Science is international: A Cuban Scientific Paper in an American journal.

[NNadir]

For my business, I have recently been reviewing some aspects of azeotropic distillation. I was somewhat surprised to come across a paper relevant to my inquiry from the Cuban Pharmaceutical Industry in a journal of the American Chemical Society.

The link to the abstract is here: http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/iecred/2001/40/i22/abs/ie0010363.html

The American Chemical Society, of course, is not a government organization, and the paper is co-published with French workers, but it nice to recall that science is indeed international, and that the horrors of politics do not intrude totally on the free exchange of information.

For the record, I have always been less than thrilled with Cuba and am always mystified by the residual attraction for the Cuban government among leftists. But I glad that Cuba has a pharmaceutical industry as I have never confused the Cuban people with any of their governments.

[mike_c]

1. the only things limiting Cuban participation in scientific advancement...

...are limitations imposed upon them by outsiders, i.e. they often don't often have the luxury of investing deeply in research. That is a real shame, IMO-- it represents a diminishment of human potential. How many opportunities have been lost because a Cuban child grew up impoverished and under-educated due to the constraints imposed upon Cuba by American hostility?

[ngant17]

2. somewhat surprised? Cuba's biotechnology is first-world class

I for one certainly wouldn't be surprised to see these Cuban scientific advancements in its biotechnology and pharmaceutical fields. Even with the embargo, which doesn't stifle its science but tends to add costs to their overall distribution of new medicines when they develop them. Medicines which BTW go toward the poor, third-world countries at little or no cost to the recipients.

Cuban democracy is a proletarian-based democracy, based on the maximum benefits to the majority of its population in society, which more or less originated from the poorest sectors of Cuban society before 1959 and the Cuban Revolution (there were exceptions). But overall modern Cuban society should be nothing to mystify anyone with a rational mind. It all operates pretty predictable as far as I have been able to tell.

[NNadir]

3. I would not refer to a country with the same ruler for 50 years

as a "democracy."

That's nonsense.

It is an entrenched dictatorship. It is an arbitrary dictatorship as well, where people are oppressed for things like being gay or being mentally ill or for having independent political thoughts.

People do not risk their lives on broken down rafts to escape nirvana. I was hoping this thread would not generate the usual "Cuba is a wonderful example of liberation" nonsense, which I certainly would not characterize as the paradigm of rationality, but that hope was quickly shattered.

I am sure though, as this paper demonstrates, that many minds have prospered in Cuba since 1959. Science can triumph in many extremes, including the tragic circumstances that have characterized Cuban history, including the tragedy of the Cult of Personality that characterizes Cuba today.

[Mika]

4. More people risk their lives to get here from countries other than Cuba

Cubans are granted special immigration perks that are offered to no other immigrant group seeking entry into the US.

Immigrants come to the US from all over the world - from democratic countries. They come here for opportunities to earn more money than they could back at home. They come to work so that they can send a little of their earnings back to their relatives. It has little to do with "despotic' regimes, it has more to do with earning power.

Cuba is a special case though, in that it is the US's Helms-Burton law (and a myriad of other sanctions) that are intended to cripple the Cuban economy. This is the stated goal of the US government, as evidenced by the Bush* admin's latest 'crackdown' on family remittances to Cuba and increased sanctions on the island and US & foreign corporations that seek to do business with Cuba.

The USA currently offers over 20,000 LEGAL immigration visas per year to Cubans (and Bush has announced that the number would increase despite the fact that not all 20,000 were applied for in the last few years). This number is more than any other single country in the world. The US interests section in Cuba does the required criminal background check on the applicants.

The US's 'wet foot/ dry foot' policy (that applies to Cubans only) permits all Cubans, including Cuban criminals and felons, who arrive on US shores by illegal means to remain in the US even those having failed to qualify (or even apply) for a legal US immigration application.

Cubans who leave for the US without a US visa are returned to Cuba (if caught at sea - mainly in smuggler's go-fast boats @ $5,000 per head) by a US/Cuban repatriation agreement. But IF they make it to US soil, no matter who they are or what their criminal backround might be, they get to stay in the US and enjoy perks offered ONLY TO CUBAN IMMIGRANTS (via the US's Cuban Adjustment Act and a variety of other 'Cubans only' perks)

For Cuban migrants ONLY - including the aforementioned illegal immigrants who are smuggled in as well as those who have failed a US background check for a legal visa who make it here by whatever means - the US's Cuban Adjustment Act instantly allows any and all Cuban migrants who touch US shore (no matter how) instant entry, instant work visa, instant green card status, instant social security, instant access to welfare, instant access to section 8 assisted housing (with a $41,000 income exemption for Cuban expats only), instant food stamps, plus more. IOW, extra special enhanced social programs designed to entice Cuban expatriation to Miami/USA.

Despite these programs designed to offer a 'carrot on a stick' to Cubans only, the Cubaphobe rhetoric loop repeats the question "why do Cubans come to the US then?".

First the US forces economic deprivation on Cubans, then open our doors to any and all Cubans illegal or not, and then offer them a plethora of immigration perks and housing perks not even available to native born Americans.

But yet, more immigrants come from Mexico and the Latin Americas than do Cubans, and they have no such "Adjustment Act" like Cubans do. But they still pour in.

Plus, Cuban immigrants can hop on a plane from Miami to Havana and travel right back to the Cuba that they "escaped" from for family trips and vacations - by the hundred of thousands annually (until Bush's recent one visit every 3 yrs restrictions on Cuban expats living in the US).

Recognizing the immorality of forced starvation and forced economic deprivation is a good reason to drop the US embargo on Cuba, the US Cuban Adjustment Act, and the US travel sanctions placed on US citizens and residents. Then the Cuban tourism economy (its #1 sector) would be able to expand even faster, thereby increasing the average wage and quality of life in Cuba. It would make products, goods, and services even more accessible to both Cubans and Americans. It would reduce the economic based immigration flow from Cuba. And it would restore our own constitutional right to travel unfettered to see Cuba for ourselves.



Unlike most Americans I've been there and seen it.

[Mika]

5. Nonsense. Cuba hasn't had the same ruler for 50 years

http://www.poptel.org.uk/cuba-solidarity/democracy.htm

This system in Cuba is based upon universal adult suffrage for all those aged 16 and over. Nobody is excluded from voting, except convicted criminals or those who have left the country. Voter turnouts have usually been in the region of 95% of those eligible .

There are direct elections to municipal, provincial and national assemblies, the latter represent Cuba's parliament.

Electoral candidates are not chosen by small committees of political parties. No political party, including the Communist Party, is permitted to nominate or campaign for any given candidates.

--

Representative Fidel Castro was elected to the National Assembly as a representative of District #7 Santiago de Cuba.
He is one of the elected 607 representatives in the Cuban National Assembly. It is from that body that the head of state is nominated and then elected. Raul Castro, Carlos Large, and Ricardo Alarcon and others were among the nominated last year. President Castro has been elected to that position since 1976.


Dorticós Torrado, Osvaldo
http://www.bartleby.com/65/do/Dorticos.html

1919–83, president of Cuba (1959–76). A prosperous lawyer, he participated in Fidel Castro’s revolutionary movement and was imprisoned (1958). He escaped and fled to Mexico, returning to Cuba after Castro’s triumph (1959). As minister of laws (1959) he helped to formulate Cuban policies. He was appointed president in 1959. Intelligent and competent, he wielded considerable influence. In 1976 the Cuban government was reorganized, and Castro assumed the title of president; Dorticós was named a member of the council of state.

The Cuban government was reorganized (approved by popular vote) into a variant parliamentary system in 1976. The Prime Minister (currently Ricardo Alarcon) of the Cuban parliament (the People's National Assembly) wields the most political power in Cuba now.

You can read a short version of the Cuban system here,
http://members.allstream.net/~dchris/CubaFAQDemocracy.html

Or a long and detailed version here,
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0968508405/qid=1053879619/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/102-8821757-1670550?v=glance&s=books





Been there. Seen it.

I was in Cuba during the entire 1997-98 election season in Cuba.

[NNadir]

6. Really? Fidel Castro hasn't ruled Cuba for 50 years?

I'm not going to touch that one with a ninety foot pole. You're hallucinating or you're serving on the Cuban politboro. It really doesn't matter which.

Stalin also appointed front men too, but who Stalin wanted dead, died. The existence of the Politboro didn't mean that the politboro had power.

Even Castro's daughter described the need to abandon the country after being unable to put up with her father's eight hour harangues? You are telling us that you know what Castro does better than his daughter.

When was the last time Americans were forced to stand in the hot sun to listen to an five hour harangue from Jimmy Carter as recently happened in Cuba to the poor college students at Havana University listening to "ex-President-for-life Castro?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cuba/story/0,,1646227,00.html

It seems, contrary to your hallucination, that King Fidel still thinks he's governing since he makes the (perfunctory) claim that the communist party, not the electorate, not the people, could replace him if he was too ill.

Next in line for succession, Prince Raul Castro.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raul_Castro

The King of Cuba, who has remained in dictatorial power for almost 50 years is a criminal freak. As it was in the case of Hitler and Stalin, having enemies who are also criminals does not make one innocent.

Like all propagandists - including the current Bush administration - you assume that your listeners are stupid. The bodies floating in the Straits of Florida over the years are on the heads of the apologists as well as the killers themselves. GFY.

[rman]

7. Don't you realize that what you say perfectly fits corporate/RW

propaganda?

[NNadir]

8. Thank you, John Reed. I despise Stalinist propaganda too.

I personally know some Cubans who think you buy into murderous propaganda.

As much as I need to know about the glorious people's democratic anti-imperialist, socialist, revolutionary, anti-capitalist, worker's, marxist-leninist, liberation Kingdom of King Fidel and the Castroite Dynasty of Imperial Grand Wizardry is contained in Julian Schnabel's "Before Night Falls," about the life of Reinaldo Arenas, the poet brutalized in Cuba for the crime of being gay. (Arenas escaped in the Mariel boatlift - which probably in your religion was some kind of grand anti-counter-revolutionary victory - in my reality it was a crime against humanity.)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140157654/002-0089843-1163204?v=glance&n=283155

Schnabel's film and Arenas's book are no fucking "corporate RW propaganda" but it certainly is a corrective to the morally disgusting religion that excuses oppression because the oppressors mutter socialist platitudes. Modern Cuba is a moral tragedy, and again, if you're too morally obtuse to see it, GFY.

From my perspective, you wouldn't know propaganda if it bit you in the ass, which apparently it has.

[htuttle]

11. As long as we're talking about it here: The problem of Cuba

To really understand the Cuba dilemna, and why I think it's an ethical dilemna, I think you need to contrast it with the Nicaraguan revolution, which initially had a somewhat similar philosphy.

In Cuba, Communism was adopted as a matter of state policy. Somewhat tangentially, I think that as US pressure against the Communist revolution intensified, the leadership of the party used Castro's charisma as a tool to push back against continuing overt and covert attacks by the US. After decades of this, hardly anyone in Cuba can imagine anyone but Castro running Cuba. If they could, someone else would have run and gotten elected, even if they were still all Communists. One might say that Castro made the opposite decision that George Washington did, who could have probably gotten 'reelected' by the electoral college almost indefinitely had he not stepped down to 'avoid creating a new monarchy'. Especially if Britain had continued to harass and threaten to invade the US as we have done to Cuba.

In Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega eventually held elections, and lost to a US-sponsored party. The Sandanista's won their revolution, and handed the country back over to the democratic process, which proceeded to elect a proxy for the very power they had just defeated (in proxy).

On the other hand, and this is where the ethical dilemna comes in, by any statistical measure, people in Cuba are better off (as in healthier) then people in Nicaragua. Infant mortality is far, far lower, literacy and education is higher, percentage of underweight children is much lower, and per capita income is quite a bit higher. I'm basing this on UNICEF statistics.
http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/cuba.html
http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/nicaragua.html

In fact, by the statistics measured by UNICEF (which are all at least 80% of the planet really cares about, ie., "will my kids live?") Cuba puts the USA to shame in most categories:
http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/usa.html

So, did the Sandinista's make the right choice? Or did the Cuban Revolution? Depends on what you think is important. Freedom of Choice and 'Democracy' or General Health and Welfare of the Population. In some ways, it's like comparing 'potential' versus 'actual'.

Which population is 'happier'? How do you measure that? :shrug: That's what makes it such as an interesting ethical question to me. Like many (probably most), I think the answer comes from somewhere in between enforcing the public health and welfare and the right to vote against our best interests for a chance at the brass ring.

All that being said, I'm glad that Cuban scientists can contribute their work to all the international journals. They have a top-notch bio-medical industry -- in fact, it seems to be one of Cuba's most valuable exports.

[Mika]

12. Your post just reeks of fear.

I faced one of my fears and actually went to Cuba to see for myself. It completely changed my perspective on Cuba, and on the US fearmongering about Cuba (as if Castro is Cuba) that you cling to like a scared child clinging to his/her mothers skirt.

GFY? Back at ya. Keep clinging.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

9. Somebody told me...

that the government forbade (somehow) the ACS to print a paper from Iran.

I don't know what happened to that.

[eppur_se_muova]

10. NATO publishes a series of monographs (ASI) which feature prominently

in any large science collection. I noticed a long time ago that these included not only contributors from India and Japan (not NATO members and nowhere near the Atlantic) but also some from Warsaw pact countries! Given that the whole purpose of NATO was supposedly to contain the Soviet bloc, it was a little strange to see Russians, Poles, E. Germans &c presenting their results in NATO-sponsored conferences whose proceedings were then included in NATO-published books.

Of course, it's precisely this sort of thing that makes me worry that Bu**sh** will one day focus special attention on scientists ... and I don't mean to fund their research (weapons development excepted).