tv Cross Talk RT July 16, 2021 4:30am-5:01am EDT
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economies outside the union so important you goats and that will trigger a ton of war. and if you end up in a terrible, i would say russia or china or the united states that negatively mean job losses across the european union is that green taxes always affect poor people. that more than they affect rich people, they make poor people poor. so what you will see is you will see petrol prices go up diesel prices, global energy prices for consumers. so people will in the end, have to choose between eating and heating. now to wrap this out, thanks for choosing all t we will. of course we'll be here throughout the day with the very latest. so we hope to see you later me ah, join me every thursday and we alex summon show and i'll be speaking to guess in the world, the politics sport. business. i'm show business. i'll see you then me
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the with ah hello and welcome to cross stock where all things are considered. i'm peter lavelle . cubans experience demonstrations for and against her by the government. many in the us loudly say something must be done. what that something is, is not entirely clear. the fact is, the u. s. has done many things against cuba for decades, namely the long standing trade embargo, maybe washington should stop trying to help the cuban people for a change. the, the cross
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stuck in cuba. i'm joined by my guess, michael flannigan in washington. he is president atlantic and consulting in a former congressman in new york. we have daniel shaw. he is professor of latin american and caribbean studies at the city university of new york. are i telling cross type rules and that means you can jump in anytime you want. and i always appreciate it. i want to ask both of you the same question. i'll go to daniel 1st in new york. i propose this, i, i would like to say after looking at all the media coverage, mainstream media coverage, this is about scoring political points and ideology, and the fate of the cuban people are actually a footnote in all of this. go ahead, daniel in new york readings, that's correct, peter. and whether it's breitbart or the new york times or the wall street journal, anywhere in between is the same unfettered scorn for cuba, for socialism, for any degree of self determination in the caribbean. in the u. s. is backyard. this is an unrelenting war on cuban self determination since the 1959 revolution
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they've never forgiven cuba. right now, fox news has been red, baiting black lives matter. bernie sand is alexandra casio, cortez, anyone who dares to mention the blockade. anyone who dares to mention the hybrid war on the cuban people has come under scrutiny under attack. and it's important to highlight over and over that this blockade has caused the cuban economy, some $753000000000.00 by one calculation. so the cubans, this system is truly a failure, according to fox news in washington post. why doesn't the u. s. like you said in the provocative introduction, just leave cuba alone. michael. the same question to you because i have to agree with daniel, is that it's settling old scores, it's, it's very ideologically rigid, and i find it very, very unhelpful. i mean, when marco rubio comes out and talks about, you know, cuba, he, i have to believe he's talking about his own political standing in florida. voters
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in florida and on and on in. and then, you know, of course, you know, it's all about socialism and socialism. michael, the one word that begins with s is never mentioned in this debate and it's about sovereignty. cuba has sovereignty. if you look at the, the rhetoric, it's never even considered. but cuba has sovereignty and, and i know you and i are ideologically aligned on many, many things. but i think that, you know, the issue of cuban sovereignty has to be take into account. and if you do that, then there's a lot of other hard discussions we need to have. go ahead. my friend michael in new york, am i watching? excuse me. the sovereign issue that you take up presupposes that the cuban people embrace the government. they have kennedy called it in prison, the island, and i think that's a fairly accurate description. this is people go on wraps and try and swim away from the island. they don't do that in places that they embrace as,
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as the government that they want castro's prisons are, the government's prisons, i should say, are filled and remain felt. they had a government murder yesterday and god knows how many behind the walls you can't very well say that that it's, it's a government that the people want, at least not fairly. so in my opinion, as for the embargo, i don't know that we disagree on this. it has not done what we hoped it would do. but to lift the embargo to trade with cuba, as a brother, nation is an immoral compromise of evil. and i don't know how we can do that and still. ready say that we're actually trying to help the cuban people. i don't, i think if you look to the cuban americans in this country and ask them what they think should happen, having the best touching and concerning interest. what's there? i think they give you a very different answer then, then many washingtonians would say, and the cuban crowded in this country in florida particularly, is not the upper middle class of wealthy that escaped in,
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in the sixty's late fifty's. those are, those are people have come over harshly unwrapped and are children of those people and they have a more sober view and a more well informed view, i think and, and they stand pretty firmly against lifting the sanctions. and i, if i, if i could be provocative, if i could be provide head of michael, do the same people you're talking about, do you think they support the statements coming from the mayor of miami that the us should bomb cuba di? i don't think that anyone supports that, and i don't think any cuban community does. there's $11.00 thing i've noticed about the cubans. i've met in my life and i think of my friend liliana, rus layton and congress is these people are so full of love and they love the people that they left behind. they all have family behind. i don't think that there's any, any desire to have any armed conflict, lobby of gigs or something like that. moving forward there has to be a peaceful way to do this. why should i certainly agree with the mayor?
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i don't, i don't think many people. okay. well, so let me go back to my introduction. daniel, let me go back to my introduction here. so what should be done? i mean, that is the mantra. all something must be done. everybody raises their arms in the air and you know, and more times than not it's intervention. and we all know how those interventions work out here. so that puts these people in a quandary here. what should be done? i want to talk about the remittances that were cut off last november by the trump administration, that has not been lifted by the, by the ministration. again, that is insult to injury to families in cuba. go ahead. daniel in new york, in the u. s. government added cuba to terrorist states. i mean that list is just completely political. it's completely ridiculous. i think what we have to do is provide historical context historically, like the other islands of the caribbean. this was, these were the survivors of gunboat, diplomacy of the monroe doctrine in 1824. so you have these historically
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underdeveloped super exploded islands. and the fact that cuba stood up in 1959 and said we're no longer going to be the u. s is backyard, and fidel castro internet to check out an id sent somebody in august. you been leadership up through today with miguel diaz can know what a contrast to see me go be in the streets. thing the streets are the streets are of the revolutionaries. it reminded me of trump running for his life, never, ever getting into the streets, but inciting how many people to come into the, the street. so to actually see human leadership standing. so that is so that with their people, i don't buy these diatribes from the forget of us corporate media. i think the u. s . human leadership has remained faithful to the people. clearly, they're in a very, very difficult position. it's natural, it's imperialism $1.00 to $1.00. if people are going to migrate from. busy the historically colonized areas because he's broke away from being near colonies in response to what michael saying, how many people are forced to leave the dominican republic in haiti in puerto rico
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and the other u. s. new colonies every day. so no one's leaving cuba because they want to, but because of this blockade, and when you are cut off from all the things that we take for granted here in the belly of the beast, whether it's electricity, food, internet, social media, fuel shortages, the cuban people are still, in a special period since the collapse of the soviet union and the socialist block, what mutually beneficial trade had the cuban people benefited from. well, then as well ahead, a good run there in the 2, thousands, but then as well as in a special period. so the special period never ending huber and that's what, that's the context, the international historical context, the lead to people coming to the streets and they have the right to be angry. the question is, who are they angry at? okay, well michael, i mean, just before i came to the studio here, i mean, the government officials in cuba have acknowledged their faults during this crisis . i mean, this is part of the reaction to the pandemic,
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the lack of vaccinations. and, but of course i being a conservative, i am and you know that very well, i'm not, i'm not a fan of socialism, not a fan of the socialist system whatsoever. and i think that people should be be able to peacefully protest. but at the same time, i still think it gets down to the fate of the cuban people. i, i really, i see, you know, when america should do something my, my bottom line is help sometimes or more often than not is, is more trouble. hands off and let them take care of themselves out to the best solution and for god's sake finally lift is ridiculous. embargo, mike? well, so many people complain about the embargo and one time they complain that it doesn't do much harm, that the european circumvented or just ignore it than they do. and that cuba really does are embargo has no effect. and then when it, when, when it serves are vantage, then they say all the embargo is destructive and horrible in the end of the world. it's their only trading with us. we don't stop them from trading with anyone else.
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we never have really. and the europeans have no trouble trading there. it's a socialist government, it's a socialist economy. and so it's a how a terry and government. and it's not functioning properly simply because it is a dictatorship. and it's a word. we can't pussyfoot around. we got, we got to call it what it is and the people are swimming away from cuba, not because they don't have electricity is certainly their economic poverty as part of it. they're swimming away from it to tell terry and government from an oppressive government. and if it were near merely neo colonialism, they wouldn't swim back to the mother country from its colonial roots. they would swim elsewhere. so i am, and we, there is something we have to do with cuba and i'm, i'm where you are, peter. i don't know what that is and continuing the embargo, i think is ineffective. i agree with you, but i don't know that trading with them is going to get where we want to be other than legitimizing. and so tell a tarion regime. it's a difficult,
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difficult place to be. daniel i've, i've said in the past that if they weren't in an embargo going back to 1960, it's doubtful that they would have been a castro dynasty. ok. because the, the, the government in her bond is always been able to use the excuse. and it does today . it's all america's fault, and it does have traction. daniel. yeah, in terms of michael's point, and he's using the same cold war rhetoric to tell a tarion is a dictatorship. but it's true that there's still a cold war. there's a new cold war against china against cuba, against the boulevard. you can begin snickered against any country with any inkling of self determination or key word. peter that you mentioned of, of sovereignty. and it's natural that people are going to flow, follow the flow of capital. it's been trained from their homelands. whether that was in the form historically, it should be kane and other mano, crops on the islands of haiti. the are the revolutionary leadership. leadership is
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never wavered. it's always stood up. so did so with this hedge him onto the north. this is david burton goliath. the cuban people have always put forth their best generals to buy back against imperialism. and here with all of the red baiting against black lives matter against bernie sanders against anyone. my gentlemen, i'm going to just going to jump in here. we're going to go to a short break, and after that short break, we'll continue our discussion on cuba state with our key. ah, we live in a now where the supply side of the equation is broken, knower entering into the supply shocks where there could be micro chips for example, or basic commodities or sharply. there's a food insecurity now by hundreds of millions of people around the world
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just emerging over the past 12 months because of its runaway inflation because of the runaway money print thing as we've been bank for a few years. so now people are really coming to grips with the fact that yeah, as the reports been right about it. what that a. ready ready watch crunch. class. enough person. i knew the song said it was just the blue book. foolish pleasure. the new one for the the because it's always more use to meet the he could contribute usually. so which protest gone? yeah. cuz really new bushel. the reason the
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moment that she's in the go rang is i could bring it up on the not a monumental chopsticks. i'm not going to talk to a cannot they are to say that in law politicians or on the work. can you been there to say that to people? oh, we have to reduce the consumption. this is why so far the consumption issue did not was not taken up pretty seriously. so or but it's a very serious issue. so we cannot address the climate change issue unless the people are on the word realize that we cannot continue our over consumption as we are doing now. the
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ah, welcome back across talk. we're all things are considered. i'm peter, i'm about to remind you we're discussing cuba. i the okay, let's go back to michael in, in washington. in the 1st part of the program, you are talking about dictatorships and totalitarianism and all of that, well, the united states has relationships with china. for example, in, with saudi arabia, for example, and there are people that claim that israel is a part time state. we have relations with israel. i don't know, he, that's the kind of going back to my original question here. kind of parsing everything through all of these, you know, rigidity terms. you know, it's all or nothing here. cuba has its kind of government that it has. it's not one
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that i would prefer to live in. actually there are people that don't like living there too. but it gets down to, you know, if you say it's a dictatorship and it's so tele, terry. and well don't you have to have it, you know, have much more of a, a clear approach in policy. i mean, we like some dictatorships, we like some totalitarianism. you know what i'm getting at the hypocrisy of it. i'll go ahead. your government being hypocritical. oh, hypocritical. i mean, peter, there's a bombshell. i have to laugh with you on that because i agree with you. china should not be on our most favored nation list. there's no question, it shouldn't be, that's one of the great votes i cast in in the nineties and congress was to move them to permanent normal relations from most favored nation. and to this day, i regretted at all, the people, a caterpillar in southern illinois might my home state that i regretted it. they scoffed at me, it wasn't a good vote, it wasn't the right thing to do. and i confess it freely. now, we need to be consistent in these activities. we need to be work with them,
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but we need to also engage them. and that's something we haven't done with cuba. and maybe that's where it needs to start, rather than jumping all the way into the pool and getting wet up to our head. maybe we need to stick our tow in and actually engage with the cast regime or the left overcast, or regime. i'm sorry, i keep calling it there, but it is, it is the legacy as we tried to do with the north korea, as we do full simply and with, with, with bear hugs with, with china. maybe we need to engage. that would be a great step forward for biden, if you would do that and make preconditions lifting the embargo perhaps, or working toward a more normal relationship with. i don't know, but i do know that keeping them at arm's length. i agree with, with the professor and with use it, it hasn't worked and it's not working. now we have to find something better. but consistency in our foreign policy please. it's, you've never had it. you never, well and it's, it's easy to point out and i agree with you. it's bad. ok. yeah. and when it's picked up on something that michael said here, i'm
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a eggs starting some kind of engagement, which i'm a 100 percent. sure. but for, but that always, there's always concessions. you have to make, to have this kind of engagement, you know, after all 60 years of this embargo and i would say limiting the sovereignty of cuba . why should the any cuban liter ship agree to that? ok, it should be if you want to have engagement, you should have unconditional on both sides. incentives saying you have to make unilateral concessions if we move forward on this. and that kind of pattern doesn't work very well. it doesn't, it doesn't create positive ends. go ahead, daniel, the cuban leadership dinner at the invaders. they're not the imperialist, they've always look for engagement with us institutions. and with the u. s. people, it's not the cubans that have one time or day in the middle of florida or in the middle of new york state. so this is a one way street of hypocrisy of imperialism. but the cubans who says they want to
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engage with the u. s. government, the future of cuba, self determination will continue to be fought for and install it already with the revolutions in managua, in our possible live year, we see the big shifts in beer do, of course, caracas, venezuela. so that's the future. one of latin american caribbean integration in unity who needs the old imperialist power. the us empire is in decline and that's why you have this new cold war on china. quite the opposite of what michael has said. it's unfair to the ideological hatred for china is a trade war against china. we never hear one positive word in this true dictatorship of the media here in the u. s. we've never heard one positive word about china, cuba or any other country that dares to stand up in the face of us imperialism. you know, mike, i want to know back that, you know, last november western union cut the remittances, that cuban americans could send to their families. i mean that that's part of the embargo and in any one that says, and i know the current administration gen saki,
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or it was ned a price, you know, saying we know, we see no evidence that the embargo is impacted the lives of cubans. i'm paraphrasing there, that if it's utterly not utter nonsense and everybody knows that western union cut cut off the remittances, which western, by the way, it's pretty expensive duration to send money. you know, how can that not be just an attack on average cuban families? i mean, i find it is unconscionable that the trump administration forced that through. well, it depends on what happens to the remittances when they arrived. and that's not all the other certain that the people got all the money. but let's assume for a minute you're right. and the people who were sent to actually got money at the same time. again, i think the touchstone of who you should ask are the people in florida, the cubans who are here, if they, if they think that that's a good policy to continue, they should be advising that and asking for, we should obey. we actually should do what they want to do with their own families
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there. and so if they wanted to return remittances, and they were satisfied that their own families were actually getting all the money or the majority of it, and there's nothing wrong. that's an appropriate thing. i mean, we're running food. i mean, many of these families, the same families are on boats running food and other materials to cuba right now to help them out with the privations that they have there. there's, there's absolutely nothing wrong with doing that. feeding, feeding hungry people as a wise thing to do worldwide, but it's also the right thing to do, and we should look forward to doing that. you know, daniel, i don't know if you notice there, followed in the last few days, is that there were pictures of protests in the, in the, in a cube. i think it was in havana and i be a p had the original picture. and essentially what they're saying, these are anti government protests, they were actually pro government protest. and then the other news, let's pick pick that up also. i mean, this is an unrelenting information war, also against cuba. i have to go to like the grey zone,
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max blumenthal and his lovely wife to get some kind of, you know, you know, even handed information because all the broad sheets and all and c, n, n, m, s, and be in fox. are all the same. essentially here, i mean, in this media war against cuba is unrelenting, and every once while they're caught with the doing miss information. and so what does that tell you about how, how, how am i to be honest discussion, there is about cuba. i grad listen to people in cuban americans and in florida. but you know, there are also people in cuba that are pro government. ok, so i mean, i don't know again, how do you find the balance? go ahead. daniel. tar. those revolutionary approaches come into the streets immediately. so the coverage, as you said, it's in information war. it's a diplomatic words in ideological war, communication, a war, thank goodness, the grey zones in the news in tele soon exists. so we can get an anti
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imperialist angle. otherwise, we're going to have the same tired rhetorical bullet points that they've been feeding us the unofficial religion of this country is anti socialism, anti self determination anywhere that it dares to raise its head across the global south. in the point really is that the leadership of cuba, what the cubans have done is a miracle. they continue to be internationalists, all of the doctors that they've sent to haiti, and came bertie and across africa, all of the solidarity. they sent to a goal. the navy south to the african liberation movement. so fidel castro wasn't just the most popular leader in cuba, but in the middle east, in africa when he went and traveled through africa, he was given a hero's welcome. because the cubans, again, with his david, standing up to the historical goliath. yeah, michael is, it's one of the interesting things if you look at the last, the summit biden had with putin and the media wants biden to be harder and
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rougher and, and threatening all of this. and now we have this cuban situation here. i mean, is the, by the administration kind of a hospital to the congressional districts, for example, in florida, florida is the, the state you want, or when you got a wind florida for the presidency here. i mean, my, my here is a, is a how much of it is a domestically driven here because the biden administration, i know right before these events happened and queue, but we're, we're thinking about re jigging trumps. i think over 300 new sanctions here. now they're kind of backed out, which tells you this is a domestic issue. again, having very little to do with people in cuba. your thoughts on that? yeah, it is a domestic issue. ready and it's, it's clear even politics, it's what it always has been and upsets. there's no question remark. rubio is beholden to the cuban american community as was ileana, or any smart politician in cuba from or in florida from either side of the,
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of the spectrum. it's, it's, it's how our government works. it's a politics and policy hand in hand. i biden's order to sensations and cubans back so that they don't land in florida. but having the borders open all over the entire mexican border and you know, all but inviting men actually flying people that we've deported out back. i find him to be able to talk about inconsistent. oh my god, you know, but then again, those, those voters can be expected to vote right eventually. and the guys coming from cuba, maybe not. and so there is, there's your inconsistencies at work in the form of credit and politics. it's to be expected. it's, it's not, it's not the unique lead to the democrats or it's a bite. and i'm, i'm sure that on the other side, this happens in south florida. all the time in republican politics, it is the nature of our system. but it does, it should not shape how we truck with the cuban government government that has
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exported its military to africa and these other places as well as doctors and has involved itself. and in other places around the hemisphere that perhaps it shouldn't. this is problematic for us in here, but, but michael, michael, if it goes this is this is going back to the sovereignty issue. or what right does the united states have to say, cuba, you can send your doctors to mexico? i mean, what's, what's happening? right? i mean, no, i don't think anybody's saying that i think what we are saying though, is that while you behave like you, but hey, we're not going to a truck with you at all. and that's probably where the roots of the, of the embargo comes from is that it's the only card we have to play. really. we perform no invasion of the country and we were not in any particular way trying to topple the. ready regime in an active day to day, let's get it done. well, i mean, i'll come your last whether you read the church commission again trying to
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overthrow the cuban government. how many times did they try to do that? oh my goodness, i mean that was a career for so many people. i got to tell you, peter, if, if we really wanted to overturn the government, it would be gone. if we were really doing it with both hands and trying to make it done. okay. alright. i mean, ok, well, get wet and on this point i hope they're not thinking about it now because given recent history would be a disaster for everybody. i want to thank my guests in washington and in new york. i want to thank our viewers for watching us here are tc next time remember prospect ah ah, ah ah ah
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ah. when i see black america, i see of my going like america spoke to me. when why destroyed you did not. you said black lives matter is a movement, we are importing from america. no, nothing. if we lived in a world where white lives mattered, i was not white. i like miss. and i wasn't new from black america. i learned to speak back to white. i bridge and people are more of them now. the police were at war with statistics. i'm scared that my children
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are going to grow up in a country that think says no racism, but they're more likely to end up in the criminal justice system than their other fellow friends in daycare me thinking to you now just in front of a bridge that was under construction at the time local to telling me that well, construction equipment that was all not bridge was swept away as if it was nothing devastating floating in germany. i'm out of a 100 said the entire house is just what way and a once in a generation over a 1000 people still missing. it looks as if a bomb has like more streets and new to door. south africa sees another night, a vine and riot. we spoke to a woman who amid the kale through her child's body building to
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