integrate a large land mass like euro that does differ very differently culturally from country to country. yeah, this is the challenge. i mean, if you wanted to expand its territory as possible and still keep trying to integrate all to south eastern faith into the year of influence. but also frank with a brings along. busy busy busy the challenge that very different cultural and political situations and that class. and if you is not able to speak with one voice in both different feel in itself that you weekend. and if all the theme that we organization in the international, the, are all in terms of international policy and it's hard to bring all the different members together in one line if there are different national interest,

different national rules in place, certainly. okay. all right, we're going to have to leave that we've a nice time, but really good to talk to you tonight that was around the roof with. he's a geopolitical manager, chairman of the local branch, the a s t alternative germany party. thanks for coming up and thank you for watching. just gone half 11 in the evening. moscow were back again though at the top. oh i i use

ah ah hello and welcome across the dock where all things are considered. i'm peter labelle cube, his 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. is on many things against cuba for decades, namely the longstanding trade embargo, maybe washington should stop trying to help the cuban people for a change. the

cross talk 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. our i tell him in cross talk, rules and effects. that means he 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

they've never forgiven cuba. right now, fox news has been red, baiting black lives matter. bernie sand is alexandra costs. you quoted, 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 and washington post wide is in 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 in florida and on and on in. and then, you know, of course, you know, it's all about socialism and socialism. michael, one word but begins with s is never mentioned in this debating 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 taken to 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 it'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,

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. busy that that is the government that the people wants, 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 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'd give you a very different answer than, than many washingtonians would say. and the cuban crowd in this country in florida, particularly is not the upper middle class of wealthy that escaped in,

in the sixty's in 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 hit if michael do the same people who you're talking about, do you think they support the statements coming from the mayor of miami that the us should bomb cuba? guy. i don't think that anyone supports that and i don't think any given 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, bay of pigs or something like that. moving forward, there has to be a peaceful way to do this. why should i certainly,

they would agree with the mayor. 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 it's 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 and we're a quandary here. what should be done? i want to talk about the remittances that were cut off and 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 men ro, doctrine in 1824 of these historically underdeveloped super exploited 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 and nest to check out an id son, somebody in august you been leadership up through today with miguel b as can know what a contrast to see me go be in the streets. thing the streets are the streets are of the revolutionaries. it reminding 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 us, 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 that people going to migrate from. busy the historically colonized areas because he's broke away from be in the colonies in response to what michael saying,

how many people are forced to leave the dominican republic in haiti in puerto rico and the other u. s. neil colonies every day. so no one's leaving cuba because they want to, but because of this blockade, and when you're 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 2000, but then as well as in a special period. so the special period never ending cuba, and that's what, that's the context, the international, historical context that led to people coming to the streets. and they have the right to be angry. the question is, who are they angry at? ok, well, micheal, 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,

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 the best solution and for god's sake finally lift is ridiculous. embargo, mike? well, so many people complain about the embargo. and at one time they complain that it doesn't do much harm that the european circumvented or just ignore it, then they do. and that cuban really does are embargo has no effect. and then when it, when i, when it serves are vantage, then they say all the embargo is destructive and horrible in the end of the world.

it's, they're only trading with us. we don't stop them from trading with anyone else. we never have really. and the europeans have no trouble trading there. it's a socialist government, it's a socialist economy, it's. it's a pallet, 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 it. 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 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 an effective. 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 sotelo, terry, and regime. it's a difficult,

difficult place to be. daniel i've, i've said in the past that if there weren't 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 of the key word. peter that you mentioned, of sovereignty. 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 motto, crops on the islands of haiti. the are the revolutionary leadership. leadership is

never wavered. it's always stood up totally. so with this hedge more into the north, this is david bird, 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. again, if anyone mar 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 r t i we live in a now where the supply side of the equation is broken. no, we're entering into the supply shocks where there could be microchips, for example, or basic commodities or sharply. and there's a food insecurity now by hundreds of millions of people around the world

just emerging over the past 12 months because of it's 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 as the reports been right about it, what net the ah, me

welcome back across town where all things are considered. i'm peter, i'm about to remind you we're discussing cuba. me okay, let's go back to michael in, in washington. in the 1st part of the program, you were 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. 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 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 will, don't you have to have it, you know, have much more a clear approach in policy. i mean, we like some dictatorships that we like some totalitarianism. you know what i'm getting at the hypocrisy of it. i'll go ahead your government being hippocratic. 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 is no question. it shouldn't be. that's one of the great boats 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 of caterpillar in southern illinois, my home state that i regretted it, they scoffed at me, it wasn't a good vote, and 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, 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 regime. i'm sorry, i keep calling it as it is, it is the legacy as we tried to do with the north korea, as we do also only in with, with, with their homes, 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 you that 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. can you pick up on something that michael said here? i'm a, a 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. the 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 looked for engagement with us institutions. and with the u. s. people, it's not the cubans that have one more 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 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 libya, we see the big shifts in beer do, of course, caracas, venezuela. so that's the future. one of latin american, improving integration in unity. i mean, 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 to dare. busy to stand up in the face of us imperialism. you know, mike, i want to know back to, 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 or it was ned price, you know, saying we know,

we see no evidence that the embargo is impacted the lives of cubans. i'm paraphrasing there, that is utterly nuts, utter nonsense, and everybody knows that western union cut cut off the remittances. which western, by the way, it's pretty expensive proration 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, the trump administration force that through well, it depends on what happens to the remittances when they arrived. and that's not off 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 other 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 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 votes running food and other materials to you, but right now to help them help them 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 it? there were pictures of protests in the, in the, in a cube, i think it was in havana and i, b a p, had the original picture. and essentially what they're saying, these are anti government protests, 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, 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 i mentioned before 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 well, how much to be honest discussion there is about cuba. i grabbed listen to people in cuban americans in, 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 process coming through the streets immediately. so the coverage, as you said, it's an inflammation war. it's a diplomatic war and ideological war, communication, a war, thank goodness, the grey zones in china news in tele sword exists. so we can get an anti 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 . so 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 verde in across africa, all of the solidarity they sent to a goal. the navy, south 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, were this david standing up to the historical goliath. michael is, it's one of the interesting things, if you look at the last, the summit that by biting had, with putin and the media is that, you know, once biding to be harder and rougher and, and threatened in all of this. and now we have this cuban situation here. i mean,

is the by the administration kind of a hostage to the congressional districts, for example, in florida, florida is the, the state you want when you got a, when florida for the presidency here. i mean, my, my point here is how much of it is a domestically driven here because the biden administration, i know right before these events happened in queue, but we're, we're thinking about re jigging trumps. i think over 300 new sanctions here. now they've 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, this is domestic issue and it's, it's square, even politics. that's what it always has been and both sets, there's no question to remark. rubio is beholden to the cuban american community as was iliana, or any smart politician in cuba from or in florida from either side of the, of the spectrum. it's, it's, it's our government works. it's a politics and policy hand in hand. i biden's order to send nations and cubans

back so that they don't land in florida. but having the borders open all over the entire mexican border and all that inviting the men actually flying people that we've deported out. so i'm 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 is 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 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, i what's, what's 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. ready the embargo comes from is that it's the only card we have to play. really. we perform no invasion of the country. we were not in any particular way trying to topple the regime in an active day to day. let's get it all come out. i'm sure you read whether you read the church commission again trying to overturn 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 . i mean, ok, well get weird. 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 guest in washington and in new york. i want to thank our viewers for watching us here to see you next time. remember prospect ah ah. when i see black manager, i see my when i was growing up 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 wide lives mattered, i was no wise like mission and i wasn't new from black america. i learned how to speak back to why i bridge the people around them. now the police were at war with statistics. i'm scared that my children are going to grow up in the country. that thing says no racism but they're more to end up in the criminal justice system. then there are other fellow friends in daycare. i mean your body literally can strengthen. it's like your brain become kind of a muscle with movement. you're not just drinking your why. so you try, you are literally strengthening the connections. you're in fact, in certain areas,

you're actually growing, accumulating the growth of brand new brain cell, the t. and now just in front of a bridge that was under construction at the time, locals are telling me that well, construction equipment that was on that bridge was swept away as if it was nothing . reco flood, germany and belgium, with more than a 100 dead, its entire buildings is swept away for the 1000 people. still missing. it looks as if a bomb has like more directly. also this wreck streets and diluted stores. south africa stuff is another night of rice after the jailing of its former president, we speak to the woman who amid decalle so through her.