and South America? Or do we maintain the belief the values of North American culture should continue to have the upper hand, ensuring South Americans remain under our control? And does this America include Canada? Because the slogan does not say North America, just America. Does this mean Canada is under the umbrella of the US? Or will we be forced to submit under sanctions and embargoes to take the knee to a foreign government? Our position is very weak, our military could not defend us in a take over. Or is it just about the selfish arrogant domination of one country and its president having immutable power, with intent to dominate?

Excerpt from Article written January 19, 2021, PBS:

Maduro’s government blasted the sanctions as another act of “imperialist aggression” aimed at destroying Venezuela’s ability to meet its own needs through oil sales after four years of attacks from the Trump administration.

“The Venezuelan people and their revolutionary government continue to stand proudly today with our dignity intact,” the statement said, adding that the outgoing Trump administration has been “repudiated by its people.”

The United States were built on the backs of immigrants, yet today in trumps mind they taint the blood of Americans. This is ironic when you consider how many women in foreign countries were abandoned with child from North American soldiers! How many tourists visiting places like Mexico, leave babies behind, unknowingly perhaps, when they return home? Who is forced to take responsibility for this behaviour? How quick we are to label those we’ve stepped all over, as criminals, when it is we who are taking so much from them, including their dignity.

What if the governments in North America stopped supporting the drug trade which is the cause of economic imbalance, fear, corruption, violence and one of the reasons so many flee their country? What if the North American governments stopped interfering by trying to overthrow governments in other countries? What if North American governments stopped placing embargoes and sanctions which have a more negative impact on the general population of a country rather than the intended target?

An example of this was when trump tried to overthrow the government of Venezuela replacing Maduro with a Venezuelan born, US puppet. The sanctions and embargoes created a situation causing millions to flee (the largest number second to those fleeing through the Syrian war), most on foot through Columbia into Ecuador, then some going to Peru. I was living there at the time and met some of these refuges. There was a domino effect as the Venezuelans were willing to work for half the pay, putting Ecuadoreans out of work. Inevitably with the refuges, came the drug traffickers and human traffickers, which has contributed to the dismal situation Ecuador is in today. Trump is long gone, Maduro is still in power and Venezuela is still dealing with the embargoes and sanctions. Cuba was and still is hit hard due to the sanctions placed on them for coming to Venezuela’s aid. Sanctions create extreme poverty – they are about control, domination. They are not about saving the people from a dictatorship, but about manipulating foreign governments then enticing them with carrots such as IMF loans in order to have controlling interest over that country’s resources. In the case of Cuba, I believe it is still about the embarrassment of losing control on foreign soil when Castro overthrew the Batista regime. The people have suffered for generations because of this game North American governments play. Trump used sanctions and embargoes more than any other president to date. It’s about power.

Understand, I do not support or condone the actions of governments like Maduro’s, but to label them dictators while we, under the guise of foreign aide, strip the people of their rights in order to claim resources, puts our governments in the same category. The only North Americans who understand what I’m saying are the ones who became ex-pats, living in places like Ecuador, using their knowledge and expertise to help the people fight back against this greedy machine of arrogance and power. Trump is a monster! A greedy, arrogant, racist, entitled, monster.
It is our arrogance, ignorance and greed as well as our need to control what we do not understand, both in nature and in human behaviour, which has brought us to this destructive way of life. What do we care what happens in another country when we do not suffer the consequences personally. When we accept and support our government by being complacent, we also become responsible for those decisions. Me, I just don’t vote, because there is no one running who I have faith in. Not voting is a vote. In Canada, we have never suffered the loss which accompanies modern war on our land. We do not understand the terror of living with guns in our faces, our lives threatened because of how we think and feel, if it goes against the opinion of those in power. It is like giving birth – you cannot describe adequately the experience to anyone who has not gone through it. Childbirth is unique to not just the mother, but the child being born, so with this metaphors in mind, I say every one of my experiences, due to who I am, were very different, some more a threat to my life than others. No one spoken to here understands what I’ve been through, therefore I cannot adequately express the severity of what is so obvious to me as I watch North America go through the upcoming election process. It is a complete farce! There is no one running for president or prime minister capable of reversing the severe damage that’s been done since the killing of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King. What seems impossible for people to comprehend, is how my birth, the relevance of my story, who my parents are, is connected to that aspect of history.

Excerpt from Article written April 17, 2024 PBS:

“………Additionally, the stiffening of sanctions doesn’t directly impact Chevron, the last major U.S. oil driller in Venezuela, which was allowed to boost shipments thanks to a license it was issued in 2022 amid concerns that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would disrupt global energy supplies.

“The true test of the administration’s seriousness about Venezuela is Chevron,” said Elliott Abrams, who served as the Trump administration’s special envoy to the crisis in Venezuela. “Leaving that license in place suggests the administration cares more about keeping oil prices down until the election, and about Chevron’s profits, than about U.S. national security interests and freedom in Venezuela……..”

How different the world could be if only we did not feel the need to control everyone, rather we learned and respected the differences while accepting the only thing which divides us, is our ignorance and limited opinions. What if we stopped making and providing the weapons which cause such destruction, suffering and death, which force us to take in refugees?
We are on the cliffs edge, and only as individuals can we make the right choice for ourselves. No one can save us, especially not the entitled, privileged, arrogant leaders who have never experienced “life on the streets” so to speak. They make decisions for their continued comfort. They know nothing of our world, so how can you believe any of them will make choices for our betterment? They are taught from birth that their privileged life entitles them to a free pass in the world, a continuous pack of “get out of jail free” cards at their disposal. They are taught how to lie with half truths, denial and deflecting the blame, all which seem to be very effective, especially in trump world. Never accept the blame, yell and throw temper tantrums, threaten to exert your power to maintain control always. Everyone has a price, everyone will fold under the pressure of your power or die. This is exactly how trump and Trudeau behave, as if they will never have to take responsibility for their decisions and actions. There is always a price for those choices which cause harm to others, just not necessarily at the time of choosing. In the meantime, we continue to suffer the consequences of their existence. But then responsibility lies on the shoulders of those who voted them in, believing they would solve our problems. The entitled will never work for us, they work only to ensure they do not lose their position.
Those who still belief in the trump-man should be more educated on the decisions he made while in the Oval Office. While I was living in Ecuador I was witness to the consequences of what he tried to do in Venezuela which then and now affects Cuba. If after reading these two articles anyone still believes he never started any wars while in power, I maintain sanctions and embargoes are an act of war against the citizens of the country targeted. I saw first hand how devastating this process is. Ecuador is still suffering, due to the exodus bringing with it all the issues of both the good and the bad people. Crime has gone up significantly, drug trafficking, human trafficking, loss of work for the Ecuadorians simply because the Venezuelans desperate for work were willing to work for half the wage of the locals. But then what do North Americans know of embargoes or sanctions and their consequences. If you don’t believe me go to Cuba or Venezuela to see for yourself the hardships caused by trumps decisions.

Article written August 18, 2019, PBS:

WASHINGTON — Call it the diplomacy of coercion.

The Trump administration is aggressively pursuing economic sanctions as a primary foreign policy tool to an extent unseen in decades, or perhaps ever. Many are questioning the results even as officials insist the penalties are achieving their aims.

Since taking office in January 2017, President Donald Trump has used an array of new and existing sanctions against Iran, North Korea and others. His Treasury Department, which oversees economic sanctions, has targeted thousands of entities with asset freezes and business bans. The State Department has been similarly enthusiastic about imposing its own penalties: travel bans on foreign government officials and others for human rights abuses and corruption in countries from the Americas to the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

At the same time, the administration is trying to reduce greatly the amount of U.S. foreign assistance, notably cutting money to Latin America and the Palestinians. The White House budget office is making plans to return billions of dollars in congressionally approved but unspent dollars to the Treasury. A similar effort was rejected by Congress last year.

The combination of more sticks and fewer carrots has created a disconnection between leveraging the might of America’s economic power and effectively projecting it, according to experts who fear the administration is relying too much on coercion at the expense of cooperation.

It also has caused significant tensions with American allies, especially in Europe, where experts say a kind of sanctions fatigue may be setting in. The decision this past week by the British territory of Gibraltar to release, over U.S. objections, an Iranian oil tanker that it seized for sanctions violations could be a case in point.

It’s rare for a week to go by without the administration announcing new sanctions.

On Thursday, the administration said it would rescind the visas of any crew aboard the Iranian tanker in Gibraltar. On Wednesday, Sudan’s former intelligence chief received a travel ban. Last week, the entire Venezuelan government was hit. More than 2,600 people, companies, ships and planes have been targeted so far since Trump took office.

“The daily pace is intense,” the treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, Sigal Mandelker, said recently.

She and proponents of the administration’s foreign policy say sanctions are working and have denied Iran and its proxies hundreds of millions, if not billions, in dollars in revenue used for destabilizing activity in the Middle East and beyond. And, they note, the U.S. approach does not involve the vastly more expensive option of military action.

“Overuse of economic warfare is certainly a better alternative to the overuse of military warfare,” said Mark Dubowitz, the chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He has advocated for even broader sanctions.

Mandelker, whose office is in charge of economic sanctions, says sanctions alone “rarely, if ever, comprise the entire solution to a national security threat or human rights or corruption crisis.” They must, she said in a speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, be accompanied by other action to push U.S. national interests.

Experts say the administration has not shown great vision in adopting strategies that do not rely on sanctions or separating punitive foreign policy decisions from purely trade issues, such as the spat with the Chinese over tariffs. While Trump has been reluctant to punish Russia for meddling in the 2016 presidential election, his administration has not relented on sanctions for Moscow’s actions in Ukraine and human rights issues.

“President Trump has completely conflated economic sanctions and commercial policy,” said Gary Haufbauer, a senior fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics who was a senior treasury official during the Carter administration. He said that while that approach might work with countries such as Mexico and Guatemala over immigration, trade measures and sanctions against China and Russia do not.

“I don’t see that the U.S. is having any positive effect on Chinese behavior, or for that matter, Russia,” Haufbauer said. He said this was a “pivot point” in world economic relations, with the U.S. losing its leadership role and opening up the possibility for another nation to pick up the mantle. Asian countries, he said, are deferring to China’s perspective on the U.S., and American alliances with European nations are being weakened by Trump’s reliance on sanctions.

“The U.S., through its trade policy, has managed to isolate itself,” he said.

Although many administrations have relied on sanctions, Trump has used them with zeal at a cost to the U.S., said Liz Rosenberg, the director of the Energy, Economics and Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. She was a senior adviser to one of Mandelker’s predecessors at Treasury during the Obama administration.

Where the U.S. once coordinated with Europeans on issues such as counterterrorism and nuclear nonproliferation, Trump’s sanctions are often one-sided and do not prioritize partnerships, Rosenberg said.

“This is a brand new reality that has never been seen in modern times,” she said. “There are those in Europe who feel not just harmed by the United States, but also targeted by the United States.”

The result is that many countries are less eager, or in fact wary, of signing up for American initiatives, particularly when they see the U.S. retreating in areas such as foreign aid. The administration is expected to present a plan soon to cut as much as $4 billion in economic and development aid, drawing wide bipartisan rebukes from Capitol Hill. A similar effort was turned aside in 2018, but there are fears it may to come to pass this year.

“Once again, the Trump administration is hell bent on slashing programs that lift millions out of poverty, turn the tide against deadly diseases, strengthen our economy, and make America safer,” said Tom Hart, the North America executive director for The ONE Campaign, which supports development assistance. “Not only does this undermine U.S. leadership around the world, it subverts Congress’ power of the purse.”

Associated Press writer Kali Robinson contributed to this report.

Article written by The New Yorker, October 10, 2019:

Amid the barrage of breaking news in the ongoing Trump scandals, one overlooked story is that of Cuba, which is experiencing severe fuel shortages and other difficulties, owing to sanctions levied by the Trump Administration. On September 28th, Sarah Marsh, a Reuters correspondent in Cuba, uploaded a video to Twitter. The thirty-second clip, shot on her phone from a moving car, shows vehicles stalled on a roadway: trucks, buses, modern taxis, and vintage nineteen-fifties Chevys and Studebakers in a line that appears to be half a mile long. All of them were waiting for gas. Marsh tweeted, “So I thought the fuel situation in #Cuba had improved somewhat, until I passed this multi-hr queue for diesel on the highway. This is only a fragment of what I filmed.”

Cuba’s energy shortage has begun to affect life on the island in a wide variety of ways. A week before Marsh posted the video, she reported that the government had urged its citizens to save fuel during daylight hours, warning that its supply was inadequate to cover the island’s needs for the month. Air-conditioning had been shut off in public buildings, while schools and universities had cut back on school hours, and some public-sector workers were told to stay home, because of a lack of fuel for public transportation. Oxen were replacing tractors in fields; wood was being used to fire ovens in state-run bakeries, and a number of factories had either cut back on production or shut down altogether.

Why is this happening? Look to the White House. After failing to help bring down the regime of President Nicolás Maduro, in Venezuela—through economic sanctions and by abetting various military plots and an attempted uprising, in April—the Trump Administration has turned its attention to Cuba, which it blames for Maduro’s survival. The Venezuelan and Cuban governments have indeed been allies since Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro forged close ties, two decades ago, in agreements through which Cuba received regular shipments of subsidized Venezuelan oil and, in exchange, Cuba dispatched tens of thousands of doctors, teachers, and sports instructors to work in Venezuela’s slums and rural hinterlands. That arrangement continues today, but Venezuela’s calamitous economic decline of the past four years—which is worse than that experienced by the United States during the Great Depression and has led to a humanitarian crisis and an exodus of more than four million people from the country—has also had an adverse effect on Cuba. The island does not produce much more than a third of the roughly hundred and forty-five thousand barrels of oil that it needs each day. Since 2000, Venezuela has made up the shortfall, providing as much as a hundred and five thousand barrels a day. But, since the economic crisis began in earnest, its shipments have fallen steadily, averaging about fifty-five thousand barrels a day this year. (Venezuela’s oil production is estimated to have dropped from 2.5 million barrels a day, in 2015, to between six hundred thousand and eight hundred thousand.) The Cuban presence in Venezuela remains intact, by all accounts, and has sparked controversy, with the U.S. government regularly accusing Cuba’s military and intelligence services of having thousands of personnel in the country.

In frustration, the Trump Administration has been escalating sanctions that target, among other things, the oil shipments. In January, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, P.D.V.S.A., prohibiting any U.S. firms from doing business with it in cases where Maduro could directly access the payments. It also seized the assets of the U.S.-based Venezuelan oil company CITGO, and sanctioned a number of banks involved in Venezuelan financial transactions. In separate orders, issued in April, the sanctions were expanded to include oil-shipping companies, vessels, and ship owners, some of which were involved in transporting Venezuelan oil to Cuba. In July, Cubametales, Cuba’s oil-import-and-export company, was also placed under sanctions. Venezuela used several of its own vessels, instead of the usual foreign-flag carriers, to get emergency shipments to Cuba, but, given its own problems, such measures are probably not sustainable in the long term.

Conditions are likely to get more difficult for both countries. In July, the International Monetary Fund predicted that Venezuela’s economy would contract thirty-five per cent further this year. In August, Trump decreed a total embargo against Maduro’s regime and authorized secondary sanctions against “any persons” assisting it, leading the way for potential actions against Chinese and Russian interests, both of which have joint ventures with Venezuela in its energy sector and are Maduro’s main creditors. When the measure was announced, John Bolton, who was Trump’s national-security adviser at the time, said that the new embargo against Venezuela, together with the long-standing one against Cuba, would ultimately bring down both regimes. “It worked in Panama, it worked in Nicaragua once, and it will work there again, and it will work in Venezuela and Cuba,” he said.

Bolton was mistaken about the success of previous embargoes, though. His Panama reference was an apparent allusion to the 1989 ouster of the dictator Manuel Noriega, but Noriega was toppled by a U.S. military invasion, not sanctions. Nicaragua was also subjected to sanctions in the years after the Sandinista revolution, of 1979, and, in 1990, President Daniel Ortega was voted out of office. But during those years the government was also fighting a war against the U.S.-backed Contras. (Ortega has been back in power since 2007, and his government is again under U.S. sanctions, as punishment for repressive behavior, including a violent 2018 crackdown on pro-democracy activists.) As for the U.S. embargo against Cuba, it has been in place since 1962, and the regime remains in power, led by President Miguel Díaz-Canel, a Communist Party loyalist in his late fifties who last year succeeded Raúl Castro in office.

There is, then, nothing to suggest that U.S. sanctions alone will be successful in bringing down Maduro. It seems just as likely that more Venezuelans, increasingly worn down by the penuries and uncertainties of life in their country, will simply join their fellow-citizens who have already fled in what has become the second-largest displacement of a nation’s population in the world, after Syria’s. The United Nations has predicted that, by the end of this year, 5.3 million Venezuelans will have left. If that number continues to rise, the crisis may increasingly be seen as having an American trademark. Not long after the Trump Administration sanctioned Venezuela’s oil industry, a veteran American diplomat acknowledged that the prospect had him worried. “Up until now, the mess in Venezuela is Maduro’s own doing,” he said. “He owns it, he really does. But from now on it’s increasingly on us.”

Nevertheless, the hard-line tactics that Bolton championed seem set to continue. On September 12th, two days after Trump fired Bolton, Marco Rubio, the Cuban-American Republican senator from Florida, who has been a key adviser to Trump on policy toward Cuba and Venezuela, tweeted his prediction that President Trump would remain tough on both nations. Afterward, Trump retweeted his agreement, saying, “My views on Venezuela, and especially Cuba, were far stronger than those of John Bolton. He was holding me back!” As some evidence of that, Bolton’s archconservative director of Western Hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council, Mauricio Claver-Carone, has remained in his post. Claver-Carone is a Cuban-American lawyer who, for years before his current job, was a pro-embargo Capitol Hill lobbyist.

Then, on September 26th, the State Department announced sanctions against the former Cuban President Raúl Castro and his four children, including Alejandro Castro Espín, who had been his personal emissary in the secret talks that led to the historic 2014 diplomatic breakthrough with the Obama Administration. In a statement, the State Department blamed the Castros for their efforts to “prop up the former Maduro regime in Venezuela through violence, intimidation and repression.” (Maduro, of course, is still in office, but, since January, when Trump formally recognized Juan Guaidó, an opposition congressman, as the legitimate interim President of Venezuela, the U.S. government has referred to Maduro as the “former” President.) The State Department went on to accuse the Castros of being “complicit in undermining Venezuela’s democracy and triggering the hemisphere’s largest humanitarian crisis,” though it offered no evidence to back up the accusation.

Article written by WOLA Advocacy for human rights in the americas February 4, 2022:

In 2017, the Trump administration undid all the progress Obama achieved and more. It swiftly imposed new restrictions prohibiting U.S. companies from doing business with certain Cuban companies managed by the armed forces and prohibited U.S. visitors from staying in hotels operated by those companies. It eliminated people-to-people educational travel, placed strict caps on family remittances, and made it impossible to send remittances by wire service. It also interrupted consular services and significantly diminished staffing at the U.S. Embassy in Havana following the onset of unexplained health incidents, now known as the ‘Havana Syndrome’ cases, due to concerns of foul play by foreign states that have now been dismissed following findings by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Trump also decided to implement Title III of the Helms-Burton Act to enable U.S. nationals to pursue lawsuits against any business or person, U.S. or foreign, benefiting from property nationalized after 1959 discouraged foreign investment in Cuba. Finally, the Trump administration put Cuba back on the SSOT list during its final days in office in an effort to make it harder for President Biden to repair U.S.-Cuban relations.

Today, U.S. policy towards Cuba is at a standstill. Despite multiple campaign promises during the 2020 election campaign, the Biden administration has not advanced engagement policies with the island. It has begun restaffing the U.S. Embassy in Havana, but with no clear timeline on the resumption of consular services. Its policy review is still paused, and after having received recommendations from the Working Group on Remittances on the best options for re-opening wire services, there has been no word of when a more flexible policy will be in place. The Working Group was established in July of 2021 immediately following the protests of July 11.

As Dr. LeoGrande noted, “For sixty years, the economic embargo has failed to achieve any of its stated policy goals while exacting a high human cost, stifling the development of the Cuban economy and making daily life harder for Cuban families.”

The Embargo’s Impact on the Cuban Economy Today

Dr. Ricardo Torrez Pérez, a leading Cuban economist who is currently a research and teaching fellow at American University, examined the impact of the U.S. embargo on Cuba at a macro level. As a small island, Cuba is in a position where it depends on trade to survive. As a result of the complete prohibition on trade with the United States, a 2021 estimate by the Cuban government found that the embargo has cost the country close to $144 billion. A similar figure has been acknowledged by the United Nations.

Under the Obama administration, actors in the private sector bloomed. With the reversal of U.S. policies in 2017 and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, cuentapropistas (private entrepreneurs and small business owners) have been among some of the most impacted by the limits on remittances, travel, and trade.

As Dr. Torres Pérez stated, “One of the arguments behind the current policy is that the private sector is a marginal actor in Cuba and we want the Cuban government to embrace a liberal economic policy as well. However, the sanctions hurt the private sector [the most].”

Peter Kornbluh, the director of the Cuba Project of the National Security Archive, described during the event how the embargo limits the people of Cuba from accessing the internet to support their small businesses, take online U.S. courses, and use financial services like PayPal. He stated how the embargo stands as “a punitive approach which endures to this very day under the Biden administration.”

Due to the asymmetry between the size of the U.S. and Cuban economies, the gap between their GDPs has only continued to grow. The undeniable truth is that on the economic front, while the embargo has a severe impact on the Cuban economy, it has little cost to the United States. “The embargo is there because the U.S. can afford to have an embargo—even a full embargo—on Cuba,” notes Dr. Torres Pérez.

How the Embargo Complicates Humanitarian Assistance

Gail Reed, public health specialist, journalist, and founder of Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba (MEDICC) highlights that “the U.S. embargo [has] nefarious consequences for Cubans, jeopardizing health and [the] welfare of women, children, people living with cancer and HIV/AIDS.” Its complex licensing requirements effectively prevent food, medicine, and medical equipment from reaching Cubans. They discourage sales of medical equipment to the island, resulting in the cancellation of ventilator sales by a Swiss company to Cuba during the pandemic. Regulatory requirements also impose onerous challenges to the provision of humanitarian assistance. These restrictive policies make it extremely difficult to send aid to Cuba for fear of running afoul of the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control and incurring hefty fines. Their impact has damaged the Cuban healthcare system’s ability to respond effectively to the COVID-19 pandemic, with a toll on human lives.

Despite these restrictions, Cuba managed to develop its own COVID-19 vaccines, bypassing a series of significant challenges. Their development, including the research, production, and rollout, was delayed because purchases of necessary supplies and shipping were complicated by the embargo. The Biden administration’s show of empathy with other countries during the pandemic led them to issue exemptions to certain sanctions interfering with public health responses in Iran, Syria and Venezuela, but these same efforts were notably absent with Cuba. Notwithstanding these obstacles in receiving much needed medical supplies, Cuba has achieved a 90% vaccination rate with the vaccines it developed.

Recommendations for Key Reforms

The U.S. embargo has endured for 60 years, failing in its initial goal of inciting regime change and promoting democracy. As Dr. LeoGrande stated in his final remarks, it no longer benefits any players in the game— not the United States and certainly not the Cuban people. Yet it continues to be one of the most persistent aspects of U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba.

Nevertheless, there are important areas of opportunity to advance modest, but key reforms in U.S.-Cuba policy. The timeliest ones should be those that help address the most dire aspects of the humanitarian crisis on the island. These include:

Suspending U.S. regulations that impede food, medicine, and other humanitarian assistance from reaching the Cuban people.
Removing all restrictions on family and non-family remittances.
Fully re-staffing the U.S. Embassy in Havana, with the necessary measures to ensure the safety of U.S. personnel, and resuming consular services in Cuba.
Rolling back the Trump administration’s measures that restrict travel to Cuba, since they limit mutually beneficial dialogue between the U.S. and Cuban people, and make it more difficult for Cuban-Americans to visit and reunite with family on the island, particularly for those with families outside of Havana.
Removing Cuba from the State Sponsor of Terrorism (SSOT) list, as this unwarranted designation places another roadblock in the path towards improved relations and creates further obstacles to purchasing or receiving humanitarian goods.

The Biden administration should recognize the 60th anniversary of the embargo as an inflection point for its policy approach and make good on campaign promises that have gone unheeded for too long.

Article written January 19, 2021, PBS:

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — The Trump administration issued a parting shot at Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Tuesday, announcing a sweeping round of stiff financial sanctions that target a network accused of moving oil on behalf of the president’s alleged frontman.

In a sign of future U.S. policy toward Venezuela, President-elect Joe Biden’s choice to be secretary of state, Antony Blinken, during his U.S. Senate confirmation hearing in Washington showed support for the decision to recognize opposition politician and Maduro rival Juan Guaidó.

Blinken also expressed frustration about the results of current U.S. policy, which hasn’t led to free and fair elections in Venezuela. He said there is room for better coordination with allied nations to restore democracy to the crisis-stricken South American nation.

“Maybe we need to look at how we more effectively target the sanctions that we have,” Blinken said. “So that regime enablers really feel the pain of those sanctions.”

Venezuela, a once a wealthy oil-producing nation, has fallen into economic and political crisis in recent years that has seen a flood of more than 5 million residents flee. They are escaping a breakdown in public services and shortages including a lack of running water, electricity and gasoline.

In the latest round of sanctions trying to pressure Maduro out, the U.S. Treasury Department hit three individuals, 14 business entities and six ships with financial measures. They are accused of assisting the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA, to evade earlier U.S. sanctions designed to stop the president from profiting from crude sales.

Trump, who leaves the White House on Wednesday, has led an international coalition over the last two years by exerting increasing pressure on Maduro to end what U.S. officials call his illegitimate hold on power.

The White House recognizes Guaidó as the nation’s legitimate leader, blaming Maduro for Venezuela’s economic and political ruin. The White House says he clings to power after undemocratic elections in 2018, when his leading rivals were banned from running.

“The United States remains committed to targeting those enabling the Maduro regime’s abuse of Venezuela’s natural resources,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin said in a statement.

The sanctions target people and businesses linked with Alex Saab, a Colombian businessman who U.S. officials say is a close associate of Maduro. Saab is jailed in the African nation of Cape Verde while fighting extradition to the U.S. to face corruption charges.

The primary figures targeted by the sanctions are Alessandro Bazzoni, Francisco Javier D’Agostino Casado, Philipp Paul Vartan Apikian, Elemento Ltd., and Swissoil Trading SA.

Bazzoni, a London-based Italian commodities trader, declined a request by The Associated Press to comment.

Sanctions by the U.S. Treasury’s Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, block any assets that targeted individuals and businesses have in U.S. jurisdictions and bar Americans from conducting financial transactions with them.

The U.S. Department of Commerce also announced measures on Tuesday to block U.S. technology from being used by military intelligence in nations including China, Cuba, Russia and Venezuela.

Commerce officials in a statement said in Venezuela they seek to deprive the General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence of any U.S. technology. Human rights groups accuse the counterintelligence agency of abuses against its own citizens, including torture.

U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo spoke Monday by phone with Guaidó. U.S. Department of State spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said the two talked about their shared goal to see a peaceful democratic transition in Venezuela.

Pompeo expressed his “personal respect and appreciation” to Guaidó for the opposition leader’s “commitment to the cause of freedom and his inspiring leadership to millions of Venezuelans yearning for a brighter future,” Ortagus said.

In a Jan. 16 letter provided by Saab’s attorney to the AP, Saab writes that Trump’s use of sanctions has ruined lives and destroyed nations such as Venezuela.

In it, Saab asks how Trump can have “unimaginable leverage over foreign adversaries” that gives the U.S. president “his very own ‘superpower’” through a division of the U.S. Treasury Department called OFAC. The Trump administration has sanctioned dozens of Maduro allies, trying to isolate the leader.

“OFAC can accuse anyone, any time, without warning, without the opportunity to address issues prior to designation, prior to destruction of businesses built up over years of hard work and prior to the destruction of lives and reputations,” the letter says. “OFAC then opens its mouth to swallow supplications and fees on an unprecedented scale.”

The Venezuelan opposition leader once recognized as the interim president of the country will be teaching at a South Florida university. Juan Guaidó, who was recognized as the legitimate president of Venezuela by the United States and dozens of countries until early 2023, will be a visiting professor at Florida International University, according to a post he made on X, formerly known as Twitter.

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It’s a new platform and opportunity to talk about the challenges of defending democracy, resisting a dictatorship and supporting the most vulnerable,” he said in Spanish on X. Guaidó, 40, will be a senior leadership fellow at the Adam Smith Center for Economic Freedom, which FIU describes as a “world-class, independent, non-partisan think tank” with a mission “to advance economic and individual freedom and human prosperity.” He will be at FIU for the fall semester and will conduct eight study group sessions, in addition to mentoring students, conducting research and being part of public conferences and seminars. He will be paid $40,000, FIU said.

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Guaidó’s biography on the website describes him as a “widely recognized leader worldwide” who “transcended borders by demonstrating an unwavering commitment to democracy.” “Overall, his vision, leadership and extensive experience make him a key player in the development and analysis of committed and transformative perspectives, not only for Venezuela, but for the global political scenario,” his profile says.

A BRIEF LOOK AT GUAIDÓ

A household name in South Florida’s Venezuelan diaspora, Guaidó, an engineer by trade, was the figurehead of the country’s democratic movement from January 2019 to January 2023. He was considered the interim president of Venezuela after the Venezuelan National Assembly declared that Nicolás Maduro had usurped the presidency.

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Venezuela’s opposition parties have controlled the National Assembly since 2015, when the last elections seen as free and fair were held. Support for Guaidó eroded over the years as other opposition leaders expressed frustration that his term as interim president failed to oust Maduro’s and provide a democratic transition. In April 2023, Guaidó said Colombian authorities threatened to turn him over to Maduro after entering the country for a forum about the Venezuelan crisis. The Biden administration helped Guaidó leave Colombia and come to Miami. In May, his wife and two daughters joined him in Miami.

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