Posts Tagged ‘Cuba’
Brazil aids Cuba’s move into a market economy
Dilma Rousseff and Raul Castro
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
Brazil is easing Cuba into the free market economy with a generous package of aid in cash and kind and joint projects that give the Latin American country a pre-eminent position in Havana’s heady mix of communism and experimental capitalism.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff appeared to be in the right place at the right time when she flew into Havana in a spirit of revolutionary camaraderie and clinched deals that secured Brazil’s status as the senior partner in a long-term, multifaceted relationship…
Rousseff followed in the footsteps of populist former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva…The “excellent” ties secure Brazil an advantageous position in Cuba’s hugely porous economy, hungry for basic consumer goods, investment and modernization. Economic upgrading in all sectors and a phased end to Cuba’s international isolation offer lucrative opportunities for Brazil’s state and private sectors.
Brazil will invest $640 million in a $900 million modernization of the Mariel container port, west of Havana, led by the Brazilian firm Odebrecht.
Brazil is also giving Cuba $400 million in credits for food imports and investing $200 million in modernizing Cuban agriculture. Rousseff pledged Cuba a long-term commitment to help its economic regeneration…
Brazilian interest in the modernization of Cuban sugar industry is linked to Brazilian plans to promote its pioneering production of cane-derived ethanol, which has led to most new cars in Brazil being fitted with flex-fuel technology to run on ethanol or gasoline or a mixture of both.
The port modernization program also fits in with Brazil’s plan to forge fruitful partnerships that will benefit its aim of making its exports of both commodities and manufactured goods more competitive in the international markets.
Cubans say they need the Mariel port to be ready for expanded trade with the United States, whenever the U.S. embargo is lifted. The embargo, begun in 1960, is the longest on record.
Bravo!
Now, which will provide long-lasting trade and commercial relationships? Efforts like this from Brazil or the usual capitulation to Gusano voters in Florida by Congressional politicians?
Italian drill rig arrives in Cuba to begin deep water oil exploration
Scarabeo 9 – owned by Italy’s Saipem
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
A large oil rig has arrived off the coast of Cuba to begin searching for offshore oil deposits.
Several international companies will use the rig to drill exploratory wells in deep water in the Florida Strait, which separates Cuba from the US. Cuba is hoping to confirm estimates that it has billions of barrels of oil in offshore fields.
But there is concern in the US that a deep water spill could devastate the coast of Florida.
Semi-hogwash! Concern from American companies forbidden by idiotic laws from bidding on the contracts? Worries from my environmental peers who never noticed the thousands of wells drilled safely round the world – until BP and Halliburton screwed-up in the Gulf of Mexico?
The Chinese-built rig – known as Scarabeo 9 – could be seen from the Cuban capital Havana as it moved slowly west.
First to use it will be the Spanish oil company Repsol YPF, which plans to drill an exploratory well around 100km from the Florida Keys. Other foreign companies are also planning to hire the rig…
If confirmed, the estimated offshore deposits could turn Cuba into an oil exporter and transform its troubled socialist economy…
Repsol has said that its operations will comply with all US safety regulations, and the rig has been inspected by US officials.
Hopefully, the Spanish company will live up to the general standards for deepwater drilling which are more demanding and rigorous than what passes for regulations in the United States.
BITD – when I worked in offshore oil drilling construction – standards and regulations were built up to a pretty high standard in the US. In the last couple of decades, the government agencies providing oversight became nothing more than party buddies of Big Oil. The regulations became a farce. Drilling rigs coming in from duty, say, off Brazil or Norway, were instructed to remove some of the redundant safety systems – which was done on the TransOcean Deepwater Horizon rig.
The ongoing boycott of normal relations with Cuba is a special category of stupid.
The wait is over – Cuba’s first zombie movie – “Juan Of The Dead”
Blood-spattered, flesh-eating monsters have been roaming the Cuban capital, Havana, in recent months – all part of filming for the country’s first zombie movie.
Bearing a similar title to Britain’s 2004 comedy horror Shaun Of The Dead, Juan Of The Dead’s plot is actually closer to the 1984 ghoul classic Ghostbusters.
In the film, an entire city is overrun by zombies while Cuba’s Communist leaders insist it is just a plot by US-backed dissidents to bring down the government.
So it is left to hero Juan – played by Cuban actor Alexis Diaz de Villegas – to rid the island of the undead for money. But as the zombie outbreak begins to spread, he is left with no choice but to fight for his own survival.
The film, due for release later this year, was written and directed by 34-year-old Alejandro Brugues.
It is only his second movie since graduating from Cuba’s International School of Film and Television.
“It’s a zombie film but it’s about Cubans and how we react in the face of a crisis because we’ve had a lot of them here over the last 50 years,” Brugues told the BBC World Service’s The Strand.
“It is a social comedy, it has a bit of everything. It has horror, it has action and it pretty much laughs in the face of problems…”
A theme that played well in the United States during the Great Depression. Not that we did it very well this time around – through the Great Recession.
On title alone – Juan of the dead should do well at the box office and on the Syfy Channel.
Cuban offshore oil plans gain momentum
Mid-construction of Scarabeo 9 in March 2010
While the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has sparked debate in America on the merits of deepwater drilling, 90 miles away Cuba’s offshore plans are quietly taking shape.
The country aims to drill seven exploration wells in its share of the Gulf of Mexico by 2014, according to American oil experts who recently met with Cuba’s state oil monopoly Cupet and regulatory officials.
“Cuba’s a sovereign nation and they’re going to drill on their shelf waters and in their economic zone,” Lee Hunt, the president of the International Association of Drilling Contractors, told CNN.
Spain’s largest oil company, Repsol, has ordered a Chinese rig to start exploring in Cuban waters. “They expect the arrival of the Scarabeo 9 rig sometime around the end of the first quarter next year,” Hunt said. “They’re going to begin drilling around mid-year 2011…”
Cuba currently produces about 60,000 barrels of oil per day from onshore wells. It imports another 115,000 bpd from Venezuela on favorable terms.
The government says it has up to 20 billion barrels of oil in its economic zone, but the U.S. Geological Survey has estimated a smaller 4.6 billion barrels.
I guess Repsol is just drilling for practice, eh?. When I first noted the discovery of these oil reserves, two years ago, no one was quoting the USGS about smaller estimates.
Politics as usual between the US and Cuba.
Feds force NY Philharmonic to cancel concerts in Cuba
New York’s Philharmonic Orchestra has put off its first trip to Cuba after sponsors were barred from visiting the Communist-led country.
“The postponement is due to existing US government restrictions on travel to Cuba,” it said in a statement…
Havana was due to host two concerts by the orchestra at the end of next month. It said that its plans received the support of President Barack Obama’s administration.
I guess no one told the State Department.
Some 150 patrons and supporters of the orchestra had pledged to pay $10,000 each to go on the trip to the Caribbean island.
I guess you can meet and negotiate with nations our government disagrees with – but, you can’t necessarily play music.
La Habana rocks to huge peace concert
A good time was had by all.
Especially my friends who prefer homemade dark rum over commercial white.
Time to sort out relations, commerce, between Cuba and the U.S.
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission
The United States and Cuba should show some flexibility and take steps to improve relations, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said Friday during a weeklong trade mission to the island nation.
“There is a good atmosphere [between the two countries],” he said at a news conference in Havana on Friday. “It is the best atmosphere I’ve seen in many years…”
In his first trip to Cuba in 13 years, when he negotiated the release of three political prisoners in 1996, Richardson said he is not in Cuba as a special U.S. envoy.
“My main objective is trade and to improve commercial ties with Cuba,” he said, though he acknowledged plans to report recommendations to the Obama administration early next week…
The governor also called on the Obama administration to ease restrictions of biotechnology products, allow Cubans to travel to the United States for academic and cultural exchanges, and implement the changes to Cuban-American travel and remittances announced in April…
Richardson…met with Cuba’s National Assembly president, Ricardo Alarcon, and received a personal letter from former President Fidel Castro.
Governor Bill has always been skilled at diplomacy. He also has a long, consistent history of following through on positive solutions to difficult tasks. Time to utilize his stature in Latin America.
Obama could do worse than find a task in this vein for Richardson in his administration now that the jive accusations about pay-for-play have been sorted out as groundless.
And restoring commerce and normal relations with Cuba is overdue.
O.A.S. lifts its suspension of Cuba – sort of
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission
After two days of intense negotiations, the Organization of American States has agreed to lift a cold war provision that suspended Cuba from the group but also accepted a list of conditions, backed by Washington, that Havana would have to meet before being allowed to return.
The compromise was a stunning about-face for the 34-nation group, which had been in what appeared to be an intractable stalemate that threatened to polarize the hemisphere.
At the grassroots level, the hemisphere has been polarized all the way back to the OAS decision to function full-time as a Washington flunky.
On one side, Washington had opposed any measure that would have ended Cuba’s suspension — imposed in 1962 — without requiring that the island nation agree to abide by the organization’s democratic principles before being allowed to return. Venezuela and Nicaragua led the opposition to any provision that set conditions for Cuba’s return…
A Latin American diplomat said that the risk of losing United States support for the organization, which gets 60 percent of its funds from Washington, weighed heavily on the group’s thinking.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, according to diplomatic protocol.
He also didn’t want to lose his free parking spot at the U.S. Treasury.
In the end, each side claimed victory, hailing the compromise as historic, even though it was largely symbolic. The resolution, for example, says that Cuba cannot return unless it asks to, and Havana has said repeatedly it has no interest in rejoining the group, which President Raúl Castro has denounced as a tool of American domination.
Hillary’s speechwriters made the best of a mediocre piece of politics. I think it’s clear the Obama administration would like to resolve the decades of rubberstamp politics that reduced the OAS to less than a footnote to Latin American history.
Before Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs, the OAS had a small measure of respect as an independent body. They deserved it.
Congress and the CIA budgeted subservience along with policies of assault and murder from Chile and Argentina to Guatemala and El Salvador. Like so many, the OAS was bought and paid for by the American taxpayer – who paid as little attention to the process as they did the march to war in VietNam.
Congressional delegation says normalize Cuba relations – then talk
Daylife/AP Photo
The United States and Cuba should normalize diplomatic relations then sort out their differences, said the head of a delegation of U.S. lawmakers on a visit to Cuba.
“Most of the members of our delegation believe we need to actually normalize relations and then the details of what that means would follow,” Representative Barbara Lee, who is also chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said at a news conference.
The seven member delegation of Democrats, made up mostly of African-American lawmakers, met with Parliament President Ricardo Alarcon and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez in what Lee said was an effort to improve relations between Washington and the communist-ruled island.
They also toured various Cuban facilities, including a genetic engineering and pharmaceutical complex, and planned to visit churches on Sunday.
The United States is the only country in the hemisphere, other than El Salvador, that does not have normal diplomatic and economic relations with Cuba.
El Salvadoran President-elect Mauricio Funes has announced he will establish both when he takes office in June…
While Obama could ease diplomatic relations with Cuba, lifting the embargo would need congressional approval.
I suppose I have to become accustomed to rational statements [and policies?] coming from members of Congress. This whole change thing may be getting out of hand – if we’re actually supposed to expect our elected officials to start making sense.
Obama to start winding down Cuban embargo at Summit of the Americas
Brazil’s President signed agreement to explore for oil in Cuba’s offshore waters
Daylife/Reuters Pictures
The White House has moved to ease some travel and trade restrictions as a cautious first step towards better ties with Havana, raising hopes of an eventual lifting of the four-decade-old economic embargo. Several Bush-era controls are expected to be relaxed in the run-up to next month’s Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago to gild the president’s regional debut and signal a new era of “Yankee” cooperation…
“The effect on ordinary Cubans will be fairly significant. It will improve things and be very welcome,” said a western diplomat in Havana. The changes would reverse hardline Bush policies but not fundamentally alter relations between the superpower and the island, he added. “It just takes us back to the 1990s.”
Bush wanted to take us back to the 1940′s. As did Kennedy.
