ND agriculture commish to visit Cuba

[Judi Lynn]

February 13, 2007, 12:36PM EST
ND agriculture commish to visit Cuba

BISMARCK, N.D.

State Agriculture Commissioner Roger Johnson says he has been invited to bring a delegation of North Dakota food exporters and processors to Cuba in May.

"The Cubans are very interested in the commodities and products that North Dakota has to offer," Johnson said Tuesday in a statement. He is organizing a trip to Havana May 21-25, to finish signing contracts for a $20 million purchase agreement.

So far, $10 million worth of products has been contracted and delivered by North Dakota producers, Johnson said.

"We hope to finish contracting the remaining $10 million and act on any future sales contracts," Johnson said.
(snip/...)

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8N8VELG1.htm

[Judi Lynn]

1. Push by Cuba makes rum brand a rising star worldwide

Feb. 12, 2007, 10:23PM
Push by Cuba makes rum brand a rising star worldwide

By DOREEN HEMLOCK
South Florida Sun-sentinel

HAVANA, CUBA — The restaurant serves chicken with rum sauce. In the courtyard, a bartender whips up a new cocktail: fresh-squeezed sugar cane and orange juices with white rum. The guided tour concludes with a tasting, complete with the finest blends.

Tourists flock daily to the Havana Club Rum Museum in this Caribbean capital, just one plank in an aggressive marketing push that has made the government-backed brand Cuba's top selling rum and a rising star worldwide.

Sales are so brisk that industry tracker IWSR of London recently named the brand the fastest-growing internationally in the decade that ended in 2005. Havana Club sales jumped 16.4 percent a year during the period, reaching 2.6 million cases in 2005, ISWR said in its Elite Brands List. A case has 9 liters.

Within Cuba, Havana Club dominates rum sales, its growth closely linked to the surge in tourism, now topping 2 million visitors a year.

But it's in Europe where the brand is making its biggest inroads and ranks No. 2 among all rums, the company said.

Growth stems partly from a marketing campaign that associates Havana Club with Cuba's vibrant music and culture.
(snip/...)

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/4548389.html

[Judi Lynn]

2. Euro-Parliament Delegations in Cuba

febrero 13, 2007
Euro-Parliament Delegations in Cuba

Havana, Feb 13 (Prensa Latina) Parliamentary delegations from Switzerland and Great Britain separately Tuesday work on agendas in Cuba, with the aim of fostering ties between the respective countries.

The Swiss legislators agenda today includes a visit to a cigar factory in Havana and a trip to the island's central province of Villa Clara, to visit the memorial that holds the remains of Argentinean-Cuban Ernesto Che Guevara and a group of his comrades-in-arms fallen in Bolivia.

Also on the table is a meeting with Cuba's Communist Party Central Committee's International Relations Department chief Fernando Remirez de Estenoz and Foreign Investment and Economic Collaboration Minister Marta Lomas, and a visit to the Latin American School of Medicine.

Meanwhile, Sylvia Heal, First Deputy Speaker of the British House of Commons, is expected to visit today the 16th International Book Fair, hold a private lunch with the island s Parliament President Ricardo Alarcon and meet with the Cuban Women's Federation general secretary Yolanda Ferrer.
(snip/)

http://www.escambray.cu/Eng/news/Cdelegation0702131053.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nobel Prizewinner Soyinka Visits Cuba



Havana, Feb 13 (Prensa Latina) Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, the first African to win a Nobel Prize in literature in 1986, is in Havana to participate as a guest at the 16th International Book Fair.

The eminent writer and dramatist asserted in the Morro-Cabaña Fortress Complex, the fair s venue, "I feel like I m at home."

Soyinka toured the fair and visited the Argentinean pavilion.

The African writer will meet and talk with his admirers on Wednesday at the Nicolas Guillen Hall.

The writer has worked in London s Royal Court Theater as an actor and director. Later he returned to Nigeria where he founded the Orisun Theater Company.
(snip/)

http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7B3ECA523A-BF49-435B-BF47-A1AE315A02E1%7D)&language=EN

[BayCityProgressive]

3. Hopefully this helps

their economy. It has been growing for years now. I would love to travel there and see it for myself but our government won't allow us freedom of travel and information. I guess our government doesn't want us getting any ideas. Then they bash other countries for lack of information freedom!:rofl:

[Judi Lynn]

7. The U.S. right-winger part of our government is going to be overwhelmingly embarrassed

when Americans DO finally start getting to travel casually to Cuba. People are going to start getting angry when they realize what a colossal fraud has been perpetrated on them by the propagandists who never believed the day would come when U.S. tourists finally started checking in there in significant numbers before they had found a way to re-seize control of Cuba, and return it to the days of the bloody, filthy, vicious U.S. puppet Batista who was President in two different decades, and ruled behind the scenes from the late 1930's, behind a succession of puppet Presidents.

They thought they had it all under control.

Right-wing, reactionary Miami Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, ( duck! ) has told people that when she moved to Miami with her family, they all assumed that they would be staying there only a few months, and the United States would invade Cuba and they'd go right back. Apparently that's been the assumption all this time.

I hope time proves them all wrong.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Docs-for-oil trade shows Cuba's flair

Docs-for-oil trade shows Cuba's flair
The Castro-Chavez deal saves the eyesight of many Venezuelans.

By DAVID ADAMS
Published February 12, 2007

HAVANA — A few months ago Venezuelan farmer Ramon Morillo, 52, was going blind and there wasn’t much he could do about it.

His condition, a fibrous tissue growth over the cornea known as pterygium, was treatable. His local health service in western Venezuela was ill-equipped, and he couldn’t afford private care.

That was before he heard about a Cuban medical program known as Operation Miracle from a local social worker. Next thing he knew he was on a government-chartered plane to Cuba.

It was too late for one of his eyes, but after several months of treatment and surgery, Cuban doctors may have saved the other.

“Everyone has been wonderful,” said Morillo, who said he is the father of 20 children.

Morillo’s condition is typical of many rural poor in Latin America who have no access to proper health services. Since Operation Miracle was created in 2004, organizers say doctors have performed 500,000 operations, mostly on low-income Venezuelan patients.
(snip/...)

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/02/12/Worldandnation/Docs_for_oil_trade_sh.shtml

[Judi Lynn]

5. Canada's silence on Washington's Cuba policy speaks volumes, experts say

Canada's silence on Washington's Cuba policy speaks volumes, experts say
Sun Feb 11 16:10:08 CST 2007
JENNIFER DITCHBURN

OTTAWA (CP) - The moment Fidel Castro passes away - or at least the moment the world finds out about it - has taken on almost mythic proportions south of the border.
In Washington, there are elaborate plans to help Cuba with its "transition." An entire government commission has been set up for the purpose, with a $80-million price-tag to prove it "stands ready to work with the Cuban people to attain political and economic liberty." In Miami, anti-Castro expatriates plan to pack the Orange Bowl for a celebration, and some contemplate potentially incendiary "aid" flotillas destined for the island's shores.

In Canada, experts say the political silence over Castro's failing health speaks volumes about this country's commitment to pursue a different path - a policy of constructive engagement.

Canadians continue to visit Cuba by the millions each year. Canadian businesses pursue mining, tourism and other interests on the island. And the Canadian government maintains normal diplomatic relations with Havana, normal being the operative word, says longtime Cuba observer John Kirk.
(snip)

Now, with Castro still recovering from gastric surgery in July and his brother Raul governing the country, Canada's ties to Cuba have been labelled "useful" to the United States. Last December, a high-ranking U.S. offical visiting Ottawa said pointedly that Canada could "play an important role expressing some expectations about what a successful and peaceful transition to democracy might look like."

But no Canadian bureaucrat or politician to date has acknowledged or backed Washington's master plan for Cuba, or expressed its "expectations" for what should or should not occur once Castro passes away.

"That's very significant. Nobody supports it," says Carleton University's Arch Ritter, another veteran observer of Cuban politics.

"The United States continues to be all alone in its policy on Cuba. They don't seem to get lonely there. Their policies have failed for so long, nobody has backed them."
(snip/...)

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/canada/story/3877001p-4484845c.html

[BayCityProgressive]

6. The US

attacks any model that isn't free market capitalism.

[Judi Lynn]

8. They've threatened every single country in the Western Hemisphere

which has had strong leftist candidates for election in just the 6 years _Bush has squatted in the White House.

_Bush has squandered tons of U.S. taxpayers' hard-earned tax money meddling in Latin American and Caribbean elections. They are determined to keep these countries from getting the governments they need and desperately want. The only ones they will accept are the ones with U.S.-interests-serving puppets.

That's not right to the citizens of the world. It's evil.

[BayCityProgressive]

9. Poor Haiti

Everyone should read the book "Haiti-A Slave Revolution". Haiti and Cuba have always been desired for their strategic positions. Haiti was and still is punished for being the only slave colony to ever launch a successful revolution and institute self rule. It sent horror through the hearts of slave owners like Washington and Jefferson who refused to recognize the government for 60 years and tried to fund it's overthrow! The French had the audacity to force Haiti to pay them 150 million crowns for burning the plantations they were enslaved on. France the US and Canada joined forces to overthrow Aristide after enacting a minimum wage and demanding 21 billion in aid from France (what the money they were forced to pay France would be equal to today.) The imperialist powers are still racist and hateful as ever! The US loved Papa and Baby Doc as well. Even Carter went to Haiti to intimidate Aristide.

[Judi Lynn]

10. The US loved Papa Doc Duvalier, apparently, even though he was a hideous man for his country.

Unbearably brutal, as well as his fiendish Touton Macoute. No doubt many of them were involved in the first _Bush removal of President Aristide, as well as the betrayal and dirty behavior toward him all over again by _Bush the Lesser.

You may recall at least one of the worst, most dreadful,Emanuel Constant, was given protection and lived in New York for years between attacks on Aristide's Presidency.

Haiti, after its own slave rebellion, offered help and gave it to Cuban slaves during their hard times. There's a real bond between the two countries.

[BayCityProgressive]

12. When people

criticize communist parties saying they don't allow other parties it is sucha joke..for many years it was a crime to be a communist in our country. Only capitalists aloud! In other countries like Haiti and South Korea the governments did/still do outlaw socialist/communist parties and many even punished their supporters with death. The hypocricy is enough to make your head spin.

[CatholicEdHead]

11. North Dakota has done this for the past few years

Trying to open up international markets for their exports.