The never ending story of CBC deliberate ignorance of their Nonpartisan Mandate

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-cuba-relations-obama-policy-cancelling-1.4165353

Trump says he's 'cancelling' Obama's Cuba policy. That's a big-league overstatement

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David Raymond Amos

Last word?

 
Alex Matheson
Why doesn't the U.S. leave Cuba alone. The Americans have been bullying that nation for over 50 years. Americans had no issues with Cuba when their wealthy used to vacation and own land there. When Castro steeped in and refused to kowtow to the U.S. is when the problems began. When I hear people like Trump going on about human rights (or lack thereof) in Cuba it makes me want to laugh. They couldn't care less about the people of Cuba. They only care about how they can exploit it to their own benefit as they did in the past. Typical American BS.

james Howard

@Alex Matheson

as long as the Cuban vote wins Florida for the Republicans, America will never leave that nation alone...

David Raymond Amos

@james Howard I agree but there is also the Yankee sweet tooth and the expensive corn syrup versus cheap sugar issue

Joe Renaud @Alex Matheson

I recall some of the wind coming out of the sails of the Helms-Burton act when Canada proposed the Godfrey–Milliken Bill. This bill mirrored Helms-Burton but replaced Cuba and assets lost during the Cuban revolution with America and assets lost by the Loyalists (most now Canadians) during the US revolution. The value of significant chunks of downtown Boston, Philadelphia and New York City expropriated from Loyalist Americans during their revolution was mind boggling. The legislation effectively pointed out that if the US wanted to establish the precedent that properties expropriated during political revolutions was subject to later civil liability, that the US had far more to lose than Cuba did. No action related to Helms-Burton has ever been taken against Canada or a Canadian as a result

David Raymond Amos

@Joe Renaud Thanks for that info sir.

John Henry

@J. Allen Murray

So you are incapable of a serious thought in other words

David Raymond Amos

@John Henry I know for a that I am incapable of a serious thought as I read all this left and right spin on Trump's latest circus act. In my humble opinion folks need to wake up and smell the coffee then see this for what it really is Methinks it is a tragic comedy. At a personal level a truly funny part for me is whether or not CBC will block this comment too.

 

david bruce So you're going to empower the Cubans by taking away their source of income? Got it

Troy Mann

@Tim Sarant

Why don't you explain it then? Instead if being obtuse?

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David Raymond Amos

@Troy Mann Methinks being obtuse is a virtue to some folks just ask fans of the old bard such as I.

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David Raymond Amos

@David Raymond Amos WOW what on earth was wrong with that comment? CBC and its moderators are not shy about ignoring their nonpartisan mandate Methinks its time to make some wicked comments and another blog about CBC and their malicious work within this article N'esy Pas Hubby Lacroix and Minister Joly?

David Raymond Amos

@Troy Mann Methinks being obtuse is a virtue to some folks just ask fans of the old bard such as I.

 

Ed Doucet

Shame, shame, shame on the USA for their treatment of Cuba. A national disgrace... and all for the sake of a few electoral votes in Florida.

David Raymond Amos

@Ed Doucet Don't forget the corn lobby

John Dirlik

@Val Stavinski

Somewhere in a Montreal suburb, loud knocking is heard.

Shuffle, shuffle...."Yes?"

"We've been alerted by a vigilant CBC poster about your nefarious plans. Remove that ninja custom immediately and come with us."

You got me Val.
You finally got me.

David Raymond Amos

@John Dirlik You joke but I am not.

FYI the "Powers That Be" with Canadian knowledge and assistance did try to take me away after I began to win two lawsuits in the USA against the IRS et al in 2003 just before the War on Iraq began. That is why I ran for public office five time and am in ongoing litigation against the Crown right now.

Doubt me? Just begin to type my whole name into the Google search engine and it will finish for you.

 

Erman Vis

Trump is so fanatical about undoing everything Obama did, he is currently holding seances to see if he can bring Osama Bin Laden back to life.

David Raymond Amos

@Erman Vis I can't help but wonder if the ghosts of Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Geronimo, Khrushchev, Che Guevara, Castro, Chavez, Noriega, Hussein, Gaddafi or a host of others who made deals with them appeared at the seances in order to put a scare into sneaky Yankees they no doubt hope to meet in Hell someday.

 
Phil Bigeau

thank you thank you MR President the less Americans we have in Cuba during vacation the better

Dawn Lewis

@Phil Bigeau The Cubans probably agree with you.

David Raymond Amos

@Dawn Lewis I doubt it


  
dennis Labbe

Cuba is changing very slowly and the best thing they can do is stay away from the USA.

David Raymond Amos

@dennis Labbe I agree

 

David Sampson

Can't decide what surprises me most, the lunacy that comes out of Trump's mouth or the fact there are still people, and senators and congressmen, who support this guy.

Bill Nazarene

@David Sampson

When 'Party Before Country' results in following a lunatic over a cliff...

David Raymond Amos

@Bill Nazarene The same could be said of any political party in any country.

That said do you really think "Hillary" was better than "The Donald" to act in the best interests of their country or anyone else on the planet?

  

Nick Maple

Trump supports countries with leaders like Mr Duterte of the Philippines, "who has compared his brutal campaign against drug dealers and users to the Holocaust, saying he will kill as many addicts as Hitler did Jews." That's Ok but Cuba's leaders are bad. What a joke the US is becoming under Trump.

Helen Anderson

@Nick Maple Filipinos I know are supporting President Duterte as well. He is cleaning up the country of drugs and ISIS.

Jeff Franklin

@Helen Anderson

Drugs like Budweiser, Marlboro's and Opioids?

Who knew?

Kathy Altenhofen

@Helen Anderson Is that what you call extra judicial killings? The death penalty without all the bother of a trial. And you approve.

David Raymond Amos

@Kathy Altenhofen Trust that I don't but then again either I am crazy or the whole world is.

Barry Todd

The US and Canada deal with countries that have much worse human rights records then Cuba so I don't know why the US wouldn't deal with Cuba.

Chris Healy

@Barry Todd that's insane. I get that it's really cool to bash former colonies at the moment but believing that Canada has a worse human rights record than Cuba is just wrong.

David Raymond Amos

@Chris Healy Humm Have you ever heard of Lieutenant General Edward Cornwallis or of residential schools etc?

 
Charles Martel

I wonder why is it that some people come here to slam President Trump, but yet they can't provide a single reason for it, or evidence to back up any of their derogatory slurs and claims? Trump hasn't done anything wrong, nothing illegal, he's honest, he's fair, he doesn't break promises, and he stands by his words. I mean, if one is going to denounce someone as a liar then have the decency to provide the proof. Calling one a liar doesn't make them one. Show the evidence.

David Raymond Amos

@Charles Martel Perhaps you should Google David Raymond Amos Michael Cohen (Trump's lawyer) sometime

 

Bob Baker

Thier loss our gain, dont have to listen to the miniscule amount of vociferous Donny fans while we are sat on the beach soaking up the sun.
"Viva la revolucion"

Jim Graham

@Carter Hayes

I think most civilized folks would spit (metaphorically, of course) on the graves of Batista and the other gangsters who ran Cuba until Castro kicked them out.

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David Raymond Amos

@Jim Graham Whereas I am a bit of a barbarian methinks I would not act metaphorically. If perchance I came across the graves of such evil people, I suspect that I would take careful aim with the stem of my bladder and hope that the expression of my contempt found its way into the gaping mouth of their skulls.

Val Stavinski

@Carter Hayes Hey Carter, your 34 down votes is a cover operation by CBC deep state, special secret unit of liberal propaganda arm. I've seen it many times now and one day they'll answer for that.

David Raymond Amos 

@Val Stavinski Nope it what you don't see that truly matters. Trust that the Undercover operation by CBC deep state, special secret unit of the liberal propaganda arm blocks the comment of many folks not just mine. Hence there can be no votes up or down on what you cannot read.

Trust that the "Powers That Be" who oversee CBC don't want certain comments at all for fear that other folks might not believe CBC anymore as well..

Here is my best example of why you should not trust the Crown Corp's spin on anything about any purportedly profound democracy. Simple question how many elections in Fundy Royal did I run against Rob Moore and when?

CBC should not block their own ethical "nonpartisan" work and my comments on their topics correct?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/fundy-royal-riding-profile-1.3274276

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/rob-moore-conservative-1.3913897

Trump says he's 'cancelling' Obama's Cuba policy. That's a big-league overstatement

Popularity of Obama-era thaw 'created a new normal' that can't be overturned

By Matt Kwong, CBC Posted: Jun 17, 2017 5:00 AM ET

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks about his new policy on Cuba policy, in Miami. on Friday. (Evan Vucci/Associated Press)

Though they're far from a return to the Cold War, Washington's new policies towards Cuba could put a chill on the island nation's budding private sector and on some Americans looking to do business with Havana.

Even as U.S. President Donald Trump declared Friday he would be "cancelling immediately" the "one-sided" Cuba policies of his predecessor Barack Obama, it became clear the rollback won't be as drastic as some hardliners had hoped.

"We will enforce the ban on tourism. We will enforce the embargo," Trump told a crowd in Miami.

But he conceded the U.S. embassy that reopened in Havana during the Obama administration will remain, "in the hope that our countries can forge a much stronger and better path."

The new normal, it seems, is normalization with the communist nation. And it's likely to stay that way in the Trump era, say scholars of Latin America foreign policy.

The core of Obama's efforts to reopen diplomatic relations after five decades are intact, though Trump has made good on his word to curb some aspects of the Cuba detente.

A man stands on his balcony, decorated with U.S. and Cuban flags, in Old Havana, Cuba, in December 2014. (Ramon Espinosa/Associated Press)

"This is what's funny. All this heat, all this noise, and the truth is there's not much there," says Christopher Sabatini, a lecturer at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. "It really only removes one of the final phases of the Obama changes."

He points out that more than 600,000 U.S. visitors went to Cuba last year, and that Airbnb, which opened in there in 2015, reports $40 million has so far been put into the hands of private bed-and-breakfast owners.

Nonetheless, Trump's new orders are expected to hurt the fledgling private sector — owners of those B&Bs, restaurateurs, taxi drivers and computer repair technicians, for example.

Ironically, those are the very Cubans who Trump, and Cuban-American hardliners Senator Marco Rubio and Florida congressman Mario Diaz-Balart, have said they wanted to empower.

Undoing Obama-era reforms is the wrong way to lift up those Cubans, argues Cathleen Cimino-Isaacs, a research associate with the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

'The Obama legacy of opening to Cuba will remain.' — Ted Henken, former president, Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy

"The small, nascent Cuban private sector and cuentapropistas [the self-employed]… were intended to be the primary beneficiaries of the expanded travel and limited trade allowed under Obama's policies."

New business ventures are likely to suffer as a result of the new rules, Cimino-Isaacs says.

But there will also be collateral damage in American farm states that see Havana as a hot market for U.S. agricultural products. While Trump has pitched himself as a "jobs president," Stefan Selig, a former Commerce Undersecretary for International Trade in the Obama administration, says the policy tweak will hurt the economy at home.

"I think [it] will undo some of the incremental progress already made. It's a mistaken policy," he says.

Cuban President Raul Castro, right, lifts up the arm of then-U.S. President Barack Obama at a joint news conference in Havana in 2016. (Ramon Espinosa/Associated Press)

There are two imminent, important changes. First, Trump has called for tighter enforcement of rules on what's become de facto American tourism in Cuba. The amendment scraps the ability for Americans to pursue independent "people to people" visits, one of 12 categories for U.S. travellers, thereby restricting them to authorized tour groups.

The second change is a ban on business dealings that could involve the Cuban military, with some exceptions.
Those restrictions could be far-reaching, Sabatini says, as the Cuban military controls two-thirds of the island's economy, including "a large chunk of hospitality, the big mega-hotels and many state-run restaurants."

As it stands, the U.S. officially recognizes the Cuban government. The countries have collaborated on shared national interests including combating narcotics smuggling, human trafficking, the Zika virus and environmental protection.

'Pleasantly surprised'

The forces in favour of re-establishing relations with Cuba are now too strong to resist, says Ted Henken, a former president of the think-tank the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy.

"There was a lot of speculation about whether Trump would introduce a 180-degree reversal or cancellation of Obama's policy. Would it be something in the middle or something symbolic?"

Henken now believes the Trump policy revisions are "between symbolic and something in the middle," with the major takeaway being that "the Obama legacy of opening to Cuba will remain."

Actor Armando Ricart watches U.S. President Donald Trump announce his new Cuba policy, in Havana, on Friday. (Ramon Espinosa/Associated Press)

While it would take an act of Congress to lift the U.S. embargo against Cuba, much of what Obama managed to pull off in terms of thawing relations was accomplished via executive orders, meaning Trump would in theory be able to undo many of them.

Instead, Henken says the Obama-era changes "have been so popular as to have created a new normal and baseline." It's significant, he noted, that Trump opted not to make major changes to Cuban-American travel or remittances, diplomatic relations, the embassies, or commercial flights or cruises.

"I'm actually surprised" by the Trump changes, he says. "Pleasantly surprised they're not harsher."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cuba-trudeau-honda-embassy-1.4165416

U.S. punishes American firm after its Canadian subsidiary leases cars to Cuban embassy in Ottawa

Honda Canada Finance, Inc. lease agreements prompt fine of almost $90k

By Evan Dyer, CBC News Posted: Jun 18, 2017 5:00 AM ET

 

President Donald Trump shows a signed executive order on Cuba policy, Friday, June 16, 2017, in Miami. From left are, Rep, Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., Florida Gov. Rock Scott, Cary Roque, and Vice President Mike Pence. (Evan Vucci/Associated Press)

U.S. President Donald Trump rolled back some of the key measures of his predecessor's rapprochement with Cuba Friday, making it harder for American tourists to travel to the island, and harder for American corporations to do business there.

That move was immediately met with a rebuke from Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

"We have tremendous respect and a constructive relationship with the United States, but in the matter of Cuba there's always been a certain amount of disagreement," he said at a news conference on Parliament hill with Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel.

"The investments in Cuba by Canadian companies and business people, the opportunities for tourism, for trade and for mutual benefit in this relationship will certainly continue," Trudeau added.

"I don't see anything new in the dynamic between Canada and Cuba other than a continued desire to work together for mutual benefit."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tells reporters at a news conference with Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel on Parliament Hill Friday that Canada will continue to go its own way on the Cuba file. (CBC)

But as a recent case in Ottawa illustrates, American sanctions against Cuba don't only affect Americans or American businesses.

Last week the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control announced it had reached a settlement with the American Honda Finance Corporation — the institution that finances the sale and leases of Hondas and Acuras in North America.

The civil liability settlement requires the company to hand over $87,255 US for violating the sanctions.

The American Honda Finance Corporation is based in California, and the fine will likely be paid in the U.S., but the transaction that brought it on occurred in Canada.

• Trump hits reset on Obama's Cuba policy, challenges Castro
• Cubans worry Trump could dash island's economic hopes
• Raul Castro calls Trump's border wall plan 'irrational'

The cause of the dispute is a series of 13 lease agreements between Honda Canada Finance, Inc. — a majority-owned subsidiary of the American Honda Finance Corporation — and the Cuban Embassy in Ottawa.

According to a notice published by the U.S. Treasury last Thursday, the 13 leases were signed between Feb. 2011 and March 2014.

Under U.S. law, the fact that a U.S. company was a majority shareholder of Honda Canada Finance makes the transaction subject to U.S. sanctions — even though both the lessor and the lessee were in Canada.

Interfering in Canadian business

In a statement, the Cuban government argued that the fine "not only hampers the work of Cuban diplomats in a third country, but also harms Canadian citizens and companies that maintain relations with Cuban entities."
Brittany Venhola-Fletcher of Global Affairs Canada told CBC News the sanction constitutes interference with a Canadian business transaction.

"Canada has consistently opposed the extraterritorial application of United States sanctions, which interfere with the right of Canadian companies to conduct their business in a manner consistent with international trade practice and the laws of Canada."

The U.S. Embassy in Ottawa referred CBC to the U.S. Treasury Department in Washington, which did not return calls about the sanction.

It's not clear whether the Cuban Embassy in Ottawa still leases vehicles from Honda.

Backing Cuba by law

Canadian companies that have business dealings with Cuba have a tough road to navigate because complying with U.S. laws can lead them to fall afoul of Canadian laws, and vice versa.

That is because in 1992 Canada enacted the Foreign Extraterritorial Measures (United States) Order, which was passed in response to the passage of the Cuba Democracy Act in Washington the same year.

The order requires any Canadian company that is contacted by U.S. authorities responsible for enforcing sanctions to notify the Canadian federal government. The order also bars Canadian companies from complying with any U.S. law that seeks to limit their business dealings with Cuba.

A Canadian businessman who pays a fine such as the one levied on Honda could face five years in a Canadian prison as a result.

New sanctions

One new prohibition in the measures announced by Trump in Florida Friday could have particular consequences for Canadian companies that have U.S. affiliates or U.S. ownership.

They specifically prohibit all business dealings with businesses owned by the Cuban Armed Forces.

Few of the 1.3 million Canadians who vacation in Cuba are aware that many of the island's hotels are majority-owned by the Cuban military, a legacy of Cuba's former minister of defence Raul Castro — now the country's president. He was an early convert to capitalist experimentation, while his more famous brother, Fidel, was still reluctant.

Raul went into business with the funds he controlled as minister of defence, and the business he focused on was tourism.

Consequently, almost any foreign company involved in Cuban tourism is likely to have dealings with the Cuban military's enterprise group, GAESA, or one of its holding companies, such as the Gaviota Group.
Today, all are run by Raul Castro's son-in-law, Army General Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Callejas.

• Trump hits reset on Obama's Cuba policy, challenges Castro
• ANALYSIS: Trump says he's 'cancelling' Obama's Cuba policy. That's a big-league overstatement

​ 
The El Senador resort was a joint venture between Army-owned Cubanacan and a Canadian syndicate that included former Montreal Canadiens captain Serge Savard. It was named in honour of his former Habs nickname, "Le Senateur."

Rankings compiled by the trade publication Hotel show that GAESA is the world's 34th largest hotel company with 39,383 rooms, just behind The Walt Disney Company with 39,751.

Gaviota works with numerous Canadian entities, including Sunwing Vacations, Air Canada Vacations and Transat Holidays.