Comment by lenkite
13 days ago
"holier than thou victimhood" ? What a horrible joke. My "utopia", as you term it, is merely asking that Western nations stop bombing, terrorizing and sanctioning other nations before issuing proclamations on "failed states". They would actually get a chance to be successful.
> PS: Food, medicine, and medical equipment--the essentials--are exempt from the embargo.
So deeply ignorant and deliberately blind to the real world. The U.S. significantly constrained Cuba’s ability to buy medical equipment from other countries, not just from the U.S. itself. Cuba cannot legally import any product containing more than "10% U.S. origin components". For some years, it was even 25%!
Even when a product was made in Germany, Japan, or Canada, U.S. parts could make it illegal to sell to Cuba.
2nd order threats and suppression are very effective for propaganda. Permits western supremacists like you to falsely claim that that "the essentials" are exempt.
Can you show any evidence of any such medical equipment whose export to Cuba was prohibited?
You deftly avoided the question, so I'll ask again: Where are you from?
> Can you show any evidence of any such medical equipment whose export to Cuba was prohibited?
Here is a UN report.
"Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba"
https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/4090890/files/A_80_83-E...
Here is another report from Cuba Solidarity, which details the cost of the blockade
https://cuba-solidarity.org.uk/resources/2025%20blockade%20r...
Here is another report from Cambridge University Press which illustrates an example in Chapter-8
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/economic-sanctions-from...
"For example, the purchase of Vitek 2 Compact 15 laboratory equipment for one of the enterprises that manufactures the Cuban vaccine candidates was cancelled when Canadian supplier North World Industry Inc. (NWI) informed its Cuban customer that the company’s supplier, Biomeriux Canadá, had refused to supply the equipment and its consumables, because the components were manufactured in the US. NWI sought to procure the equipment from Spain, through Biomereux’s European subsidiary, and from Panama, through a Latin American subsidiary, to no avail."
Antoher report of denial during Covid crisis
https://cuba-solidarity.org.uk/news/article/3985/us-company-...
There are a dozen other reports/articles that I can bring up. Most of this research, you could easily find out by yourself. You are just not willing to admit the basic truth to yourself and chosen to deliberately blind your eyes.
(PS: My origin is irrelevant to the evidence. I am not from any NATO nation, obviously not from Cuba myself, belong to a nation formerly under colonial rule and which also experienced Western harsh sanctions in the past.)
A whole bunch of obviously biased reports from the Cuban government's UK propaganda arm and the famously impartial UN. Farcical.
According to tankies, everything is a genocide these days (except Putin's very halal spetzoperatsiya, of course), embargoes are blockades, and it's all America's fault. It's actually pretty disappointing reading this propaganda. I wish the embargo was as restrictive and effective as they claim!
> the purchase of Vitek 2 Compact 15 laboratory equipment
Was not actually prohibited by the US. The Canadian company denied the sale on its own. Anyway that is dual-use laboratory equipment ostensibly intended for the benefit of Cuba's biomedical industry, not medical equipment intended for the benefit of patients.
> Antoher report of denial during Covid crisis
That looks like either overly-conservative risk management from a company's own leadership, or else a convenient excuse to redirect supply to the US where ventilators were in high demand and short supply and they could command a premium.
> PS: My origin is irrelevant to the evidence.
Your "evidence" is Cuban government propaganda and your origin is highly relevant to understanding your geopolitical motives. But it's clear enough that you hold a grudge against America, just like the Cuban regime.
I actually think the humanitarian exemptions and light restrictions on foreign vessels trading with Cuba are misguided policies. Half measures are usually ineffective, there's no good reason to provide aid and succor to Cuba, and there's no good reason why we should be lenient with those who do. Nobody has a human right to trade with a country against their will.
Cuba has the sovereign right to give the US the middle finger and the US has the sovereign right to return the favor. Why should we trade at all with a regime that hates us and wishes to see us suffer? Let Cubans grow their own food and diagnose and treat themselves with their own equipment. They can build their own supply chains for their own industries. Your bank wants access to US dollar accounts? Don't transact with Cuba. Your company wants access to the US market? Don't transact with Cuba. You wanna dock your ship in US ports? Don't dock your ship in Cuba.
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