I wrote Reconciliation: 78 Reasons to End the US Embargo of Cuba, a 330 page book that makes a powerful case for normalizing relations with Cuba with the explicit goal of re-establishing relations with Cuba within the Obama administration, so today I can claim a personal victory for my advocacy.

But let's be clear: it's immoral and unethical for Americans to be passive about the US embargo of Cuba as long as it prevents unique Cuban treatments for at least 42 different medical problems from reaching 316 million Americans (unless smuggled, at risk of a 10 year jail sentence and $250,000 fine), and it prevents 11.2 million Cubans from receiving American pharmaceuticals, medical equipment, and lower cost supplies of many things needed for public health.

What does Marco Rubio insist on before allowing medical supplies to flow?



Among other things, property claims. Dig deeper, and you'll find ugliness and corruption. The claims made for Cuban property (which, collectively, exceed the total land area of Cuba!), were rubber stamped by a US federal court, so that any criminal, including US elected officials who have an obvious conflict of interest, are expecting to get free property just by saying, "Yeah, my family owned that harbor and that plantation and that house...".

There were 11 nations that had property taken during the Cuban revolution. 9 of those have been repaid, leaving Spain, which is still receiving payment, and the US, which refused payment.

Look at the US with respect to Israel: the US position is with Israel. Palestinians left their homes, so, well, from the US position, it's okay that Israelis from Europe, Russia, Ethiopia, etc. took the homes and they are keeping them.

Israel received what could be called a "fully-furnished nation", including tables, chairs, silverware, curtains, toys, etc., and would not dream of giving these back. And the US is good with that.

There is no elected official in the US who is advocating that the Israelis give back all property taken. It would mean the end of the the Jewish state, as millions of people would be dislocated.

The same potential dislocation is true of Cuba, however: those homes that used to have 2 to 4 people living in them now have 20 people living in them, and apartments that housed 100 people have 200 to 700 people in them. Many of those people are black. And part of the reason for the Cuban revolution was the same reason as for many revolutions: concentration of land ownership, including ownership of the biggest hotels and casinos by US mobsters, who could shoot a man [1] out on a date and rape his girlfriend, and get away with it.

Americans rail about racism in every form, but go full Afrikaner when it comes to Cuba, which is at least 50% black: every nasty horrible thing that white Miami "Cubans" (many of whom, like Marco Rubio, have never been to Cuba) do to Cuba, they cause 5.1 million blacks to suffer. I just don't get why Americans can think that other people don't notice this acceptable racism.

So basically white Americans who have never been to Cuba are saying that they deserve to take the homes and apartments of millions of black Cubans, because a federal court that never investigated the veracity (truth) of property claims says that an American owns it, ignoring the precedent set by the US support for Israel, and ignoring the fact that US courts are not supposed to decide similar claims with completely opposite legal reasoning.

The United Nations has voted dozens of times on whether the US embargo of Cuba amounts to genocide and whether it's illegal under the terms of the treaties signed by the US.

Cuba always wins, sometimes, lately, by votes of 189-2, with only the US and Israel hypocritically voting in favor of the legality of an embargo, based on reasoning that, if they lived by the legality of what they are voting for, would mean the end of Israel.

It's an indication of how unintelligent and unethical most politicians are that no politician has ever pointed this hypocrisy out.

[1] Mobsters could shoot a Cuban man, but they were not allowed to shoot other mobsters who were Americans, so Havana became a "mobster's paradise" where they could literally get away with murder, drugs, prostitution, gambling, and yet have police protection from the other crooks.

And Americans wonder why there was a revolution.

Alex has been interviewed on this topic HERE