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Local News & Opinion
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Ref. : Letters to the editor Open Letters:
06.24 Mr. Holder, You Must Hold Torturers Accountable Health & Environment
06.29 Thinking about Climate 06.26 False Health-Scare Ad on CNN 06.25 Louella Learns the Limits of Medicare 06.23 The Simple Answer to America’s Health Care Crisis: Medicare for All 06.23 Tell ABC: Include Single-Payer in Healthcare Debate 06.23 Serving the Medical-Industrial Complex 06.22 Thinking about Recoveries 06.20 Obama's Health Care Waterloo 06.15 Obama, Like Clinton Before Him, is Blowing the Chance for Real Health Care Reform 06.11 Two Key Health-Care Numbers 06.10 Big Breakthroughs for Single Payer Health Care 06.10 Readying Americans for Dangerous, Mandatory Vaccinations Media Watching
06.29 WP's Connolly Back, on Health Reform 06.17 Hypocrisy and Hope: Western Coverage, Iranian Courage 06.15 Excusing Outrages of the Right 06.11 Tying Obama to Bush's Budget Mess US Politics, Policy & Culture
06.30 Obama's Torture Hypocrisy 06.30 Court Circular: Annals of Imperial Continuity 06.29 Obama, They Want You to Fail 06.26 Who to Trust on a Truth Commission? 06.26 Tarnished Shields: The Morally Bankrupt 'Family Values' Republican Leadership 06.25 America's "Bases of Empire" 06.24 Twelve Angry White People: Jury Nullification in a Pennsylvania Coal Town 06.24 Touring Empire's Ruins 06.23 Employers are Undermining the Economic Stimulus Program 06.19 Criminalizing Dissent: Obama Pot Calls Iranian Kettle Black 06.17 Afghanistan's Operation Phoenix 06.16 Are You Ready for War with a Demonized Iran? 06.13 Where's the Anger as the Wheels Come Off Obama's and the Democrats' Recovery Program? 06.10 Waiving the Rules for Old Glory 06.10 Obama's Era of Openness Is Closed High Crimes?
07.03 Reviewing Marjorie Cohn and Kathleen Gilberd's "Rules of Disengagement" 07.01 Iraq: A Bitter Strategic Failure 06.25 It's All Good, Again: 'Uptick' in the American-Made Tides of Violence in Iraq 06.22 Obama Opposes Plame-gate Release 06.21 Dexter's Legions: The "Good" Killers of the "Good" War 06.18 Extending the Tradition: Proudly Taking American Torture Into the Future 06.15 New UN Report Denounces America's Human Rights Record 06.14 Fear Rules Economics & Business Non/Mis/Malfeasance
07.01 Michael Hudson's "Super Imperialism:" The Economic Strategy of Imperial America 06.23 Obama's Financial Reform Proposal - A Stealth Scheme for Global Monetary Control 06.10 Cyberscares About Cyberwars Equal Cybermoney International
07.01 Pirates of the Mediterranean 06.29 Color Revolutions, Old and New 06.25 Iran Divided & the 'October Suprise' 06.23 Astringent Corrective: AbuKhalil on Iran's Turmoil 06.20 Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated “Color Revolution?” 06.20 Through a Glass Darkly: Sifting Myth and Fact on Iran 06.19 Iran's Election and US - Iranian Elections 06.16 The Ir-Af-Pak War: Obama Looses the Manhunters 06.12 Israeli War Crimes Against Children During Operation Cast Lead We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
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COMMENTARY:Perfora Cariño, Perfora!Mon, 10/20/2008
Cuba may be sitting on some 20 billion barrels of oil, which would place the little country in the top 20 nations in the world in terms of reserves.
It’s going to be interesting to see how much longer the vicious decades-long US embargo of Cuba lasts, whichever person wins the White House this November.
The main reason the US has stubbornly refused to trade with Cuba, and has used sanctions to bully other nations into refusing to trade with Cuba, while enthusiastically trading with and investing in China, Vietnam and other communist regimes, is that Cuba has had little to offer the US, either in terms of products or markets. That’s all about to change dramatically, with word that the Communist island just 90 miles to the south of Florida may possess oil reserves equal to or greater than all the oil reserves left in the United States. According to a report in the British newspaper The Guardian, Cuba may be sitting on some 20 billion barrels of oil, located in Cuban territory under the Gulf of Mexico. If the reports from Cuban, Spanish and other geologists are correct, Cuba, which currently only produces 60,000 barrels of oil per day (about half the country’s domestic demand), is on the verge of joining the ranks of the world’s exporting nations. 20 billion barrels of reserves would place the little country in the top 20 nations in the world in terms of reserves. The Republican crowds who are greeting presidential candidate John McCain and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin with rowdy chants of “Drill Baby, Drill!” my have to start shouting “Perfora Cariño, Perfora!” while watching Raul Castro joining meetings of OPEC. After all, most experts say that a lot of the offshore drilling being planned in US coastal waters is likely to lead to dry holes, while drilling in Cuban waters by the country’s national oil company Cubapetroleo, or Cupet, and by a consortium led by Spain’s Repsol, which is set to begin with punching some test wells early next year, are likely to produce gushers. If the oil starts flowing, how long will it be before the US starts clamoring to buy it? How long will it be, for that matter, before US oil companies start using their lobbying clout to get the US embargo lifted, so they can get a chance to join the drilling party? After all, if the US companies are kept out by vestigial anti-Communist ideology, the investment opportunities will be left wide open for European, Middle Eastern and Venezuelan interests. For the long-suffering Cuban people, who have been forced to eke out a national economy virtually barred from the global marketplace, this oil find is an astonishingly lucky break, particularly coming at a time that existing oil reserves are beginning to run out, and that prices for crude are soaring. It’s going to be fun to watch the rationalizations coming out of Washington, particularly from the hard Right, for whom Fidel Castro’s Cuba has for several generations served as a prime bogeyman in the Cold War pantheon of villains. Just as Corporate America has since the 1970s been hypocritically singing the praises of Communist China, and has been justifying economic trade and investment with that nation on the grounds that “economic engagement” will bring democracy (all the while calling for a boycott of all things Cuban), we will soon be hearing such songs about virtues of economic engagement with Cuba. This new oil bonanza may not be great news for the environment—either the waters of the Gulf or for the carbon-sogged atmosphere of the earth—but for the Cuban people, at least for the short term, it’s an amazing turn of events.
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Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. Baltimore News Network, Inc., sponsor of this web site, is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed in stories posted on this web site are the authors' own. This story was published on October 20, 2008. |
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