Chris Slee said: The US economic blockade against Cuba makes Cuba dependent on trade with Russia and China. This inevitably has an influence on Cuba's foreign policy. Cuba will be very cautious about doing or saying anything which might annoy Russia or China, which might cause the latter to cut off trade and further deepen Cuba's economic problems.
Only if the US blockade is ended will Cuba be free to adopt a consistently progressive foreign policy. The US left should be campaigning vigorously against the blockades on Cuba and Venezuela, but as far as I can tell from a distance this does not appear to be the case. * * * * * * * * Ken Hiebert replies: I’m inclined to agree with Chris. At one time Cuba was very dependent on the USSR. I don’t know the nature of the relationship today with Russia and China, but I expect they must be dependent to some degree. In that situation they are not necessarily bound to slavishly follow the foreign policy of Russia and China, but it is something they must take into account. Chris says, "The US left should be campaigning vigorously against the blockades on Cuba and Venezuela, but as far as I can tell from a distance this does not appear to be the case.” I think the depends on how you define the left. The various organized Marxist currents are doing some work, but in my view they are not as effective as they could be. And I think this is true in Canada as well. Considering the broad sympathy for Cuba, the movement against the blockade should be broader. But I’m not sure that any of the leaders of this movement have the perspective and political skills to bring together a broad movement. I look back at the work that was done in Canada in the early years of the revolution and I believe it was effective. I cite the work in my own province, British Columbia. Aside from Jack Scott, a columnist in the Vancouver Sun, the campaign drew in Cedric Cox, an MLA (equivalent to a state legislator), and Colin Cameron, an MP at the federal level. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedric_Cox Colin Cameron https://www.lipad.ca/members/record/97f9d88f-ae28-4f99-8f6c-2ec41c4accfa/2/ I have a very clear recollection of the day in this house when it looked as though we were coming to the end of things. I refer, of course, to the confrontation over Cuba. I have been interested to note in all my reading of the discussions on the matter that no one goes farther back than the situation that obtained after Fidel Castro succeeded in seizing power in Cuba. No one goes farther back in history where there are another few links in the chain of cause and effect which finally led us that day in the House of Commons to sit here wondering whether we were facing the end of all things. If people would go farther back they would find something else that Canada and other prosperous parts of the world should not be very proud of, namely, that for decades we had known that the Cuban people were suffering under one of the most brutal dictatorships in the history of the world. They were living in poverty, in misery and in fear, and we did nothing about it. As a consequence the chain of events led finally to the confrontation between the two great powers in the world. I suggest that if we are interested in our own defence we should be bending all our efforts to coping with all the potential Cubas that exist throughout the world which may at any time produce the chain of cause and effect that will lead us to the brink of disaster. I can think of no more honourable, no more decisive and significant role for Canada at this time than to say to the rest of the world that we are not interested in this fatal game of military expenditures and military defiance because we know we can play no real role in it. We should say that we want to free our hands to undertake the task that lies ahead of all of us in the more affluent parts of the world, which is to remove to the best of our ability the causes of future disruption of peace in the world by removing the poverty and misery underlying those causes. But if we are going to go on playing, which is all we are doing-posturing, playing and pretending-that we in Canada can play any sort of role whatsoever in the military sense we are not going to have the resources, the energies and the time to engage in the real peace keeping operation of trying to build up the submerged areas of the world to the level of affluence that we enjoy on this continent. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#7191): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/7191 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/81252823/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
