Chavez's illness spells trouble for Cuba

Hugo Chavez back in Venezuela, last Monday, the 4th July.

Cuba depends on Venezuela for billions of dollars in subsidies that could disappear if Chavez doesn't recover.

As Hugo Chavez boarded a plane here early Monday for his return to Caracas, he stood on the tarmac with Raul Castro and offered some parting words of reassurance: “Venezuela and Cuba are the same thing, the same country,” he said.

And that, precisely, is what’s at stake for Cuba with Chavez now battling cancer. Billions in Venezuelan subsidies to the island — and other regional left-leaning allies — are riding on his recovery.

Two decades after the Soviet Union’s implosion brought chronic blackouts to Cuba and sent the island’s economy into a ditch, Havana is once again highly dependent on foreign largess to keep the lights on. Chavez provides Cuba with more than two-thirds of its petroleum needs, and the island earned an estimated $3.5 billion in trade last year with Venezuela, its largest source of hard currency.

Chavez, 56, has not disclosed what type of cancer he has, or what the prognosis is, only that he had a growth described as a pelvic abscess removed and that “cancerous cells” were discovered by Cuban surgeons.

When he landed Monday in Venezuela in preparation for his country’s bicentennial celebration, Chavez appeared upbeat and energetic, sending out messages to his 1.7 million Twitter followers and assuring television audiences he was “devouring” his meals.

But in Havana, it has been the start of concern. Chavez’s imperiled health brings new attention to the fragility of Cuba’s economy, at a time when 80-year-old Raul Castro is struggling to put the island’s finances in order and proceed with carefully managed, incremental liberalization measures.

Cuba’s communist government is planning to lay off hundreds of thousands of state employees over the coming years and is allowing the expansion of small private businesses and cooperatives. One big reason Havana can afford to conduct the reforms at its own pace is the dependable revenue coming from Caracas.

If Chavez’s rule were to end because of his illness or impact his December 2012 re-election bid, the return of 40,000 Cubans now working in Venezuela — mostly in the health care sector — would create still more financial strain for the Castro government.

Of greater worry is Cuba’s energy supply. Steady oil shipments from Venezuela have largely eliminated the chronic blackouts that plagued Cuba in the early 1990s and led to riots in Havana, as well as the chaotic departure of thousands of rafters for the U.S.

Back then, Fidel Castro was still at the height of his political powers, taking to the airwaves almost daily to pull Cubans through the crisis by the sheer force of his will. Now he’s 85, and far too frail to rally the country once more.

Public unrest in Cuba is closely linked to the power supply — especially during the torrid summer months — and over the past decade, Cuba has stabilized its electrical grid by installing a series of relatively small fuel-burning power plants. They run mostly on Venezuelan crude, and even as oil prices climbed over $100 a barrel in recent months, Cuba has continued to enjoy a reliable energy supply.

Cuba isn’t likely to find a quick alternative to Venezuelan oil, either. The island produces about 50,000 barrels of oil per day from domestic sources, used mostly for generating electricity. Spanish oil consortium Repsol is planning to begin drilling in offshore beds along Cuba’s north coast in the coming months, but even if it has a major strike, experts say it will take years to bring the crude to market.

Then there are hundreds of other commercial and trade agreements with Venezuela that could be jeopardized if the country’s next president isn’t as simpatico. Cubans privately worry those arrangements may be only as healthy as Chavez himself, a man who views Fidel Castro as his political father figure.

Other socialist allies around the region, like Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, are also highly reliant on Venezuelan oil diplomacy, along with the 19 nations of the Petrocaribe alliance, whom Chavez buffers from the global oil market’s volatility.

Chavez insists he is fine, and on the path to full recovery. In a written “Reflection” dedicated to Chavez’s illness Monday, Castro said the Venezuelan president had launched “a decisive battle” that “will lead him and his country to a great victory.”

But that victory now depends on the Cuban oncologists tasked with saving Chavez. While the location and stage of his cancer has been kept secret, experts speculate the area of affliction could be Chavez’s colon or prostate. A late-stage form of colon cancer would be extremely dangerous.

Chemotherapy treatments could force Chavez to withdraw from public view again, so his return to Caracas this week may also be a final attempt to put his political team in order before a lengthy absence.

Nick Miroff 

Source: Global Post

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Doubts over Chavez's health spur talk of successor

Speculation that Hugo Chavez could be suffering from a serious illness is putting attention on a predicament for the president's allies: It's unclear who could step forward if he had to step down.

Few Venezuelans are talking publicly about the possibility of President Hugo Chavez leaving office, partly because top government officials and close relatives have repeatedly said the president is recuperating in Cuba following surgery there two weeks ago.

Still, Chavez's silence and seclusion since the operation have spurred growing talk about his health, stirring fears among some supporters that their leader could be seriously ill.

The speculation has prompted some to ponder what would happen if failing health were to force Chavez to relinquish power. Until recently, even contemplating that possibility would have been considered absurd.

Under Venezuela's constitution, Vice President Elias Jaua would take the president's place during "temporary" absences of up to 90 days. And Jaua would serve the rest of Chavez's six-year term if the socialism-preaching president were to die or resign.

With a presidential election looming next year, such a scenario might put Jaua and other ruling party leaders in a tough position.

None of Chavez's close confidants share his charisma and knack for connecting with Venezuela's poor majority. That constituency has ultimately decided elections in this politically divided South American country.

Steve Ellner, a political science professor at Venezuela's University of the East, believes the future of Chavez's political movement would largely depend on whether ill health prevented Chavez from designating a successor.

"There is no second-in-command in the Chavez movement," Ellner said. "If Chavez is unable to endorse anyone, there will inevitably be dissension." Ellner said the situation would be much different if Chavez threw his support behind a would-be successor.

"There is a great sense of loyalty within the Chavez movement," he said. "If Chavez himself is unable to run for physical reasons, but endorses a given candidate, the movement will not fall apart." While there are no obvious candidates, some observers believe the president might tap Jaua or Rafael Ramirez, Venezuela's energy minister.

Diosdado Cabello, a former army officer who joined a 1992 coup attempt led by Chavez, was once perceived as Chavez's closest confidant. But Cabello's standing seems to have faded since he lost a 2008 re-election bid as the governor of Miranda state to a prominent opposition leader.

Venezuelan officials have limited their comments on Chavez's health to saying he's recuperating but have provided few details.

Jaua told an auditorium packed with government supporters Saturday that Chavez "is recuperating to continue the battle." He condemned Chavez's opponents for speculating about the president's health, accusing them of using the president's surgery to score political points before the next presidential election.

"They know they cannot beat our commander, Hugo Chavez, in an election," he said, adding: "Chavez is going to be around for a long time." Meanwhile, Chavez's Twitter stream has been active while not providing any information about his health. One message on Friday saluted Venezuela's military on a holiday marking a decisive independence battle.

Three messages appeared within 30 minutes Saturday afternoon, including one mentioning visits by Chavez's daughter Rosines and grandchildren. "Ah, what happiness it is to receive this shower of love!" the Twitter message read. "God bless them!" Nobody has heard Chavez publicly speak since he told Venezuelan state television by telephone on June 12 that he was quickly recovering from surgery two days earlier for a pelvic abscess. He said medical tests showed no sign of any "malignant" illness.
It remains unclear when he will return to Venezuela.

Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro urged Venezuelans on Friday to wish for Chavez's complete recovery and express their "most authentic love so that his health is re-established." "The battle that President Chavez is waging for his health must be everyone's battle: the battle for life, for the immediate future of our fatherland," Maduro added.

Miguel Tinker Salas, a Latin American studies professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California, said he thinks some people "are jumping the gun" by expressing doubts on Chavez's health and raising questions about a potential successor.

"I imagine that Chavez is enjoying this because people seem so concerned about his health," Tinker Salas said.

"I can imagine him joking about all this speculation in front of a crowd of supporters" sometime in the near future.

Source: Ahram Online

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Cuba: Tobacco dollars over public health

In a section of the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth", Al Gore talks on the topic of smoking and its harmful effects on human life, but this piece of the film seems to be ignored by Fidel Castro and the Cuban communists, although they are apparently anti-global-warming activists.

Much of the civilized world has begun to pass laws to ban smoking in places that affect other people, as recommended by the World Health Organization; however, as if it were not enough to be one of the only countries still governed by a socialist dictatorship, Cuba also prefers to be one of the few nations to avoid anti-tobacco regulations in order to not harm the earnings of its state tobacco industry.

According to WHO, about 6 million people will die this year because of smoking, not including passive smoking, but in the socialist paradise of the Castro brothers, the "problem" to choose between health and dollars is defined in the style of Wall Street investment bankers, what makes more profit?, where tobacco capitalism wins easily.

While Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Guatemala, Panama, Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay and other Latin American countries continue to move to offer its citizens smoke-free spaces, Cuba continues to hold the annual "Habano's Festival", tobacco is still among the top three Cuban export products, and the pictures of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara with cigars in their mouths are part of Latin American communist culture.

A few years ago, the government of Cuba sought to promote anti-tobacco regulations, but they were nullified with the excuse of being intolerable for the people, which sounds highly implausible because we are talking about one of the most repressive dictatorships on the planet.

And in this we have another of the contradictions of Cuban socialism. Fidel prefers to write about the growth of deserts in Africa and toxic emissions in the northern hemisphere, but where he can do something real for life, in Cuba, where the Castro family has dominated for the past 52 years, he chooses to discuss the problems in foreign countries.

Luis Alberto López Rafaschieri and José Alberto López Rafaschieri

Source: From the Beginning

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Members of the Cuban medical team defect in Chile

Around 500 Cuban doctors working in the program "Barrio Adentro" already defected in Venezuela

Two Cuban doctors and an anesthesiologist, members of the Henry Reeve Cuban Emergency Medical Brigade sent to Chile to help after a Feb. 27 earthquake, have decided to stay in the South American country.

Cuban Ambassador Ileana Diaz-Arguelles has confirmed the defections to Cooperativa radio station, saying it was the trio's personal decision. She says that "there are people who value material questions more."

The leader of the Cuban dissident community in Chile, Mikail Bonito, says he has been informed of the situation but hasn't had contact with the three.

Local media reported Friday that one of the doctors and the anesthesiologist worked in a field hospital in Rancagua, while the third worked in Chillan.

The magnitude-8.8 quake killed 521 people and caused $30 billion in damage.
Henry Reeve Cuban Emergency Medical Brigade

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Failed socialism: Cubans know it, will Obama, too?

It takes only 51 years to realize

It's taken 51 years, but the Castro regime has finally figured out what the rest of the world has already learned and what Americans need to be reminded of — that private enterprise creates wealth far better than government ever could.

Cuba's president since 2006, Raúl Castro, recently announced his government will be laying off 500,000 people, one-tenth of the country's work force.

Meanwhile, the Cuban government has opened up hundreds of jobs to self-employment, announced that small businesses can obtain bank loans and hire employees, and decided foreign investors now can purchase Cuban real estate.

Cuba still has a long way to go before it has the kind of free market economy the United States has — well, sort of still has. Cubans now can create a business repairing mattresses but still can't sell them. They can operate beauty parlors and barber shops, but only as long as they have three chairs or fewer. And of course, the country has not had a leader with a name other than "Castro" since 1959.

It's unknown if this opening will forestall Cuban communism's inevitable demise or, like Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika before it, speed it up.

But even the Castro regime can't ignore this: The Revolution is over. The country that was once the world's biggest exporter of coffee can't even satisfy domestic demand. All of Cuba's historical benefactors have rejected communism. Raúl's brother, the dictator Fidel, even told The Atlantic, "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore."

One would hope that folks in Washington would heed that message. The truth is that the Cuban model has never worked at all — not in Cuba, not anywhere. That's why Cuban-Americans in Florida and elsewhere long ago fled their country for the opportunities and freedoms they enjoy here.

And yet with all of the historical evidence to the contrary, this present U.S. administration seems unable to resist the temptation to dip its toe time and again into the quicksand of state control. Taxpayers have watched their government bail out huge corporations at taxpayer expense, nationalize part of the banking and automotive industries, and gain control of part of the nation's health-care system.

The United States continues to have the second-highest corporate tax rate in the world, along with myriad deductions designed to entice private employers to do the government's bidding.

In the midst of the longest economic downturn in recent memory, the Obama administration continues to try to spend our way to prosperity, as if our children and grandchildren will never have to pay the price for our recklessness.

Any U.S. political leader with the guts to cut the work force by 10 percent would get my vote immediately, so in that sense, bravo Raúl.

At the same time, let's not forget that he was at Fidel's side during his long reign over Cuba, when Cubans' personal, political and property rights were violated as a matter of state policy. The long-awaited transformation of Cuba may have begun, but it probably will have to be completed by someone not named Castro.

Regardless of who is in charge, the island Americans have long watched so warily as a potential launching pad could soon be a vacation spot or, for some Cuban-Americans, a place to reunite with families not seen for many years.

Someday Cubans may enjoy the prosperity that comes when the government allows the free market to work.
Let's hope Americans do as well.

From: Sun Sentinel

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Cuban hunger striker Fariñas leaves hospital

Cuban dissident Guillermo Fariñas, whose long hunger strike helped pressure the Cuban government into releasing political prisoners, left the hospital, not fully recovered, but ready to resume his life of opposition. Three weeks after ending his 135-day fast, Fariñas said in a telphone interview he felt "diminished" and still cannot walk well.
He stopped eating and drinking on Feb. 24 and ended the strike on July 8, a day after the government pledged to release 52 jailed dissidents in a deal with the Catholic Church.
His hunger strike added to international criticism of the Cuban government that followed the Feb. 23 death of imprisoned dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo and the harassment of the opposition group "Ladies in White" during protest marches.
The 48-year-old psychologist and writer collapsed on March 11 and from then on received nutrients and liquids intravenously in a hospital in his hometown of Santa Clara, 168 miles (270 km) east of Havana.
Fariñas, speaking from Santa Clara, told reporters he is eating "small quantities" of food and remains under treatment for a blood clot in his neck that doctors had described as life-threatening.
He said he would spend his first week out of the hospital giving interviews to the international press, then resume his work of editing and writing for a dissident blog.
So far, 20 of the promised 52 prisoners have been released in a process the church said could take four months.
Fariñas said he is prepared to re-launch his hunger strike if the prisoners are not all freed by Nov. 7.
"We're going to wait until the 7th of November to see if the government honours the word it gave to the Catholic Church and to national and international public opinion," he said.
Fariñas had conducted 22 previous hunger strikes, including a seven-month strike seeking improved Internet access.
Cuban officials consider dissidents to be US-backed mercenaries working to subvert the island's communist-led government.

From: Buenos Aires Herald 

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CastroCare in Crisis: Lessons of ‘Single-Payer’ Health Care

The single-payer crowd, which advocates for government monopoly over people’s right to access medical services, is ready for the next big push.  Obamacare was just the “appetizer,” according to activists at the Netroots conference this week.  Maybe it’s time to check in to see how “single payer” works in reality.  Destination: Havana.

Although Cuba’s government commits 16 percent of its budget to health care, the Communist dictatorship’s real health-care “system” is dedicated to serving cash-paying customers from Canada and other countries.

This comes from a fascinating article in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, “CastroCare in Crisis,” by Laurie Garrett of the Council on Foreign Relations. It’s not news that the Castro brothers profit from medical tourism. Michael Moore infamously shilled for the enterprising Havana Hospital in his movie SiCKO, where he brought 9/11 Ground Zero rescue workers to be treated. The Havana Hospital appears to be a more competitive, patient-centered enterprise than any American general hospital I’ve seen: It posts prices for its services, reports testimonials, and can schedule surgeries on short notice (three days for open-heart surgery)!

Garrett explains that the hospitals that serve foreigners are owned by a government-owned tourism conglomerate, and serve patients from 70 different countries. Canadians are significant customers. Like Cuba, Canada controls access to medical services through a government monopoly, so citizens cannot get timely care. Unlike Cuba, Canada allows the rest of the economy to operate freely, so Canadians are rich enough to be able to pay just under $7,000 for knee replacements in Cuba (instead of waiting for months in Canada). But what will happen when the Castros are gone?

Two competing effects, according to Garrett: An influx of U.S. patients will be free to travel to Cuba for treatment, but an exodus of physicians will be free to emigrate to the U.S. Plus, Cuba has the second-oldest population in the Americas, with only one quarter of the population under 40 years of age. Once the Cuban people are free of Communism, their pent-up demand for medical care will also explode. Cuban patients (as opposed to Canadian patients in Cuba) already have to provide their own syringes, sheets, and towels. Soap, disinfectant, and sterile equipment are rare.

Unfortunately, Garrett does not consider the consequences of Obamacare, which will likely accelerate the international travel of U.S. patients, while minimizing the emigration of Cuban doctors. If Cuba becomes a free society that welcomes foreign capital, investors will soon decide that investing in Cuban hospitals that serve U.S. and other patients is a good bet. There will be plenty of opportunities for Cuban surgeons who stay at home.

By:  John R. Graham

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