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lonestar2004
Live to party,work to affordit.
Registered: 10/03/04
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Cuba cracks down on Private Enterprise.
#4320645 - 06/21/05 12:41 PM (18 years, 9 months ago) |
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Cuba revokes self-employed worker licenses
By VANESSA ARRINGTON ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
HAVANA -- Cuba's communist government has revoked some 2,000 licenses from self-employed workers across the island, part of a campaign to reassert state control over the economy, local media reported this week.
Those who lost their licenses were violating rules that allow a limited number of Cubans to work for themselves, Tribuna, a weekly newspaper, reported Sunday.
The government has repeatedly complained about growing inequality associated with self-employment, and officials say private workers often compete with the government or steal state goods. A private worker can earn more in a day than the $12 (10 euros) that the average state worker makes in a month.
The government stopped issuing self-employment licenses last fall for 40 categories of jobs ranging from computer programming to auto body repair. Self-employment in these professions was legalized only in 1993 during the severe economic crisis that followed the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Cuba's biggest source of aid and commerce.
New optimism based on oil prospects off Cuba's northern coast and strengthened economic ties with China and Venezuela has prompted President Fidel Castro to crack down on those working for their own financial gain.
The roughly 150,000 self-employed Cubans represent just 2.1 percent of Cuba's work force, and officials say the state system has recovered sufficiently from the shock of the early 1990s to absorb more workers.
Labor Ministry officials have been interviewing self-employed Cubans to determine how they obtained the materials and skills they are selling, Tribuna reported. The process will conclude at the end of the month and be repeated every two years, Odalys Gonzalez, a regional labor ministry director, told the newspaper. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/aplatin_story.asp?category=1102&slug=Cuba%20Economy
-------------------- America's debt problem is a "sign of leadership failure" We have "reckless fiscal policies" America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better Barack Obama
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Vex
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Re: Cuba cracks down on Private Enterprise. [Re: lonestar2004]
#4320665 - 06/21/05 12:47 PM (18 years, 9 months ago) |
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well..Castro is going to die any day now. Maybe Cuba can turn things around when that happens. I can't say that i really care to much about cubans though.
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MAIA
World-BridgerKartikeya (DftS)
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Re: Cuba cracks down on Private Enterprise. [Re: lonestar2004]
#4320791 - 06/21/05 01:20 PM (18 years, 9 months ago) |
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Stalinist !!!
MAIA
-------------------- Spiritual being, living a human experience ... The Shroomery Mandala Use, do not abuse; neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy. Voltaire
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afoaf
CEO DBK?
Registered: 11/08/02
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Loc: Ripple's Heart
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Re: Cuba cracks down on Private Enterprise. [Re: lonestar2004]
#4322629 - 06/21/05 09:58 PM (18 years, 9 months ago) |
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my wife and I honeymooned for two weeks in cuba and spent most of our time staying in casa particulares with cubanos instead of hotels.
we talked to a lot of people about the system and what they expect to happen when castro passes.
nobody really talks...they ALL just shrug and say 'we will see'.
it's a very strange place...lots of propaganda along the roadways...pictures of castro, che and cienfuego all over.
personally, I think capitalism could send that nation into a terrible tailspin.
not to say that state control is going well...it's just that shit could go downhill really quickly there without the frail framework they currently have.
-------------------- All I know is The Growery is a place where losers who get banned here go.
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lonestar2004
Live to party,work to affordit.
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Re: Cuba cracks down on Private Enterprise. [Re: afoaf]
#4322803 - 06/21/05 10:39 PM (18 years, 9 months ago) |
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interesting
-------------------- America's debt problem is a "sign of leadership failure" We have "reckless fiscal policies" America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better Barack Obama
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afoaf
CEO DBK?
Registered: 11/08/02
Posts: 32,665
Loc: Ripple's Heart
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Re: Cuba cracks down on Private Enterprise. [Re: lonestar2004]
#4324241 - 06/22/05 10:22 AM (18 years, 9 months ago) |
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as a whole...much of the people recognize the inequities in living conditions between themselves and their surrounding nations.
but, either through truth or through the state's incessant message of cuban success and splendor, many would not trade the current system for capitalism.
they see it as divisive, unfair and impoverishing.
most have grown content with their lifestyles...and for some of them, I can't blame them at all...it's a good existence.
but, ironically, a poor person in america (can potentially) enjoy a standard of living much higher than the local construction chief in maria la gorda.
it was a very interesting trip...I still haven't really worked it all out in my head.
-------------------- All I know is The Growery is a place where losers who get banned here go.
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Its Pat
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Re: Cuba cracks down on Private Enterprise. [Re: afoaf]
#4326673 - 06/22/05 09:16 PM (18 years, 9 months ago) |
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Do you live in the U.S. of TEH GEH; if so, how did you get to Cuba?
-------------------- BigUpRadio WorldReggaeShow DreaderThanDread - Listen! (druqs said) don't get arsey, just get RC.
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Los_Pepes
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Re: Cuba cracks down on Private Enterprise. [Re: Its Pat]
#4567569 - 08/22/05 06:37 PM (18 years, 7 months ago) |
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Castro's helpers: American librarians
June 20 '05
By Duncan Currie Published: Monday, June 20, 2005 1:24 AM EDT E-mail this story | Print this page
Librarians attending the American Library Association's conference in Chicago this week will hear a speech from that great man of letters Henry Winkler (a.k.a. "The Fonz"). But a bigger story involves who won't be appearing at the podium: Ramon Coles and Berta Mexidor, the co-founders of Cuba's independent library movement.
The ALA claims they did not apply to be speakers through the proper channels. But critics say the group's refusal to accommodate this brave husband-and-wife team is part of a broader hypocrisy on Cuba.
Two years ago, Cuban strongman Fidel Castro jailed 75 dissidents in a brutal clampdown. Fourteen of them were librarians, members of a movement that collects books, newspapers and periodicals and loans them to interested readers. In Castro's island paradise, this is a crime.
The ALA took notice ? sort of. At its Toronto summit in June 2003, members briefly mulled a resolution on Cuba before postponing the decision until the following January. By that time, the ALA faced mounting pressure to condemn the arrests and demand the release of those imprisoned.
Would the ALA call on Castro to free the jailed librarians? No. The best it could muster was an expression of "deep concern over the arrest and long prison terms of political dissidents." It noted that some were private librarians, but stopped short of insisting on their release. It urged the Cuban regime to respect "basic human rights" and "eliminate obstacles" to the free flow of information.
Curiously, the ALA report also took a dig at the U.S. embargo because it "restricts access to information in Cuba." It likewise zinged the U.S. travel ban for hampering "professional exchanges" between the two countries. In its fit of moral equivalence, the ALA blamed both governments ? the one in Washington and the one in Havana ? for the "political climate" that led to the arrests.
This prompted journalist Nat Hentoff, a staunch civil libertarian, to renounce his Immroth Award for Intellectual Freedom, which the ALA bestowed upon him in 1983. "To me, it is no longer an honor," Hentoff wrote in his Village Voice column.
But John Berry, who was then head of the ALA, was not impressed. In a debate with Hentoff, he defended the ALA's position and questioned the credentials of the jailed librarians. "Cuba is a bit of a special case for us," he added, because of the embargo and "the aggressiveness of the American attitude toward [Cuba]."
The ALA's current leadership seems to consider the matter settled, and prefers to spend its political capital these days bashing the Patriot Act.
But don't tell Robert Kent, a public librarian in New York, that Cuba is a dead issue. He co-chairs "The Friends of Cuban Libraries." He also recently penned a letter asking outgoing ALA President Carol Brey-Casiano to invite Col?s and Mexidor to speak in Chicago. "Your response to this request," he wrote, "will establish, once and for all, your stand on this momentous issue."
The ALA balked at Kent's challenge. "It's way too late to schedule something," explains Berry, now chair of the ALA's international relations committee.
"Nonsense," Kent replies. He says the ALA president has the authority to invite the Cubans.
Kent may have lost this latest battle, but his group is preparing to release a scathing analysis of the ALA's position on Cuba. He believes that the vast majority of the ALA's 64,000 members have no idea about the ongoing Cuba flap. Because of low turnout in ALA elections, he says, "a small group of extremists can dominate the organization."
In the meantime, the world's largest and oldest library association works in silent complicity with the Western hemisphere's most brutal dictator.
Duncan Currie is a reporter at The Weekly Standard.
http://www.dcexaminer.com/articles/2005/06/20/opinion/op-ed/46oped20currie.txt
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