***AFF
1ac human rights
The Cuban embargo is the worst and most destructive of all policies enacted by the United States—it
systematically denies Cubans of their most basic rights
Wall, 97 contributing Editor of The Christian Century magazine (James M. Wall, June 1997, “Cruel
squeeze on Cuba”, Ebsco)//EM
IT IS HARD to think of any single foreign policy act by the United States that is meaner, more demeaning
and altogether less defensible than the American embargo on medicine, medical supplies and food to Cuba." That
stinging rebuke was delivered by Stephen S. Rosenfeld in the Washington Post. The embargo, first put in place in 1961 in an effort to topple
Fidel Castro, is not only mean and demeaning; it is
also a complete failure. Castro is still in power. In addition, by including
medicine and food in the embargo, the U.S. is violating international human rights conventions which call for the free
movement of food and medicine, even in wartime, to civilian populations. Seventeen years ago I spoke to a small Southern Baptist
congregation in Havana. During the social hour a woman told me of her daughter's need for a medication. At that time she could get drugs from
Eastern Europe, but the particular drug she needed was available only from a U.S. company. Did I think, she asked, that after the upcoming
presidential election her fellow Southern Baptist, Jimmy Carter, would lift the embargo on food and medicine? I told her that I had good reason
to believe that Carter, if re-elected, would indeed lift that part of the ban. Three weeks later, Carter lost the presidency to Ronald Reagan. The
embargo is not only still in place; it has been tightened. In 1992 George Bush signed the Cuban Democracy Act during a campaign stop in
It is the Helms-Burton Act
which is so stringent that it prevents foreign companies from doing business in the U.S. if they "traffic"
with Cuban companies that hold properties that Castro nationalized in 1960. The U.S., which in recent years has
Florida, and in 1996 President Clinton signed the Helms-Burton Act during his re-election campaign.
turned to the United Nations to sanction its military actions in Iraq and in the former Yugoslavia, has ignored UN resolutions that condemn the
The
damage inflicted on the Cuban people by the ban on food and medicine has been documented in a recent yearlong study conducted by the American Association for World Health. The medical investigators, directed by physician
Cuba embargo and which call for the U.S. to rescind provisions of the embargo that violate both the UN Charter and international law.
Peter Bourne, chair of the AAWH board and a former official in the Carter administration, interviewed medical professionals and government
officials, surveyed 12 American medical and pharmaceutical companies, and documented the experience of Cuban import firms. AAWH
concluded that the
U.S. embargo is "taking a tragic human toll" on the Cuban people. Indeed, "the embargo has
closed so many windows that in some instances Cuban physicians have found it impossible to obtain
lifesaving machines from any source, under any circumstances. Patients have died." According to the report,
until 1990 all Cuban women over the age of 35 received mammograms on a regular basis at no cost. Today, without adequate equipment,
mammograms are no longer employed as a routine preventive procedure; they are used only for high-risk patients. In 1994 and 1995, the lack
of X-ray film halted all mammograms in Havana institutions and in 15 mobile units. The AAWH found that "the
embargo prevents
the Eastman Kodak company or any subsidiary from selling the U.S.-produced Kodak Mini-R film--a product
specifically recommended by the World Health Organization because it exposes women to less
radiation." During the 1980s, as many as 15 mastectomies were performed daily; now, because of the lack of surgical supplies, the number
has dropped to two or three a day. Cuba tried to buy X-ray film from third-party trading companies, but ran into
two problems: markups priced the film out of the government's reach, and these third-party
intermediaries were reluctant to purchase sufficient quantities to sell to Cuba even at inflated prices because large
purchases would call U.S. attention to sales that would be illegal under U.S. law. The AAWH team also reported that since 1992 Cuba has
been unable to purchae parts for the chlorination system that treats 70 percent of the country's drinking
water. Morbidity rates from water-born diseases have doubled since 1989. A shortage of anesthetics and related
equipment and of antibiotics has forced a drop in the number of surgeries from 885,790 in 1990 to 536,547 in 1995.
When the AAWH team visited one pediatric ward, it found that 35 children were vomiting 28 to 30 times a day from their chemotherapy
treatment, a reaction that is normally minimized with a drug readily available in the U.S. New drugs for breast cancer and children's leukemia
The political logic behind a policy of deliberately blocking Cuba from
U.S. politicians and their financial backers, most notably CubanAmericans who live in South Florida and New Jersey and dream of one day returning to Cuba, don't like Fidel Castro. Neither did Dwight
are denied to women and children in Cuba.
access to medical supplies and drugs is quite simple: some
Eisenhower, who began the embargo in 1961 at the height of the cold war when Castro nationalized the U.S. corporations in Cuba and declared
his Marxist sympathies. That move brought him decades of financial support from the Soviet Union, but it also launched the U.S. embargo.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, its financial backing for Cuba ended. The U.S. embargo continues. Following the release of the
AAWH report, the U.S. State Department quickly rejected "any allegation that the United States government is responsible for the deplorable
state of health care in Cuba." A spokesman for Secretary of State Madeleine Albright maintained that a "loophole" in the embargo allows for
U.S. humanitarian shipments to Cuba from nongovernmental agencies. According to AAWH, however, "donations
from U.S. NGOs,
international agencies and third countries do not compensate to any major degree for the hardships inflicted
by the embargo on the health care system and the health of the Cuban people. Restrictions placed on charitable donations
from the U.S. which are similar to those imposed on commercial trade have the same discouraging impact, severely limiting what might
The AAWH's conclusions are supported by statistics and extensive interviews with
medical professionals in Cuba and the U.S. But individual cases tell an even more powerful story. "In one instance," the AAWH
otherwise be contributed."
reports, "Cuban cardiologists diagnosed a heart attack patient with a ventricular arrhythmia. He required an implantable defibrillator to survive.
Though the U.S. firm CPI, which then held a virtual monopoly on the device, expressed a willingness to make the sale, the U.S. government
denied a license for it. Two months later the patient died."
It deprives Cubans of their most basic rights
Hirnandez-Truyol, 9 Profesor of Law at University of Florida (Berta Esperanza Hirnandez-Truyol, 2009,
“Embargo or Blockade? The Legal and Moral Dimensions of the U.S. Economic Sanctions on Cuba”,
Intercultural Human Rights Law Review,
http://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1219&context=facultypub)//EM
It is common knowledge that trade sanctions hurt workers and industries, not the officials who authored
the policies that are the target of the sanctions. The countries most likely to face sanctions are those run by undemocratic
governments least likely to let the pain of their population sway them. These observations hold true in the case of the U.S.
embargo on Cuba. While in nearly fifty years of the embargo the purported goal of achieving democracy in Cuba
has not been met, the embargo has had deleterious effects on Cuba and the Cuban people. First, a look at
some factual data in light of trade relation confirms the reality and extent of the harms suffered. In 1958, the United States accounted for 67%
of Cuba's exports and 70% of its imports,(FN111) placing it seventh on both export and import markets of the United States.(FN112) In 1999, by
contrast, official U.S. exports to Cuba totaled a paltry $4.7 million, which was comprised mainly of donations of medical aid, pharmaceuticals,
and other forms of charitable aid.(FN113) In the year 2000, Cuba ranked 184th of 189 importers of U.S. agricultural products.(FN114) The
relaxation of sanctions against food and medicines beginning in 2000 found Cuba rising to 138th in 2001 and to 26th in 2004 for U.S. export
markets.(FN115) By 2006, Cuba's ranking had fallen slightly to become the 33rd largest market for U.S. agricultural exports (exports totaling
$328 million).(FN116) The U.S. International Trade Commission estimates an ongoing annual loss to all U.S. exporters of approximately $1.2
billion for their inability to trade with Cuba.(FN117) The Cuban government estimates that the
total direct economic impact
caused by the embargo is $86 billion, which includes loss of export earnings, additional costs for import, and a suppression of the
growth of the Cuban economy.(FN118) However, various economic researchers and the U.S. State Department discount the effect of the
embargo and suggest that the Cuban problem is one of lack of hard foreign currency which renders Cuba unable to purchase goods it needs in
the open market.(FN119) That
there has been an economic impact of the embargo is evident to anyone who
visits Cuba. For example, there is a minuscule number of modem automobiles on the roads of Cuba. Most are
American vehicles from the late 1950s-prior to the embargo (and the revolution). To be sure, because the law prohibits ships from entering U.S.
ports for six months after making deliveries to Cuba, the policy effectively denies Cuba access to the U.S. automobile market.(FN120)
However, the impacts of economic sanctions are greater than lack of access to goods. In the case of Cuba, some
argue that the U.S. embargo has had a deleterious impact on nutrition and health with a lack of availability of medicine and equipment, as well
as decreased water quality.(FN121) Indeed, the
American Association for World Health (AAWH), in a 1997 report,
concluded that the U.S. embargo of Cuba has dramatically harmed the health and nutrition of large
numbers of ordinary Cuban citizens.... [I]t is our expert medical opinion that the U.S. embargo has caused
a significant rise in suffering -- and even deaths -- in Cuba.... A humanitarian catastrophe has been averted only because the
Cuban government has maintained a high level of budgetary support for a health care system designed to deliver primary and preventive health
care to all of its citizens.(FN122) Thus, AAWH concludes that the embargo, limiting availability of food, medicine, and medical supplies, has a
deleterious effect on Cuban society. Significantly, religious leaders, including the late Pope John Paul II, opposed the embargo and called for its
end.(FN123) The gravamen of the objection is the humanitarian and economic hardships that the embargo causes. Interestingly, the new
regulations implemented by the Bush administration were met with criticism from many in the Cuban community. While the new regulations
purport to exert pressure on Castro, many believe that these regulations only hurt Cuban-Americans and their Cuba-based families. Some
speculate that President Bush's supporters for the new regulations are U.S. citizens who no longer have relatives in Cuba.(FN124) For example,
one of the supporters of the new restrictions included a seventy-five year old man who emigrated from Cuba in 1973. Opponents, however,
were mostly recent immigrants who still had many relatives in Cuba.(FN125) Because the implementation of the amendments occurred shortly
before the 2004 elections, many suspected that they would cause a split among Cuban voters in the South Florida area who ordinarily tend to
vote Republican. Four years after the implementation of the draconian regulations Cubans continue to voice their disaffection with the
interference with their ability to send money to family or travel to Cuba. In Vilaseca v. Paulson,(FN126) a case filed in the United States District
Court in Vermont against Henry Paulson in his official capacity as the Director of the U.S. treasury department, four citizens of Vermont who
have pressing needs to return to Cuba because of illness, sickness, and death of family members, challenged the constitutionality of the
regulations. The complaint alleges that the family travel regulations violate the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution(FN127) and
they seek an injunction preventing the government from enforcing the regulation.(FN128) The American Civil Liberties Union ("ACLU") affiliates
in Vermont, Florida, and Massachusetts along with the Center for Constitutional Rights, filed an amicus curiae brief in support of the Plaintiffs'
complaint.(FN129) In its brief, the ACLU maintains that the regulations not only violate an individual's right to preserve and maintain family as
guaranteed by the First and Fifth amendments, they also violate plaintiffs' equal protection rights under the United States Constitution.(FN130)
They argued that the right to family is a constitutionally protected fundamental right, and that Cubans are being deprived of that right.(FN131)
The ACLU also argues that the regulations violate international law.(FN132) Specifically, the argument posits that the
regulations violate established human rights. First, they infringe on the right to family which is recognized
as "the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the
state."(FN133) In addition, they violate the "right to freedom of movement"(FN134) and the "right to leave
any country, including his[/her] own."(FN135) President Obama's changed approach, although a small step, goes quite far in alleviating
some of these concerns.
Furthermore, it legitimizes the Castro regime, which destroys human rights
HRW, 8 (Human Rights Watch, 2/19/8, “Cuba: Fidel Castro’s Abusive Machinery Remains Intact”,
http://www.hrw.org/news/2008/02/18/cuba-fidel-castro-s-abusive-machinery-remains-intact)//EM
Despite Fidel Castro’s resignation today, Cuba’s abusive legal and institutional mechanisms continue to deprive
Cubans of their basic rights, Human Rights Watch said today. The counterproductive US embargo policy continues
to give the Cuban government a pretext for human rights violations. “Even if Castro no longer calls the shots, the
repressive machinery he constructed over almost half a century remains fully intact,” said José Miguel Vivanco,
Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Until that changes, it’s unlikely there will be any real progress on human rights in Cuba.” For almost
five decades, Cuba has restricted nearly all avenues of political dissent. Cuban citizens
have been systematically deprived of
their fundamental rights to free expression, privacy, association, assembly, movement, and due process
of law. Tactics for enforcing political conformity have included police warnings, surveillance, short-term detentions, house
arrests, travel restrictions, criminal prosecutions, and politically motivated dismissals from employment. Cuba’s legal and
institutional structures have been at the root of its rights violations. The rights to freedom of expression, association, assembly, movement, and
the press are strictly limited under Cuban law. By criminalizing
enemy propaganda, the spreading of “unauthorized
news,” and insult to patriotic symbols, the government curbs freedom of speech under the guise of protecting state security. The courts are
not independent; they undermine the right to fair trial by restricting the right to a defense, and frequently fail to observe the few due process
rights available to defendants under domestic law. “Since Fidel Castro first turned power over to his brother, the Cuban government has
occasionally indicated a willingness to reconsider its approach to human rights,” said Vivanco. “But so far it hasn’t taken any of the steps
needed to end its abusive practices.” In December 2007, the Cuban government announced its intention to ratify the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The ratification, if it occurs, would represent
an important break from Cuba's longstanding refusal to recognize these core human rights treaties. However, the Cuban government still needs
to take concrete steps to decriminalize political dissent, Human Rights Watch said. Specifically, it should unconditionally release all political
dissidents. It should also repeal the provisions of the penal code that provide the basis for gross violations of human rights. “This would
be
a good time for the US government to revisit its failed embargo policy,” said Vivanco. “By lifting the
embargo, Washington could deprive Raúl Castro of the underdog image that his brother exploited so
effectively.” For more than four decades, the US government has used Cuba’s dismal rights record to justify a sweeping economic embargo
aimed at toppling the Castro regime. Yet the policy did nothing to bring change to Cuba. On the contrary, it helped
consolidate Castro’s hold on power by providing his government with an excuse for its problems and a
justification for its abuses. Moreover, because the policy was imposed in such a heavy-handed fashion, it enabled Castro to garner
sympathy abroad, neutralizing international pressure rather than increasing it.
Such sanctions are an immoral and calculative form of foreign policy that is evil and
should be rejected
Addis, 3 William Ray Forrester Professor of Public and Constitutional Law at Tulane University Law
School. He received his B.A. and LL.B. (Honours) from Macquarie University (Australia), and an LL.M. and
a J.S.D from Yale. (Adeno Addis, 2003, “Economic Sanctions and the Problem of Evil”, Human Rights
Quarterly 25.3, Project Muse)//EM
As sanctions have proliferated, however, their use has come under intense challenge from various sources. The
reasons for such challenges are as diverse as the critics themselves, but one could group the critics into three general categories. One group of
critics simply challenges that sanctions do in fact achieve the purpose for which they are often adopted. Proponents of sanctions often state
that sanctions are imposed for purposes of persuading or forcing the regime of the target state to change its conduct or policy in relation to a
particular area of concern by making the cost of pursuing that policy greater than the benefit to be gained from it. Critics of this line of
reasoning argue that sanctions, whether unilateral or multilateral, often fail to bring about the desired behavioral or policy change. 12 The
challenge here is, by and large, empirical not normative. Other critics may concede that more often than not such measures would lead to the
desired behavior modification, but at a cost that is often unacceptably
high. Economic sanctions deprive citizens of the
target state many of the basic necessities of life, leading to massive disruption and even destruction of
life. The often high cost in life, liberty, and property that economic sanctions exact on innocent citizens
and sectors of the target state are, to these critics, simply unacceptable even if at the end there was to be a change in the
action and behavior of the regime of the target state. The moral and material costs that sanctions entail are, to these critics, simply too high to
bear. Actually, there are two versions of the moral argument. The weak version is utilitarian in nature. It claims that often the cost in innocent
human life and infrastructural damage is far greater than the benefit that is gained by imposing these sanctions. 13 The strong version of the
moral argument is Kantian in its outlook. It objects to economic sanctions on the ground that often, if not
always, sanctions target innocent civilians for suffering as a means to achieving a foreign policy objective,
contrary to Kant's categorical imperative that we treat "humanity, whether in [our] person or in the person of
any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end." 14 The argument here is that it is
morally [End Page 576] unacceptable to impose suffering on innocent sectors of the target state, as economic sanctions do, for an objective
that does not involve the prevention of the deaths of other innocent persons. 15
This collective punishment violates fundamental human rights and institutionalizes
racism
Mwaria,98 – PhD from Columbia University, Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Hofstra University,
writes on bioethics, women’s health, race relations and differential access to health care (Cheryl, “The immorality of collective punishment: A
closer look at the impact of the U.S. embargo on the health of Cubans,” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, Vol. 1 No.
2, 1999, online at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ccbh/souls/vol1no2/vol1num2art8.pdf)//BI
Nowhere is the interrelationship of the moral, the political, and the medical more evident than in the
impact of the U.S. embargo on the health system of Cuba. By banning the sale of food and most medicine,
the embargo “appears to violate the most basic international charters and conventions governing human
rights,” according to a March 1997 report of the American Association for World Health. Supporters of the embargo attempt to justify it
on the basis of Cuba’s alleged violation of individual rights. Such a justification overlooks the immorality of the collective
punishment of innocent citizens. It is both hypocritical and subtly racist. As a growing number of human rights
advocates have argued, only the combined perspective of cultural arrogance and willful ignorance enable such
assertions. The streets of Havana bear the marks of the embargo, obvious even to the most casual visitor. While government and business
build hotels and tourist facilities, most of the beautiful old residential and office buildings have fallen into disrepair. Food and fuel are rationed.
Transportation is difficult (notwithstanding the charm of bicycles and the plea-sure of’ a relatively pollution-free environment). Desperate
shortages in paper, soap, machine parts, and material for clothing have become part of daily life. But the streets of Havana bear signs of hope
as well. The arts are thriving. Children still attend school. Clinics continue to be built and staffed. Even more important, thanks to the Cuban
government’s thirty-year investment in its national health care system, the most brutal marks of hunger and disease— kwashiorkor, marasmus,
chronic skin lesions, bellies distended by parasitic disease and rampant dysentery—are nowhere to be seen. The question is: How long can the
payoff’s last, and at what price? The Cuban Revolution ushered in two of the twentieth century’s most significant human rights
achievements in social welfare in the Western hemisphere. The first was a war on illiteracy—accompanied by the guarantee of a free
education—that produced a 7 percent literacy rate in its first year. The second achievement (and the subject of this paper) was the
development of a public health care system that guaranteed equal access, regardless of in-come or social standing,
rural or urban residence. This system now includes not only primary health care but access to expensive procedures such as transplants,
neurosurgery, and in vitro fertilization. Cuba’s achievement of these goals testifies to the sheer strength of the country’s political will as well as
to the moral commitment of its people. Prior to the 1959 revolution, Cuba’s health care system, like that of many so-called developing as well
as “developed” countries, was sharply divided between haves and have-nots. In 1958, for instance, Cuba had ninety-seven hospitals; of those
ninety seven, only one was located in a rural area, despite the fact that Cuba contained an overwhelmingly rural population. The country had
no dental clinics and only one dental school. There were seven nursing schools, hut the entire island had only one medical school and a scant
four teaching hospitals. As for physicians them selves, half of the country’s 6,000 doctors left immediately following the revolution. Before
the revolution, access to health care belonged to the urban and wealthy. Basic health indicators reveal the system’s
impact:2 In 1959, there were 60 deaths per 1,000 live births in Cuba. Due to poor sanitation and a lack of clean drinking water, 4,157 Cubans
under the age of 15 died of acute diarrheic disease, a rate of 57.3 per 100,000. The revolution turned these statistics around in less than thirty
years. By 1984, only 385, or 3.9 percent, of those under 15 died of diarrheic disease. The government built 370 polyclinics; before, there had
been none. The number of hospitals reached 263, including 54 in rural areas. Some 99 teaching hospitals and 15 medical schools trained the
next generation of doc-tors, while 58 technical and nursing schools and 4 dental schools catered to other health care needs. With a population
of 11 million, today’s Cuba has more than 60,000 practicing physicians (approximately one for every 185 inhabitants) and more than 70,000
nurses. Cuba currently commits approximately 15 percent of its GNP to its national health care system, a higher percentage than either the
United States or Canada. The results in terms of basic health indicators have been overwhelmingly positive. Cuba’s infant mortality rate of 7.9
per 1,000 live births from 1993 to 1996 places it among the twenty countries with the lowest infant mortality rates in the world. Although the
infant mortality rate in the United States was 7.5 for 1995, the rate for inner cities, including the nation’s capital, was considerably worse. The
average life expectancy in Cuba is 77 years, higher than that for African-American and Native American males in the United States. These
advances have not benefited Cuba alone. Cuba has trained Physicians and other health care professionals from many parts of the world. In the
tnid-1980s, Cuba “had more doctors and other health care professionals in international service than the World Health Organization,”3
according to the U.S. and Cuba Medical Project. Additionally, Cuba
has been in the forefront of medical research for the
production and development of vaccines, neurological restoration, molecular immunology, and
dermatological diseases. The U.S. embargo, however, threatens these improvements in Cuban citizens’ health
and quality of life. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cuban government lost its main source of medicine, equipment, and expertise.
The U.S. Helms-Burton Act, passed in 1996, has helped to deter Western companies from filling in the gaps. As a result of both the direct and
indirect pressures of the embargo, Cuba
now faces the possible loss of its remarkable gains. A yearlong investigation by
poor water quality, lack
of medicine and equipment, and lack of medical information among the most dire current effects of the
embargo. Malnutrition and poor water quality, especially, have led to outbreaks of neuropathy, typhoid fever,
dysentery, and viral hepatitis as well as to an increase in the number of low- birth-weight babies. And despite the urgency of the
the American Association for World Health (AAWH), completed in March 1997, identified malnutrition,
situation, “the most routine medical supplies are in short supply or entirely absent from some Cuba clinics” according to the AAWH.
Racism outweighs every impact – it’s the precondition to ethical political decision
making.
Memmi, 2k – Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Paris (Albert, “RACISM”, translated by Steve Martinot, pp.163-165)
The struggle against racism will be long, difficult, without intermission, without remission, probably
never achieved, yet for this very reason, it is a struggle to be undertaken without surcease and without
concessions. One cannot be indulgent toward racism. One cannot even let the monster in the house,
especially not in a mask. To give it merely a foothold means to augment the bestial part in us and in
other people which is to diminish what is human. To accept the racist universe to the slightest degree is
to endorse fear, injustice, and violence. It is to accept the persistence of the dark history in which we still
largely live. It is to agree that the outsider will always be a possible victim (and which [person] man is not [themself]
himself an outsider relative to someone else?). Racism illustrates in sum, the inevitable negativity of the condition of
the dominated; that is it illuminates in a certain sense the entire human condition. The anti-racist
struggle, difficult though it is, and always in question, is nevertheless one of the prologues to the ultimate passage from
animality to humanity. In that sense, we cannot fail to rise to the racist challenge. However, it remains true
that one’s moral conduct only emerges from a choice: one has to want it. It is a choice among other
choices, and always debatable in its foundations and its consequences. Let us say, broadly speaking, that the choice
to conduct oneself morally is the condition for the establishment of a human order for which racism is the very negation. This is almost a
One cannot found a moral order, let alone a legislative order, on racism because racism
signifies the exclusion of the other and his or her subjection to violence and domination. From an
redundancy.
ethical point of view, if one can deploy a little religious language, racism is “the truly capital sin.”fn22
It is not an accident
that almost all of humanity’s spiritual traditions counsel respect for the weak, for orphans, widows, or strangers. It is not just a question of
It is not just a question of theoretical morality and
commandments. Such unanimity in the safeguarding of the other suggests the real utility of
such sentiments. All things considered, we have an interest in banishing injustice, because injustice engenders
violence and death. Of course, this is debatable. There are those who think that if one is strong enough, the
assault on and oppression of others is permissible. But no one is ever sure of remaining the strongest.
One day, perhaps, the roles will be reversed. All unjust society contains within itself the seeds of its own
death. It is probably smarter to treat others with respect so that they treat you with respect. “Recall,” says the bible, “that you were once a
theoretical counsel respect for the weak, for orphans, widows or strangers.
disinterested
stranger in Egypt,” which means both that you ought to respect the stranger because you were a stranger yourself and that you risk becoming
It is an ethical and a practical appeal – indeed, it is a contract, however implicit it might be. In
short, the refusal of racism is the condition for all theoretical and practical morality. Because, in the
end, the ethical choice commands the political choice. A just society must be a society accepted by all.
If this contractual principle is not accepted, then only conflict, violence, and destruction will be our lot.
If it is accepted,
we can hope someday to live in peace. True, it is a wager, but the stakes are irresistible.
once again someday.
Human rights are an a priori obligation—key to agency and outweigh all other concerns
Burggraeve, 5 Emeritus Professor at KU Leuven (Roger Burggraeve, 1/1/5 “The Good and Its Shadow:
The View of Levinas on Human Rights as the Surpassing of Political Rationality”, Human Rights Review
Vol. 6, Issue 2, pp. 80-101)//EM
And human rights fulfill this defense in different ways, in the sense that they both surpass as well as correct and
supplement every social, economic, juridical, and political system. The one who thinks and acts from the
basis of human rights--e.g., standing up for and committing oneself to the fights of certain minorities or forgotten people--then does
more in terms of humanization than what the sociopolitical structures can achieve. This is so because
these structures can never take to heart completely the singular realization of the rights of the unique
other. In our ever more international and structurally constructed societal bonds, they precisely make it possible to orientate separately
every responsible person towards the necessary surplus of the good for each and every other. In one of his three articles, which Levinas
dedicated entirely to human rights, 4 he ex- pressed the bond between
the uniqueness of the other and human rights in
a radical and challenging manner (HS 176-78). Human rights, which in no way whatsoever must be attributed from without because they
are experienced as a priori and therefore as irrevocable and inalienable, express the alterity or ab- soluteness
of every human being (AT 151). Every reference is annulled by human rights since it is acknowledged that every individual person
possesses those rights: they are inherent to their being-human as persons. In this regard, human rights wrench every human
person away from the determining order of nature and the social body, to which everyone indeed obviously belongs. Herein lies, according to
Levinas, a remarkable paradox. Thanks
to the belongingness of every person to the human kind --humanity-every person possesses an incomparable alterity and uniqueness, whereby everyone likewise transcends the
generalness of the human kind. The belongingness of every person to the human kind does not mean a reduction to a neutral unity, but a
presentation as a unique person, who by means of that fact itself actually destroys humanity as an abstract idea. Every person is unique in his
or her genre. Every person is a person like every other person and yet utterly unique and irreducible: a radi- cally separate other. Humanity
exists only by grace of irreducible beings, who are for each other utterly unique and non-exchangeable others. Levinas also calls it the absolute
identity of the person (HS 176). It is about a uniqueness that surpasses every individuality of the many individuals in their kind. The uniqueness
or dignity of every individual person does not depend on one or the other specific and distinctive difference. It is about an "unconditional"
uniqueness, in the sense that the dignity of the person--over every individual person--is not determined by their sex, color of skin, place of
birth, moment of their existence, nor by the possession of certain qualities and capacities. Every person possesses dignity that is to be utterly
respected, independent of whichever property or characteristic. It is about a uniqueness that precedes every difference, namely understanding
a radical alterity as an irreducible and Burggraeve 93 inalienable alterity, whereby a person can precisely say "I." This leads Levinas to state that
human rights reveal the uniqueness or the absoluteness of the human person, in spite of their belongingness to the
human kind or rather thanks to this belongingness. This absolute, literally detached and uncondi- tional alterity and thus uniqueness of every
person simply signifies the para- dox, the mystery and the newness of the human in being! But there is more. Human rights also
fulfill
a function within socially and politically organized justice itself, namely insofar as they also offer a specific
contribution to an even better justice. Or rather, they precisely flow forth from the awareness that justice is never just enough
(EFP 98). From within their surpassing position, people will begin to demand that the current, not yet stipu- lated or realized human rights be
acknowledged in society and also acquire a structural, social, economic, juridical and political rendition. In this regard they belong to the
essence of a non-totalitarian order of society itself, which namely is an order where the political (to be understood as a synthesising term for
the entirety of social, economic, financial, juridical and state structures, institutions and forms) is not the definitive and total regime. Even
though they are not identified with the presence of a government, and thus they have no direct political or state function, it is still within the
political structure that they are acknowledged as their own parallel institution alongside the written laws. It is precisely this acknowledgement
that makes the sate a non-totalitarian state. For human rights to make a specific institutional place means indeed accept- ing that the political
order does not proclaim itself as the final word. A politics that accepts human rights agrees at the same time to be critiqued on the basis of
these human rights so that a better justice becomes effectively possible. With hu- man rights, which is not equated with the regime, one can lay
one's finger on the sore spot. By means of pressing charges when human rights are violated, one can question radically a political system that
has become rigid or break it open towards greater justice. Human rights remind us that there still is no perfect social and political justice--and
there will never be as well (EFP 119).
It is our responsibility as global citizens to learn about the plight of others and include them in this
global network of fundamental rights
Abdi and Shultz, 8 professor of Education and International Development at the University of Alberta
AND Associate Professor and Co-Director, Centre for Global Citizenship Education and Research (Ali A.
Abdi and Lynette Shultz, 2008, “Educating for Human Rights and Global Citizenship”,
https://www.sunypress.edu/pdf/61591.pdf)//EM
As should be derived from these horrific problems of diminished citizen- ship (and some that may be more benign in their
effect on human life) that both the conceptual and practical implications and realities of citizenship should, indeed, be considered in as wide a
context as possible. And when we problematize the case, we should see that for all pragmatic undertakings, the contours as well as the corners
of denatured citizenship (fragmented, even destroyed—assuming that people are born as free and naturally enfranchised citizens) have so
many forms and characteristics that all nonlegal depriva- tions and suffering could be categorized as lack of citizenship. The fact is that
beyond the millions who have been killed, there are billions who are still alive but whose fundamental
citizenship rights to education, health, and a viable standard of living have been taken away by those who
control access to either state or market resources. In spaces and relationships such as these, citizenship,
instead of being created and achieved (see Callan, 1997) is actu- ally being denied, and one can see, as Mamdani (1996) noted, the
continu- ing “subjectification” of so many in presumably decolonized landscapes. Indeed, the overall picture is
anything but encouraging. As has been abun- dantly reported in recent UN publications, close to half of the world’s popu- lation lives on less
than two dollars a day, nearly a billion people cannot read and write, between eight and nine hundred million lack clean drinking water, and an
estimated 350 million school-age children do not have access to edu- cation, while, in fact, less than 1 percent of the money spent on weapons
could educate all the children in the world. These
sites of struggle are collectively an indication of the multicentric
nature of the work that is being carried out to address the realities and effects of marginalization, and they
lead us to understand the need for a universal approach to human rights. Where some people argue that human rights are particular,
necessarily differing according to group and context, we take as a key position that, at many sites, efforts to universalize rights have been the
outcome of oppression and the struggle for liberation. The power of the vision and the enactment of universal rights as legal, political, social,
cul- tural, and economic entitlements enables marginalized individuals and groups in particular contexts to challenge claims to power by
oppressors. Therefore, our position is that universal human rights creates a vision of a world of diversity where all humans have an equitable
claim to the rewards and privileges of their social, economic, political, and cultural context. Reporting on the depressing state of the world
could continue into many more pages; suffice it to say here that as educators and researchers it is incum- bent upon us to seek a permanent
platform for the attainment by all of viable citizenship rights. These rights, while they may not immediately accord us the noble guarantees we
need to avoid the likes of Cambodia in the early 1970s or Rwanda in the early 1990s, should at least help us reclaim some relief for the
hundreds of millions of our contemporaries who are exposed to malaise and suffering. The
potential for human rights as a
common vision of human dig- nity to be the catalyst for change is significant. As one small component of that
overall project, this book aims to minimally and initially diffuse the meaning as well as the possible practices of the rights of all citizens across
the world. To achieve some measure of this, we
should not underestimate the role of education in instilling in the
minds of people core human rights values and the sanctity of a global citizenship ethic. Global citizenship
aims to expand inclusion and power and provides the ethical and normative framework to make this a
legitimate and far-reaching project whereby citizenship is a prod- uct of diversity rather than an
institutional tool serving particular groups. This global ethic should affirm, for all of us, that citizenship is not
just a mechanism to claim rights that are based on membership in a particular polity, but that human rights are based
on membership beyond any state or national bound- aries, inherent to all individuals and groups in all places and times.
Even in global spaces where fragile or nonexistent states (e.g., Afghanistan, Somalia, Zaire) cannot guarantee the rights of citizens, or in the
case where refugees are on the move or located in an “in-between” geographical and political status, people must be still protected by the
international community from the per- vasiveness of structural violence.
1ac imperialism
The history of the US-Cuba relationship is plagued by the influence of exceptionalism
Wylie 10 [Lana Wylie is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at McMaster University. “Perceptions of Cuba:
Canadian and American policies in comparative perspective” 2010 //NG]
Historical Representations: Cuba as the Other Even in
the early days of the U.S.-Cuba relationship, American
exceptionalism influenced the U.S. approach towards the island. In the nineteenth century, Cubans were
caricaturized as well-meaning children or gendered as female. These representations appeared in
American cartoons, official rhetoric, and popular discourse. Cuban inferiority and the necessity of
American tutelage were inherent in all representations. 7 Prior to this revolution, Cubans (and other Latin Americans)
were portrayed as a naïve, uncivilized, and childlike people who required American guidance. President
McKinley said that Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico were a ‘great trust’ that the United States had taken on ‘under the
providence of God and in the name of human progress and civilization.’ 8 Senator Albert Beveridge justified
American involvement in the 1898 Spanish American War over Cuba because God has made Americans ‘the master organizers of the world to
establish system where chaos reigns … He has made us adept in government that we may administer government among savage and senile
peoples … He has marked the American the American people as His Chosen nation finally to lead in the regeneration of the world’ 9 In 1902 a
future president, Woodrow Wilson,
echoed these sentiments in a speech about the Spanish American War and
American responsibilities in Cuba and the Philippines, referring to Americans as ‘apostles of liberty and selfgovernment’ and to the Filipinos and Cuban as children. 10 Cubans were understood as incapable of taking care of themselves. The Platt
Amendment to the Cuban constitution asserted that ‘the United States may exercise the right to intervene for the preservation
of Cuban independence, the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty.’ As late as the
1950s, American cartoons portrayed Cubans as children in need of American guardianship. Even as Castro assumed
power, this image was alive and well, with senior Washington officials viewing Cuba’s leader as a wayward child. Nixon talked recently about
needing to lead Fidel Castro ‘in the right direction.’ More recently, Vicki Huddleston, the chief of the American mission in Havana from 1999
until 2002, remarked that ‘it is fundamental that Cubans begin to learn how to govern themselves.’ Likewise, the
American view of life
in Cuba has not changed a great deal since the early 1900s. The Platt Amendment declared that Cuba
needed to follow American instructions regarding the sanitation of the cities of the island, to the end that a recurrence of
epidemic and infectious diseases might be prevented, thereby assuring protection to the people and commerce of Cuba. The 2006 report
of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba made a similar statement: ‘The U.S. Government stands
ready to help the Cuban Transition Government begin to address the immediate water, sanitation,
health, food, shelter and education needs of the Cuban people.’ 11 This representation of Cuba ignores the wellknown evidence that Cuba has achieved results in many of these areas that rival American ones. For
example, according to the United Nations, Cubans and Americans share the same life expectancy (seventy-seven years in
2005). Surveys reveal the American public also believes that Cuba is inferior. A 2000 poll asked: ‘Generally speaking, is
the U.S. system of economics and government morally superior to the Cuban system of economics and government?’ Sixty-three per cent said
yes, another 28 per cent answered that they were not sure, and only 9 per cent said no. 12 This
contributes to the sense that the
United States knows what is best for the island and the corresponding policies that attempt to dictate Cuba’s future.
The American sense of superiority is often associated with the political character of the United States, a particular
belief that the United States represents the embodiment of democracy and freedom. Cuba is represented
as an enemy of democracy and freedom in U.S. legislation, official speeches, and most media reports. President
George W. Bush emphasized these images in a 13 July 2001 speech. He stated that the Cuban government ‘routinely stifles all the freedoms
that make us human. The United States stands opposed to such tyranny and will until it respects the basic human rights of its citizens, frees
political prisoners, holds democratic free elections, and allows free speech.’ 12 How the United States sees itself and how the United States
sees Cuba go hand in hand, each reinforcing the other identity. Policy
towards the island is constructed in a large part by these
images and identities that are taken for granted. 14 Most foreign embassies in Havana operate under the assumption that human
rights are not fully respected in Cuba but they disagree with each other on the extent of violations. The American comments on this matter are
almost always more vehement than those of other countries. Helms-Burton
describes the human-rights abuses in Cuba
as ‘massive, systematic, and extraordinary.’ 15 Similar languages frames Fidel Castro as a tyrant, categorizing him together
with Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, Josef Stalin, or Adolf Hitler in the American imagination. In contrast, most other countries in
the world take a much more moderate position towards Cuban human-rights violations and focus their critiques main on
violations of political rights such as freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and freedom of the press. Speaking to the House of Commons
in 2003, a British government representative simply referred to Cuban politics as ‘out-of-date’ and belonging to the Cold War era. 16 Although
the United Kingdom explicitly states that entirely normal relations between it and Cuba are not currently possible because human-rights
violations do indeed occur in Cuba, the general rhetoric is relatively passive. The official position of the United Kingdom towards Cuba is that it
‘urge an end to arbitrary detention, intimidation and imprisonment on political grounds.’ 17 Furthermore, unlike American
which acts
rhetoric
to demonize almost every aspect of the Cuban state, European Union (EU) members are willing to acknowledge the
significant advances that have been made in Cuba, even though they may impose temporary sanctions in response to particular events. Cuba
is often represented in contrast to the United States in American discourse. Specifically, the American view of
human rights and democracy in Cuba is reinforced by the comparison between the United States and
Cuba. For example, in 1984 the chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Relations, Dante Fascell, asserted: ‘Just
come to my State and look at the smiling, happy faces of almost 1 million people who came from Cuba to the land of freedom, and I’m sure
many others in Cuba would like to do the same thing if they had the opportunity.’ 18 The 2006 report of the Commission for Assistance to a
Free Cuba declares: ‘Cubans continue to be imprisoned for activities that Americans take for granted each and every day.’ 19 The United States
is focused on changing the political face of Cuba. Historically, this included not only the removal of Fidel Castro (and later, Raul Castro) from
power but also the stipulation that Cub adopt a democratic political system and market economy modeled on the United States. The end of
isolationist policy is firmly tied to these changes. A January 1997 government document declares: ‘Once Cuba has a transition government –
that is, a government committed to the establishment of a fully democratic, pluralistic society – the United States will be prepared to begin
normalizing relations and provide assistance to support Cuba’s transition.’ 20 The Americas Free Trade Act introduced in the Senate on 22
January 2001 states that Cuba will remain an exception to free trade until: freedom has been restored in Cuba, for the purpose of subsection
(a), unless the President determines that – (1) a constitutionally guaranteed democratic government has been established in Cuba with leaders
chosen through free and fair elections; (2) the rights of individuals to private property have been restored and are effectively protected and
broadly exercised in Cuba; (3) Cuba has a currency that is fully convertible domestically and internationally; (4) all political prisoners have been
released in Cuba; and (5) the rights of free speech and freedom of the press in Cuba are effectively guaranteed. 21 According to American
policy, political and economic life on the island must change in these ways before the United States will reinstate full diplomatic and normal
economic relations. The
U.S. foreign-policy establishment considers it a duty to ensure that Cuba
democratizes. The Helms-Burton Act declares: ‘The United States has shown a deep commitment, and considers it a
moral obligation to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms as expressed in the Charter of the United Nations and
in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.’ 22 Helms-Burton also states: ‘The Cuban people deserve to be assisted in a decisive manner to
end the tyranny that has oppressed them for 36 years,’ and the continued failure to do so constitutes ethically improper conduct by the
international community.’ 23 Daniel W. Fisk, a senior staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that drafted this 1996 HelmsBurton Act, explains U.S. policy towards Cuba this way. He says that many accounts of the policy totally miss ‘an essential element of American
foreign policy, that is, the views of a significant segment of the foreign policy elite of America’s mission in the world and how this “mission” is
played out through the structure and interaction of the policy-making institutions.’ 24 The United States considers itself to be on a moral
mission in Cuba. Policy
towards Cuba is also constructed by the idea within American exceptionalism that the
United States has special rights and duties within the hemisphere. The states in the region are considered to be not just
close neighbours but part of the ‘American family.’ While this negates some of the ‘othering’ of states in the western hemisphere, it also
reinforces American hostility towards Cuba.
Today, we continue this punishment of Cuba, “the bad student in class,” via the
embargo
Perez, 8 (Louis A. Perez Jr., 2008, “Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and Imperial Ethos”, pp
150-152)//EM
The metaphor of
child further set in relief the image of the island as classroom, the Cubans as students, and
the Americans as their teachers. Indeed, education both figuratively and literally—was at the core of the metaphor as paradigm.
The classroom was imagined as the site for the transmission of new cultural knowledge and the transformation of
political values. Indeed, perhaps the most widely disseminated turn-of—the—century image depicted a classroom setting,
typically with Uncle Sam as teacher, often with switch in hand, with Cuba as pupil, often in class with other newly
acquired territories represented as classmates, receiving proper lessons on civics and civilization. “Cuba has had more than
three years of schooling for the part she has to play,” exulted the Washington Post at the end of the military occupation in 1902. “She will enter
the arena as the alumnus ofthe greatest academy on earth — not as a fourth-class trembler, shrinking at the bully’s frown. How effective the
tuition has been; with what wisdom the faculty have chosen their material. . . . Our authorities have done their best.106 The metaphor
enabled Americans—parents—to persuade themselves that Cubans—children —were obliged to defer
to adults as a function of the human life cycle. Just as parental wisdom and adult experience could not yield to pro— tests
t'rom the child in need of discipline, the Americans could not permit Cubans to challenge U.S. authority. That
Cubans protested North American control was equated with tantrums of misbehaved children that
required disciplinary action by the parents. The Cuban demand for seltldetermination, or alternately, Cuban protest of
American military intervention, was duly dismissed, or disregarded, characterized as the complanits of children bemoaning the exercise of
parental authority. Experience gave meaning to representation.
This imperial metaphor of childhood justifies biopolitical control over the globe and
ensures the escalation of every major international threat
Perez, 8 (Louis A. Perez Jr., 2008, “Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and Imperial Ethos”, pp
269-171)//EM
By the mid-twentieth century, as
the process of decolonization expanded through Africa, Asia, and the Middle
East, the plausibility of mission ciuz'laztrice the rationale for imperialism could no longer be readily sustained. The logic of the
imperial project was subsequently encoded within new depictive constructs, principally as a matter of
democracy, human rights, and civil society, always with the promise to enhance the lives of the very peoples who fifty years
earlier were deemed to be in need of civilization. The Americans at the turn of the new century proselytized the virtues of democracy with as
much moral rectitude as when they had propounded the promise of salvation through civilization in the nineteenth century. The
idiom of
empire may have undergone modification—a concession no doubt to the sensibilities of Third World people—but the
metaphors of the colonial arrogance of the nineteenth—century metaphors obtained renewed use early
in the twenty-first century. New York Times columnist Thomas Fried’ man could write in 2003 that “we just adopted a baby called
Baghdad.“40 U.S. relations with Iran and North Korea often turned on platitudes derived from unstated metaphors. For the United States
to negotiate directly with Iran and North Korea would “reward bad behavior,” a construct alluding to
child-rearing practices and/or classroom conduct.4| A war of choice in Iraq obtained validation by way of
metaphor: the war against terror. Once the metaphor passed unchallenged, the president could proceed
to govern as commander in chief, civil liberties were subordinated to national security, and national
security justified torture, suspension of habeas corpus, and extralegal wiretaps. It all began with a
metaphor.
Biopower justifies removal of any population- makes nuclear war, chemical war, environmental
collapse, genocide and racism and necessity
Dean 01 (Mitchell, Professor of Sociology at Macquarie University, “Demonic Societies: Liberalism, biopolitics, and sovereignty.”
Ethnographic Explorations of the Postcolonial State, ed. Hanson and Stepputat, p. 55-58)
Consider again the contrastive terms in which it is possible to view biopolitics and sovereignty. The final chapter in the first
volume of the History of Sexuality that contrasts sovereignty and biopolitics is titled "Right of Death and Power over Life." The initial terms of
the contrast between the two registers of government is thus between one that could employ power to put subjects to death, even if this right
to kill was conditioned by the defense of the sovereign, and one that was concerned with the fostering of life. Nevertheless, each part of the
contrast can be further broken down. The
right of death can also be understood as "the right to take life or let
live"; the power over life as the power "to foster life or disallow it." Sovereign power is a power that distinguishes
between political life (bios) and mere existence or bare life (zoe). Bare life is included in the constitution of sovereign power by Its very
exclusion from political life. In contrast, biopolitics might be
thought to include zoe in bios: stripped down mere
existence becomes a matter of political reality. Thus, the contrast between biopolitics and sovereignty is
not one of a power of life versus a power of death but concerns the way the different forms of power
treat matters of life and death and entail different conceptions of life. Thus, biopolitics reinscribes the
earlier right of death and power over life and places it within a new and different form that attempts to
include what had earlier been sacred and taboo, bare life, in political existence. It is no longer so much the right of the sovereign
to put to death his enemies but to disqualify the life—the mere existence—of those who are a threat to the life of the population, to disallow
those deemed "unworthy of life," those whose bare life is not worth living. This allows us, first, to consider what might be thought of as the
dark side of biopolitics (Foucault 1979a: 136—37). In Foucault's account, biopolitics
does not put an end to the practice of
war: it provides it with new and more sophisticated killing machines. These machines allow killing itself to be reposed
at the level of entire populations. Wars become genocidal in the twentieth century. The same state that takes on
the duty to enhance the life of the population also exercises the power of death over whole populations.
Atomic weapons are the key weapons of this process of the power to put whole populations to death.
We might also consider here the aptly named biological and chemical weapons that seek an
extermination of populations by visiting plagues upon them or polluting the biosphere in which they live
to the point at which bare life is no longer sustainable. Nor does the birth of biopolitics put an end to the
killing of one's own populations. Rather, it intensifies that killing—whether by an "ethnic cleansing" that visits
holocausts upon whole groups or by the mass slaughters of classes and groups conducted in the name of the Utopia to be
achieved. There is a certain restraint in sovereign power. The right of death is only occasionally exercised as the right to kill
and then often in a ritual fashion that suggests a relation to the sacred. More often, sovereign power is manifest in the refraining from the right
to kill. The biopolitical imperative knows no such restraint. Power is exercised at the level of populations and hence wars will
be waged at that level, on behalf of everyone and their lives. This point brings us to the heart of Foucault's provocative thesis about biopolitics:
that there is an intimate connection between the exercise of a life-administering power and the
commission of genocide: "If genocide is indeed the dream of modern powers, this is not because of a recent return of the ancient right
to kill: it is because power is situated and exercised at the level of life, the species, the race, and the large-scale phenomena of population"
(1979a: 137). Foucault completes this same passage with an expression that deserves more notice: " massacres become vital ." There is
thus a kind of perverse homogeneity between the power over life and the power to take life characteristic of biopower. The emergence of a
biopolitical racism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries can be approached as a trajectory in which this homogeneity always threatened to
tip over into a dreadful necessity. This racism can be approached as a fundamental mechanism of power that is inscribed in the biopolitical
domain (Stoler 1995: 84—85). For Foucault, the primary function of this form of racism is to establish a division between those who must live
and those who must die, and to distinguish the superior from the inferior, the fit from the unfit. The notion and techniques of population had
given rise, at the end of the nineteenth century, to a new linkage among population, the internal organization of states, and the competition
between states. Darwinism, as an imperial social and political program, would plot the ranking of individuals, populations, and nations along
the common gradient of fitness and thus measure eflicienqp6 However, the series "population, evolution, and race" is not simply a way of
thinking about the superiority of the "white races" or of justifying colonialism, but also of thinking about how to treat the degenerates and the
abnormals in one's own population and prevent the further degeneration of the race. The second and most important function for Foucault of
this biopolitical racism in the nineteenth century is that "it establishes a positive relation between the right to kill
and the assurance of life" (Stoler 1995: 84). The life of the population, its vigor, its health, its capacities to survive,
becomes necessarily linked to the elimination of internal and external threats. This power to disallow life is
perhaps best encapsulated in the injunctions of the eugenic project: identify those who are degenerate, abnormal, feeble*minded, or of an
inferior race and subject them to forced sterilization: encourage those who are superior, fit, and intelligent to propagate. Identify those whose
life is but mere existence and disqualify their propagation: encourage those who can partake of a sovereign existence and of moral and political
life. But this last example does not necessarily establish a positive justification for the right to kill, only the right to disallow life. If we are to
begin to understand the type of racism engaged in by Nazism, however, we need to take into account another kind of denouement between
the biopolitical management of population and the exercise of sovereignty. This
version of sovereignty is no longer the
transformed and democratized form founded on the liberty of the juridical subject, as it is for liberalism, but a
sovereignty that takes up and transforms a further element of sovereignty, its "symbolics of blood" (Foucault
1979a: 148). For Foucault, sovereignty is grounded in blood—as a reality and as a symbol—just as one might say that sexuality becomes the key
field on which biopolitical management of populations is articulated. When power is exercised through repression and deduction, through a law
over which hangs the sword, when it is exercised on the scaffold by the torturer and the executioner, and when relations between households
and families were forged through alliance, "blood was a reality with a symbolic function." By contrast, for biopolitics with its themes of health,
vigor, fitness, vitality, progeny, survival, and race, "power spoke of sexuality and to sexuality" (Foucault 1979a: 147). For Foucault (1979a: 149—
50), the novelty of National Socialism was the way it articulated "the oneiric exaltation of blood," of fatherland, and of the triumph of the race
in an immensely cynical and naive fashion, with the paroxysms of a disciplinary and biopolitical power concerned with the detailed
administration of the life of the population and the regulation of sexuality, family, marriage, and education.'Nazism generalized biopower
without the limit-critique posed by the juridical subject of right, but it could not do away with sovereignty. Instead, it established
a set of
permanent interventions into the conduct of the individual within the population and articulated this
with the "mythical concern for blood and the triumph of the race." Thus, the shepherd-flock game and the city-citizen
game are transmuted into the eugenic ordering of biological existence (of mere living and subsistence) and articulated on the themes of the
purity of blood and the myth of the fatherland. In such an articulation of these elements of sovereign and biopolitical forms of power, the
relation between the administration of life and the right to kill entire populations is no longer simply one of a dreadful homogeneity. It has
become a necessary relation. The
administration of life comes to require a bloodbath. It is not simply that power, and
act of disqualifying the right to life of other
races becomes necessary for the fostering of the life of the race. Moreover, the elimination of other races is
therefore war, will be exercised at the level of an entire population. It is that the
only one face of the purification of one's own race (Foucault 1997b: 231). The other part is to expose the latter
to a universal and absolute danger, to expose it to the risk of death and total destruction. For Foucault, with
the Nazi state we have an "absolutely racist state, an absolutely murderous state and an absolutely suicidal state" (232), all of which are
superimposed and converge on the Final Solution. With the Final Solution, the state tries to eliminate, through the Jews, all the other races, for
whom the Jews were the symbol and the manifestation. This includes, in one of Hitler's last acts, the order to destroy the bases of bare life for
the German people itself "Final Solution for other races, the absolute suicide of the German race" is inscribed, according to Foucault. in the
functioning of the modern state (232).
The embargo is a policy grounded in US imperialism – “re-establishing democracy” is
just the latest justification attempting to mask economic exploitation
Lamrani, 3 – PhD of Iberian and Latin American Studies at the University Paris-Sorbonne Paris-IV, specialist on relations between Cuba and
the US (Salim, “Economic sanctions against Cuba: objectives of an imperialist policy,” The Voice of the Turtle (online journal of left-wing politics
and culture), 24 December 2003, http://www.voiceoftheturtle.org/show_article.php?aid=384)//BI
The economic sanctions imposed on Cuba by the United States are unique in view of their longevity and of their
complexity but they are consistent with the real objectives of the first world power. In order to show this, it is necessary to
base this analysis on the following postulate: the blockade is part of a scheme designed not to promote democratic
values, as the administration in Washington would have us believe, but to control the natural resources of Third World
nations through subjugation. And the history of the United States – characterized mainly by violent and
bloody conquest of new territories – proves this unequivocally.¶ As far back as the middle of the 19th century, U.S. expansionist
William Gilpin announced: “The destiny of the American people is to subdue the continent.”[1] The primary goal of the United
States is to make sure that the resources of the countries of the South remain at hand of the capital of
the masters of the universe. The case of Cuba is exceptional because it is the only country that has dared to refuse to follow the
orders set by their northern neighbor, designing its political, economic and social system, at once sovereign and independent, despite the
unilateral constraints imposed by Washington. The enmity Cuba is a victim of reflects a historical continuity whose broad lines must be
retraced. And by the way, it would be widely-known if something like a sense of respect for obvious historical truisms existed. This topic would
not be controversial if the society we live in was intellectually free. ¶ Cuba is no doubt the oldest preoccupation of U.S. colonialists. As far back
as October 20, 1805, Thomas Jefferson evoked the extreme importance of the Caribbean archipelago – under Spanish rule at the time – stating:
“The control which, with Florida Point, this island would give us over the Gulf of Mexico, and the countries and isthmus bordering on it, as well
as all those whose waters flow into it, would fill up the measure of our political well-being.”[2] However, Spain could rule the island until “our
people is sufficiently advanced to take those territories from the Spanish, bit by bit”[3]. In 1809, in a letter to James Madison, he wrote: “I
candidly confess that I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of States.”[4] The
theory of the “ripe fruit” – evoked in 1823 by one of the most clear-sighted and intelligent political visionary of the history of the United States,
John Quincy Adams – mentioned “an object of transcendent importance to the commercial and political interests of our Union” that was to fall
in the hands of the United States at all costs[5]. This object was the Cuban island, which was already the priority of the United States
government of the time.¶ After the collapse of Napoleon’s empire, the Monroe doctrine came into the world. It stipulated that the United
States would on no account accept European interventions in the affairs of the American hemisphere. It would enable the northern giant to
establish its power on the whole continent without hindrance, since Europe would not interfere. The theory was first motivated by Russian
designs on Oregon and by the will to prevent any reconquest of the young Latin American republics by European nations. The
Monroe
doctrine – one of the founding principles of U.S. foreign policy – had imperialist and hegemonic aims. With the Roosevelt
Corollary, its scope was later extended to encompass a diversity of situations. Economic factors had a primary role in the search for new
markets. The birth of an industrial nation and the rapid increase in the production of goods entailed the need to conquer new territories.
Because of its strategic position if the Gulf of Mexico and despite the failure of the various attempts to buy the island to
Spain, Cuba was in the U.S. line of sight[6].¶ In 1890, U.S. investments in Cuba amounted to $50 million and 7% of U.S. foreign trade
was with the island. Spain spent $7 million on Cuban imported goods whereas U.S. imports from the archipelago amounted to $61 million. U.S.
economic interests entailed the need for the U.S. to closely control the Cuban market in order to protect U.S. investments[7]. ¶ The main
objective of U.S. intervention in the Cuban war of independence against Spain in 1898 was to prevent Cuban
revolutionaries to gain their sovereignty. Indeed, in January 1896, the captain-general of the island Martínez Campos, who was
in charge of military Spanish operations, resigned, admitting that he was powerless to stop the rebels who had managed to infiltrate into the
distant province of Pinar Del Río, at the extreme West of Cuba. In talks with Spain in June 1896, the United States put forward the possibility of
granting Cuba home rule status. This idea aimed at ruining the independence movement and infuriated Maceo – second-in-command of the
Cuban army of independence – who flatly turned down the idea[8]. Although the Spanish army outnumbered Cuban freedom fighters and
despite its overwhelming material superiority, Cuban rebels were winning one victory after another and their prestige among the Cuban
population and the Latin-American public was growing day by day. The Russian ambassador in La Havana wrote to his counterpart in Spain that
“the cause of Spain [was] lost”[9]. In the same way, Colonel Charles E. Akers, the London Times correspondent, wrote: “With an army of
175,000 men, all kinds of equipment in unlimited quantity, a beautiful weather, no or few diseases, with everything working in his favor,
General Weyler was unable to defeat the rebels. ”[10] Máximo Gómez, commandant of the Cuban revolutionaries, declared on March, 1, 1898:
“the enemies are crushed and retreating and when they had the opportunity to do something, they didn’t do anything.”[11] ¶ This was exactly
at that time that the United States decided to intervene, when Spain was put to rout. The U.S. wanted to despoil the Cuban people of its
independence, an independence that had been conquered with machetes. U.S. Democrat Senator from Virginia John W. Daniel accused the U.S.
government of intervening to prevent a Spanish defeat: “…When the most favorable time for a revolutionary victory and the most unfavorable
time for Spain came … the United States Congress is asked to put the U.S. army into the hands of the President to forcibly impose an armistice
between the two parties, one of them having already surrendered.”[12]¶ The armistice was signed on December, 10, 1898 in Paris, by the
United States and Spain. The Cubans were excluded from the talks. The vile Platt amendment – that was later repealed in 1934 after the United
States started to rule over the whole political and economic life of Cuba – shattered the hopes of Cubans. The
United States replaced
Spain in the role of the colonizer, a role decadent Spain could not take on anymore. After they had suffered from Spanish
colonialism, Cubans were to endure U.S. neo-colonialism and their northern neighbor was going to “build an empire at the expense of
Spain”[13]. On January, 1st, 1899, after the Spanish troops had left, the Stars and Stripes – not the Cuban flag – was hoisted in the sky of La
Havana. The ripe fruit had at last fallen into the hands of the United States[14].¶ After it
had taken hold of almost all sectors of
the Cuban economy, the United States intervened several times to maintain the status quo, notably in 1912, 1917
and 1933 when protests were repressed in a bloodbath. Before the 1959 revolution, U.S. companies owned 80% of services, mines, ranches and
oil refineries, 40% of the sugar industry and 50% of railways[15]. The Batista regime enjoyed Washington benevolence because it wonderfully
served U.S. economic interests. Cuba had to wait until 1959 to taste the fruit of independence that had been forbidden to its people for almost
half a millennium. But again Cuba would have to pay the highest possible price for this slap in the face of its lifelong neighbor, an affront that
would not be forgiven. And what price!¶ The
total blockade of the island imposed on February, 7, 1962 violates
international conventions and runs counter to the most basic juridical principles. Its main objective is to
re-establish U.S. neo-colonial domination over Cuba, using starvation as a political weapon against the Cuban
people. The arguments justifying this economic state of siege varied according to time. During the Cold War, the
“communist threat” that Cuba represented was the paradigm in use although any serious study would smash this theory to pieces. Indeed, in
1959, there was no Soviet presence in Cuba. But Washington stuck to that interpretation: Cuba
represented a threat for U.S.
national security and Kennedy urged Mexico to back them up in their policy of hostility towards Cuba. But the answer of a Mexican
diplomat was not long in coming: “If we publicly declare that Cuba is a threat to our security, forty million Mexicans will die laughing”[16].¶
The Cold War context, used for thirty years as a pretext legitimizing U.S. animosity towards Cuba, was actually a fraud since
there are no facts to support this theory. If there had been any foundations to this thesis, the United States would have
normalized its relations with Cuba after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Instead of that, Washington
launched a new and more serious wave of economic sanctions with the Torricelli Act in 1992 and the Helms-Burton Act
in 1996. As the ancient paradigm departed this life in 1991, a new one was created. Now it is no more about containing communism but
about “re-establishing democracy” in Cuba, a “democracy” devoted to the interests of Washington. No matter if it is ruled by a
clone of Gerardo Machado or Fulgencio Batista: what’s important is that it should make of its subordination to the United States its main virtue.
¶ The economic sanctions imposed on the Cuban people are condemned by almost all countries in the international community and, for twelve
years running, by their overwhelming majority. Nonetheless, not an ounce of change in U.S. foreign policy towards Cuba stands out on the
horizon, driving international opinion to despair. Below is a table summing up the successive votes since 1992: ¶ [TABLE REMOVED]¶ The
only objectives of the United States are to send Cuba back to the pangs and torments afflicting Third
World nations and which it has dared to escape; to plunder its resources; and to destroy its health care
system considered “uniformly as the pre-eminent model for the Third World”, according to the American Association for World Health[17].
The aim of the blockade is to fulfill the wishes of Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams to incorporate Cuba into the U.S. sphere of
the argument of human rights problems
in Cuba is only a rhetoric motivated by self-interest and designed to conceal a very clear plan: to make the
Cuban people toe the line and to send it back to the destitute standards of living they were used to fret over
before the triumph of the Revolution.¶ Recently, President George W. Bush not only added Cuba to the list of terrorist
states – a decision that should cause some mirth among the international community given that this accusation is groundless – but he
also declared that the restrictions concerning the travels of U.S. citizens to Cuba would be made tighter. He also
influence and to enable foreign capital to devastate it. The logorrhea putting forward
called for the creation of a Presidential “Commission for the Assistance to a Free Cuba”, in order to repay the debt he has contracted during the
2000 election campaign with his extreme-right friends of the Cuban-American National Foundation – a powerful entity never reluctant to use
terrorism as a tool to express political ideas[18]. What is the truthfulness of those declarations? It is non-existent. It is easy to guess what kind
of “Free Cuba” the United States wants to create: a regime that would be “more acceptable to the U.S.”, as the Washington administration
underlined it as soon as 1959, that is to say a nation completely obedient to its orders[19].¶ Condoleeza Rice, National Security Advisor to
President Bush, evoked the “intolerable case of Cuba” and this opinion is not groundless if one sees things from the point of view of U.S.
political strategists[20]. Indeed, it is “intolerable” that a Third World country – which is moreover in the U.S. backyard – dares to brave the
masters of the world, intending its natural resources to be used by its people and not by Washington financial and economic interests. It is
intolerable that a nation stifled by a legislative net of sanctions that would be hard to bear even for a European power, is still able to resist after
44 years of economic stifling. And there is even worse: “Social policy is unquestionably one area in which Cuba has excelled by guaranteeing an
equitable distribution of income and well-being of the population, while investing in human capital”, according to the report published by the
United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC)[21]. The United States cannot tolerate this heresy.¶ If
Cuba submits to the orders of Washington, if it accepts to give up its sovereignty and to abandon its resources to the ravenous
appetite of multinationals, forgetting the needs of its people on the way, it will be considered to be part and parcel of the
“democratic world”. But as long as it has not fulfilled those conditions, it will continue to be the target of
Washington attacks. As the hero of the 1898 independence war José Martí said: “Freedom is very expensive and it is necessary either to
resign ourselves to live without it, or to decide to buy it for what it’s worth.” And the Cubans have made their choice.¶ As long as Cuba
continues to challenge the dominant and dogmatic ideology of free market by providing an example showing that it
is possible to free one’s country from the distress of under-development – not through the implementation of the diktats of the International
it will be a victim of
paramilitary attacks organized fron The United States. As long as it refuses to implement market and profit discipline U.S.
Monetary Fund and the World Bank, but by putting human beings at the center of its plans for society –
economic terrorism will not ease off.
The Cuban embargo reflects a larger expansionist and imperialist desire of the United States
Lamrani, 13 (Salim Lamrani, 2013, “The Economic War Against Cuba”,
http://books.google.com/books?id=4FIx_3gFJGYC&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68&dq=%22a+Cold+War+anachron
ism+kept+alive+by+Florida+politics%22+%22&source=bl&ots=JQhx9zZsW&sig=5E0BkGf1wu9bz7WWPyNuSdDTs6k&hl=en&sa=X&ei=WvLWUdy4DofGrQH_uYDACg&v
ed=0CDUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22a%20Cold%20War%20anachronism%20kept%20alive%20by%20
Florida%20politics%22%20%22&f=false)//EM
In fact, to
grasp Washington`s real purpose in its relations with Cuba, it is necessary to go back to the nineteenth
the warnings of josê Marti, apostle and national hero, who warned the peoples of Latin America
against a "convulsed and brutal North," a North that aspired to annex the Caribbean island and dominate the continent."• Long in the
crosshairs of American expansionism, the island of Cuba, because of its geostrategic position and its
natural resources, has always whetted the appetite of the United States. Washington's intervention in the second Cuban War of
century and heed
Independence of 1898 turned Cuba into a protectorate, dependent upon U.S. stewardship. This was a state of aflairs that lasted until the advent ofthe Cuban
Revolu- tion onjanuary 1, 1959, at which point the United States lost all control over the destiny of the Caribbean nation. From Dwight D. Eisenhower to Obama, no
U.S. govemment has accepted the possibility of a sovereign and independent Cuba, a state of aflairs that explains the imposition of economic sanctions in 1960,
sanctions that have continued over the two decades that have followed the "end of history" 218 The
state of economic siege of which the
Cuban people are victims reminds us that the United States-by applying war- time measures in times of
peace against a nation that has never been a threat to its national security-apparently has still not
abandoned its old colonial aspiration of integrating Cuba into the U.S. Washington refuses to
acknowledge the reality of an Latin American nation finally emancipated from heavy-handed U.S. guardianship and, in all
likelihood, does not accept that national sovereignty in Cuba is the sole and exclusive heritage Of the Cuban
people. The economic sanctions also demonstrate that the struggle for Cuban self-determination, begun in |868 by Carlos Manuel de Cêspedes, father of the
co\.u1try, is a daily battle that is far from won. Marti, both a visionary and a man of his own time, had predicted it: "Freedom costs dearly and it is necessary either
to resign yourself to live without it or decide to pay the price."•Â°'° The preservation of Cuban independence and identity comes, it appears, with a price.
Imperialism through economic ordering promulgates racism, sexism, and violence
Mohanty, 6 – postcolonial and transnational feminist theorist, Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, served as the
women's studies department chair and professor of Women's and Gender Studies, Sociology, and the Cultural Foundations of Education and
Dean's Professor of the Humanities at Syracuse University (Chandra Talpade, “US Empire and the Project of Women’s Studies: Stories of
citizenship, complicity and dissent,” Gender, Place and Culture Vol. 13 No. 1, pp. 6–18, February 2006, online at
http://www.tanianavarroswain.com.br/labrys/labrys14/textos/chandra.htm)
A number of scholars including Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin (2004) conclude that since the last decades of the twentieth century, the
US rules through the mechanisms of ‘informal empire’ managing the flow of corporate capital globally
across and through the borders of nation/states, as well as through military interventions in countries that resist this form of
capitalist globalization.[1] However, I would argue that these mechanisms of informal and not violently visible empire
building are predicated on deeply gendered, sexualized, and racial ideologies that justify and consolidate the
hypernationalism, hypermasculinity, and neo-liberal discourses of ‘capitalist democracy’ bringing freedom to oppressed third world peoples—
especially to third world women. The
US war state mobilizes gender and race hierarchies and nationalist
xenophobia in its declaration of internal and external enemies, in its construction and consolidation of
the ‘homeland security’ regime, and in its use of the checkbook and cruise missile to protect its own economic and territorial
interests. It mobilizes both languages of empire and imperialism to consolidate a militarized regime internally as
well as outside its territorial borders. Bringing ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ (or more precisely the free market)to
Afghanistan and Iraq most recently, then, has involved economic devastation, de-masculinization, destruction of cultural,
historical, natural and environmental resources, and, of course, indiscriminate massacres in both countries. Similarly, ‘making
the homeland safe’ has involved the militarization of daily life, increased surveillance and detention of immigrants, and
a culture of authoritarianism fundamentally at odds with American liberal democratic ideals. If the larger, ove
rarching project of the US capitalist state is the production of citizens for empire, then the citizens for democracy narrative no longer holds.
Exceptionalism justifies militarist interventions globally to assimilate the “other” into the American
sphere
McElroy, 13 author for The Future of Freedom Foundation, a fellow of the Independent Institute
(Wendy McElroy, 1/21/13, “The Tension within American Exceptionalism”, http://fff.org/explorefreedom/article/the-tension-within-american-exceptionalism/)//EM
One of the idea’s current and most common uses is in foreign policy. American exceptionalism
is a key assumption driving
the U.S. military’s global presence, even in nations that pose no threat to U.S. security. American
exceptionalism claims there is something qualitatively different and better about the United States as compared to
any other nation; it is socially and politically superior. This means Americans are inherently better than individuals born elsewhere. Thus,
Americans have a duty to spread their form of liberty and democracy — that is, their character — around the globe. In his article
“Exceptionalism in American Foreign Policy: Is It Exceptional?” Kalevi J. Holsti (Professor of Political Science at the University of British
Columbia) lists some of the factors that define an exceptionalist foreign policy. They include “a
presumed duty to liberate other
societies; nonconformity from the standards set in place and followed by non-exceptionalist states; presence in a believed-to-be
hostile world; [and] the belief that the exceptionalist country is both a victim and a constant target.” America’s assumed duty to liberate
other societies — or segments thereof, such as women in Afghanistan — can be expressed in various ways. They include diplomacy, foreign aid,
and political or economic pressure through tactics like embargoes. If “persuasion” does not work, then direct military intervention is an option.
The mission of American exceptionalism in foreign policy is
similar to the “white man’s burden” assumed by the British
was the responsibility that many whites believed they shouldered to
bring Western civilization to non-whites, by force of arms if necessary.
Empire in past centuries. This “burden”
American exceptionalism means a refusal of the U.S. to engage multilaterally—we must take a stance
in this round against such practices
Zinn, 5 former political science professor at Boston University (Howard Zinn, 6/1/5, “The Power and the
Glory”, http://bostonreview.net/zinn-power-glory)//EM
One of the consequences of American exceptionalism is that the U.S. government considers itself
exempt from legal and moral standards accepted by other nations in the world. There is a long list of such selfexemptions: the refusal to sign the Kyoto Treaty regulating the pollution of the environment, the refusal to strengthen
the convention on biological weapons. The United States has failed to join the hundred-plus nations that have agreed
to ban land mines, in spite of the appalling statistics about amputations performed on children mutilated by those mines. It refuses
to ban the use of napalm and cluster bombs. It insists that it must not be subject, as are other countries, to the jurisdiction of
the International Criminal Court. What is the answer to the insistence on American exceptionalism? Those of us in the
United States and in the world who do not accept it must declare forcibly that the ethical norms concerning peace and
human rights should be observed. It should be understood that the children of Iraq, of China, and of Africa, children
everywhere in the world, have the same right to life as American children. These are fundamental moral principles.
If our government doesn’t uphold them, the citizenry must. At certain times in recent history, imperial powers—the
British in India and East Africa, the Belgians in the Congo, the French in Algeria, the Dutch and French in Southeast Asia, the Portuguese in
Angola—have reluctantly surrendered their possessions and swallowed their pride when they were forced to by massive resistance.
As policymakers and academics, we have a responsibility to investigate the metaphors
behind the American imperial project in Cuba
Perez, 8 PhD, J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of History at University of North Carolina (Louis A. Pérez Jr.,
2008, “Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos”, Google Books)//EM
The analysis of
the relationship between language and power necessarily involves the examination of the
ways that metaphor produced knowledge and thereupon enabled power to shape a consensus about the
nature of reality. This is, as historian Michael Hunt has persuasively suggested, on one hand, to take stock of "the need for
greater sensitivity to language and especially to the meaning embedded in key words" and, on the other, "to
look beneath the explicit meanings texts convey to the deeper structures of language and rhetoric that
both impart and circumscribe meaning."• Americans embraced imperialism principally by way of an
accumulated stock of metaphorical constricts, mostly as a set of figurative depictions ar- ranged in the
form of a narrative to represent national purpose. This was meta- phor as the principal means through
which a people persuaded themselves of the beneficence of their purpose and the propriety of their
conduct, that is, the wherewithal to sustain the self-confidence and moral certainty so central to the maintenance of systems of domination.
The ideological function of meta- phor was contained in its use as a source of normative truths, to represent the exercise of North American
power as a matter of moral purpose. For almost all of the nineteenth century, the
Americans stood vigil over the future of
Cuba. The perception of Cuba as profoundly relevant to North American well-being meant that almost
everything that happened on the island somehow implicated U.S. interests. Certainly the Americans thought so.
And on the matter of the future of sovereignty over Cuba, the Americans were as unequivocal as they were unyielding. "The American
Govemment,"• U.S. minister to Spain Alexander Everett pronounced as early as 1825, "could not consent to any change in the political situation
of Cuba other than one which should place it under thejurisdiction ofthe United States."• This meant first and foremost, of course, the
detennination to prevent the transfer of Cuba from Spain to any other European power. But it also meant opposition to the succession of
sovereignty of Cuba by the Cubans. First during the years 1868-78 and 1879-80, but especially 1895-98, Cubans embarked upon wars of
liberation explicitly with the objective of seizing control of their own future. These were popular mobilizations, imbued with a sense of destiny
radically different from what the Americans had imagined for Cuba. The Cuban inde- pendence war of 1895-98 in particular challenged North
American designs on Cuba's future, and indeed in 1898-in what subsequently passed into U.S. his- tory books as the "Spanish-American War"•the Americans acted in defense of their interests.
1ac tourism
US tourism in Cuba is on the rise – Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s trip spurs it
Gibson, 13 – (William E, Washington Bureau “Jay-Z and Beyoncé tour stokes desire to visit Cuba” http://www.sun-sentinel.com/fl-cubatravel-congressional-push-20130602,0,7448204.story) //NG
Jay-Z and Beyoncé's controversial trip to Cuba four weeks ago has stoked public interest in traveling to the
forbidden island, prompting more Americans to seek similar "people-to-people" culture tours.¶ Insight Cuba, the first and largest of
the Cuba tour groups, estimates that public inquiries and bookings have grown by 10 percent to 15 percent since
Jay-Z and Beyoncé's tour in early April.¶ "It's had a huge impact. Everything from our call center to our website to our blog to our
Facebook page just lit up," said Tom Popper, president of Insight Cuba. "People were Googling it and curious. The debate got
heightened, and also people's awareness of this kind of tour was heightened."¶ The rapper/singer celebrity couple
popularized a small but growing travel phenomenon that taps a pent-up demand to visit Cuba, an exotic
time-locked land still off-limits to U.S. tourists. Their highly publicized adventure — while sharply criticized by U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, RFla., and other Cuban-American leaders — also reinforced attempts by many members of Congress to make it easier for almost any American to
legally visit Cuba.¶ Despite
a five-decade trade embargo, Americans are allowed to travel to Cuba. But the rules
don't make it easy, unless you are Cuban-American.¶ Roughly 400,000 Cuban-American passengers went to Cuba last
year, taking advantage of a 2009 rule change by President Barack Obama that allows unlimited visits to family
members.¶ Another rule change in 2011 allows groups licensed by the U.S. Treasury Department to lead
cultural tours of Cuba. The idea was to put more Americans in contact with the Cuban people. Some proponents
hoped this closer engagement would build pressure for economic and political reforms in the island nation.¶ An estimated 90,000 Americans
made these "people-to-people" visits last year, up slightly over previous years. Insight Cuba projects that its bookings will increase to 5,000 this
year from about 3,000 in 2012.¶ But the rules are rigorous for these tours, including the one taken by Beyoncé and Jay-Z. They arranged their
trip through Academic Arrangements Abroad, a nonprofit group based in New York, one of more than 230 organizations licensed to sponsor
travel to Cuba.¶ At the insistence of Rubio and other embargo defenders, all such tours must have an approved itinerary heavy on "purposeful"
activities — such as visits to senior centers, schools and artist studios.¶ It's not supposed to be a day at the beach.¶ Beyoncé and Jay-Z, while
celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary on the three-day trip, reportedly stuck to their itinerary, visiting a school, a children's theater group
and a jazz club while meeting musicians.¶ Rubio and other embargo defenders — who want to sharply limit even family visits — say all these
trips put money in the hands of a repressive Castro regime.¶ Rubio last year stalled Senate confirmation of an Obama nominee — Roberta
Jacobson to be assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs — until the State Department agreed to impose tighter
requirements on tour groups.¶ Under the new rules, applications to obtain or renew "specific" tour licenses went from about six pages to as
many as 600 pages. And they can take weeks or months to process.¶ "Every day has to be chock-full of approved activities, pretty much from 9
to 5," Popper said. "It's a rigorous day. People are mentally and physically exhausted, but incredibly stimulated and inspired.¶ "Not everybody
wants to travel that way," he acknowledged.¶ But, Popper added, Beyoncé
and Jay-Z's trip helped overcome the biggest
hurdle to travel by making Americans aware that they can visit Cuba legally through these culture tours.¶ Hoping to
further ease travel, 59 Democrats in the U.S. House wrote Obama in April urging him to let anyone go to Cuba on their own without prior
approval by the U.S. government.¶ The House members — led by Sam Farr, D-Calif. — want to allow travelers to go under a "general" license.
As Cuban-Americans do now, visitors could book their trip through a charter airline and sign an affidavit to affirm they have a permissible
purpose.¶ Administration officials have not responded. They have been reluctant to make further changes in policy until Cuban authorities
release Alan Gross, of Maryland, who was jailed in December 2009 for alleged "crimes against the state" for bringing satellite-communications
equipment to the island.¶ But proponents of expanded travel hope that recent reforms in Cuba — notably a new policy this year that allows
Cubans to leave the island on a passport without prior approval — will spur Obama to further loosen U.S. travel rules.¶ "The Cuban government
remains repressive. They have serious human-rights issues," said U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Tampa, after returning from Havana in April. "But I
think the policy of embargo and isolation over 50 years hasn't improved that situation. We need to try something new."
Cuba is the newest hotbed for tourists craving sex with minors – investigation proves
Cribb et al, 13 – (Toronto Star reporters Robert Cribb, Jennifer Quinn and Julian Sher, and El Nuevo Herald reporter Juan O. Tamayo
“How Cuba became the newest hotbed for tourists craving sex with minors” 3/16/13 http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/16/vfullstory/3289971/how-cuba-became-the-newest-hotbed.html#storylink=cpy //NG)
The 50-something Canadian steps inside a downtown bar, his left arm wound tightly around the waist of
a young prostitute as he flashes a sly grin. A winking bartender welcomes him like an old friend.¶ “It’s hard not to
be inspired by this,” Michael says, looking over his companion for the night. “And that,” he adds, his eyes pointing to one of the
other young women in the bar. “This is the promised land.”¶ Michael, a retiree from Vancouver Island, spends up to
six months a year in Havana, where he says he has discovered easy access to young women willing to ignore age
differences — in exchange for as little as $30 for the night.¶ Foreign tourists, especially Canadians and Spaniards, are
travelling to Cuba in surprising numbers for sex — and not just with adult prostitutes. They are finding underage girls and
boys, a joint investigation by The Toronto Star and El Nuevo Herald has found.¶ Havana’s conspicuous scenes of
street-level prostitution are the outward face of a hidden prostitution trade in minors, some as young as four, some with
families complicit in their exploitation, the newspapers found.¶ Cuba holds unique allure for Western sex tourists. It is closer and
cheaper than other sex destinations, such as Thailand. And HIV rates are lower than in other Caribbean sex tourism hotspots, such as the
Dominican Republic or Haiti.¶ While the size of the island’s underage sex market remains a mystery — the
communist government
denies it is a problem and fosters the image of an island free of the social ills that plague other nations —
it clearly goes on.¶ • A confidential Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) report in 2011 showed Cuba was one of the main destinations in
the Americas for Canadian sex predators, along with the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Brazil and Mexico. More than one million Canadian tourists
visited Cuba last year.¶ • Cuba’s government “made no known efforts to reduce the demand for commercial sex,” noted the 2012 version of
the U.S. State Department’s annual report on global Trafficking in Persons (TIP).¶ • The 2003 version noted that some officials of Cuban
state enterprises such as restaurants and hotels “turn a blind eye to this [child] exploitation because such activity
helps to win hard currency.”¶ • A dispatch by U.S. diplomats in Havana in 2009 noted that “some Cuban children are
reportedly pushed into prostitution by their families, exchanging sex for money, food or gifts,” but gave no
overall numbers.¶ Pimps, cabbies and tourist hotel staffers can procure discreet meetings with underage prostitutes, according to the RCMP
report.¶ “That’s prohibited here in the hotel,” a security chief at a Havana hotel told a journalist posing as a tourist in search of underage girls.
But, he added helpfully, they can be found “in houses waiting for the call from pimps.”¶ Clients can
known as “casas particulares,” the security man noted, where tourists
take them to private homes,
can rent rooms for $10 a night and do “whatever you want.
Orgies, anything.” Bleak future Exploitation thrives were poverty exists, and in that respect Cuba is no different than
other destinations for sex tourists.¶ ¶ Ivan Garcia, 43, a dissident Havana journalist who has written several articles on prostitution, said the
underage prostitutes are typically poor, hopeless and desperate. “For these people, ‘future’ is a bad
word,” he said.¶ ¶ Today, prostitution may well be the most profitable job in an island where the average
monthly salary officially stands at less than $20 and a bottle of cooking oil costs $3.¶ ¶ But Garcia argues that there’s
more to prostitution on the island than poverty — that most Cubans dream of meeting a foreigner who will take them away from the island’s
grinding isolation.¶ ¶ “They see that this girl married some Italian and now she’s dressing nice, fixing up her mother’s house – it’s the illusion
that you can get ahead if you prostitute yourself … the illusion of leaving the country, the illusion of a visa,” he said.¶ ¶ Garcia said he knows two
12-year-old girls currently working the streets and has heard of 11-year-olds. Havana lawyer Laritza Diversent said she knew of one nine-yearold girl who “was groped lasciviously” for cash. Age of consent The
State Department’s TIP report has classified Cuba as a
“Tier 3” country — the worst of its rankings — when it comes to combating sex trafficking every year since
2003.¶ ¶ Cuban laws “do not appear to penalize prostitution of children between the ages of 16 and 18” and
prostitution for those 18 and older is legal though pimping is outlawed, the 2012 edition noted.¶ ¶ The age of sexual
consent on the island is 16 but girls can marry at 14 with parental approval, Diversent said. Foreigners caught with
prostitutes older than 16 are usually not arrested but the minors can be sent to youth detention centers, she added, although police often
take bribes to look the other way.
Plan solves – allows the US to work with Cuba to solve sex trafficking
Havana Times 13 – (The Havana Times regularly collaborates with many contributors - cites account from Graham Sowa – resident of
Cuba for 3 years. “Prostitution in Cuba: Denied at Home, Enabled from Abroad” 3/30/13 http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=90370) //NG
In Cuba the denial of prostitution is a lie of omission: the government doesn’t really talk about it. At the same time
American politicians promote a travel ban that seriously damages United States efforts to identify and
prosecute child sex tourism.¶ Few people in Cuba want to talk about prostitution. I’ve been here for three years and I have yet to see
any type of campaign against prostitution or sex tourism. Denial that prostitution is rampant in the tourist sector is an outright lie. Anyone who
disagrees is invited to walk down Obispo Street with me (this is a serious offer). You will think the only services offered to tourists in Havana
Vieja are taxis and blowjobs.¶ Police are often witness to the solicitation. I’ve never seen them intervene. I’m left to wonder if they are paid inkind or in cash for their see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil approach to their job.¶ I know right now those readers who defend Cuba out of
reactionary habit are preparing their anecdotal story about how sex crimes with minors are prosecuted in Cuba. And those stories are probably
true. But they don’t originate from the official news here. Not the crime, not the societal problem, not the obvious police corruption and not
even the successful prosecution (of what I am left to imagine are a very small percentage of cases) are addressed at any level higher than street
gossip among neighbors.¶ Child
sex tourism (or child rape tourism as it should be known as) not only exists, but is literally killing
Cuban children. I refer here to a good piece of journalism from the Miami Herald about a 12 year old girl who was statutorily raped to
death by European and Cuban tourists.¶ The Cuban authorities acted appropriately and tried and jailed the rapists. Of course we read nothing
in the local newspapers about the crime or punishment.¶ In the United States the story ran one day in the Miami-Herald and I could not find
any syndication in other newspapers, not even the European ones. So I can’t say my society is very interested in making this problem known
either.¶ The same day the Toronto Star ran an article about child rape tourism in Cuba originating from Canada after a lengthy Canadian
Government investigation of the sick enterprise.¶ But the Cuban problem in Cuba is only one half of the picture. As far as the
United
States is concerned the extreme right Miami-Cuban community continues to support a travel ban that
has made it all but impossible to track and prosecute child rapists for their pedophilic visits to Cuba.¶ The
octagenarian anti-Fidelistas will sometimes harp on prostitution as a reason why the Revolution has failed. (Even though I have no idea how
they would ban it if they somehow took power again. I can only imagine it would get worse with floods of Cuban-Americans returning to the
island.)¶ But the Cuban-Americans never take the discussion about sex tourism further than superficial criticism because that would mean
either stiffening the travel ban to unconstitutional proportions or ending it outright. They don’t have the courage or political capital to do the
former and completely lack the intelligent foresight to do the latter.¶ An apt example is the Junior United States Senator from Florida (who
knows just as much about Cuba as anyone else who has never been there) Marco Rubio. Senator Rubio recently spoon fed some tired rhetoric
to a lobby group about how American travelers to Cuba treat the country as a “zoo”.¶ Obviously aside from knowing nothing about Cuba
outside of Miami hearsay and gossip, Senator Rubio also knows nothing about American tourists. So let me tell Senator Rubio what most of us
Americans know about ourselves: we, as Americans, pretty much treat everywhere we travel to like a zoo. (I encourage any doubters to watch
the movie National Lampoon’s European Vacation.)¶ We even treat local tourism, within the United States, like a zoo. Look at Senator Rubio’s
beloved Miami; whose tourist fueled party culture, fleeting decadence, silicon beauties, and millions of people stuck in a sad cultural limbo are
as worthy as comparison to an animal prison as any Communist Caribbean island.¶ Instead of making predictable observations about American
travel attitudes I think Senator Rubio would have been better off having a discussion on how the United States could do something to prevent
child rape tourism to Cuba. Because as it stands we are probably facilitating more than we are prosecuting.¶ Illegal
travel to Cuba
under the current United States travel ban usually involves passing through Mexico first, followed by the final
leg to Cuba. Upon arrival in Cuba the Cuban Passport Control does not stamp United States passports. Instead they stamp a piece of paper
inside of the passport.¶ Without a passport stamp the traveler is left with plausible deniability that they never traveled to Cuba. And with
Cuban-American relations kept dismal by petty disputes perpetuated by feuding octogenarian neighbors there is no reason to expect Cuban
cooperation in a United States investigation into crimes committed by a U.S. Citizen in Cuba.¶ So the
situation, made possible by
both Cuban and United States policies, is that a pedophile can travel to Cuba from the United States knowing that their home
country will not be able to prosecute the crime.¶ In a problem this grave both Cuba and the United States share blame. And
while I would like to see both countries take a much more hard-line approach to child rape tourism that
involves civil society; as a United States citizen I’m going to appeal to my homeland.¶ As a country we need to decide if we are going to
continue letting our differences with the Cuban government set the limits to the actions we will take to do what is right. If we know that people
can use the travel ban to fly under the radar and rape children with little to no fear of getting caught shouldn’t we talk about ways to prevent
that, regardless of what the Cubans are doing?¶ I think that legalizing
all travel to Cuba, with the understanding that
Cubans would stamp all United States passports and cooperate with United States law surrounding sex
tourism, would help make child rape tourism to Cuba feasibly prosecutable as a federal crime under the
PROTECT Act of April 2003. I hope other people will offer their thoughts, opinions or original ideas.
Sex tourism violates the rights of women, while enhancing males’ sense of masculine
dominance and superiority
Hobbs et al 11 Professor of Communication Studies at Phuket Rajabhat University in Thailand AND
Assistant Dean for Academic and Research Affairs, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Phuket
Rajabhat University AND Director of the Nicholson School of Communication, University of Central
Florida, USA (Jeffrey Dale Hobbs, Piengpen Na Pattalung, Robert C. Chandler, April 2011, “Advertising
Phuket's Nightlife on the Internet:1 A Case Study of Double Binds and Hegemonic Masculinity in Sex
Tourism”, Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia Volume 26, Number 1, Project Muse)//EM
The review of literature suggests that men travel to Thailand as sex tourists to rediscover (create or recreate, construct or
reconstruct) their [End Page 89] masculinity (Johnson 2007, p. 154). This rediscovery is based on imagined ideas of the authentic (Johnson
2007, p. 158) and creates constructs which inherently violate the human rights of women through sexual
exploitation (Hemingway 2004, pp. 278–79). Two concepts which may influence sex tourists' imagined authenticities of
masculinity and femininity are double binds and hegemonic masculinity. Men's failure to achieve "perfect"
masculinity (Boon, p. 301) and/or to find "perfect" femininity at home — the perfect being impossible to find — may provide incentives for men
to engage in sex tourism away from home. However, this study is not concerned, per se, with the psychology of these motivations or with the
critical sociological implications of the persistence of these two underlying cultural constructs. Rather, this study seeks to understand if images
of Thai culture and Thailand are constructed and communicated in a way that draws upon such motivations as a means of persuasion that
serves to symbolically construct Thailand as an appropriate and desirable "sex tourist" destination. In particular, the explosion of Internet usage
among "sex tourist" populations (as well as a means of marketing Thailand as a tourist destination) provides a logical starting place to
investigate how such expectations are shaped or targeted in promotional efforts to entice tourists to Thailand. Thus, one move towards
responsible tourism requires a critical look at the concepts of double binds and masculine hegemony through
a feminist lens as they relate to sex tourism. With this agenda in mind, the following two research questions are posed: 1. What
gender roles are communicated as appropriate by websites used to advertise nightlife in Phuket, Thailand? 2. In what ways do the websites
used to advertise nightlife in Phuket utilize rhetoric to support or challenge patriarchy?
This is made worse by the commodification of bodies intrinsic to sex tourism
Duvivier, 8 Ph. D. in literature from Duke University, is an assistant professor of English at James
Madison University (Sandra C. Duvivier, Fall 2008, “My Body is My Piece of Land”, Project Muse)//EM
Mimi’s big sale is in tandem with what sociologist Carolle Charles observes in relation to many working-class and poor Haitian women’s
perceptions of the body as a marketable entity: In Haiti, poor and working women speak in a different way about the image
and usage of the body for social reproduction, for economic survival, for social status, and for heterosexual encounters and conjugal
relationships. [ . . . ] While the dominant discourse symbolically describes women and their bodies as “ripe fruit ready to be eaten,” working
class women, in contrast, define their bodies as a “resource, an asset, a form of capital that can reap profits if well invested.” “Kom se kawo
tèm” (my body is my piece of land) claim many poor Haitian women.6 Unlike larger Haitian discourse’s patriarchal
constructions of
women’s bodies, which place the benefits of women’s sexuality at the hands of men, poor and working-class
Haitian women’s definitions allow for female agency and capitalizing off of their own bodies. Nevertheless, their use of their bodies as
potential capital is not without sexual exploitation by men. Furthermore, in Peggy’s case, Mimi decides to exploit her
body as well as her complexion and hair texture, both inherited by a distant ancestor and very much unlike the rest of her family, which render
her more of a marketable asset for Henri. In the sale of her own body, Peggy is denied autonomy. Because Mimi is able to
sell her daughter, she excitedly informs her children that “Peggy went out to buy water and instead brought you all something even better”
(31). Her comment, resonant of the nursery rhyme’s “little piggy” going to the marketplace and returning with provisions, illuminates
the
body’s potential for capital in the market on macroeconomic and microeconomic levels. Yet, Mimi’s lessened
excitement upon looking at Peggy exemplifies, as the narration implies, her guilt over sanctioning her daughter’s sexual exploitation. It possibly
also suggests that Mimi may have certain mores concerning “proper” female sexual conduct, but does not have the economic luxury to enforce
certain practices. Thus, she perceives selling Peggy’s sexuality as the only feasible way out of extreme poverty. Mimi’s selling of Peggy is
tantamount to Peggy’s commercial sexual exploitation, which the World Congress defines as “sexual abuse by the adult and remuneration in
cash or kind to the child or to a third person or persons [ . . . ]. [I]t constitutes
a form of coercion and violence against
children and amounts to forced labor and a contemporary form of slavery.”7 Like slaves, Peggy is sold into
servitude without her permission or consent. Her purchase requires her moving to facilities arranged by Henri, where she will,
as Mimi informs her, bear his children. Peggy’s situation parallels slaves’ forced sexual labor, including having to bear
children, with slave owners and/or other slaves against their will. Additionally, Peggy is to remain deferential to Henri
and confined to the bungalow, not traveling even to visit her family. Being excluded from the decision-making process of her purchase and
future sexual activities with Henri further emblematizes Peggy’s relatively young, not fully sexually autonomous position and manipulation by
both Henri and Mimi. Though not explicitly sexually abusing Peggy, Mimi exploits her daughter’s sexuality for economic gain, thereby [End Page
1108] rendering herself a sexually abusive party. Mimi also takes advantage of Peggy’s complexion, which attracts Henri and leads to his
wanting children with her: illustrated by her informing Peggy, “You can make beautiful children for any man. You are lucky that way” (31). Now
bought, Peggy
is Henri’s “property” and lacks sexual and overall autonomy.
Patriarchy causes extinction
Warren & Cady 94 [Professors of Philosophy at Macalester College & Hamline University Karen and Duane,
“Hypatia”, Spring, 1994. Proquest]
The notion of patriarchy as a socially dysfunctional system enables feminist philosophers to show why conceptual connections are so
important and how conceptual connections are linked to the variety of other sorts of woman-nature-peace connections. In addition,
the claim that patriarchy is a dysfunctional social system locates what ecofeminists see as various "dysfunctionalities" of patriarchythe empirical invisibility of what women do, sexist-warist-naturist language, violence toward women, other cultures, and nature-in a
historical, socioeconomic, cultural, and political context.(10)
To say that patriarchy is a dysfunctional system is to
say that the fundamental beliefs, values, attitudes and assumptions (conceptual framework) of patriarchy give
rise to impaired thinking, behaviors, and institutions which are unhealthy for humans,
especially women, and the planet. The following diagram represents the features of patriarchy as a dysfunctional social
system: Patriarchy, as an Up-Down system of power-over relationships of domination of women by men, is
conceptually grounded in a faulty patriarchal belief and value system, (a), according to which (some)
men are rational and women are not rational, or at least not rational in the more highly valued way (some) men
are rational; reason and mind are more important than emotion and body; that humans are justified in using
female nature simply to satisfy human consumptive needs. The discussion above of patriarchal conceptual
frameworks describes the characteristics of this faulty belief system. Patriarchal conceptual frameworks sanction,
maintain, and perpetuate impaired thinking, (b): For example, that men can control women's inner lives, that
it is men's role to determine women's choices, that human superiority over nature justifies human
exploitation of nature, that women are closer to nature than men because they are less rational, more emotional, and respond
in more instinctual ways than (dominant) men. The discussions above at (4) and (5), are examples of the linguistic and
psychological forms such impaired thinking can take. Operationalized, the evidence of patriarchy as a
dysfunctional system is found in the behaviors to which it gives rise, (c), and the unmanageability, (d), which results. For example, in
the United States, current estimates are that one
out of every three or four women will be raped by someone
she knows; globally, rape, sexual harassment, spouse-beating, and sado-masochistic pornography are examples of behaviors
practiced, sanctioned, or tolerated within patriarchy. In the realm of environmentally destructive
behaviors, strip-mining, factory farming, and pollution of the air, water, and soil are instances of behaviors
maintained and sanctioned within patriarchy. They, too, rest on the faulty beliefs that it is okay to "rape the
earth," that it is "man's God-given right" to have dominion (that is, domination) over the earth, that nature has only instrumental
value, that environmental destruction is the acceptable price we pay for "progress." And the presumption of warism, that
war is a natural, righteous, and ordinary way to impose dominion on a people or nation, goes hand in hand with
patriarchy and leads to dysfunctional behaviors of nations and ultimately to international unmanageability. Much of the
current "unmanageability" of contemporary life in patriarchal societies, (d), is then viewed as a consequence of a patriarchal
preoccupation with activities, events, and experiences that reflect historically male-gender-identified beliefs, values, attitudes, and
assumptions. Included among these real-life consequences
are precisely those concerns with nuclear
proliferation, war, environmental destruction, and violence toward women, which many
feminists see as the logical outgrowth of patriarchal thinking. In fact, it is often only through observing these
dysfunctional behaviors--the symptoms of dysfunctionality--that one can truly see that and how patriarchy
serves to maintain and perpetuate them. When patriarchy is understood as a dysfunctional system, this
"unmanageability" can be seen for what it is--as a predictable and thus logical consequence of patriarchy.(11) The theme that global
environmental crises, war, and violence generally are predictable and logical consequences of
sexism and patriarchal culture is pervasive in ecofeminist literature (see Russell 1989, 2). Ecofeminist Charlene Spretnak, for
instance, argues that "a militarism and warfare are continual features of a patriarchal society because they reflect and instill
patriarchal values and fulfill needs of such a system. Acknowledging the context of patriarchal
conceptualizations that feed militarism is a first step toward reducing their impact and preserving life
on Earth" (Spretnak 1989, 54). Stated in terms of the foregoing model of patriarchy as a dysfunctional social system, the claims by
Spretnak and other feminists take on a clearer meaning: Patriarchal conceptual frameworks
legitimate
impaired thinking (about women, national and regional conflict, the environment) which is manifested in
behaviors which, if continued, will make life on earth difficult, if not impossible. It is a stark
message, but it is plausible. Its plausibility lies in understanding the conceptual roots of various woman-nature-peace connections in
regional, national, and global contexts.
1ac framing
Citizens have a prima facie obligation to be informed about mass atrocities – it’s key
to prevent them
Filice, 90 – Professor And Chair Of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Geneseo, PhD from the University of Illinois (Carlo
“On the Obligation to Keep Informed about Distant Atrocities,” Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 12 No. 3, pg. 397-414, August 1990,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/762531)//BI
Because the "average" US citizen does not know these massacres occur, nor of the government's relatively close ties to
the regimes perpetrating them, the average citizen does nothing to help end the slaughters. Is this ignorance and
resulting inaction morally excusable? The following is one line of argument in favor of a "no" answer. It tries to establish that
most of us are under a prima facie obligation to keep informed about cases such as East Timor. What it maintains about
US citizens would also apply to citizens of other major powers whose governments play supportive roles in the atrocities of other governments.
1. One has a prima facie obligation to help prevent harm, especially major, avoidable suffering and death,
whenever helping to do so requires only trivial sacrifices, such as buying fewer or no luxury items, spending less time watching television, etc.,
and whenever there is some chance that one's efforts will produce at least some success.7 2. One will not be in a position to help prevent harm
if one is unaware of the occurrence of this harm. 3. One who has a prima facie obligation to help prevent X also has a prima facie obligation to
attempt to position oneself so as to be able to help prevent X , particularly if these positional attempts are likely to be successful (e.g., if A has a
prima facie duty to prevent his own violent behavior, A also has a prima facie duty to attempt to remain sober if drunkenness tends to make A
violent, and if A's attempts to remain sober are not absolutely hopeless). 4. Therefore, each
of us has a prima facie obligation to
make serious attempts to become and remain informed about the occurrence of major, avoidable harm
whenever these attempts at gaining the necessary information are likely to succeed and require small sacrifices, and whenever there is some
chance for the prevention of at least some harm. 5. Major moral atrocities,
such as the systematic and large-scale
torture and killing by a government for political reasons, constitute one class of major avoidable harm. 6.
Therefore each of us has a prima facie obligation to make serious Attempts to be informed about the occurrence of major moral atrocities
(whenever the conditions in 4 above obtain). 7. Most people in developed countries who attempt to gain the necessary iformation are likely to
succeed. 8. Most people in developed countries can make serious attempts to gain the necessary information about current moral atrocities
without such attempts resulting in major sacrifices. 9. The preventive
actions based on such information have some
likelihood of leading to the prevention of at least some harm resulting from major moral atrocities. 10. Therefore, most
people in developed countries have a prima facie obligation to make serious attempts to become informed about the current major moral
atrocities, especially those occurring within their country's sphere of influence
Debate over the ethical implications of the Cuban embargo is key to end the “crime of
silence”
Heizer, 98 – practices civil rights and employment law in Milwaukee, WI, graduated from the University of Wisconsin Law School cum laude
(Arthur, “The U.S. economic blockade of Cuba: a crime against humanity?,” Guild Practitioner, Vol. 55 No. 2, 1998, HeinOnline)//BI
the U.S. embargo policy reaches criminal proportions involves medications for which there are
of life-saving medicine to Cuban patients when it is clear that no substitute is available, appears
to be every bit as serious as denying life-saving food or medicine to POWs or populations of occupied
territories. In this light, the practical impact of the extraterritorial reach of both CDA and of Helms-Burton upon the pharmaceutical industry
must be examined. It is widely recognized that a major consolidation of international pharmaceutical companies is under way. Few if any
international drug companies can be free of significant U.S. holdings or influence. Further, the AAWH study,
The strongest argument that
no alternatives. The denial
finding that over 50% of new medications are denied to Cuban patients, is particularly damning. The example of Cuba's AIDS and HIV-positive
patients, dying because they are denied the recently developed cocktail of life-extending medications bearing U.S. patents is particularly
telling.7" This is complicated by the fact that U.S.-developed
life saving medications are covered by a 17-year patent,
making their sale to Cuba illegal, and virtually sentencing to death whole categories of patients who
otherwise could be saved.7' A related question is the degree to which the shortage of medical equipment and medicine is a result of more
generalized increases in costs, rather than an explicit ban on the sale of a particular medicine. For example, if Cuba has to pay 30-40% more for
its medicines and cannot afford it, some patients will die, even if substitutes are theoretically available around the world. A suspicion that the
overall problems of the Cuban economy are the cause of medical shortages, more so than the discreet blockage of specific medications, may be
a concern in the review of the pending OAS petition cited above. While the decision to bar particular life-saving medicine from a particular set
of patients is tantamount to executing them, is a more generalized process which results in the same deaths any less a crime? The difference is
that here there may be dual causation: both a cash-starved economy, and additional costs being imposed upon it. Where
the only
available medication is explicitly barred, cause and effect, and therefore culpability, are clear. The fact that
Cuba's economy is strapped for hard currency is a given. As Cuban authorities have argued, policies which double the cost of medicine may
result in denying effective treatment for two patients, or in denying it to one of them, when otherwise both could be treated and presumably
saved. Claiming
that the U.S. embargo policy constitutes a "crime against humanity" may be criticized as
the concept of crimes against humanity has been
reasonably broadened since Nuremburg to include various types of extremely oppressive behavior. For example, the crime of
demeaning the seriousness of such crimes by attempting to generalize them, but
apartheid has been understood to fall into the category of crimes against humanity. Measures designed to divide the population along racial
lines and particularly "deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction
in whole or in part" arguably rise to the level of crime against humanity.72 "War crimes" have been understood to encompass crimes
committed "for the extermination of a race, nation or political party," including the "willful starvation of populations, excessive removal
offoodstuffs or depriving persons of shelter, clothing and/or other means of sustenance. 3 I
suggest this issue be debated widely,
especially in the U.S. and among its allies. A very serious deprivation of human rights is undoubtedly taking
place; it is not fully known by most of the U.S. populace, and it behooves all of us to help end this "crime
of silence."
Add-ons
2ac heteronormativity add-on
The Castro regimes perpetuates heteronormative violence
Tatchell, 2 writer and a political activist on behalf of lesbian and gay rights (Peter Tatchell, Spring 2002,
“Gay Rights and Wrongs in Cuba”, http://www.pinktriangle.org.uk/glh/213/cuba.html)//EM
The persecution of the gay Cuban novelist Reinaldo Arenas (1943-1990) symbolises the worst homophobic excesses of Fidel Castro’s
revolutionary Cuba: a period in the 1960s and 1970s when the witch-hunts of homosexuals in Cuba prefigured the oppression of gay Chileans
during the Pinochet dictatorship. Although Cuban queers are no longer savagely repressed, it
is nonsense for the Cuban government and
its apologists in the West to claim there is no anti-gay discrimination in Cuba today. It is true that Havana has none of the
death squads that murder queers in Bogotá, but this is hardly proof of Castro’s liberalism. Moreover, socialist Cuba may have the highest
standards of health, education and housing of any Latin American country, and a literacy rate exceeding that of the United States. Great! But
what is the point of excellent social welfare policies if people are not free and human rights are not respected? Like many other lesbian and gay
Cubans, Reinaldo Arenas was initially an ardent supporter of the revolution, running away from home at the age of fourteen to join the rebels
who were fighting to overthrow the American-backed Batista dictatorship. After Castro’s victory in 1959, Arenas benefited from the new
government’s mass education programme, eventually gaining a place at the University of Havana and winning official acclaim for his first novel,
Singing from the Well. But his follow-up book, Hallucinations, was refused publication and had to be smuggled to a publisher overseas. This act
of defiance resulted in repeated police raids and the confiscation of his manuscripts. The campaign of harassment culminated in his arrest in
1973 on a false charge of sexual assault. Fearful of his fate, Arenas escaped from prison and made an unsuccessful attempt to float to Florida on
an inner tube. Recaptured, he spent the next two years brutalised inside El Morro prison, until he agreed to secure his freedom by renouncing
his “deviant” writings. Arenas eventually got out of Cuba in the 1980 Mariel Harbour exodus, when Castro decided to get rid of “antisocial”
dissidents, criminals and homosexuals by allowing these “scum” to emigrate to the US. Settling in New York proved a mixed blessing. While free
to write, he was stateless, impoverished and later contracted HIV. With no health insurance, he could not afford proper treatment. Dying and
plagued by depression, Arenas committed suicide in 1990, aged 47. If his life was an indictment of communism’s lack of political, artistic and
sexual freedom, then the circumstances of his death were an equally damning reproach concerning the fate of the poor and sick under
capitalism. Arenas himself made this point shortly before his death, bemoaning that by going into exile he had exchanged political repression
for economic injustice. Peter Marshall’s generally favourable book about the revolution, Cuba Libre, recalls that, like Arenas, many gay artists
and intellectuals supported Castro’s insurrection. They saw his rebellion against the US-backed dictatorship as paving the way for cultural and
sexual freedom, as well as economic emancipation and social justice. The popular left-wing journal Lunes de Revolución was run largely by gay
writers. Its radical ideas seemed to enjoy the tacit support of the rebels in the Sierra Maestra. A couple of years after Castro came to power,
however, Lunes de Revolución was closed down, as were other freethinking magazines. Many gay authors and
journalists were
publicly disgraced, refused publication and dismissed from their jobs. Some were reassigned to work as
janitors and labourers. While Castro challenged many backward ideas as remnants of the old society, he embraced with
enthusiasm the homophobia of Latin machismo and Catholic dogma, elevating it into a fundamental
tenet of Cuba’s new socialist morality. Idealising rural life, he once claimed approvingly that “in the country, there are no homosexuals”.
When Cuba adopted Soviet-style communism it also adopted Soviet-style prejudice and puritanism. Ever since Stalin promoted the ideology of
“the socialist family” and recriminalised gay sex in 1934, communist orthodoxy dictated that homosexuality was a “bourgeois decadence” and
“capitalist degeneration”. This became the Cuban view. “Maricones” (faggots) were routinely denounced as “sexual deviants” and
“agents of imperialism”. Laughable allegations of homosexuality were used in an attempt to discredit “corrupting” Western influences, such as
pop music, with the communists circulating the rumour that the Beatles were gay. In the name of the new socialist morality,
homosexuality was declared illegal in Cuba and typically punishable by four years’ imprisonment. Parents
were required to prevent their children from engaging in homosexual activities and to report those who did to the authorities. Failure to
inform on a gay child was a crime against the revolution. Official homophobia led, in the mid-1960s, to the mass
round-up of gay people, without charge or trial. Many were seized in night-time swoops and incarcerated in forced-labour camps for
“re-education” and “rehabilitation”. A few disappeared and never returned. One gay man recalls: “We were taken to Camagüey, at the other
end of the island. It was a camp surrounded with barbed wire, with watchtowers manned by guards with machine guns.” The camp inmates
included not just homosexuals, but also criminals, students, Catholics and political dissidents. They were set to work at 3 a.m., cutting sugar
cane with machetes. It was backbreaking labour on meagre food rations. The gay
prisoners were often beaten, and
occasionally raped, by criminal gangs in the camps. Some gays were killed; others committed suicide.
This heternormative violence is at the root of broader structural violence that should
be rejected
Luthra, 4 Professor at Syracuse University (Aman Luthra, 2004, “Interrupting Heteronormativity
(Un)Straightening the Syracuse University Landscape”,
http://www.syr.edu/gradschool/pdf/resourcebooksvideos/Heteronormativity.pdf)//EM
Three years later, in October 2000, anti- gay chalkings on the quad read: “We’re mad and will be silent no more;” “Be gay and pay;”
“Stand up and stop the gay community from shoving their beliefs on us;” “Keep the gay shit to yourself;” “I don’t need to know who you fuck”
(Blum, 2000). Aside
from simply being messages expressing hatred and violence, these words chalked on the
quad also need to be understood as aggressive acts of resistance to the use of public space by a social
minority group who attempted to claim rights to publicly express their identities. These writings were a response
to the prideful Coming Out Week chalkings, inviting the SU campus community to come out, celebrate with, and be a part of SU’s queer
community. Chalkings on the quad by the queer community visibly distorted a “straight” landscape. These distortions are precisely what
elicited an
aggressive response that attempted to reaffirm the dominant heterosexual paradigm of the
visible landscape by suppressing the expression of alternative sexualities. In a spontaneous interview with Leon Blum, Chancellor Shaw
commented on this incident: “[...] the important thing is to not view this as an organized movement” (Blum, 2000). What makes a movement
organized? By
no means are these acts of hatred random ; not only are they systematic but also they are
routinely structured by a dominant discourse. Inasmuch as heteronormative discourses are embedded in institutions, policies,
and our mundane daily practices, then they are indeed organized . Both of these incidents reveal the assumed straightness of the SU campus. In
the first incident, because the policy is ambiguous, heteronormativity gets institutionalized. In the second incident, underlying straightness
finds expression in the aggressive reactions of the perpetrators. Both of these incidents also tell us a story about the use and governance of
public space at SU. If we regard the quad as public
space (at least within the context of the University), we imagine that the entire SU
community has access to it. As is evident through the chalking incidents, however, access is far from free. Instead, it is structured
through cultural norms and legal practices that institutionalize and privilege particular social relations
within the community.
2ac racism add-on
The embargo upholds a tourism industry grounded in racism
St. Martin & Thompson, 3 – (Amy St. Martin is a Laurie Crumpacker scholar graduate of the Gender and Cultural Studies M.A.
Program at Simmons College. Bucky Thompson is a Professor of Sociology at Simmons College. “Cuban Tourism: In The Name of Progressive
Politics" Race, Gender & Class Vol. 10 No. 4, 2003) //NG
The Cuban government's encouragement of tourism partly reflects Cuba`s need for foreign capital made
necessary by the decades-long blockade levied against the country by the United States. Ironically, progressive
support of Cuba manifested in this travel is undermining Cuba's struggle against racism and patriarchy. In
this article the authors examine how, under the guise of supporting a socialist country, tourism has become an embargo-era means of
upholding inequalities. The authors open up the discourse of the romance with the Cuban revolution that many progressives play out in their
imaginations and a Cuban nationalist discourse, both of which make it difficult to talk openly about internal hierarchies. This becomes another privilege of
tourists, in adopting closed discourses on Cuban nationalism, as they do not have to live with the realities that extend from
colonization and the U.S. occupations, or the present day policies that produce social inequalities for many Cubans. The authors
conclude with suggestions of ways that progressive delegations can break rather than re-inscribe patterns of domination.¶ ...the map to a new world is in the
imagination, in what we see in our third eyes, rather than in the desolation that surrounds us now. - (Kelley, 200212-3)¶ I recently returned from Cuba where I
traveled with a delegation of people affiliated with the Committees of Correspondence, a communist based organization that was founded by Manning Marable,
Charlene Hunter, Angela Davis, and other Black and white communists who left or were kicked out of the Communist Party in the early l990s.* It did my spirit good
to be in a location where being part of a socialist group with communist ties opened doors. In my travels and study in Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa-even in
progressive contexts in those countries-I had never before felt the welcome that a socialist-communist affiliation brought in Cuba. At the same time, I have never
experienced such a layering of contradictions as I did traveling there. These mind-splitting contradictions speak volumes to the important question raised by
humanitarian aid scholar, Angela Raven-Roberts: where do issues of race and power manifest themselves globally and how are these issues often veiled or encoded
in other terms (200l)?¶ In this article we present three anecdotes from my recent trip to Cuba that illuminate ways that privilege
and domination
manifest themselves in the tourist industry. We draw upon these anecdotes in the tradition of qualitative sociologists, critical race legal
theorists, and multiracial feminist theorists, whose analyses of power and capitalism are often revealed in their description of specific, embodied scenes (Blee, 1991;
Collins, 1998; Du Bois, 1903; Ferber, 1988; Matsuda, 1996; Moraga & Anzaldlia, 1983; Rollins, 1985; Romero, 1997; Williams, 1991). These three anecdotes
spring from oppressive demonstrations of power, control and white supremacist practices rooted in
Spanish colonization, subsequent US occupations, and the embargo (1963-present). When viewed together, these scenes reflect dangerous ways in
which tourism undermines Cuban economic strategies, supports prostitution, and undercuts AfroCubans' struggles against racism. Under the guise of supporting a socialist country-and often in the name of progressive politics-tourism has
become an embargo-era means in which white supremacy and patriarchy are upheld. ¶ The history of the external domination of Cuba set the
stage for racism and sexism that are currently being reinscribed through a dramatic surge in tourism
(from the 1990s and continuing). While this escalation has come from tourists across the globe, our primary focus in this article is US
tourism in Cuba. This surge reflects Cuba's need for U.S. dollars since it is close to impossible to obtain
crucial supplies, mainly technological and medical, without U.S. money. The influx also reveals progressives' long standing ailiation
with, respect for, and romance with the Cuban Revolution. In fact, there has long been a symbolic umbilical cord between Cuba and progressives outside of Cuba. ¶
The emotional, psychic and political connections between progressives and Cuban history and culture are multiple. As novelist and scholar Andrea O'Reilly Herrera
writes, "Cuba has become a kind of real and imagined place or space...the object of imagination and desire" (2001 zxxix). Cuba is the home of a rich Afro-Cuban
culture-Santeria, the Rumba, jazz, hip-hop, folk music, and art infused with African symbolism. This creativity has both been a source of spiritual and political
sustenance in Cuba and has resonated deeply with what historian and cultural theorist Robin Kelley has termed the "Black radical imagination" (2002). Cuban exile
Rafael Saumell writes, "...the true Cuban democratic revolution occurred in music. One might compare it to the freedom African American musicians enjoyed in
creating the jazz tradition, as opposed to the freedom they lacked at a time when civil rights were nonexistent for them"¶ Cuban-U.S. political ties also reflect
progressives' admiration for early achievements of the Cuban Revolution. In 1961 the Cuban people reduced illiteracy from 74% to close to zero with an each-one,
teach-one campaign that remains unparalleled. For those activists in the U.S. concerned with literacy, from those who founded liberation schools in the 1960s to
those who have worked on literacy campaigns in rural and urban areas since, the Cuban literacy movement has long been a model. Cuba is a country that boasts no
homelessness, no malnutrition, universal healtl1 care and education. The country has earned the right to such pride even as it struggles with the reality that many
people do not have the money to buy aspirin and other simple necessities. ¶ Cuba is also the home for over 90 U.S. political exiles including Assata Shakur, a former
Black Panther caught in the COINTELPRO snare in the early 1970s who, in 1979, was freed from prison and was able to tind safe haven in Cuba (Cleaver, 2001:125;
James, 2003, 115; Perkins, 2000). For prison activists in the U.S. Assata Shakur's escape from prison remains a proud achievement, particularly since New Jersey
governor Christine Todd Whitman's 1998 attempt to extradite Shakur was unsuccessful. All those achievements and more are now long standing and have been
institutionalized, despite U.S. attempts to undermine these humanistic goals at every turn. ¶ The place Cuba has earned in the U.S. progressive public imagination is
a key reason for the rise in Cuban tourism. This influx is what Jorge Fornet, Director of the Center for Literary Research, a government institute in Havana, has called
a "real invasion from Berkeley. Duke, Tulane, Harvard" (Lawrence 2000:A46). Delegations have been sponsored by state legislators, Cross-Cultural Solutions, the
Cuba Outreach Program, Global Exchange, church groups, lay groups, and community groups. This industry is a small but important antidote to the U.S. embargo
(although it remains another twisted version of the NAFTA imposed dynamic that has made it much easier to trade consumer goods across borders while making it
harder-often to the point of risking one's life-for those who make the goods to travel to the U.S). ¶ Tourist
travel to Cuba brings capital to the
country but also carries with it economic and skin privilege that, in often unexamined ways, mediates consciousness. Many tourists
have the privilege to continue the romance with the Cuban Revolution without confronting how U.S. imperialism has shaped Cuban options. The
privileges
that white supremacy has endowed many progressives traveling to Cuba from the U.S. and Europe has allowed many to
sideline conversations around internal conflicts in Cuba. White Cubans' privilege--much of which is
unnamed-certainly does little to undermine white tourists' privilege. In fact, white Cuban privilege can easily justify white tourists'
racial domination when they see whiteness upheld in the name of socialism in Cuba, Tourists' investment in preserving their
image of a socialist country blurs their ability to see racist, sexist, and heteronormative practices. ¶ The term "progressive" itself can be manipulated to encode white
supremacy, as it is used under the idea that one is for positive and active change within a specific realm of space, but what constitutes positive change can be vague
and misleading. The potentially misleading nature of adopting a title to one's intentions, such as "progressive" or "liberal" may allow for a person`s privileges to
implicitly operate, which prevents them from understanding their power. The term "progressive" can even relieve them of the responsibility for the racism they
reinscribe as a tourist. Anne Braden, in The Wall Between, affirms that many white Americans, who call themselves liberals, operate their privileges to "develop a
gradualist approach because they think that when a step is taken too fast it inflames the passions of those who oppose" change (l958:293). She contends that
"liberal" is a broad term that can cover those who oppose oppression to those who oppose oppression in certain circumstances, usually when it would not affect
their privileged way of life. Therefore, a careful consideration around the way privileges operate under the guise of "progressive" or "liberal" politics is necessary to
combat the contradictions that tourists in this industry bring to their idealized image of Cuba. Story One It
is New Year's Eve, 2000 and a big party
has been planned at a Havana hotel where the Committees of Correspondence delegation and other tourists, mostly from the U.S. and Europe,
are staying. Among the elaborate plans for the party are tables and tables of food, already conspicuous
consumption in a country
the Special Period, had to reduce a family's allotment of rice, beans, and other food essentials
so substantially that the average citizen lost between ten and twenty pounds. Cubans tend to be a lean, proud
that, a decade ago, in
people who are careful not to waste and are cognizant, in a bodily way, of the impact of upholding socialist values in a world bent on capitalist
accumulation. I see tables of food and tourists who are, seemingly, joyful. Cubans, including a busload of Cuban workers asked to work
this special event, are working the New Year's Eve shift away from their families. And then
I see the coup-de-grace, a six-foot high,
domed display of food at the center of each table complete with big, red, whole-bodied lobsters. Dozens of lobsters are
dangling on these displays for all to see, to enjoy, to smile at. My stomach turns.¶ All lobster and beef are prohibited for the general
population of Cuban citizens, Lobster and beef are considered luxury items. Lobsters-decadence on display on New
Year’s Eve-are plentiful at this celebration where all of the visible workers, the people at the front desk and the wait staff, are lightskinned while the women cleaning the rooms are several shades darker. Lobsters are on display and the hotel's
hiring practices reflect colorism as our delegation spent the week being driven around in big, cushiony, air-conditioned, media-stocked buses.
We were driven from place to place while we passed, on every street, lines and lines of people, young and old,
people in pressed shirts and work clothes, waiting for the bus, packed to overflowing with people. They were waiting for
old buses, way too-full buses, waiting, in line, in groups, on street corners, typically for one and sometimes two hours each
day.¶ The contradictions are multiple when tourists who travel to Cuba to support a socialist country then eat the very foods-in front of
Cubans-that Cubans, for politically sound reasons, do not eat. The history of the logic behind such prohibitions reveals why eating lobster and
beef flies in the face of supporting Cuban strategies of maintaining economic autonomy. This history of food prohibition has its origins during
the Spanish colonization. Cuba's emergence with its sugar production in the North American trade market, in the nineteenth century, became
increasingly more demanding as the market became more profitable. bouis A. Perez Ir., in On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and
Culture, documents how "Cuban success was very much derived from a strategy of specialization: production for export at the expense of
production for consumption, increasingly to the exclusion of other products, eventually to the exclusion of other markets" (l999:l7). The
revenue that accrued from Cuba's exports, such as sugar and then later lobster, various other seafood products, beef, citrus fruits, and many
dairy products trumped the food preferences and choices of general Cuban individuals and families.¶ Though most Cubans go without eating
lobster, today the revenue from exporting more than 10,000 tons of lobster to Japan, France, Spain, and Canada allows Cuba to import 20 tons
of powdered milk yearly for the equally distributed and rationed consumption of the population (Castro 1988). ln a 1988 speech given to the
Cuban people, President Fidel Castro made specilic reference to certain compromises that had to be made within the food distribution industry
since the embargo against Cuba. Castro stressed, "We can say that lobster is not part of the Cuban diet, but our children do not have rickets; we
do not have children starving to death. Every child in this country drinks a liter of milk daily, which is why Cuba today is one of the healthiest
countries in the world" (1988).¶ Cuba is a country that has had to make due with the situation that is imposed upon them, a country whose
people take pride in many of the choices they have had to make for the betterment of all Cubans. This is a counter ideological practice to that
of the structure of capitalism that creates and sustains poverty, hunger, malnutrition, illiteracy, etc. Capitalism prides itself on world economic
power. Maintaining oppression becomes the means for sustaining the wealth of the dominant few, whereas socialism takes pride in bringing up
communities together as a whole in the attempt to foster a more egalitarian society. According to this socialist logic, giving up the pleasure of
consuming part of an expansive lobster industry in Cuba, for the sake of importing other products that would feed and nourish more bodies, is
the pride of the Cubans. Eating lobster, then, becomes the privilege of those tourists who sit at tables with elaborately constructed
centerpieces of that sweet meat and other prohibited food exports. Story two I am visiting Old Havana with three others from the
delegation-a white, long-time communist activist, a white divorce lawyer from New York, an African American female professor from Vassar,
and me, a white US born female professor. We have met a twenty-two-year-old Afro-Cuban whose English is probably as good
as my Spanish. We eat and see the sites together. He reminds me a lot of my twelve-year-old Black son--sweet, tall and thin, easy with
strangers. For
a split second, the African American woman of the group slips off in search of a bathroom, just
long enough for the Cuban police to swoop in on the young Afro-Cuban man. They begin to harass him,
demand his identification papers, and assume that he had been bothering us, no matter what we say to the contrary.¶ Obviously, the police had
been watching us, probably assuming that the Afro-Cuban young man and the Black (American) woman were related and both Cuban. Once the
Black woman stepped away, our group became three white Americans and one Afro-Cuban man. We
witness racial profiling on this
gorgeous winter day. They are harassing him, getting ready to put him in the police car. I am unable to stop any of this
frightening affair with my limited Spanish. Finally, an Afro-Cuban woman and her family approach the police. Thinking quickly on her feet, this
woman tells the police that this young man is her relative. She argues with the light skinned, olive-skinned, and then darkskinned police officers
insisting that they are practicing racial profiling. Finally, the police give the young man back his identification. The family who intervened does
not want to explain it all to us. They wanted to spend a pleasant weekend day as a family. We go of? shaken. I think, silently, that it is lucky that
I had decided not to take my U.S.-raised-of-Trinidadian-descent son with me to Cuba.¶ Had we intervened with the police in the United States
as much as we did in Cuba, we might have been arrested or harassed ourselves. In Cuba, the discussion did eventually tum the scene around.
Regardless, the
police policy is all in the name of tourism. Protecting the tourists. Protecting the white
people. Audre horde (1988) has long asked, what is being done in your name? In my name, for the sake of the flow of capital, at
my son's, this young Cuban's expense? When a few of us asked one of the key officials who works with Ricardo Alarcon (the
President of the Cuban National Assembly of People`s Power) about this incident and racial profiling in general, she said that some of the Cuban
police are young and insufficiently trained. But, she explains, they soon learn that such practices are unacceptable. Her response becomes
another version of neoconservative individualism that continues to deny state-sanctioned racism in the Cuba and the United States. These
racist practices are intimately tied to Cuba's history of colonialism. Its history continues to be relived though modern
bodies.¶ Cubans continue to live, prosper, and struggle with the history of their ancestors and their ancestor's ancestors. James Baldwin
contends,¶ ¶ The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and
history is literally present in all that we do. It could scarcely be otherwise, since it is to history that we owe our frames of reference, our
identities, and our aspirations (l998:32l).¶ It is this living history of all Cubans and those whose predecessors have enacted imperial projects
upon Cuba that continue to influence ideological assumptions of white supremacy. Thus, white
European and American tourists
traveling in Cuba today, extend from a lineage of hegemonic notions of privilege and power that they may
continue to foster, consciously and unconsciously, within the postcolonial context of socialist Cuba. Cubans, also carrying their colonial history
of in justices, may continue to harbor not only the awareness of historic struggles but also a deep-set oppression that was implemented and
augmented by colonial forces. Frantz Fanon, in Black Skin White Masks (1967), intimately describes the
internalized oppression of
colonized individuals and communities that takes its form in the young child, with the encounters and identifications of
colonial texts produced through the scope of whiteness. In the process of the id and ego's development from infant to adolescent, the child
looks outward to seek images that s/he can identify with, however, the images that the child mirrors have
been influenced or constructed through a white colonial lens that is imbedded with ideologies of power, through
which social oppressions manifest. Therefore, if Cubans identify with images from imperial sources (from Spain or the US), they may
inadvertently identify with a white man’s perception of the colored "other" that has colonized them (or
aimed to Americanize them)-a hateful, unloving, devastating identification.¶ The core of racial oppression is a more traumatic and destructive
whole-bodied process than a superficial discourse of oppression would have one comprehend. The
child, within her/his colonized
society, has the alarming potential to grow up despising its difference apart from the dominant colonial
forces, in turn emulating white supremacist practices against themselves and their people. It is these attitudes that have benefited the cause
of white supremacy during Cuba's colonial past, that structure the individual’s mind to carry out its own destruction; a practice to colonize the
souls of natives.¶ When
witnessing a case of racial profiling in the twenty-first century of an Afro-Cuban by Cuban
police, in the name of catering to and protecting white tourists, we see how history lives within us and is
passed down through the generations. Moreover, we see the extent to which oppression is a corruption of the
entire personhood as one has the potential to adopt practices of racism and white supremacy that
inadvertently carry out the desires and interests of those who hold global economic power. bell hooks, in Talking
Back: Thinking Feminist Thinking Black, speaks to the adoption of racist practices by people of color on people of color explaining that,¶ ‘White
supremacy' is a much more useful term for understanding the complicity of people of color in upholding and maintaining racial hierarchies that
do not involve force (i.e. slavery, apartheid) .... The term ‘white supremacy' enables us to recognize not only that black people are socialized to
embody the values and attitudes of white supremacy, but that [people of color] can exercise "˜white-supremacist control' over other black
people (l989: 1 13).¶ Using the term "white supremacy" not only signifies the agency from which these practices extend. It may also allow a
conscious spectator of racist practices and contradictions in a socialist context to connect the adoption and internalization of white supremacist
values and attitudes to Cuba’s colonial history.¶ It is this
colonial history, embedded in Cubans, Spaniards, and Americans, that
becomes apparent in the demonstrations of racism, power and privilege within the present day Cuban
context. It is this colonial history coupled with the contact and negotiations with a growing global capitalism
that sustains those vexed contradictions. They are being observed in the socialist country, that had focused intentions on the
advancement of all its people who are now forced to compromise with that global capitalism in a way that caters
to white American and European tourists and feeds into white supremacist practices.
Racism outweighs every impact – it’s the precondition to ethical political decision
making.
Memmi, 2k – Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Paris (Albert, “RACISM”, translated by Steve Martinot, pp.163-165)
The struggle against racism will be long, difficult, without intermission, without remission, probably
never achieved, yet for this very reason, it is a struggle to be undertaken without surcease and without
concessions. One cannot be indulgent toward racism. One cannot even let the monster in the house,
especially not in a mask. To give it merely a foothold means to augment the bestial part in us and in
other people which is to diminish what is human. To accept the racist universe to the slightest degree is
to endorse fear, injustice, and violence. It is to accept the persistence of the dark history in which we still
largely live. It is to agree that the outsider will always be a possible victim (and which [person] man is not [themself]
himself an outsider relative to someone else?). Racism illustrates in sum, the inevitable negativity of the condition of
the dominated; that is it illuminates in a certain sense the entire human condition. The anti-racist
struggle, difficult though it is, and always in question, is nevertheless one of the prologues to the ultimate passage from
animality to humanity. In that sense, we cannot fail to rise to the racist challenge. However, it remains true
that one’s moral conduct only emerges from a choice: one has to want it. It is a choice among other
choices, and always debatable in its foundations and its consequences. Let us say, broadly speaking, that the choice
to conduct oneself morally is the condition for the establishment of a human order for which racism is the very negation. This is almost a
One cannot found a moral order, let alone a legislative order, on racism because racism
signifies the exclusion of the other and his or her subjection to violence and domination. From an
ethical point of view, if one can deploy a little religious language, racism is “the truly capital sin.”fn22 It is not an accident
redundancy.
that almost all of humanity’s spiritual traditions counsel respect for the weak, for orphans, widows, or strangers. It is not just a question of
It is not just a question of theoretical morality and
commandments. Such unanimity in the safeguarding of the other suggests the real utility of
such sentiments. All things considered, we have an interest in banishing injustice, because injustice engenders
violence and death. Of course, this is debatable. There are those who think that if one is strong enough, the
assault on and oppression of others is permissible. But no one is ever sure of remaining the strongest.
One day, perhaps, the roles will be reversed. All unjust society contains within itself the seeds of its own
death. It is probably smarter to treat others with respect so that they treat you with respect. “Recall,” says the bible, “that you were once a
theoretical counsel respect for the weak, for orphans, widows or strangers.
disinterested
stranger in Egypt,” which means both that you ought to respect the stranger because you were a stranger yourself and that you risk becoming
It is an ethical and a practical appeal – indeed, it is a contract, however implicit it might be. In
short, the refusal of racism is the condition for all theoretical and practical morality. Because, in the
end, the ethical choice commands the political choice. A just society must be a society accepted by all.
If this contractual principle is not accepted, then only conflict, violence, and destruction will be our lot.
If it is accepted, we can hope someday to live in peace. True, it is a wager, but the stakes are irresistible.
once again someday.
2ac gender equality add-on
Lifting the embargo is critical for women’s rights – ensures employment
Associated Press 13 - [Cites a report by Sarah Stevens - executive director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, long-time
human rights advocate, works with U.S. policymakers, journalists and others, to change the debate on U.S. foreign policy toward the
hemisphere has led dozens of delegations of U.S. policymakers, academics, experts, and philanthropists to Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador,
Honduras and Venezuela on fact-finding and research missions. “Cuba gender equality good, but threatened says report” 3/8/13
http://m.jamaicaobserver.com/mobile/business/Cuba-gender-equality-good--but-threatened-says-report_13801067 //NG]
Cuba has made great strides in gender equality, but still has work to do in eradicating macho attitudes and
supporting opportunities for women in business and leadership, according to a new report from a US
study group published to coincide with International Women's Day today. The Washington-based Centre
for Democracy in the Americas also warned that the island's economic difficulties and drive to restructure
its socialist model could put at risk the advances in gender equality since the Cuban Revolution. "Just like everywhere,
in times of economic crisis it's women and families and kids that are often the most vulnerable," Sarah Stephens,
the group's executive director, said yesterday. During numerous research trips to the island and interviews with a wide range of
Cuban women, Stephens said, that was "one of the concerns that we heard again and again." President Raul Castro's
economic reform plan includes massive reductions in state jobs, with those workers to be absorbed by an
expanded private sector that has grown to 181 approved trades. But the center report noted that many of those are maledominated professions — mechanics, masons, construction workers and so on — and to date, 24 per cent of small businesses are run
by women. Moreover there's no provision for women in the private sector to maintain rights they enjoy in
government jobs, such as paid maternity leave and breaks for breast-feeding. The centre recommended
that Cuba implement measures to support women as independent workers and small business owners, such as offering
training in finance and marketing, improving access to credit and providing day care. "What we heard from
women was that much of the safety net, many of the benefits they received working for the state, they still desperately need in order to make
ends meet, in order to be able to both hold down a job and take care of the home and the family and put meals on the table," Stephens said.
The report also recommended that the United States engage with Cuban women and society at large,
including opening US markets to Cuban goods. Stephens' centre is generally sympathetic to Havana and
actively lobbies for changes in US policy toward the island, including the lifting of the 51-year economic embargo.
Overall the report praised Cuba on gender equality especially compared with the rest of the region, noting advances in indicators such as
universal literacy, low maternal death rates, high representation of women in higher education, the enshrinement of equal rights in the
constitution and legal guarantees in the family code. Still, it noted that Cuba
has been criticised both internally and
externally on domestic violence and it warned that cutbacks in the health and education systems
potentially threaten gender equality if not handled properly. It also suggested that a glass ceiling still exists to a certain
extent, saying that while Cuban women constitute 53 per cent of workers with graduate degrees, they occupy just 34 per cent of executive
positions. Fewer
than 40 per cent of women are employed, and they earn less than half of what men make,
is especially dispiriting to the highly trained women who emerge year after year from Cuban
the study found. "This
colleges, yet remain unable to fully employ their talents," the report said. Castro, other officials and intellectuals have often stressed the
importance of making Cuban society and government more inclusive of women, people of Afro-Cuban descent and youth. In late February a
new parliament formed with women making up 42 per cent of its membership, continuing a gradual upward trend over the years. Thirty-nine
per cent were black or mestizo. Castro also convened a new ruling Council of State with two women among its five vice presidents. Sonia
Delgado, a 52-year-history teacher in Havana, said she is grateful that women in Cuba have rights to equal education, equal pay for equal work
and free contraception and abortion. But Delgado said some workplace discrimination continues, and bosses can be hesitant to hire female
employees for fear they might have children and miss work. In many families a husband's role is to "help out" rather than "share" household
chores, she added. "After the triumph of the revolution, women's lives changed and doors were opened," Delgado said. "But I would say
machismo continues to exist in our society. Perhaps out of sight, but there it is, lurking."
Gender inequality leads to war, prolif, environmental destruction, and eventually
extinction
Warren and Cady, 94—Warren is the Chair of the Philosophy Department at Macalester College and Cady is Professor of
Philosophy at Hamline University (Karen and Duane, “Feminism and Peace: Seeing Connections”, p. 16, JSTOR,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3810167.pdf, JB)
Operationalized, the evidence of patriarchy as a dysfunctional system is found in the behaviors to which it gives rise, (c), and the
unmanageability, (d), which results. For example,
in the United States, current estimates are that one out of every three or
four women will be raped by someone she knows; globally, rape, sexual harassment, spouse-beating,
and sado-masochistic pornography are examples of behaviors practiced, sanctioned, or tolerated within
patriarchy. In the realm of environmentally destructive behaviors, strip-mining, factory farming, and pollution of the air,
water, and soil are instances of behaviors maintained and sanctioned within patriarchy. They, too, rest
on the faulty beliefs that it is okay to "rape the earth," that it is "man's God-given right" to have
dominion (that is, domination) over the earth, that nature has only instrumental value, that environmental destruction is the
acceptable price we pay for "progress."And the presumption of warism, that war is a natural, righteous, and ordinary way to impose dominion
on a people or nation, goes hand in hand with patriarchy and leads to dysfunctional behaviors of nations and ultimately to international
unmanageability. Much
of the current" unmanageability" of contemporary life in patriarchal societies, (d), is
then viewed as a consequence of a patriarchal preoccupation with activities, events, and experiences
that reflect historically male-gender identified beliefs, values, attitudes, and assumptions. Included
among these real-life consequences are precisely those concerns with nuclear proliferation, war,
environmental destruction, and violence toward women, which many feminists see as the logical
outgrowth of patriarchal thinking. In fact, it is often only through observing these dysfunctional behaviors-the symptoms of
dysfunctionality that one can truly see that and how patriarchy serves to maintain and perpetuate them. When patriarchy is understood as a
dysfunctional system, this "unmanageability" can be seen for what it is-as a predictable and thus logical consequence of patriarchy.'1 The
theme that global environmental crises, war, and violence generally are predictable and logical consequences of sexism and patriarchal culture
is pervasive in ecofeminist literature (see Russell 1989, 2). Ecofeminist Charlene Spretnak, for instance, argues that "militarism
and
warfare are continual features of a patriarchal society because they reflect and instill patriarchal values
and fulfill needs of such a system. Acknowledging the context of patriarchal conceptualizations that feed militarism is a first step
toward reducing their impact and preserving life on Earth" (Spretnak 1989, 54). Stated in terms of the foregoing model of patriarchy as a
dysfunctional social system, the claims by Spretnak and other feminists take on a clearer meaning:
Patriarchal conceptual
frameworks legitimate impaired thinking (about women, national and regional conflict, the
environment) which is manifested in behaviors which, if continued, will make life on earth difficult, if not
impossible. It is a stark message, but it is plausible. Its plausibility lies in understanding the conceptual roots of various woman-naturepeace connections in regional, national, and global contexts.
Tourism
2ac economy i/l
Embargo destroys employment which is the root cause of prostitution
Karseeboom, 3 (Jennifer Karsseboom, 3/26/3, “Poverty Pushes Cuban Women into Sex Tourism”,
http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/211/44367.html)//EM
From north to south, Havana to Santiago de Cuba, amidst the decaying buildings, propagandizing billboards and food stores with empty shelves
there are two things in Cuba which are always in full supply: prostitutes and sex tourists. In a country
with few employment options that offer enough upon which to subsist and an embargo that contributes
to substandard living conditions for the majority of the population, women and girls flock to densely populated
Havana in search of sexual employment in hotels, bars, restaurants and on the streets. Sex tourists flock to Havana
and other cities in search of a form of escapism that is cheap, safe and exotic. In Cuba, foreign men can command Cuban
women and girls with the same ease used to order cocktails.
2ac commodification
Sex tourism commodifies the bodies of women, which causes patriarchy
Duvivier, 8 Ph. D. in literature from Duke University, is an assistant professor of English at James
Madison University (Sandra C. Duvivier, Fall 2008, “My Body is My Piece of Land”, Project Muse)//EM
Scholars and activists have begun to pay critical attention to the employment of sexuality, particularly female sexuality, as a viable means of
socioeconomic advancement in the Caribbean. Primarily emerging within the past two decades, the publications have often centered on the
commodification of sexuality within the public sphere: through the tourist industries. These industries largely
perceive Caribbean bodies as “exoticized,” overly sexualized “others,” which attests to the global political
economy’s exploitation of Caribbean people generally and Caribbean women particularly. More critical
attention could also be given to “private” representations of the sex industries in these locales, as many sex workers’ activities occur outside of
the public sphere with Caribbean counterparts as their main clientele. However, these sex workers, especially their manipulation by financially
secure patrons, serve metonymically for the Caribbean sex industries within the larger global political economy.
2ac racism
The embargo disproportionately affects Afro-Cuban women – they must resort to
working as sexual jockeys to make ends meet
Harrison, 10 – [Faye V. has a PhD in Cultural Anthropology and is a Professor at the University of Florida “Souls: A Critical Journal of Black
Politics, Culture, and Society, Global Apartheid, Foreign Policy, and Human Rights” 11/30/10 //NG]
The Cuban Embargo and Racially Sexualized Bodies
Although structural adjustment is a specific policy of the IMF working in conjunction with the World Bank, USAID, and other institutions, the
term also refers to a general development orientation and policy climate driven by neoliberal assumptions about economic growth and change.
In other words, structural adjustment can also serve as metonym for the restructuring and realignments that define present-day globalization.
Hence, in the case of Cuba, although the IMF, World Bank, WTO, and USAID do not directly intervene in the Cuban economy, neoliberal
policies — the most coercive and punitive being the U.S. embargo — have indeed reshaped the nation during
its so-called Special Period since the end of USSR and Eastern bloc economic support, and they have undermined its
revolutionary achievements in ensuring rights to employment, education, and health services. This has
occurred even though, when the embargo began in the Race and Globalization early 1960s, the politico-economic climate in the U.S. and the
world was Keynesian rather than neoliberal. Nonetheless, for the past two decades, this punitive policy has been enforced within a politicoeconomic matrix of neoliberal globalization. In the wake of the disintegration of the USSR and the demise of the Eastern Bloc, the
Cuban
government undertook an “internal readjustment” and “rationalization,” to sustain its economy and meet
basic subsistence needs. These changes allowed for greater economic diversification, a partial process of privatization, foreign
investment, and “dollarization.” 44 The effects of these drastic changes — Cuba’s own structural adjustment — on everyday
life have been considerable. Cuba’s status as a socialist sanctuary is being destabilized under dollarization and the conditions of
economic austerity that led to it. Social inequalities are re-emerging and becoming conspicuous, and crime is becoming a problem. A red flag
signaling the changing times can perhaps be found in a troubling December 2001 incident in which five members of a family, including an eightyear-old child and a couple visiting from Florida, were murdered in a robbery in Matanzas Province. This heinous incident was unusual in that
murders are extremely rare in Cuba and mass murders “are unheard of.” 45 The
economic crisis that has brought about this
unprecedented crime wave has caused escalating unemployment and has reduced safety net provisions
— trends that have impacted African-descended Cubans, and Afro-Cuban women in particular, more than
any other segment of the population. With less access to kin-mediated remittances from the
disproportionately white emigré communities overseas, there is more pressure on Afro-Cuban women,
who are more likely than white Cubans to live in female-headed households, to stand in long lines for
rations, stretch the devalued peso, and make ends meet by any means necessary. 46 Any means necessary
has come to include doing own-account work — trabajo por cuenta propia — in the underground economy aligned with the growing
tourist sector. For younger women, particularly those who fit the culturally constructed stereotype of la mulata, this is increasingly being
translated into working
as jineteras (sexual jockeys). This line of work reflects Cuba’s historical race, gender, and
class boundaries. 47 Desperate to lure foreigners to the country’s beaches and hotel resorts, the Cuban government itself has
resorted to manipulating pre-revolutionary racial clichés by showcasing ‘traditional’ Afro-Cuban religious
rituals and art, ‘ traditional ’ Afro-Cuban music, and Afro-Cuban women, who are foregrounded as performers in
these commodified contexts.” 48 The sexual exoticization of African-descended women has a long history in Cuba
as well as throughout the African diaspora and the West, where variations on the theme of Black
hypersexuality are rampant as either a positively valued essentialism or a fertility or health related social problem. Nadine Fernandez
questions the assumption that Black and mulatto women predominate in Cuba’s sex tourism by highlighting the
role of a racially biased gaze in attributing Afro-Cuban women’s interactions with male tourists to
prostitution while perceiving white women ’ s interactions in terms of alternative interpretations, including
that of “romance.” Because of their greater access to dollars and to jobs in the tourist sector, white
women are more likely to have privileged access to tourists in restricted venues (shops, restaurants, and
nightclubs) where Afro-Cubans are not generally permitted to enter. Consequently, Afro-Cubans interact with
tourists outside tourist installations, making their meetings much more visible and scrutinized by the
public eye.” 49 In the context of Cuba’s current crisis, traditional racial narratives of gender, race, and sexuality are being reasserted and
rewritten to fit with recent restructuring. 50 The U.S.
embargo is a flagrant form of foreign intervention. Like official structural
been premised on an ideology of power, recolonization, and ranked capitals that
assumes that Cubans are expendable troublemakers — perhaps even harborers of terrorism — who deserve to
be starved out of their defiant opposition to U.S. dominance. The same ideology that rationalizes the
unregulated spread of commodification into all spheres of social life implies that Cuban women’s bodies,
especially Afro-Cubanas’ hypersexualized bodies, can be bought and sold on the auction block of imposed
economic austerity without any accountability on the part of the papiriquis , or sugardaddies, of global
capital. The implication of these policies is that Afro-Cuban families and communities can be sacrificed so
that northerners can enjoy privileges — including that of living in a “good” and “free” society — that southern
adjustment policies, it has
workers and peasants subsidize. Cuba’s current crisis is being negotiated over the bodies of its women, with African-descended women , las
negras y mulatas, las chicas calientes (Black and mulatto women, hot sexy chicks), expected to bear the worst assaults against what remains in
many ways a defiant socialist sanctuary. 51
Human Rights
2ac poverty add-on
Human rights are key to reducing poverty
UN, 10 (UN, 8/4/10, “UN official stresses the importance of human rights in overcoming poverty”,
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=35536#.UeMRd9LVCSo)//EM
4 August 2010 – The economic empowerment of the world’s poorest people will not happen unless their
human rights are also considered, a senior United Nations official said today, urging governments around the world not to
separate development and basic rights when devising policy. Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, warned that “the
interrelation between freedom from want and freedom from fear” must be central to the discussions of
world leaders on how to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by their target date of 2015. Global leaders are scheduled to
gather at UN Headquarters in New York next month to assess the progress so far towards the MDGs, a series of targets for reducing social and
economic ills, and where future efforts should be directed. In an op-ed column that was published in Nepal’s Republica and other newspapers,
Ms. Pillay noted that poverty remains stubbornly high in too many regions of the world, particularly sub-Saharan Africa
and parts of Asia. “We cannot afford to keep disappointing the hopes of those who live at the margins of their own societies – let alone the
global community,” she wrote. “Their disenfranchisement may carry a higher cost than investing resources and political will in their
empowerment.” For too long, Ms. Pillay said, economic development and human rights have been considered by governments as separate
issues to be tackled separately, with development treated as the overriding concern. “Empowerment cannot
be achieved if
development policies are pursued in a human rights vacuum… Economic growth strategies can be a powerful tool to help
us realize the UN Charter’s vision of a more equal, secure and just world in larger freedom. “Human rights principles such as
equality, participation and accountability and the rule of law are instrumental for development to take firm
root and be both equitable and sustainable.” A human rights approach to development is essential, the High
Commissioner emphasized, as “it puts people in control of their own lives.”
Poverty makes violence inevitable --- outweighs nuclear war
Gilligan 96 (James, Professor of Psychiatry – Harvard Medical School, Director of the Center for the
Study of Violence, Member – Academic Advisory Council of the National Campaign Against Youth
Violence, “Violence: Our Deadly Epidemic and its Causes”, pg. 191-196)
***We do not endorse the use of Holocaust rhetoric
The deadliest form of violence is poverty. You cannot work for one day with the violent people who fill our prisons and mental
hospitals for the criminally insane without being forcible and constantly reminded of the extreme poverty and discrimination that characterizes
their lives. Hearing about their lives, and about their families and friends, you are forced to recognize the truth in Gandhi’s observation that the
deadliest form of violence is poverty. Not a day goes by without realizing that trying to understand them and their violent behavior in purely
individual terms is impossible and wrong-headed. Any theory of violence, especially a psychological theory, that evolves from the experience of
men in maximum security prisons and hospitals for the criminally insane must begin with the recognition that these institutions are only
microcosms. They are not where the major violence in our society takes place, and the perpetrators who fill them are far from being the main
causes of most violent deaths. Any approach to a theory of violence needs to begin with a look at the structural violence in this country.
Focusing merely on those relatively few men who commit what we define as murder could distract us from examining and learning from those
structural causes of violent death that are far more significant from a numerical or public health, or human, standpoint. By “structural violence”
I mean the increased rates of death, and disability suffered by those who occupy the bottom rungs of society, as contrasted with the relatively
lower death rates experienced by those who are above them. Those excess deaths (or at least a demonstrably large proportion of them) are a
function of class structure; and that structure is itself a product of society’s collective human choices, concerning how to distribute the
collective wealth of the society. These are not acts of God. I am contrasting “structural” with “behavioral violence,” by which I mean the nonnatural deaths and injuries that are caused by specific behavioral actions of individuals against individuals, such as the deaths we attribute to
homicide, suicide, soldiers in warfare, capital punishment, and so on. Structural
violence differs from behavioral violence in
at least three major respects. *The lethal effects of structural violence operate continuously, rather than
sporadically, whereas murders, suicides, executions, wars , and other forms of behavioral violence occur one at a time .
*Structural violence operates more or less independently of individual acts; independent of individuals and groups (politicians, political parties,
voters) whose decisions may nevertheless have lethal consequences for others. *Structural
violence is normally invisible,
because it may appear to have had other (natural or violent) causes. The finding that structural violence
causes far more deaths than behavioral violence does is not limited to this country. Kohler and Alcock attempted to arrive at
the number of excess deaths caused by socioeconomic inequities on a worldwide basis. Sweden was their model of the nation that had come
closes to eliminating structural violence. It had the least inequity in income and living standards, and the lowest discrepancies in death rates
and life expectancy; and the highest overall life expectancy in the world. When they compared the life expectancies of those living in the other
socioeconomic systems against Sweden, they found that 18
million deaths a year could be attributed to the “structural
violence” to which the citizens of all the other nations were being subjected. During the past decade, the discrepancies between the rich and
poor nations have increased dramatically and alarmingly. The 14 to 18 million deaths a year caused by structural violence compare with
about 100,000 deaths per year from armed conflict. Comparing this frequency of deaths from structural violence to the
frequency of those caused by major military and political violence, such as World War II (an estimated 49 million military and civilian deaths,
including those by genocide—or about eight million per year, 1939-1945), the Indonesian massacre of 1965-66 (perhaps 575,000) deaths), the
Vietnam war (possibly two million, 1954-1973), and even a hypothetical nuclear exchange between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. (232 million), it
was clear that even war cannot begin to compare with structural violence, which continues year after year .
In other words, every fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed by the Nazi genocide of
the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the
equivalent of an ongoing, unending , in fact accelerating,
thermonuclear war , or genocide, perpetrated on the weak and poor every year of every decade, throughout the world.
Structural violence is also the main cause of behavioral violence on a socially and epidemiologically significant scale (from
homicide and suicide to war and genocide). The question as to which of the two forms of violence—structural or
behavioral—is more important, dangerous, or lethal is moot, for they are inextricably related to each
other, as cause to effect.
2ac genocide add-on
This systematic attempt to destroy the Cuban people constitutes a genocidal policy
Lamrani, 13 – PhD of Iberian and Latin American Studies at the University Paris-Sorbonne Paris-IV, specialist on relations between Cuba
and the US (Salim, The Economic War Against Cuba: Historical and Legal Perspective on the U.S. Blockade, pg. 72-73, 1 March 2013)//BI
The Cuban authorities condemn economic sanctions in the strongest terms. According to Havana, it is a
“genocidal policy.”20’ To justify its position, Cuba bases its argument on two elements: the Geneva Convention and
a U.S. memorandum dated April 6, 1960—three months before the imposition of the first economic retaliation. The Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of December 9, 1948, states in Article II that “in the present Convention, genocide
means any of the following acts, committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical,
racial or religious group as such.” Points that follow allude to “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members
of the group” and “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its
physical destruction in whole or in part’21° On April 6, 1960, Lester D. Mallory, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American
Affairs, noted in an internal memorandum to Roy R. Rubottom Jr., then the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American affairs, the
purpose of economic sanctions: The majority of Cubans support Castro. There is no effective political opposition. . . . The only
foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on
economic dissatisfaction and hardship.. .. every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic
life of Cuba. .. a line of action which .. . makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real
wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.21’ According to Cuban authorities, this is
the objective of the economic sanctions and the reason for maintaining them over two decades after the end of the Cold War. The former
Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs, Felipe Pérez Roque, has denounced this state of affairs before the United Nations and provided an
interpretation: Why does the U.S. government not lift the blockade against Cuba? I will answer: because it is afraid. It fears our example. It
knows that if the blockade were lifted, Cuba’s economic and social development would be dizzying. It knows that we would demonstrate even
more so than now, the possibilities of Cuban socialism, all the potential not yet fully deployed of a country without discrimination of any kind,
with social justice and human rights for all citizens, and not just for the few. It is the government of a great and powerful empire, but it fears
the example of this small insurgent island?’2 Thus, in the
light of international conventions, the United States imposes
on the Cuban population living conditions that seriously undermine their well-being and their physical
and mental security.
Genocide is the ultimate evil
Vetlesen, 2k – [Arne Johan Vetlesen, Department of Philosophy, University of Oslo, July 2000, Journal of Peace Research, “Genocide: A
Case for the Responsibility of the Bystander,” p. 520-522]
Most often, in cases of genocide, for every person directly victimized and killed there will be hundreds, thousands, perhaps even millions,
who are neither directly targeted as victims nor directly participating as perpetrators. The
moral issues raised by genocide,
the illegal act par excellance, are not confined to the nexus of agent and victim. Those directly
involved in a given instance of genocide will always form a minority, so to speak. The majority to the event will be formed
by the contemporary bystanders. Such bystanders are individuals; in their private and professional lives, they will
belong to a vast score of groups and collectives, some informal and closely knit, others formal and
detached as far as personal and emotional involvement are concerned. In the loose sense intended here,
every contemporary citizen cognizant of a specific ongoing instance of genocide, regardless of
where in the world, counts as a bystander. Bystanders in this loose sense are cognizant, through TV, radio, newspapers,
taken as
and other publicly available sources of information, of ongoing genocide somewhere in the world, but they are not - by profession or
formal appointment — involved in it. Theirs is a passive role, that of onlookers, although what starts out as a passive stance may, upon
decision, convert into active engagement in the events at hand. I shall label this category passive bystanders. This group should be
distinguished from bystanders by formal appointment: the latter bystanders have been professionally Engaged as a ‘third party’ to the
interaction between the two parties directly involved in acts of genocide. The stance of this third party to an ongoing conflict, even one
with genocidal implications, is in principle often seen as one of impartiality and neutrality, typically highlighted by a determined refusal
to ‘take sides.’ This manner of principled non-involvement is frequently viewed as highly meritorious (Vetlesen, 1998). A case in point
would be UN personnel deployed to monitor a ceasefire between warring parties, or (as was their task in Bosnia) to see to it that the
civilians within a UN declared ‘safe area’ are effectively guaranteed ‘peace and security’, as set down in the mandate to establish such
areas. By virtue of their assigned physical presence on the scene and the specific tasks given to them, such (groups of) bystanders may be
referred to as bystanders by assignment. What does it mean to be a contemporary bystander?To begin with, let us consider this question
not from the expected view- point — that of the bystander - but from the two viewpoints provided by the parties directly involved in the
event. To put it as simply as possible: From
the viewpoint of an agent of genocide, bystanders are persons
possessing a potential (one needing to be estimated in every concrete case) to halt his ongoing actions. The
perpetrator will fear the bystander to the extent that he [or she] has reason to believe that the
bystander will intervene to halt the action already under way, and thereby frustrate the perpetrators goal of
eliminating the targeted group, that said, we immediately need to differentiate among the different categories of bystanders introduced
above. It is obvious that the more knowledgeable and other wise resourceful the bystander, the more the perpetrator will have reason to
fear that the potential for such resistance will translate into action, meaning a more or less direct intervention by military or other
means. Deemed efficient to reach the objectives of halting the incipient genocide. Of course, one should distinguish between bystanders
who remain inactive and those who become actively engaged. Nonetheless, the point to be stressed is that, in principle, even
the
most initially passive and remote bystander possesses a potential to cease being a mere onlooker
to the events unfolding. Outrage at what comes to pass may prompt the judgement that ‘this
simply must be stopped’ and translate into action promoting that aim. But is not halting genocide first and
foremost a task, indeed a duty, for the victims themselves? The answer is simple: The sheer fact that genocide is
happening shows that the targeted group has not proved itself able to prevent it. This being so,
responsibility for halting what is now unfolding cannot rest with the victims alone, it must also be
seen to rest with the party not itself affected but which is knowledgeable about -which is more or less literally witnessing
— the genocide that is taking place. So whereas for the agent, bystanders represent the potential of resistance, for the
victims they may represent the only source of hope left. In ethical terms, this is borne out in the notion of
responsibility of Immanuel Levinas (1991), according to which responsibility grows bigger the weaker its
addressee. Of course, agents of genocide may be caught more or less in delicto flagrante. But in the age of television - with CNN
being able to film and even interview doers as well as victims on the spot, and broadcast live to the entire television-watching world
(such as was the case in the concentration camp Omarska in Bosnia in August 1992) (see Gutman, 1993) — physical
co-presence
to the event at hand is almost rendered superfluous. One need not have been there in order to
have known what happened, The same holds for the impact of the day-to-day reporting From the ground by newspaper
journalists of indisputable reputation. In order to be knowledgeable about ongoing genocide, it suffices to watch the television news or
read the front pages of a daily newspaper. But, to be more precise, what exactly does it mean to act? What is to count as an action? We
need to look briefly at the philosophical literature on the notion of action — as well as the notion of agent responsibility following from it
- in order to gel a better grasp of the moral issues involved in being a bystander to genocide, whether passive or active. ‘I never forget',
says Paul Ricoeur in Oneself as Another, 'to speak of humans as acting and suffering, The moral problem', he continues, ‘is grafted onto
the recognition of this essential dissymmetry between the one who acts and the one who undergoes, culminating in the violence of the
powerful agent.' To be the 'sufferer' of a given action in Ricoeur's sense need not be negative; either 'the sufferer appears as the
beneficiary of esteem or as the victim of disesteem, depending on whether the agent proves to be someone who distributes rewards or
punishments'. Since there is to every action an agent and a sufferer (in the sense given), action is interaction, its structure is
interpersonal (Ricoeur. 1992:145). But this is not the whole picture. Actions are also omitted, endured, neglected, and the like; and
Ricoeur takes these phenomena to remind us that ‘on the level of interaction, just as on that of subjective understanding, not
acting
is still acting: neglecting, forgetting to do something, is also letting things be done by someone else,
sometimes to the point of criminality. (Ricoeur, 1992:157) Ricoeur's systematic objective is to extend the theory of action from acting to
suffering beings; again and again he emphasizes that 'every action has its agents and its patients' (1992; 157). Ricoeur's proposed
extension certainly sounds plausible. Regrettably, his proposal stops halfway. The vital insight articulated, albeit not developed, in the
passages quoted is that not acting is still acting. Brought
to bear on the case of genocide as a reported, on going
affair, the inaction making a difference is the inaction of the bystander to unfolding genocide. The
failure to act when confronted with such action, as is involved in accomplishing genocide, is a failure which
carries a message to both the agent and the sufferer: the action may proceed. Knowing, yet still not
acting, means-granting acceptance to the action. Such inaction entails letting things be done by someone else - clearly, in
the case of acknowledged genocide, 'to the point of criminality', to invoke one of the quotes from Ricoeur. In short, inaction here
means complicity; accordingly, it raises the question of responsibility, guilt, and shame on the part of the inactive bystander, by
which I mean the bystander who decides to remain inactive
1ar genocide
The embargo is legally classified as genocide – authors supporting the embargo are
isolated
Lopez 8 –Onofre Guevara Lopez is a commentator for El Nuevo Diario. Translated By Olga Tymejczyk “Cuba Embargo a Prolonged Genocide”
El Nuevo Diario, Nicaragua 10/7/08 http://watchingamerica.com/News/8598/the-embargo-a-prolonged-genocide/ //NG]
At the end of this month, on October 29, the General Assembly of the United Nations will discuss, for the seventeenth time, a project of a
resolution against the most universal, prolonged, and a low-blow of a violation of international law, human rights, and a people's sovereignty: a
50-year-old embargo imposed by imperialists against Cuba. The official name of Cuban delegation's proposal is: "Necessity of ending the
economic, commercial, and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba." According to a resolution approved last
year, the debate on this issue in the General Assembly will be conducted on the basis of a report by the Secretary General regarding the effects
of the embargo against Cuba, estimated at around $93 billion, of which $3.775 billion was the impact in 2007 alone. The report was prepared
with cooperation of more than 100 countries, 20 UN agencies and other international organizations. With majority support received in previous
assemblies and the worldwide awareness of the damages brought about by the embargo year after year, it will be very difficult for Cuba's
proposal not to be ratified again, just as forcefully. But Cuba is hoping for a result better than the 184 votes it received last year, when only 7
votes were missing from the unanimity of 191; excluding, of course, the United States, the 192nd member of the UN. In this period of grave
financial crisis shaking the powerful economic system of the United States, the
majority of countries – including many of America's
ideological allies – will understand better than ever the severity of a loss of nearly $4 billion a year for a small
nation like Cuba. The situation is further worsened by the destructive contribution of nature's blind forces
to the conscious action of the empire’s political forces. Hurricanes Gustav and Ike added their destruction to
the actions of the most complete, prolonged, and exhaustive program of destruction by U.S. governments
against Cuba. It is therefore natural that in the context of this blatant, massive, and systematic violation of the
sovereignty and human rights of the Cuban people, the embargo seems to the world as immoral and
repulsive as few other circumstances could be, and is condemned even by countries that oppose Cuba’s sociopolitical system. This causes a political and moral decline of the authors of the embargo, which is a yet
another reason why the world expresses increasing support for Cuba's demands. However, many population sectors remain
unaware because of their ignorance and because they support the embargo for ideological reasons,
fueled by old anticommunist propaganda against Cuba, the only remaining, poor sustenance of that
propaganda. These sectors should follow the debates about the report in the U.N. General Assembly, as they've been taught, among other
superficialities, the simplistic comparison of the difficult supply situation in Cuba to the abundance on the markets of other countries, just as
poor as the Caribbean nation, but never subjected to disasters such as the embargo. Moreover, they'd
have an incentive to find
out on their own the reason why it’s possible for the blocked and assaulted Cuba to maintain, among other
socio-cultural advances, health care and education systems on the same or even higher level than bigger
countries which do not suffer any outside aggression. They would then appreciate another fact that knows no precedent: the extraordinary
humanism of the Cuban revolution, which maintains advanced health care and education systems despite difficulties in the normal course of
life and despite the losses caused by the embargo. Moreover, those systems are generously shared with other nations. This includes, to a
greater glory of Cuba and to an embarrassment of the United States, free study of medicine for poor North American youths at the Latin
American School of Medicine. They could also explain the contradiction which is in front of them, but to many remains invisible: supermarkets
of our pauperized country overflow with merchandise and food, but the majority of our compatriots don’t even know it and could never afford
what those supermarkets offer. Those sectors could also abandon the poor mental scheme of "bad" socialism and "abundant and progressive"
capitalism, and acquire a more authentic vision of the world we're living in. For example, try to find a reason why in a country full of
supermarkets, our children suffer from undernourishment on a level absolutely unknown in Cuba. Nevertheless, despite
the isolation
and bad reputation acquired by the authors of the embargo, they maintain it, conscious of the fact that
it’s a case of genocide against a people, according to the description of genocide in the Geneva Conventions. The meaning
of the politics and actions of the U.S. in the embargo against Cuba are specifically categorized by the
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime [of Genocide] of 1948. The entire
international judicial order holds an obligation, also including the arrogant gringo empire, to not engage in activities
it has been pursuing by means of the embargo. It's logical that, as a result, the embargo of the United States
against Cuba increases America’s isolation and bad reputation. Apart from the seven countries which accompanied the
U.S. until last year with their votes, the economic war against the heroic island has had extensive consequences
against the sovereignty rights of third countries, their businesses, and citizens, as the Helms-Burton Act
has given the embargo an extraterritorial character. That war even violates political and human rights of
U.S. citizens and Cubans residing in the United States, as one of the damages inflicted by the embargo is a
ban on travel to Cuba. This violation is complemented by restrictions on legal travel from Cuba to the United States, against the
agreements between the two countries, along with the impulse to grant protective asylum to those who risk their lives traveling illegally by sea.
Finally, there
is the cynicism of propagating the notion of "the Cuban people" risking their lives for
"liberty", while a wall is being erected and death handed to other Latin Americans on the Southern U.S.
border. The gringo government has committed numerous misdeeds in its support of the embargo, which,
by the way, should have ended after the first resolution of the U.N. General Assembly. This coming October 29, the
world will surely vote again in favor of the Cuban complaint, but imperial arrogance will yet again flaunt its contempt for
international legality. But Cuba will not allow the U.S. to continue their violations without ever denouncing them. It is not only Cuba's
right, but also its will not to hesitate a moment in its fight for respect.
2ac human rights good
Human rights come first
Donnelly, 7 Andrew W. Mellon Professor of International Relations at the Graduate School of
International Studies at the University of Denver (Jack Donnelly, 2007, “International Human Rights”, 3rd
Edition, pp 21-22)//EM
The term human rights indicates both their nature and their source: They are the rights that one has simply because one
is human. They are held by all human beings, irrespective of any rights or duties that individuals may [or may not)
have as citizens, members of families, workers. or parts of any public or private organization or association. If all human beings have human
rights simply because they are human, then hu- man rights are held equally by all."˜ Because being human cannot be
renounced, lost, or forfeited, human rights are also inalienable. Even the cruelest torturer and the most debased victim
are still human beings. In practice, not all people enjoy all their human rights, let alone enjoy them equally. Nonetheless, all human
beings have the same human rights and hold them equally and inalienably. What exactly does it mean to have a
right? In English, "right"• has two principal moral and political senses. "Right" may refer to what is right, the right thing to do. For example, we
say that it is right to help the needy and wrong (the opposite of right) to lie. cheat, or steal. The focus here is on the righteousness of the
required action and on the duty-bearer`s obligation I0 do "what is right."• "Right" may also refer to a special entitlement that one has to
something. In this narrower sense, we speak of having, claiming, exercising, enforcing, and violating rights.: The focus is on the relationship
between right holder and duty-bearer. Many things to which people do not have a (human) right would nevertheless be right for every human
being to have or enjoy: for example, to be treated with consideration and respect by strangers or to have a loving and supportive family. Both
rights, in the sense of entitlement, and considerations of righteousness create relations between those who have a duty and those who are
owed or benefit from that duty. Rights, however, involve a special set of social institutions, rules, or prac- tices, Rights place right-holders and
duty-bearers in a relationship that is largely un~ der the control of the right-holders, who may ordinarily exercise their rights as they see lit.
Furthermore, claims of rights ordinarily take priority over ("trump") other kinds of demands, including righteousness. If Anne has a right to x
with respect to Bob, it is not simply desirable. good, or even merely right that Anne enjoy x. She is entitled to it. Should Bob hill to discharge his
obligations, besides acting improperly and harming Anne, he violates her rights. This makes him subject to remedial claims and sanctions that
she largely controls. Anne does not merely benefit from Bob`s obligation, She may assert her right to x. If he still does not discharge his duty,
she may press further claims against Bob (or excuse him), largely at her discretion. She is in charge ofthe relationship, as sug- gested bythe
language of "exercising" rights. Rights empower, as well as benefit. their holders. Although rights do not have absolute priority, they do
typically have prima facie priority over competing claims. Likewise, although there are limits, discretionary exercise is a
central and distinguishing feature of rights. The power and control of rights in ordinary circumstances are precisely what make them so valuable
to right-holders. Human rights are a special type of right. Most fundamentally, they are paramount moral rights,
Human rights are also recognized in international law (see §3.5). Most countries recognize many of these rights in their national legal systems
as well. The same "thing"•-for example, food or protection against discrimination --thus is often guaranteed by several different types of rights.
Human rights are universal—we have a moral imperative to protect our fellow citizens of the world
Gibney, 8 Belk Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina-Asheville (Mark Gibney,
February 2008, “Responsibilities for Protecting Human Rights”, http://globalejournal.org/2008/02/15/gibney/)//EM
Human rights are universal, meaning that each person possesses certain human rights by the mere fact
of this person’s humanity. What does not matter – or at least what should not matter – is where a person lives, how much money a
person has (or does not have), whether that person’s country has (or has not) became a party to any particular international human rights
treaties, and so on. Who has the responsibility for meeting these “universal” rights? The (universal) response of states has been that each
country is responsible for protecting human rights within its own borders – but that no state has human rights obligations that extend outside
of its own territorial jurisdiction. But what if
a country is not able or is not willing to protect the human rights of its
citizens? Or what if human rights are being violated, in large part due to the actions of outside states? It is here that
the silence of the international community has been deafening. Thus, notwithstanding near-universal declarations of
the “universality” of human rights, the responsibility for protecting human rights has been based almost exclusively on territorial
considerations. What
has this territorial approach to human rights given us? Unfortunately, not nearly enough.
Looking at violations of economic rights alone, we live in a world where an
average of 50,000 people die every single day
due to preventable causes. Yet, notwithstanding this incredible level of human rights atrocities, the territorial approach to human
rights has essentially gone unchallenged. However, this has started to change and it has come from the most unlikely of sources: the “war on
terror.” To state matters bluntly, the reason why “enemy combatants” are being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and not in some location in this
country is that American government officials are of the mind that U.S. obligations under international law do not extend outside the territorial
boundaries of the United States. Under this (territorial) approach to human rights, the U.S. government is not bound by the Torture Convention
and the Covenant on International Civil and Political Rights (both of which the U.S. is a party to) when it is operating outside the territorial
borders of the United States. This same kind of rationale is behind the policy of “extraordinary rendition.” The idea is that the U.S. has not done
anything wrong or unlawful when individuals outside the United States are being kidnapped and sent to some third country for “interrogation”
purposes – albeit at the behest of, and under the direction and control of, American authorities. Again, the argument is that American
obligations under international law are only applicable to actions within the United States. Fortunately, most people have been able to see
behind this façade. That is, they have recognized that territorial considerations should
not be used in this manner to
demarcate where a country’s human rights obligations begin – but, more importantly, where they end. Most people
seem to believe that torture is illegal whether it takes place in Fort Benning, Georgia, or Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or at the Abu Ghraib prison in
Iraq. In that way, the “war on terror” has helped us see that territorial considerations oftentimes make little sense in the context of protecting
human rights. This is not to suggest that “territory” does not matter at all or that states have the same human rights obligations outside their
borders as they do domestically. Neither of these propositions happens to be true. Rather, each state has the primary responsibility for
protecting human rights within its own domestic borders. However, what we have completely failed to recognize are the secondary
responsibilities that the rest of the international community has when the territorial state has not been willing or able to offer human rights
protection. And what also has to be said is that this is not simply a moral obligation – wouldn’t it be a nice gesture if we provided some
assistance to starving children in some other land – rather, it is a legal obligation. This is most clearly seen in the language of the International
Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, one of the so-called International Bill of Rights, whereby each state party to the Covenant
has (legally) obligated itself to protect the economic rights of “everyone” by means of “international assistance and cooperation.” What does
“international assistance and cooperation” mean? What it means is that when children in a particular country are being denied an education (to
choose one example), this not only constitutes a violation of human rights by the territorial state – but this also constitutes a human rights
violation on the part of the rest of the international community, which has pledged to protect those rights. The point is that human
rights
are universal, but so are the duties and responsibilities to meet those rights. This is what the framers of the
International Bill of Rights, and all of the other international human rights treaties, sought to achieve. This is the only way that the notion of
human rights makes any sense. If human rights protection were something that individual states could (and would) do individually, there would
be no need for any international conventions. Stripped to their barest essentials, what each one of these treaties represents is nothing less than
this: that everyone has an ethical as well as a legal obligation to protect the human rights of all other people. Sadly enough, our inability to
recognize the extent of our own human rights obligations has constituted the greatest human rights failure of all.
Human rights come first—they are the foundation of agency
Hirnandez-Truyol, 9 Profesor of Law at University of Florida (Berta Esperanza Hirnandez-Truyol, 2009,
“Embargo or Blockade? The Legal and Moral Dimensions of the U.S. Economic Sanctions on Cuba”,
Intercultural Human Rights Law Review,
http://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1219&context=facultypub)//EM
Human Rights are those trappings essential to the individual's existence. Such rights "are fundamental,
inviolable, interdependent, indivisible, and inalienable;(FN12) they are central to our self; moral, social,
religious, legal, and political rights that concern respect and dignity associated with personhood. with a
human beings' identity."(FN13) The origins of human rights are traced to "religion, natural law, and
contemporary moral values."(FN14) Following the First World War, the League of Nations was born with the purpose of maintaining
international peace.(FN15) This was a time when the rival states recognized an overarching need to protect the rights of different ethnic, racial,
and religions minority groups -- often groups created by the shifting of national boundaries as a result of the war. Thus, even before the
development of the modern human rights framework and its non-discrimination ideals, states entered into treaties with the goal of protecting
minority rights.(FN16) However, those treaties often were honored in the breach. Human rights violations within each state's borders
continued and ultimately the gravest of abuses led to World War II. After the Second World War, in 1945 the victors and others who joined
them assembled in San Francisco, participated in the United Nations Conference on International Organization, and established the United
Nations. Those nations signed the United Nations Charter ("the Charter"). The Member States "resolved to combine [their] efforts"(FN17) to
save succeeding generations from the scourge of war... and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the
human person, in the equal rights of men and women... and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom... and for
these ends... to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples....(FN18) The
Charter embraces the natural rights
notion that certain rights and freedoms of persons are fundamental and
that States can neither give them nor take them away.(FN19) As such, one of the Charter's purposes is to "encourage
respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion..."(FN20) Soon after the
formation of the United Nations, on December 10, 1948. the General Assembly (GA) adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights ("the Declaration").(FN21) After its adoption, the GA asked the Member States to make the text of the Declaration known and
"to cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction
based on the political status of countries or territories."(FN22) The Declaration is a comprehensive document embracing, like the Charter, a
natural law approach, and detailing civil and political rights as well as economic, social and cultural rights. The Declaration's preamble plainly
states that the
"recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of
the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world."(FN23) Member States commit to
"the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms."(FN24) The enumerated rights include
many rights and freedoms directly pertinent to a conversation about Cuba. The Declaration includes the rights to equality.(FN25)
nondiscrimination,(FN26) "life, liberty and the security of person",(FN27) freedom of religion.(FN28) freedom of opinion and expression,(FN29)
peaceful assembly and association,(FN30) freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State, as well as the freedom "to
leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."(FN31) The Declaration also prohibits slavery(FN32) and torture,(FN33) and
provides for a plethora of procedural rights(FN34) including the right to a fair trial, it forbids interference with privacy(FN35) and confirms the
right to own property.(FN36) Significantly, it sets out the right to participate in government(FN37) as well as the rights to health(FN38) and
education.
A human rights discourse of universalism is key to protect the powerless against oppression
Ignatieff, 1 - Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, PhD in history
from Harvard Universtiy (Michael, “The Attack on Human Rights,” Foreign Affairs, November/December 2001, online at
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/sipa/S6800/courseworks/Ignatieff_Human_Rights.pdf)
Many traditions, not just Western ones, were represented at the drafting of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights -- for example, the Chinese, Middle Eastern Christian, Marxist, Hindu, Latin American, and Islamic. The members of
the drafting committee saw their task not as a simple ratification of Western convictions but as an attempt to delimit a
range of moral universals from within their very different religious, political, ethnic, and philosophical
backgrounds. This fact helps to explain why the document makes no reference to God in its preamble. The communist delegations would
have vetoed any such reference, and the competing religious traditions could not have agreed on words that would make human rights derive
from human beings' common existence as God's creatures. Hence the secular ground of the document is not a sign of European cultural
domination so much as a pragmatic common denominator designed to make agreement possible across the range of divergent cultural and
political viewpoints. It remains true, of course, that Western inspirations -- and Western drafters -- played the predominant role in the drafting
of the document. Even so, the drafters' mood in 1947 was anything but triumphalist. They were aware, first of all, that the age of colonial
emancipation was at hand: Indian independence was proclaimed while the language of the declaration was being finalized. Although the
declaration does not specifically endorse self-determination, its drafters clearly foresaw the coming tide of struggles for national independence.
Because it does proclaim the right of people to self-government and freedom of speech and religion, it also concedes the right of colonial
peoples to construe moral universals in a language rooted in their own traditions. Whatever failings the drafters of the declaration may be
accused of, unexamined Western triumphalism is not one of them. Key drafters such as Rene Cassin of France and John Humphrey of Canada
knew the knell had sounded on two centuries of Western colonialism. They also knew that the declaration was not so much a proclamation of
the superiority of European civilization as an attempt to salvage the remains of its Enlightenment heritage from the barbarism of a world war
just concluded. The declaration was written in full awareness of Auschwitz and dawning awareness of Kolyma. A consciousness of European
savagery is build into the very language of the declaration's preamble: "Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in
barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind . . . " The declaration may still be a child of the Enlightenment, but it was
written when faith in the Enlightenment faced its deepest crisis. In this sense, human rights norms are not so much a declaration of the
superiority of European civilization as a warning by Europeans that the rest of the world should not reproduce their mistakes. The chief of these
was the idolatry of the nation-state, causing individuals to forget the higher law commanding them to disobey unjust orders. The abandonment
of this moral heritage of natural law and the surrender of individualism to collectivism, the drafters believed, led to the catastrophes of Nazi
and Stalinist oppression. Unless the disastrous heritage of European collectivism is kept in mind as the framing experience in the drafting of the
declaration, its individualism will appear to be nothing more than the ratification of Western bourgeois capitalist prejudice. In fact, it
was
much more: a
studied attempt to reinvent the European natural law tradition in order to safeguard
individual agency against the totalitarian state. THE POWER OF ONE IT REMAINS TRUE, therefore, that the core of the
declaration is the moral individualism for which it is so reproached by non-Western societies. It is this individualism for which
Western activists have become most apologetic, believing that it should be tempered by greater emphasis on social duties and
responsibilities to the community. Human rights, it is argued, can recover universal appeal only if they soften their individualistic bias and put
greater emphasis on the communitarian parts of the declaration, especially Article 29, which says that "everyone has duties to the community
in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible." This desire
to water down the individualism of
rights discourse is driven by a desire both to make human rights more palatable to less individualistic cultures in
the non-Western world and also to respond to disquiet among Western communitarians at the supposedly corrosive impact of individualistic
values on Western social cohesion. But this tack mistakes what
rights actually are and misunderstands why they have proven
attractive to millions of people raised in non-Western traditions. Rights
are meaningful only if they confer entitlements
and immunities on individuals; they are worth having only if they can be enforced against institutions such as the family, the state,
and the church. This remains true even when the rights in question are collective or group rights. Some of these group rights -- such as the right
to speak your own language or practice your own religion -- are essential preconditions for the exercise of individual rights. The right to speak a
language of your choice will not mean very much if the language has died out. For this reason, group rights are needed to protect individual
rights. But the ultimate purpose and justification of group rights is not the protection of the group as such but the protection of the individuals
who compose it. Group rights to language, for example, must not be used to prevent an individual from learning a second language. Group
rights to practice religion should not cancel the right of individuals to leave a religious community if they choose. Rights are inescapably political
because they tacitly imply a conflict between a rights holder and a rights "withholder," some authority against which the rights holder can make
justified claims. To confuse rights with aspirations, and rights conventions with syncretic syntheses of world values, is to wish away the conflicts
that define the very content of rights. Individuals and groups will always be in conflict, and rights exist to protect individuals. Rights language
cannot be parsed or translated into a nonindividualistic, communitarian framework; it presumes moral individualism and is nonsensical outside
that assumption. Moreover, it is precisely this individualism that renders human rights attractive to non-Western peoples and explains why the
fight for those rights has become a global movement. The
language of human rights is the only universally available
moral vernacular that validates the claims of women and children against the oppression they experience in
patriarchal and tribal societies; it is the only vernacular that enables dependent persons to perceive themselves
as moral agents and to act against practices -- arranged marriages, purdah, civic disenfranchisement, genital mutilation,
domestic slavery, and so on -- that are ratified by the weight and authority of their cultures. These agents seek out human
rights protection precisely because it legitimizes their protests against oppression. If this is so, then it is necessary to rethink what it
means when one says that rights are universal. Rights doctrines arouse powerful opposition because they challenge powerful religions, family
structures, authoritarian states, and tribes. It would be a hopeless task to attempt to persuade these holders of power of the universal validity
of rights doctrines, since if these doctrines prevailed, their exercise of authority would necessarily be abridged and constrained. Thus
universality cannot imply universal assent, since in a world of unequal power, the only propositions that the powerful and powerless would
agree on would be entirely toothless and anodyne. Rights
are universal because they define the universal interests of
the powerless -- namely, that power be exercised over them in ways that respect their autonomy as agents. In this sense, human
rights represent a revolutionary creed, since they make a radical demand of all human groups that they
serve the interests of the individuals who compose them. This, then, implies that human groups should be, insofar as
possible, consensual, or at least that they should respect an individual's right to exit when the constraints of the group become unbearable.
2ac cultural exchange
The embargo dramatically restricts cultural exchange – Cuban artists are turned away
in the name of US security
Coll, 8 – Professor of Law, President of the International Human Rights Law Institute, and Director, European and Latin American Legal
Studies Program at DePaul College of Law, Juris Doctor and Ph.D. in government and foreign affairs from the University of Virginia, frequent
lecturer on American foreign policy, U.S. relations with Cuba and Latin America, and international legal and political issues (Alberto R.,
“Harming Human Rights in the Name of Promoting Them: The Case of the Cuban Embargo,” UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign
Affairs, Fall 2007, lexis)//BI
"Without
culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any
authentic creation is a gift to the future. ,349 The U.S. embargo has had an impact on cultural exchange and
preservation. For example, in 2004 the U.S. Treasury Department denied the Hemingway Preservation
Foundation's application for a license to assist in preserving Ernest Hemingway's Cuban home.350 The home
holds invaluable pieces of joint American and Cuban literary history, including 2,000 letters, 3,000 photographs, and 9,000 annotated books, as
well as drafts of some of the novels Hemingway wrote while there, including For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Moveable Feast, and The Old Man and
the Sea.351 U.S. officials reportedly did not want to assist in any effort that could bring future tourist dollars to the Castro government.352 In
May 2005, the Hemingway Preservation Foundation reapplied to the U.S. Treasury Department for the license, this time jointly with the
National Trust for Historic Preservation.353 A letter signed by 60 writers and historians, among them John Irving and Salman Rushdie,
compared the home to the preserved homes of Mark Twain and William Faulkner.354 After meetings with members of the U.S. Treasury and
State Departments as well as members of Congress, the license was finally granted but only for the limited purpose of sending a team to give
technical advice on the restoration work.3 55 The U.S. government expressly prohibited donations of money, resources, materials, and even
simple carpentry tools, such as saws or hammers, which might be used by the Cubans to repair the property. For an example of the embargo's
impact on the visual arts, the
Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington, D.C. abruptly cancelled a "cultural program" it
had scheduled at the Cuban Interests Section of the Swiss embassy in November of 2004.356 Though only 41 tickets
had been sold to what they described would be a "dialogue about art," the program had drawn the attention of the State
Department. 357 The Office of Foreign Assets Control at the Treasury Department had also contacted the Gallery in order to inquire about
where proceeds from the ticket sales would go.358 As a result, the Gallery quickly chose to "postpone" the program.359 Perhaps the bestknown embargo-related hindrance to the arts involves the U.S. government's frequent denials of visas
to Cuban musicians. In 2004 alone, Buena Vista Social Club's legendary singers Ibrahim Ferrer360 and Omara Portuondo, jazz pianist
Jesus "Chucho" Vald6s, singersongwriter Carlos Varela, the dance band Los Van Van, and the folkloric ensemble Los Mufiequitos de Matanzas
were all forced to cancel performances in the United States as a result of visa denials by the U.S. government. 361 The U.S. Interests Section in
Havana wrote letters asserting that the musicians' entrance to the U.S. would be detrimental to national interests because of its potential to
"enrich the government" of Cuba.362 Also in 2004, the
U.S. government denied visas that would allow five Grammy
Award nominees for Best Tropical Latin Album, including Mr. Ferrer, to attend the ceremony, on the grounds
that the visit would be detrimental to the United States.363 In surmising why the U.S. government would deny visas to
musicians as "detrimental" to U.S. interests, Carlos Acosta, Cuban Vice-Culture Minister and head of the Cuban Music Institute, complained that
"something
as noble as music is being converted into a policy against Cuba. 364 In response to the visa denial, Mr.
addition to the shadow this policy
casts on the U.S. image, it also appears counter-productive, as promoting literary, musical, and artistic
exchanges with Cuba could serve to strengthen links with important sectors of Cuban society, broaden
Ferrer was quoted as saying, "I am not a terrorist. I couldn't be one. I am a musician. ' 365 In
cooperation in non-political areas, and contribute to greater openness within Cuba.
2ac embargo=bad
The embargo is an immoral human rights violation that props up the Castro regime
Henderson, 8 research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and is also associate professor
of economics at the Naval Postgraduate School (David R. Henderson, 2/21/8, “End the Cuban Embargo”,
http://antiwar.com/henderson/?articleid=12395)//EM
At the same time, despite the knee-jerk reaction of the Bush administration in favor of keeping the embargo, this
is a good time to
end the U.S. embargo on Cuba. Actually, it has always been a good time. The case for ending the embargo has little to do with
making Americans better off and lots to do with spreading American values – the good ones, not the bad ones – to make Cubans better off,
both in their degree of freedom and in their economic well-being. And now that Fidel Castro is officially out of commission, ending the embargo
would be easier because the U.S. government would not have to worry so much about saving face. The Moral Case for the Embargo Let's step
back and consider the proponents' case for the embargo. They make two arguments. The first is a straight moral argument: Castro (we need
not quibble with whether it's Raúl or Fidel) is
an evil man who heads an evil regime. The Castros have murdered many innocent
people, stolen a lot of property, and put many innocent people, including homosexuals, in prison. So far, I agree with the argument.
But here's the non sequitur: because of all this, the U.S. government should forcibly prevent Americans
from trading with Cuba. Why is it a non sequitur? Because for the trade embargo to be a logical response to the
vicious facts about the Cuban government, one would have to show that the embargo would speed the
end of the Cuban government. No one has done that. Jeff Jacoby, in a 1998 article in the Boston Globe, made the moral
argument above. He ended his article with the following flourish: "The key to Cuba's salvation does not lie in constantly attacking U.S. policy. It
lies in washing away the corrupt and fetid stain of Fidelismo. The embargo is regrettable and has its costs, but it is not what keeps Cubans on
their knees. The dictator is. Instead of harping on the embargo, American leaders should be saying, loudly and insistently, what every Cuban
yearns to hear: "'Castro must go.''' But notice something interesting. American leaders did say, loudly and insistently, that Castro must go. And,
at the same time, President Bush II strengthened the embargo. What happened to Castro? He lasted more years in power. His leaving power
had nothing to do with the embargo; it was caused by his bad health. It is possible that Castro's bad health is due to lousy socialized medicine,
but, if so, that's more his fault than it is the effect of the embargo. If your moral argument is that a policy must be kept in place to achieve a
certain end, and the policy clearly does not achieve that end, aren't you morally obligated to reconsider the policy? Make the Victims Hurt
More Which brings us to the second argument for the embargo, which seems to go as follows. By
squeezing the Cuban economy
enough, the U.S. government can make Cubans even poorer than Fidel Castro has managed to over the past
48 years, through his imposition of Stalin-style socialism. Ultimately, the theory goes, some desperate Cubans will rise up and overthrow Castro.
There are at least three problems with this "make the victims hurt more" strategy. First, it's profoundly
immoral. It could succeed only by making average Cubans – already living in grinding poverty – even
poorer. Most of them are completely innocent and, indeed, many of them already want to get rid of Castro.
And consider the irony: A defining feature of socialism is the prohibition of voluntary exchange between people. Pro-embargo Americans
typically want to get rid of socialism in Cuba. Yet their solution – prohibiting trade with Americans – is the very essence of socialism. The second
problem is more practical: It hasn't worked. To be effective, an embargo must prevent people in the target country from getting goods, or at
least substantially increase the cost of getting goods. But competition is a hardy weed that shrugs off governmental attempts to suppress it.
Companies in many countries, especially Canada, produce and sell goods that are close substitutes for the U.S. goods that can't be sold to Cuba.
Wander around Cuba, and you're likely to see beach umbrellas advertising Labatt's beer, McCain's (no relation) French fries, and President's
Choice cola. Moreover, even U.S. goods for which there are no close substitutes are often sold to buyers in other countries, who then resell to
Cuba. A layer of otherwise unnecessary middlemen is added, pushing up prices somewhat, but the price increase is probably small for most
goods. Some observers have argued that the very fact that the embargo does little harm means that it should be kept because it's a cheap way
for U.S. politicians to express moral outrage against Castro. But arguing for a policy on the grounds that it's ineffective should make people
question the policy's wisdom. Third, the policy is politically effective, but not in the way the embargo's proponents would wish. The
embargo surely makes Cubans somewhat more anti-American than they would be otherwise, and it makes
them somewhat more in favor of – or at least less against – Castro. Castro has never talked honestly about the embargo: he has
always called it a blockade, which it manifestly is not. But he has gotten political mileage by blaming the embargo, rather
than socialism, for Cuba's awful economic plight and reminds his subjects ceaselessly that the U.S.
government is the instigator. Some Cubans probably believe him.
The Cuban embargo means that Cuban citizens are systematically denied necessary
food and medicine
Hidalgo and Martinez, 2k Ph.D., is professor of macroeconomics at the University of Havana AND
Research Fellow at the University of Havana, working with the Centro de Estudios sobre Estados Unidos
(Vilma Hidalgo and Milagros Martinez, 2000, “Is the U.S. Economic Embargo on Cuba Morally
Defensible?”, Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 3.4, Project Muse)//EM
The prime victim of the economic blockade has unquestionably been the Cuban people. The blockade affects
the Cuban population without regard to sex, age, race, religion, political creed, or social position, not only because it attacks basic
means of living but also because it undermines the possibility of intellectual development and the spiritual
well-being of the Cuban family. In this essay we shall focus on three important and sensitive aspects of the harm
caused to Cuban families by the blockade: the food supply, health, and the negative consequences felt
by women in Cuba. We shall stress the impact that economic sanctions have had in heightening the crisis during the nineties. For the
moment we do not delve into other dimensions of the problem, which may be less visible but are no less relevant, such as the effect on
education, culture, scientific activity, and quality of life, as well as a more personal impact felt by sectors of the population such as children and
the elderly. In our effort to present an objective analysis we have often relied on quantifying the most tangible effects from an economic
perspective, yet even so it has not been possible to evoke the full effect of the havoc wrought by each of the factors described in the preceding
section as a function of ensuring adequate food supplies and levels of health among the population. Moreover, the toll in terms of human
suffering cannot be quantified nor estimated, and consequently we shall allow the historic events themselves to bear witness to what has
transpired, running the risk perhaps that the anecdotal nature of the events reported may seem to render our analysis simplistic. Assuring
Adequate Food Supplies and Good Health In spite of the severity of the crisis, one of the goals of the economic program begun in Cuba during
the nineties was to preserve social [End Page 106] gains and prevent the costs of this adjustment from impacting spending to benefit the
society. Cutbacks required by the inevitable macroeconomic readjustment largely involved administrative costs and subsidies to public
enterprise, while the national budgets for health and education remained virtually unchanged. An effort was made to ensure consumption of
essential goods by all families through distribution of a quota of these items at subsidized prices. But in spite of good political intentions, the
gravity of the monetary pressures that the nation faced led inevitably to lost ground with respect to assuring an adequate diet and maintaining
the quality of basic services. Cuban
agriculture was not exempt from the crisis. In the face of shortages of fuel
and farming supplies, the level of activity in this sector fell significantly, heightening the dependence on
imported foods acquired at unfavorable market conditions. As a result, in a few years the effects on consumption by the
general population were in evidence: daily caloric consumption, for example, dropped 34 percent, and protein intake plummeted 40 percent
between 1989 and the worst year of the crisis, 1993. Despite a slight recent improvement, there is a long row to hoe before previous levels are
reached: in 1989 the availability of food per capita was 3,108 caloric units and 73 grams of protein, while in 1997 these figures were 2,480 and
51.7, respectively. 5 This drastic change in consumption levels affected the health of the population, as both men and women experienced
weight loss, epidemics of some diseases previously unknown in the country broke out, and the birth weight of babies declined. In these difficult
times, every additional dollar paid to import foodstuffs affected Cuban families, taking its toll in human terms. When the Torricelli Act took
effect, contracts valued at over $100 million with Argentine subsidiaries of Continental Grain, in New York, and Cargill, in Minnesota, for
products such as wheat, soy, beans, peas and lentils had to be canceled. The U.S. market is obviously one of the most competitive in terms of
production of [End Page 107] various types of foods. According to several studies, the average cost of importing grains coming from U.S.
suppliers, including transportation charges, is $130 (US) per metric ton, substantially cheaper than importing the grain from Europe, which
would cost around $270. 6 This means, for example, that in 1997 the added cost for Cuba of importing beans was $24 million (US) dollars, and
for importing wheat flour it is $7.8 million each year. Likewise, restrictions imposed
on shipping by sea raised
transportation costs of food by 30 percent with respect to international rates and lengthened delivery cycles of goods to the
people. Thus, for example, a New Zealand company that manufactures powdered milk declined to supply 1,500 metric tons in the face of
refusal on the part of their shipping company to deliver the cargo to Cuban ports. Overall, it is estimated that in 1998, the added cost of
importing essential foods, given the lack of access to U.S. markets, reached $30 million, 7 which represented approximately 2 percent of
exports that year and substantially reduced the global import budget. This figure is equivalent to 15,000 tons of powdered milk that Cuban
children never received. The impact on availability of food was not limited exclusively to direct importation of foodstuffs but also exerted
considerable effect on the already weakened agro-industrial sector. The productivity of the agricultural and farming
sector was severely hampered by the prohibition on selling items such as pesticides, fertilizers, animal feed, and fuel. Two well-known cases
were those of Bayer AG of Germany and Sanachem of South Africa. Bayer canceled sales of the pesticide Sencor because the company
transferred production of the active ingredient to a plant in Kansas City. Bayer requested permission from the United States to continue
exporting to Cuba, but permission was denied. In 1997, Dow Chemical bought the shares of the Sentrachem group of South Africa, owner of
Sanachem, with which Cuba had enjoyed stable trading relations since 1992. In 1997 a Cuban import [End Page 108] firm had purchased
pesticides valued at $82 million from Sanachem, yet after that acquisition the U.S. Treasury Department put an end to business dealings
between the two companies, refusing even to grant a license to cover the shipment of products that were in transit. 8 The
human costs
due to impact on the health sector are even more obvious and dramatic if we consider that U.S.
companies produce more than 50 percent of important new drugs on the international market and that
90 percent of patents on new biotechnology products are granted to U.S. firms. Many of these products are vital to
saving human lives and have no equivalents made in Cuba. After Torricelli, fourteen subsidiaries based in Germany, Sweden, Japan, France,
Argentina, Italy, Australia, the Netherlands, Canada, Belgium and Switzerland that produce medicines and medical equipment stopped selling to
Cuba. Cuba is
forbidden to buy, from U.S. companies or subsidiaries, products such as third-generation antibiotics,
medicines and drugs used in postoperative pediatric cardiology and to treat infantile leukemia, modern cancer therapies, and
medications for the relief of side effects, for the treatment of AIDS, and others. Cuba is also denied the ability to purchase
equipment and replacement parts for donated equipment, as is the case of Kobe dialysis equipment, used with persons
requiring transplants.
These sanctions deprive citizens of their most basic rights and represent moral failure by the United
States
Hirnandez-Truyol, 9 Profesor of Law at University of Florida (Berta Esperanza Hirnandez-Truyol, 2009,
“Embargo or Blockade? The Legal and Moral Dimensions of the U.S. Economic Sanctions on Cuba”,
Intercultural Human Rights Law Review, Ebsco)//EM
The other aspect of legality involves the human
rights idea. Here, the real impact on real people of the embargo
borders on unconscionable. As the essay has described, the actions have taken a human toll; they affect health,
hunger, education, nutrition quite directly. They also affect the right to travel and the right to family life
of Cubans in the U.S. who can no longer visit their relatives with regularity nor spend time with them in
either times of joy or times of need -- although this has been changed dramatically by President Obama's policy shift. Economic
sanctions are valuable tools for protecting human rights. The U.S. has used sanctions to discourage human rights
violations. Examples include the U.S. ban of South African gold Krugerrands in 1985 to protest apartheid(FN148), the blockage of Nicaraguan
imports to deter terrorist acts of the Sandinista regime,(FN149) the prohibition of foreign aid to Burma to oppose the government's use of
forced labor,(FN150) and the 1989 denial of MFN status against China to protest the killing of pro-democracy protestors in Tiananmen Square
to name a few.(FN151) The U.S. is not alone in this approach. In fact, human rights violations have resulted in states jointly taking economic
sanctions through the UN Security Council. Examples include NATO states' 1986 sanctions against Libya as a result of Moammar Ghadafi's
support for the terrorist killing of 279 passengers aboard a U.S. airline bombed over Lockerbie and 1990 Iraq sanctions for its invasion of
The Cuba sanctions, however, reflect another aspect of economic sanctions: their deleterious and
harmful effects on civil society, the innocent citizenry of the targeted country. By depriving citizens of the
Kuwait.
benefits of trade, of travel, of family life; by creating circumstances in which people's health, nutrition, standard of living and overall welfare are
negatively affected, sanctions
have effected serious denials of human rights a moral if not legal failure.
The embargo was created without concern for basic human rights—today’s sanctions
only perpetuate this, serving US self-interest at the expense of the Cuban people
López-Levy, 11 - lecturer and PhD Candidate at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, teaches Latin
American Politics, and Comparative Politics at the University of Denver and the Colorado School of Mines (Arturo, “‘Chaos and Instability’:
Human Rights and U.S. Policy Goals in Cuba,” NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol. 44 No. 5, September/October 2011, pg. 16-18, ProQuest)//BI
For a half-century the United States has maintained an economic embargo on Cuba with the express goal of overthrowing the
country's regime. Two main arguments have historically justified this measure. In the Cold War era, Washington asserted that Cuba's alliance with the Soviet Union
and its behavior internationally constituted a national security threat to the United States. The embargo was therefore necessary to contain a nearby enemy. Since
the fall of the Berlin Wall, the main argument has been that
the Cuban regime violates its citizens' human rights and ought to
all other U.S.
interests, both economic and strategic, to the altruistic goal of promoting human rights on the island. U.S.
be overthrown for their benefit. The latter argument has made the embargo a singular U.S. foreign policy measure: It subordinates
policy toward no other country, from China to Russia to Saudi Arabia, has been so exclusively predicated on human rights as Cuba policy has - at least at face value.
Is the embargo really a human rights policy? It is not. We can come to this conclusion not simply because the embargo has not
"worked" to improve human rights in Cuba (although the policy's failure on its own terms is nonetheless notable). Nor because Amnesty International, Human
Rights Watch, and other prominent groups have denounced the U.S. embargo as itself a violation of human rights and as tending to provoke the Cuban government
into crackdowns on civil liberties. Rather, the problem with the embargo is that human
rights as a whole have never been an essential
consideration in its design. One right above all others takes precedence in U.S. Cuba policy: the right of Cuban exiles to reclaim their private
properties that were nationalized during Cuba's revolutionary process after 1959. The
embargo furthermore reflects Cuban exiles' desire to
punish those who do not accept them as the rulers of Cuba by including measures to "purify" the island of the current government's
upper echelons and many of its followers. Codifying these goals was the true motivation behind the Cuban Liberty and Democratic
Solidarity Act of 1996, better known as the Helms-Burton law, the central piece of U. S policy toward Cuba.1 Thanks to its sponsors, Senator Jesse Helms
and Congressman Dan Burton, the embargo is the law of the land. The law was passed soon after the Cuban air force shot down two U.S. planes flown by members
of Brothers to the Rescue, an exile group, who invaded Cuban airspace and dropped flyers calling on Havana residents to rebel. In the heat of the shootdown, the
U.S. Congress passed a law that tied the hands of the executive branch to respond flexibly to developments in the island. As result, the core of U.S. policy toward
the island is frozen in the anger of U.S. politics of almost two decades ago. In making the observation that the embargo's design has nothing to do with promoting
human rights, we refer to the model of human rights policy set forth by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted by the
United Nations General Assembly in 1 948. Although these norms are based on an ideology of liberal constitutionalism, promoting a liberal-democratic welfare
state, they are more than ideological constructs. They carry the force of international law and represent enforceable obligations of those states
that have signed the declaration. Both Cuba and the United States have signed it, and Cuba has agreed to all six covenants established to implement the
declaration's principles - the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (1966), the International Covenant of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (1966),
the Convention for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (1965), the Convention Against Torture (1985), the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination
Against Women (1979), and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). The United States has signed on to all of these instruments and ratified all but the last.
The declaration's 30 articles cover a range of rights, including basic freedoms to life and liberty, and freedom from slavery; civil and political rights (freedoms of
speech, assembly, association, and religion), and social and economic rights (to food, water, clothing, housing, security, education, employment, and so on). Each of
the rights on this relative short list are considered universal, interdependent, and indivisible - such that one right cannot be emphasized to the exclusion or
detriment of another. That is, the declaration lists a bundle of rights, all of which states must agree to protect and respect; it is not a menu from which they may
freely select. In the UDHR model, sovereign
states are understood to be the agents primarily vested with the
responsibility of protecting and promoting human rights inside their countries.2 Other states do have an obligation to protect
human rights in countries whose states fail to do so, but the quality and scale of foreign action is highly conditioned. In the case of Cuba, there is no
question that citizens and governments outside the country have the right to criticize Cuba's
government or to name and shame human rights violators; there is likewise no question that international institutions like the United
Nations and others can take up the issue of human rights violations within member states for discussion. But such measures must be
distinguished from more belligerent actions, including sanctions and especially military intervention. An important precedent
on the latter question was set in 1984, when the International Court of Justice ruled in The Republic of Nicaragua v. the United States of America that U.S. support
for the Contras' counterrevolutionary war against the Sandinista government - support often justified by the Reagan government in the name of protecting the
human rights of Nicaraguans under a supposedly totalitarian government - had broken international law. "With regard ... to alleged violations of rights relied on by
the United States" as a justification, the ruling found, "the Court considers that the use of force by the United States could not be the appropriate method to
monitor or ensure respect for such rights."3 Neither direct U.S. sponsorship of military action in Cuba, such as the infamous Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, nor Cuban
exiles' myriad terrorist actions that were sponsored, supported, or tolerated by the U.S. government are legal under international law4 Unlike military action,
sanctions for the sake of protecting human rights are not banned outright, but they are subject to the general regulations on dispute settlement under Chapter VI of
the UN Charter. According to Chapter VI, even the Security Council should take the opinion of other UN organs into consideration when considering sanctions, and
search for other peaceful ways to settle disputes such as through the International Court of Justice. According to the General Comment no. 8 of the Economic,
Cultural and Social Rights Committee, the international organ in charge of the 1966 UN covenant on these matters, any sanctions regime imposed on a country for
the purpose of improving human rights falls into the category of "smart sanctions," targeting only those responsible for violating human rights. Meanwhile, General
Comment no. 8 mandates that the sanctions' impacts on children, food security, health, and other aspects of the general population's living conditions be
periodically reviewed.5 Sometimes, foreign pressure brings about human rights improvements, and sometimes it mobilizes the population around the targeted
government. Well-targeted sanctions that minimize harm to innocent bystanders or victims of human rights abuses are the most effective, as are those that "detail
a very clear, credible, and limited number of demands."6 Moreover, they never amount to a country's policy toward another, but are rather one set of instruments
combined with positive inducements in search of a change in behavior or policy, not regime change.7 Sanctions against apartheid South Africa or countries of the
Soviet bloc, for example, were never about changing the regime. They were about pressuring the authorities and creating a propitious domestic context for reforms
and openness.8 By almost any standard, the U.S. embargo on Cuba short-changes human rights concerns. From
its inception, the embargo was
indiscriminate, targeting the whole Cuban population in the hope of provoking an internal revolt. Until 2000,
it prohibited food sales to Cuba and even today prevents the sale of medicines, medical equipment, and educational materials. Contrary to prevailing criteria about
sanctions, the
embargo does not include any official periodic assessment about the impact it has on
vulnerable groups and the general population's rights to food, drinkable water, education, and health. Furthermore, the embargo opportunistically
violates the UDHR's essential principles of interdependence and indivisibility, conferring a higher value
to the right of private property, a right that is at best equal and at worst less important than other rights.9 About a third of the Helms-Burton text
(Title III, "Protection of Property Rights of United States Nationals") is devoted to this issue. Although the text mentions "internationally recognized human rights"
several times, the sections dealing with a political transition in Cuba also emphasize the right to own private property, combined with the right to create
independent trade unions and the right to competitive elections (205, "Requirements and Factors for Determining a Transition Government," and 206,
"Requirements for Determining a Democratically Elected Government"). No other human rights considerations are given such priority. Now, owning private
property is undoubtedly a human right, but it is not absolute and does not have any higher standing in the list of human rights on the UDHR. Indeed, the right of
Helms-Burton
stipulates that ending the embargo is conditioned not upon substantial improvements in human rights, but upon a regime
change in Cuba. Normal relations with the United States are predicated on the wholesale stripping-away of the
Cuban revolution, which is to be replaced by a liberal-democratic regime that specifically "does not include Fidel Castro or Raul Castro." Helms Burton calls
for the dissolution of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution and the department of State Security, Cuba's internal police
apparatus, and demands free and fair multiparty elections in no fewer than 18 months after the proclamation of a transitional
owning property is the only right that appears in the UDHR (Article 17) but does not appear in the hard-law covenants. Not only that, but
government. This is also a case of arbitrary prioritization of a right, in this case electoral rights over the strategic promotion of human
rights with an integral vision. Since elections in the context of regime change tend to be destabilizing events, most human rights policies do not advocate such an
electoral fallacy by which human rights are considered equivalent to voting alone. Altogether, sections 205 and 206 of Helms-Burton pay excessive attention to
dismantling the revolutionary state and planning elections in Cuba to favor the Cuban political right, as well as to compensating Cuban exiles for properties
nationalized after the 1959 revolution. This
conditionality violates Cuban sovereignty in ways that make a mockery of
self-determination. The Cuban government and others have argued for years that Cuba is living under siege, as the victim of an
illegal U.S. policy aimed at overthrowing the government. According to this argument, the most powerful nation on
earth is attempting to isolate the island from its natural markets, not only cutting off most U.S. trade relations, but also illegally requiring third
countries to abstain from trading with Cuba - all in an attempt to worsen the daily lives of ordinary Cubans and thereby provoke a
rebellion against the government. Meanwhile, the invocation of an external, U.S. threat to Cuban sovereignty and to the safety and well-being of the Cuban
citizenry has long served to justify the Cuban government's restrictions on civil and political rights, especially of travel, speech, and association. Studies have shown
that the deterioration of social and economic indicators in Cuba, the number of political prisoners, and the implementation of emergency laws that limit liberties
have all increased in parallel to the strengthening of the embargo.10 For example, the most draconian laws against political dissidence were passed by the Cuban
National Assembly in 1996 as a response to the passing of the Helms-Burton law the same year. Law 88, under which dissidents were arrested and condemned to
long prison terms in 2003, was passed by the Cuban National Assembly in 1999 as an antidote to the Helms-Burton law. During the presidencies of Jimmy Carter, Bill
Clinton, and Barack Obama, releases of prisoners, the loosening of travel restrictions, and wider margins of political dissidence accompanied the relaxation of the
embargo. Although the threat of U.S. intervention is not valid to justify the violation of Cubans' civil rights, it is an accepted view in human rights norms that
governments can suspend some rights during emergencies. This government authority is not a carte blanche. It is based on the understanding that there is a link
between the prevented danger and the suspended rights, and that emergencies that last too long are suspicious. Many human rights organizations, including
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Human Rights First, agree that the Cuban government has used emergency pretexts with excessive frequency and
for too long.11 That said, there is irrefutable evidence and even confessions from U.S. government officials that the U.S. policy toward Cuba has
attempted to overthrow the regime by creating "chaos and instability" on the island.12 These words were used by Roger Noriega, former U.S. undersecretary for
hemispheric affairs, to describe U.S. policy goals in Cuba. This is
likely the only case in which "chaos" and "instability" have
been used to describe a government's means of promoting human rights.13 Such pronouncements, together with an
analysis of the embargo's codification in the form of HelmsBurton, can lead us to only one conclusion: that the embargo is not a human rights
policy but a masquerade for other, less altruistic, interests.
The US has the capacity to prioritize human rights in Cuba, but failure to adhere to
international standards undermines credibility
Halperin, 7 - American expert on foreign policy and civil liberties, senior advisor to the Open Society Foundations, Ph.D. in international
relations from Yale University, associated with a number of universities and think tanks including Harvard University where he taught for six
years (1960–1966), the Council on Foreign Relations and the Center for American Progress (Morton H., “Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy,”
Testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight, 12 July 2007,
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/civil-liberties/news/2007/07/12/3282/human-rights-and-u-s-foreign-policy)
I believe that the formulation of “ideals versus
reality” does not really illuminate the problem of addressing
issues such as using U.S. foreign policy to advance human rights. No American “ideals” can be fully implemented in our
foreign policy. Whether it is promoting human rights or democracy or the prevention of genocides—all of which embody conflicts between
different foreign policy objectives that are labeled “ideals”—there
are limits to the American ability to influence events
abroad. Moreover, I think it is a fundamental misunderstanding of the world to contrast a foreign policy of
“idealism” with one of “realism.” This approach assumes that there are “real” interests of a nation that can be derived from some
straightforward analysis and that this is in contrast to “ideals” that are just objectives we may care about but that are not our “real” interests.
In a democracy the “real” interests of a nation can be determined only by the political process. Preventing
genocide is no less a
“real” interest than is keeping the price of oil low or reducing the risk of a military attack. The American people, through
our constitutional processes, must decide what objectives are important to us in general and in relation to any specific country. As we deal with
individual nations we will often find that Americans who have a special attachment to one particular country or another will be especially vocal
when it comes to policy toward that country. In my view, that is as it should be. The intensity of concern as well as the positions taken can, and
do, affect U.S. foreign policy. Because of this difference, and because our ability to influence events varies from country to country, it is
inevitable that some
will see a double standard in U.S. foreign policy. The United States cannot, and should not, approach
it may not be possible to place the highest priority on promoting
human rights in one country, that does not mean that we should not give the advancement of human
rights the highest priority in U.S. policy toward other countries where we have a greater ability to do so.
each country in the world in the same way. While
Even when we have other critical interests in our relations with a particular country, we can and should press that government to honor its
international obligations to respect the human rights of its people. The three countries under consideration today are all countries in which the
United States has multiple interests that we must take into account when determining U.S. policy, but they are also places with substantial
human rights violations which we should seek to end. If we cannot have a single standard for deciding what priority to give to human rights in
U.S. foreign policy, we
also cannot have a “one size fits all” approach to advancing human rights in all
countries. For example, one critical question is whether the U.S. government should speak out forcefully in defense of human rights activists
and provide financial assistance to domestic actors struggling to defend human rights. In my view, in deciding the answer to that question (and
many others) we should look first to the views of the local activists. It is my understanding that human rights activists in all three countries of
particular concern today welcome, and indeed encourage, the United States government and private Americans to speak out in their defense,
and those at least in Egypt and Azerbaijan also welcome financial assistance from the American government. We should be responsive to those
requests. In other countries, such as Iran, human rights activists have made it clear that American support of any kind is counterproductive. We
should honor those requests as well. On other issues as well we should listen carefully to the views of those struggling in each country to
advance human rights. For example, as
Congress debates the future of economic sanctions against Cuba I urge you to
bear in mind that most Cuban dissidents have told us that the sanctions help the Cuban regime to justify
repressive measures. American military and economic assistance to other nations should also reflect our commitment to human rights.
Where there are gross and persistent violations of human rights, we should honor the law and our values by denying any assistance. In those
countries where there are lesser violations, we should use the leverage that our aid affords by pressing governments for greater respect for
human rights. Egypt, as the second largest recipient of U.S. economic assistance, is a prime example of this imperative. We
should also
use affirmative incentives to encourage states to improve their human rights records. The Millennium Challenge
program is the best and most effective example of such an effort. Congress should consider amending the MCA to make clear that a state must
be a democracy that respects human rights in order to be eligible for a compact. It is not inconceivable that Azerbaijan would improve its
governance capability and human rights protections sufficiently over time to be considered for such a compact and we should be sure that the
people of that country understand that. The
United States should also actively work with the United Nations and especially the
Human Rights Council to help to advance human rights and to protect human rights activists. Here, as elsewhere, we need
to recognize that by failing to observe internationally recognized human rights ourselves we reduce American
credibility to champion human rights for others. I understand that many in the Congress and elsewhere are troubled by the
first year of operations of the new Council. I share those concerns. However, it is far too soon to give up on the Council or to cut its funding. I
am confident that human rights activists in Cuba, Egypt, and Azerbaijan share this view.
2ac health internal link
The embargo deprives Cuba’s health sector of adequate medication and equipment,
victimizing the civilian population
Tutton, 9 – journalist and digital producer at CNN International, citing a study conducted by Amnesty International, director of MEDICC
(non-profit organization that encourages cooperation among U.S., Cuban and global health communities) Gail Reed, Master of Science from
Columbia University School of Journalism and Amnesty International’s Cuba researcher Gerardo Ducos, Bachelor of Arts, Anthropology from
Universite de Montreal (Mark, “Report: U.S. sanctions put Cubans' health at risk,” CNN Health, 2 September 2009,
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/09/01/amnesty.cuba.health)//BI
The U.S. trade embargo on Cuba is endangering the health of millions by limiting Cubans' access to
medicines and medical technology, human rights group Amnesty International alleged Wednesday. An Amnesty report
examines the effects of the sanctions, which have been in place since 1962. Amnesty International Secretary-General Irene Khan
called the U.S. embargo immoral and said it should be lifted. "It's preventing millions of Cubans from benefiting from vital medicines and
medical equipment essential for their health," Khan said. The
embargo restricts the export of medicines and medical
equipment from the U.S. and from any U.S.-owned company abroad. Amnesty also called on President Obama to not
renew the Trading with the Enemy Act, which is due for renewal on September 14. The Act has been reviewed by U.S. presidents on an annual
basis since 1978. Amnesty said that while not renewing the Act would not in itself end the embargo against Cuba, it would send a clear message
that the U.S. is adopting a new policy toward Cuba. In April this year President Obama lifted restrictions that had prevented U.S. citizens from
visiting relatives in Cuba, and sending them remittances. A U.S. State Department spokeswoman would not comment on the report because
she hadn't read it. However, she said, "The president believes it makes strategic sense to hold on to some inducements we can use in dealing
with a Cuban government if it shows any signs of seeking a normalized relationship with us and begins to respect basic human rights." The
Amnesty report also cites United Nations data that says Cuba's inability to import nutritional products for schools, hospitals and day care
centers is contributing to a high prevalence of iron deficiency anemia. In 2007, the condition affected 37.5 percent of Cuba's children under
three years old, according to UNICEF. Cuba
can import these products from other countries, but there are major
shipping costs and logistical challenges to contend with. Gail Reed is international director of MEDICC (Medical
Education Cooperation with Cuba), a non-profit organization that encourages cooperation among U.S., Cuban and global health
communities. She told CNN, "In general, the embargo has a sweeping effect on Cuban healthcare. Over the past decades, I
would say the people most affected have been cancer and HIV-AIDS patients." She also said the embargo
affects the way doctors think about the future. "Doctors in Cuba always worry that an international
supplier will be bought out by a U.S. company, leaving medical equipment without replacement parts and
patients without continuity of medications," Reed said. Gerardo Ducos, an Amnesty researcher for the Caribbean region, told CNN
that although medicines and medical supplies can be licensed for export to Cuba, the conditions governing the
process make their export virtually impossible. According to the report, the U.S. exported $710 million of food and agricultural
products to Cuba in 2008, but only $1.2 million of medical equipment and products. Reed said the embargo does not permit the
sale of active ingredients or raw materials to the Cuban pharmaceutical industry. She gave the example of
methotrexate, used to treat breast cancer, telling CNN that an export license was denied to a firm wanting to sell the U.S.-produced active
ingredient to Cuba, to be used in domestic production of the drug on the island. "Four
times as many women may be treated
with methotrexate if the drug could be produced domestically, so that Cuban importers were not forced to purchase the
finished product on the international pharmaceutical market," she said. The report says that products patented in the U.S. are
covered by the embargo. Ducos told CNN that this particularly affects HIV/AIDS treatments. "The latest medicines are
usually covered by U.S. patents, which means Cuba must wait several years for the patent to run out before they can
buy generic products," he said. In the statement, Khan added, "Although responsibility for providing adequate health care lies primarily
with the Cuban authorities, governments imposing sanctions such as embargoes need to pay special attention to the
impact they can have on the targeted country's population."
The embargo destroys Cubans’ nutrition and access to medical care
Coll, 8 – Professor of Law, President of the International Human Rights Law Institute, and Director, European and Latin American Legal
Studies Program at DePaul College of Law, Juris Doctor and Ph.D. in government and foreign affairs from the University of Virginia, frequent
lecturer on American foreign policy, U.S. relations with Cuba and Latin America, and international legal and political issues (Alberto R.,
“Harming Human Rights in the Name of Promoting Them: The Case of the Cuban Embargo,” UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign
Affairs, Fall 2007, lexis)//BI
1. Nutrition Even before the 1959 revolution that brought Castro to power, Cuba had to import a considerable amount of its food.267 In the
1980s, approximately half of all protein and calories consumed by Cubans were imported. 268 As communism collapsed in Eastern Europe in
1989, and Mikhail Gorbachev began reducing Soviet subsidies to Cuba, the Cuban economy entered a steep depression that reduced its GDP by
35%. When
the Soviet Union ceased to exist at the end of 1991, Russia's new leader, Boris Yeltsin, eliminated all aid to
Cuba. In addition to the loss of aid, the Cuban economy also lost its highly advantageous membership in the Soviet commercial bloc
(COMECON). The virtual disappearance of COMECON in 1990 left Cuba highly vulnerable and forced the nation to start integrating into the
wider and less protected capitalist international trading system, an economic readjustment fraught with significant economic pain and
hardship. This
would have been an appropriate time for the United States to reconsider its embargo, or to at least
narrow it in order to reduce its impact on the majority of innocent Cubans. Instead, the U.S. government not only left the
highly indiscriminate and comprehensive embargo in place but further tightened it in 1992 with the passage of the
Cuban Democracy Act. Those in Washington that were supportive of a tough policy toward Cuba argued that the embargo had not worked for
30 years because of Soviet subsidies, and that the end of such aid meant that the embargo would finally accomplish its objective of forcing
Castro from power.269 Thus, during Cuba's painful period of economic readjustment from 1989 to 1994, the embargo became a key
contributing factor to what was already an extremely difficult situation. Legally
and morally, the United States not only had the
obligation to take Cuba's deteriorating economic situation into account in the early 1990s
as it pondered whether to relax or tighten the embargo. The U.S. government's actions-to enhance the embargo's comprehensive
and indiscriminate character-had predictably harmful effects on the human rights of innocent people. The
impact on nutrition and public health from Cuba's economic crisis was devastating. Between 1989 and 1993, Cuban imports
opportunity but also the
declined by approximately 50%270 and resulted in an 18% to 25% decrease in the availability of protein and calorie sources. 27' The
decrease in the availability of nutrients had a detrimental effect on the health of the population, particularly
pregnant women and young children.272 Data on pregnancy and birth weights taken during the time period reveals troubling
trends. For example, low birth weights 273 rose 23% from 7.3% in 1989 to 9.0% in 1993.274 In ad- dition, pregnant women who failed to gain
adequate weight rose 18% from 7.9% in 1988 to 9.3% in 1993.275 Furthermore, in 1991, approximately 50% of pregnant women and six- to 12month old infants were affected by anemia, levels unheard of since the early 1970 s.276 Until 1992, children up to the age of 13 and seniors
over the age of 65 were regularly given a daily milk ration; in 1992 the ration was limited to children six years old and younger. 277 The
declining health indicators thus substantiate the Cuban government's claim that the
embargo affects the "physical and moral
integrity of an entire nation, above all its children and its elderly." 278 Moreover, a lack of nutrients added to
the incidence of disease in the larger Cuban population. An epidemic of optic and peripheral neuropathy, a condition caused in large
part by lack of food, 279 affected more than 51,000 Cubans in 1992-1993.28° Poor nutrition in combination with unsanitary conditions also
contributed to an increase from 5.5 cases of tuberculosis per 100,000 people in 1990 to 15.3 cases per 100,000 people in 1994.8 In addition to
harms suffered by the population due to a lack of sufficient nutrition, the lack of fats led to a soap shortage in 1993-1994,282 and Cubans were
forced to make soap out of lye, caustic soda, and other chemicals. 283 The use
of these soap substitutes resulted in an
increase in poisoning and bums and an epidemic of esophageal stenosis in toddlers from inadvertent ingestion of lye.284 Due
largely to the lack of soap products, epidemics of lice and scabies reached peak levels in 1994.285 While reports of these
conditions generated significant controversy within the United States regarding the embargo's appropriateness, the Clinton administration did
little to loosen the embargo. B. Medications and Medical Supplies The Cuban government claims that in the ten-month period between June
2004 and April 2005, the embargo cost Cuba $75.7 million in public health damages alone.286 This cost is a result of the laborious licensing
process that Cuba must comply with in order to purchase medical products manufactured in the United States or by U.S. subsidiaries. 287 Like
the rest of the embargo, the licensing procedures do not target certain carefully selected products but rather are comprehensive and
indiscriminate. These procedures pose serious problems when considering that U.S. companies produce approximately 50% of all new patented
drugs in the world.288 In a widely publicized 1997 report, the American Association for World Health ("AAWH") found that the
embargo's
arduous licensing provisions actively discouraged medical trade and commerce.289 AAWH further reported that in
some cases U.S. officials provided American firms with misleading or confusing information.290 In addition, it reported that several licenses for
legitimate medications and medical equipment were denied as "detrimental to U.S. foreign policy interests." 291 The AAWH concluded that, as
a result of inaccurate or confusing information from U.S. officials, one-half of the firms they surveyed incorrectly believed that the embargo
prevented all sales of medications and medical supplies to Cuba.292 An
arduous and confusing process that discourages even legal
Cubans' human rights to health and
sales of medication and medical supplies from U.S. companies or subsidiaries harms
medical care. The licensing procedures often effectively ensure that vital health products are only available to Cubans through
intermediaries at prohibitive prices that are much higher than in the American market.293 The resulting impact of medication shortages in
Cuba is well documented. 94 For example, between 1992 and 1993, medication shortages in Cuba accounted for a 48% increase in deaths from
tuberculosis; a 67% increase in deaths due to infectious and parasitic diseases; and a 77% increase in deaths from influenza and pneumonia.295
More recently, the Cuban government has issued reports in the United Nations General Assembly documenting the ways in which the U.S.
embargo makes the process of obtaining medications and medical equipment unnecessarily difficult and costly.296 Two examples include
Cuba's unsuccessful attempts to purchase an anti-viral medication called Tenofovir (Viread) from the U.S. firm Gilead and Depo-Provera, a
contraceptive drug, from another U.S. firm, Pfizer. Because it would have required an export license from the U.S. government, Gilead was
unable to sell Tenofovir, and Cuba was forced to purchase the medication through third-parties at a significantly higher price. The Cuban
government cited this as an example of the embargo's negative impact on Cuba's efforts to modernize its HIV/AIDS treatments. 297 In the
Depo-Provera example, Cuba reported that, despite Cuba's attempts to purchase the drug as part of a national program associated with the
United Nations Population Fund, Pfizer claimed it could not sell the product to Cuba without obtaining a number of licenses, a process which
would take several months.298 Cuba's report to the United Nations also chronicled obstacles the country faced in obtaining medical equipment
from U.S. companies and subsidiaries. Moreover, Cuba reports that the embargo's restrictions go beyond the purchase of medical equipment
and medications but also includes replacement components for equipment it already possesses.2 99 The country reported being denied the
possibility of purchasing replacement pieces containing U.S.-made components for equipment used in its Oncology and Radiobiology Institute.3
°° In another example, Cuba reported that the U.S. Treasury refused to authorize Atlantic Philanthropic, a United States NGO, from donating a
molecular biology laboratory to Cuba's Nephrology Institute. This technology would have facilitated successful kidney transplants for a larger
percentage of Cuban patients. 30 1 Additional reported examples include film for x-ray machines used to detect breast cancer, Spanishlanguage
medical books from a U.S. conglomerate subsidiary, and U.S.- made components for respirators.3 °2 A
policy of maintaining an
arduous and at times insurmountable licensing procedure for trading health-related products with Cuba harms the health
of Cuban citizens. Moreover, the waste of valuable time and the deprivation of necessary medicine and equipment
do not make sense morally or politically. In a 1995 speech addressing the use of economic sanctions as a political tool, former United
Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali explained: "Sanctions, as is generally recognized, are a blunt instrument. They raise the
ethical question of whether suffering inflicted on vulnerable groups in the target country is a legitimate
means of exerting pressure on political leaders whose behaviour is unlikely to be affected by the plight of their subjects., 30 3
Economic sanctions are a war on public health – removing the embargo is a moral
imperative
Eisenberg, 97 – BA and MD from the University of Pennsylvania, honorary Doctor of Science degrees from the University of Manchester
(UK) and the University of Massachusetts, Professor of Social Medicine and Psychiatry Emeritus in the Department of Global Health and Social
Medicine of the Harvard Medical School (Leon, “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters -- Human Costs of Economic Sanctions,” The New
England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 336 No. 17, pg. 1248-1250, 24 April 1997, http://www.scn.org/ccpi/NEJM_editorial.html)//BI
Accepting medical assignments constrained by larger political decisions without examining the moral grounds for those decisions and without
scrutinizing the role assigned to doctors can compromise the medical mission. Chasing symptoms is an ineffective mode of management when
their cause is clear. Andrews et al. note the "deteriorating economic conditions in Cuba" caused by the loss of economic subsidies from the
former Soviet Union, along with stricter economic sanctions
by the United States. The U.S. sanctions are having visible
effects. Mass flight (when Castro allows it) is one measure of the sanctions' "effectiveness." But we changed our minds
about welcoming refugees and transmuted them into migrants. Another measure of the "effectiveness" of the U.S. sanctions was the
epidemic of 50,000 cases of optic and peripheral neuropathy in Cuba between 1991 and 1993. The team that studied the
epidemic, assembled by the Pan American Health Organization with the cooperation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
concluded that
the outbreak was "linked to reduced nutrient intake caused by the country's deteriorating
economic situation and the high prevalence of tobacco use." (Ref. 4) The incidence of the disease dropped sharply after the Ministry of
Public Health inaugurated a program of multiple-vitamin supplementation for the Cuban population. Thus, three unusual outbreaks of
medical conditions -- neuropathy, self-inflicted disease, and injuries caused by rioting -- stemmed from U.S. economic
sanctions. The sanctions may be aimed at Fidel Castro, but the victims are the ordinary citizens of Cuba.
Castro looks as well fed as ever. Economic sanctions afflict civilians, not soldiers and not the leaders of autocratic
societies. Yet the United States continues to employ such sanctions against dictators (or at least those dictators it
suits present policy to condemn). When the sanctions are applied, they are all-encompassing. The interdicted trade with Cuba includes visits by
medical delegations and the mailing of medical journals such as this one. Whom do medical journals empower, dictators or doctors? Can
freedom be defended by suppressing information any more than by interrupting food supplies or drugs? Iraq is an even more disastrous
example of war against the public health. Two months after the end of the six-week war, which began on January 16, 1991, a study team from
the Harvard School of Public Health visited Iraq to examine the medical consequences of sanctions imposed after the armed conflict. The
destruction of the country's power plants had brought its entire system of water purification and distribution to a halt, leading to epidemics of
cholera, typhoid fever, and gastroenteritis, particularly among children. Mortality rates doubled or tripled among children admitted to hospitals
in Baghdad and Basra. Cases of marasmus appeared for the first time in decades. The team observed "suffering of tragic proportions.... [with
children] dying of preventable diseases and starvation." (Ref. 5) Although the allied bombing had caused few civilian casualties, the destruction
of the infrastructure resulted in devastating long-term effects on health. An international group supported by the United Nations Children's
Fund (UNICEF) carried out a more comprehensive study five months later by interviewing members of households selected to represent the
Iraqi population. (Ref. 6) The age-adjusted relative mortality rate among children in the eight months after the war, as compared with the five
years before the war, was 3.2. There were approximately 47,000 excess deaths among children under five years of age during the first eight
months of 1991. The deaths resulted from infectious diseases, the decreased quality and availability of food and water, and an enfeebled
medical care system hampered by the lack of drugs and supplies. The
Cuban and Iraqi instances make it abundantly clear that
economic sanctions are, at their core, a war against public health. Our professional ethic demands the defense of public
health. Thus, as physicians, we have a moral imperative to call for the end of sanctions. Having
found the cause, we must act to
remove it. Continuing to allow our reason to sleep will produce more monsters. In mid-19th-century London, John
Snow thought he discerned a pattern in the distribution of cases of cholera. (Ref. 7) He observed that in 10 days there were more than 500 fatal
attacks of cholera within 250 yards of the spot where Cambridge Street joined Broad Street. What made that junction important was the fact
that residents of the area obtained their water from the Broad Street pump. Because so many cases were aggregated in an area supplied by
one water company, Snow petitioned the Board of Guardians of St. James parish to remove the handle of the pump. They did. The epidemic
subsided. Like John Snow, we
have a responsibility to petition the authorities to remove the known causes of
epidemics -- in this case, by ending U.S. restrictions on trade in nonmilitary supplies. Doing so will not make us
popular in some circles. But neither the Hippocratic oath nor its contemporary versions contain clauses that make self-interest grounds for
exempting physicians from "acting for the benefit of the sick... and keeping them from harm and injustice." (Ref. 8)
The embargo is a crime against humanity – it constitutes a systematic deprivation of
Cubans’ health
Heizer, 98 – practices civil rights and employment law in Milwaukee, WI, graduated from the University of Wisconsin Law School cum laude
(Arthur, “The U.S. economic blockade of Cuba: a crime against humanity?,” Guild Practitioner, Vol. 55 No. 2, 1998, HeinOnline)//BI
Can it be reasonably argued that the effects of the economic blockade on Cuban civilians rise to the level
of a crime against humanity? Crimes against humanity are essentially war crimes. Unlike war crimes, however, a "crime against
humanity" can be recognized as such, regardless of the nature of the conflict in which the crime was committed, i.e., they can be
perpetrated in the context of international armed conflict or purely internal strife. There is no specialized
convention proscribing crimes against humanity. Instead, a cumulative body of law has developed, since the end of WWII, starting with the
principles of international law recognized and relied on in the Nuremburg war crimes tribunals. The prohibition against crimes against humanity
and the international community's resolve to hold individuals responsible for such violations were recently reinforced through the work of the
international criminal tribunals in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Application of the Nuremburg Principles The
Nuremburg
Principles describe crimes against humanity as "murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and
other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political,
racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of
the domestic law of the country where perpetrated." While our Cuba policy has included isolated instances of murder and attempted murder in
the past (including attempts on the life of President Castro), and there has been an apparent condonation of small scale armed attacks from
U.S. soil which can reasonably be expected to result in loss of life, it is doubtful they are sufficiently pervasive by themselves to establish a crime
against humanity under the first prong of the definition.47 Do U.S. Sanctions "Persecute" Cubans for Following a Revolutionary Path to
Development? The application of the second prong-outlawing "persecutions" on political grounds as an independent crime against humanity-to
the economic blockade is a much better fit because because U.S.
policy not only seeks to negate Cuba's selfdetermination, but indeed to persecute its populace for their revolutionary political tendencies in
actively or passively supporting the revolution. Unfortunately, it is unclear whether the requirement contained in the language
of the original Nuremburg Principles that the "persecution" be in connection with another independently established "crime" is or should still
be generally applicable. An important argument to explore, which is beyond the scope of this paper, is whether on these facts an independent
crime against humanity may be established, based on a 36-year plan of comprehensive politically motivated persecution by the most powerful
country in the world against a very small and poor neighbor. Our present focus, therefore, is whether the conscious attack on Cubans' health
rises to the level of "other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population." Does the Conduct of the U.S. Government Amount to "An
Inhumane Act Against a Civilian Population"? It is the author's opinion that the
widespread effects of the economic blockade
on food and medicine have been sufficiently established, documented, and publicized over a number of years
to constitute an inhumane act against a "population," as opposed to isolated instances victimizing only isolated
individuals. For example, in 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996 and 1997, the United Nations General Assembly in increasingly lopsided votes, has
condemned the U.S. embargo policy against Cuba.48 The U.S.
perseverance, and even intensification of this policy, in the
to the argument that the
violation of international law is serious rather than incidental or technical. The remaining question is whether the
light of such universal repudiation and exposure of the deleterious health impact, certainly adds
deliberate attempt to destroy the health system of a country and the health of its population for political leverage is an "inhumane act" rising to
the level of murder, extermination, enslavement, or deportation. Based
on the resulting increase in deaths, as well as the
other severe and unnatural deprivations suffered by the Cuban population in significant part due to the
economic blockade, the author believes the better argument is that the "crime" is so longstanding and notorious that
it does reach this level.
2ac at: embargo good
The embargo aids human rights only nominally – in reality it has an overwhelmingly
negative effect on the Cuban population
Coll, 8 – Professor of Law, President of the International Human Rights Law Institute, and Director, European and Latin American Legal
Studies Program at DePaul College of Law, Juris Doctor and Ph.D. in government and foreign affairs from the University of Virginia, frequent
lecturer on American foreign policy, U.S. relations with Cuba and Latin America, and international legal and political issues (Alberto R.,
“Harming Human Rights in the Name of Promoting Them: The Case of the Cuban Embargo,” UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign
Affairs, Fall 2007, lexis)//BI
The aforementioned 2007 United Nations report on the situation of human rights in Cuba noted that the U.S.
embargo actually retards rather than contributes to a political opening. The embargo and the recent HelmsBurton legislation has seriously affected the civil and political rights of Cuban citizens by provoking reactions
from Cuban authorities who often respond to foreign interference with domestic policy by enacting repressive laws.3 66
Thus, the embargo is the most powerful political cover under which the Cuban government repeatedly justifies its
unwillingness to broaden the scope of individual civil and political liberties on the island.
The embargo fuels Cuba’s human rights abuses
Steinberg 9 – researcher in Human Rights Watch’s Americas Division (Nik Steinberg, “New Castro, Same Cuba” Human Rights Watch,
November 19 2009, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2009/11/18/new-castro-same-cuba) MR
In July 2006, Fidel Castro handed control of the Cuban government over to his brother Raúl Castro. As the new head of state, Raúl
Castro inherited a system of abusive laws and institutions, as well as responsibility for hundreds of political prisoners
arrested during his brother’s rule. Rather than dismantle this repressive machinery, Raúl Castro has kept it firmly
in place and fully active . Scores of political prisoners arrested under Fidel Castro continue to languish in Cuba’s prisons. And Raúl
Castro’s government has used draconian laws and sham trials to incarcerate scores more who have dared
to exercise their fundamental freedoms. Raúl Castro’s government has relied in particular on a provision of the Cuban Criminal
Code that allows the state to imprison individuals before they have committed a crime, on the suspicion that they might commit an offense in
the future. This “dangerousness” provision is overtly political, defining as “dangerous” any behavior that contradicts socialist norms. The most
Orwellian of Cuba’s laws, it captures the essence of the Cuban government’s repressive mindset, which views anyone who acts out of step with
the government as a potential threat and thus worthy of punishment. Despite significant obstacles to research, Human Rights Watch
documented more than 40 cases in which Cuba has imprisoned individuals for “dangerousness” under Raúl Castro because they tried to
exercise their fundamental rights. We believe there are many more. The “dangerous” activities in these cases have included handing out copies
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, staging peaceful marches, writing news articles critical of the government, and attempting to
organize independent unions. The Raúl Castro government has applied the “dangerousness” law not only to dissenters and critics of the
government, but to a broad range of people who choose not to cooperate with the state. We found that failing
to attend progovernment rallies, not belonging to official party organizations, and being unemployed are all
considered signs of “antisocial” behavior, and may lead to “official warnings” and even incarceration in Raúl
Castro’s Cuba. In a January 2009 campaign called “Operation Victory,” dozens of individuals in eastern Cuba—most of them youth—were
charged with “dangerousness” for being unemployed. So was a man from Sancti Spíritus who could not work because of health problems, and
was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in August 2008 for being unemployed. In addition to “dangerousness,” Cuba
has a wide
range of other laws that criminalize the exercise of fundamental freedoms, including laws penalizing
contempt, insubordination, and acts against the independence of the state. Indeed, article 62 of the Cuban
constitution prohibits the exercise of any basic right that runs contrary to “the ends of the socialist state.” Together with a judicial
system that lacks independence and systematically violates due process rights, Raúl Castro’s government has
employed such laws to imprison scores of peaceful dissidents. Imprisonment is only one of the many tactics the Cuban
government uses to repress fundamental freedoms. Dissidents who try to express their views are often beaten, arbitrarily arrested, and
subjected to public acts of repudiation. The government monitors, intimidates, and threatens those it perceives as its enemies. It isolates them
from their friends and neighbors and discriminates against their families. Cuba
attempts to justify this repression as a
legitimate response to a US policy aimed at toppling the Castro government. It is true that the United States has a
long history of intervention on the island, and its current policy explicitly aims to support a change in Cuba’s
However, in the scores of cases Human Rights Watch examined for this report, this argument falls flat.
government.
The embargo is oppressive and helps the regime – only lifting solves
Griswold 2 – [Daniel T. Griswold is the associate director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Trade Policy Studies. “No: The Embargo Harms
Cubans and Gives Castro an Excuse for the Policy Failures of His Regime” 5/27/02 http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/no-embargoharms-cubans-gives-castro-excuse-policy-failures-regime //NG]
Former president Jimmy Carter’s five-day visit to Cuba arguably did more to promote freedom on that oppressed island than the U.S.
government’s trade and travel embargo has accomplished in four decades. In a live, televised speech to the people of Cuba, Carter challenged
his host, communist dictator Fidel Castro, to allow free speech, free elections — and free religious worship. In addition to publicizing a prodemocracy petition campaign that the state-run Cuban media had ignored, Carter challenged
the U.S. government to lift its
trade and travel embargo, a position entirely consistent with his demand for more human rights in Cuba. Since
1960, Americans have been barred from trading with, investing in or traveling to Cuba. The embargo had a national-security rationale before
1991, when Castro served as the Soviet Union’s proxy in the Western Hemisphere. But all that changed with the fall of Soviet communism.
Today, a decade after losing billions in annual economic aid from its former sponsor, Cuba
is only a poor, dysfunctional nation
of 11 million people that poses no threat to U.S. or regional security. A 1998 U.S. Defense Intelligence
Agency report concluded that, “Cuba does not pose a significant military threat to the U.S. or to other
countries in the region.” The report declared Cuba’s military forces “residual” and “defensive.” Some
officials in the Bush administration charge that Castro’s government may be supplying biological-weapons material to rogue states and
terrorists abroad, but the evidence is not conclusive. And even if it were true, maintaining a comprehensive trade embargo would be a blunt
and ineffective lever for change. The Cuban embargo already is tighter than U.S. economic sanctions against Iraq, even though Iraq is a far
greater security threat. If
the goal of U.S. policy toward Cuba is to help its people achieve freedom and a better
life, the economic embargo has failed completely. Its economic effect is to make the people of Cuba worseoff by depriving them of lower-cost food and other goods that could be bought from the United States.
It means less independence for Cuban workers and entrepreneurs, who could be earning dollars from
American tourists and fueling private-sector growth. Meanwhile, Castro and his ruling elite enjoy a
comfortable, insulated lifestyle by extracting any meager surplus produced by their captive subjects.
Cuban families are not the only victims of the embargo. Many of the dollars Cubans could earn from U.S. tourists would come back to the
United States to buy American products, especially farm goods. The American Farm Bureau estimates that Cuba could “eventually become a $1
billion agricultural-export market for products of U.S. farmers and ranchers.” The embargo stifles another $250 million in potential annual
exports of fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides and tractors. According to a study last year by the U.S. International Trade Commission, the embargo
costs American firms between $684 million and $1.2 billion per year. As a foreign-policy tool, the
embargo actually enhances
Castro’s standing by giving him a handy excuse for the manifest failures of his oppressive communist
system. He can rail for hours about the suffering the embargo inflicts on Cubans, even though the
damage done by his domestic policies is far worse. If the embargo were lifted, the Cuban people would
be a bit less deprived and Castro would have no one else to blame for the shortages and stagnation that
will persist without real market reforms. Congress mistakenly raised the embargo to a new level in 1996 with the passage of the
Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act. Known as the Helms-Burton act, it threatens to punish foreign-based
companies alleged to engage in the “wrongful trafficking in property confiscated by the Castro regime.”
The law is legally flawed because it allows U.S. courts to rule on actions of parties who were not U.S.
citizens when the alleged offense took place. As a foreign-policy tool, the law perversely punishes not the
Castro regime itself, but some of our closest allies, such as Canada and the European Union. Economic sanctions rarely
work. Trade and investment sanctions against Burma, Iran, Iraq, and North Korea have failed to change
the behavior of any of those oppressive regimes; sanctions have only deepened the deprivation of the very
people we are trying to help. President George W. Bush and Republican leaders in Congress understand that
economic engagement with China offers the best hope for encouraging human rights and political
reforms in that country, yet they fail to apply that same thinking to Cuba. Pressure has been building in Congress for a new
policy toward Cuba. Two years ago Congress voted to allow limited sales of food and medical supplies to Cuba on a cash-only basis, and the
House voted by wide margins in 2000 and 2001 to lift the travel ban (although that provision died in the Senate). Both the Senate and the
House voted this spring in favor of third-party financing for farm exports to Cuba while debating this year’s farm bill, but the provision was
stripped from the final bill in the conference committee. A new House caucus, the Cuban Working Group, composed of 20 Democrats and 20
Republicans, unveiled a plan recently for easing the embargo. Speaking for the group, Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) delivered a withering indictment
of U.S. policy: “For over 40 years, our policy toward Cuba has yielded no results. Castro hasn’t held free and fair elections, he hasn’t improved
human rights and he hasn’t stopped preaching his hate for democracy and the U.S. It’s time to try something new.” Instead of relaxing the
failed Cuban embargo, the Bush administration wants to continue the status quo. In a speech on May 20, the president reaffirmed his support
for keeping the trade and travel embargoes in place until the Cuban government holds free elections. The administration already has
quadrupled the number of Americans cited for violating the travel ban in 2001 compared with the number cited the last year of the Clinton
administration. For example, one 75-year-old retired schoolteacher was fined $1,000 for a recent bicycle tour through rural Cuba. According to
U.S. law, citizens can travel more or less freely to such “axis of evil” countries as Iran and North Korea. But if Americans want to visit Cuba
legally, they need to be a former president or some other well-connected VIP or a Cuban-American. The strongest supporters of the Cuban
trade embargo are Cuban-Americans concentrated in Southern Florida — an important constituency in a key electoral state. Yet those very
same Cuban-Americans routinely and massively violate the spirit if not the letter of the embargo. Each year, they send $800 million in harddollar remittances to their friends and families back in Cuba; another 100,000 Cuban-Americans actually visit their homeland each year through
a special program for “emergency” visits (most of which occur around the Christmas holiday). In the name of politics, Cuban-American leaders
want to restrict the freedom of other Americans to visit Cuba while retaining that freedom for themselves. Lifting or modifying the
embargo would not be a victory for Castro or his oppressive regime. It would be an overdue
acknowledgment that the four-decade-old embargo has failed and that commercial engagement is the best
way to encourage more-open societies abroad. The U.S. government can and should continue to criticize
the Cuban government’s abuse of human rights, while allowing expanding trade and tourism to
undermine Castro’s authority from below. Instead of the embargo, Congress and the administration should take concrete if
incremental steps to expand American influence in Cuba. First, the travel ban should be lifted. Yes, more American dollars
would end up in the coffers of the Cuban government, but dollars also would go to private Cuban citizens. Philip Peters, a former
State Department official in the Reagan administration and an expert on Cuba, argues that American tourists would boost the earnings of
Cubans who rent rooms, drive taxis, sell art and operate restaurants in their homes. Those dollars then would
find their way to
the 300 freely priced farmers’ markets, to carpenters, repairmen, tutors, food venders and other
entrepreneurs. Second, restrictions on remittances should be lifted. Cuban-Americans currently can send a maximum
of $1,200 a year to friends and relatives in Cuba. Like tourism, expanded remittances would fuel the private sector,
encourage Cuba’s modest economic reforms and promote independence from the government. Third,
American farmers and medical suppliers should be allowed to sell their products to Cuba with financing
arranged by private commercial lenders, not just for cash as current law permits. Most international trade is financed by temporary credit, and
private banks, not taxpayers, would bear the risk. Finally,
the Helms-Burton law should be allowed to expire in 2003. Like
every other aspect of the embargo, it has failed to achieve its stated objectives and has, in fact, undermined U.S.
influence in Cuba. In an April 4 speech on the importance of trade-promotion authority, President Bush noted that trade was about
more than raising incomes. “Trade creates the habits of freedom,” the president said, and those habits “begin to create
the expectations of democracy and demands for better democratic institutions. Societies that are open
to commerce across their borders are more open to democracy within their borders. And for those of us who
care about values and believe in values — not just American values, but universal values that promote human dignity —
trade is a good way to do that.” Bush should apply that same moral and practical reasoning to his administration’s policy toward
Cuba. The most powerful force for change in Cuba will not be more sanctions or a short visit by a former U.S. president, but daily interaction
with free people bearing dollars and new ideas.
Imperialism
2ac imperial metaphors important
The aff’s investigation of imperial metaphors is necessary to comprehend and
challenge broader power strucutres
Perez, 8 PhD, J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of History at University of North Carolina (Louis A. Pérez Jr.,
2008, “Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos”, Google Books)//EM
Paradigms of power dwell in the realm of metaphors. Power seeks moral subsidy and social validation
within those representations of higher purpose so readily provided by metaphorical depiction, those figurative
constructs where the terms of representation are arranged to provide the perspective desired. Metaphor serves principally as a hortatory
device, to persuade and to prevail upon, a way to mediate perception of reality: to see something as other than what it is, and thereby enable
conduct for a purpose other than what is pro- fessed. The concept of metaphor
insinuates itself into virtually all facets of
the culture: in aesthetic production and popular vernacular, in religion, philosophy, and science, to mention
only a few. Metaphors constantly evolve; their meanings change; sometimes they become literal; sometimes they get lost al- together. As a
mode of discourse in the service of power, metaphors discharge a special function to enable domination
and induce submission. That is, they act to articulate the premise of power and therein offer insight into the larger logic of imperial
paradigms. The depictive efficacy of metaphor is contained within the larger moral sys- tem from which it
originates, whereby the exercise of power deemed proper and proclaimed appropriate in one domain obtains validation by association with
another. The exercise of power derives normative plausibility best by way of everyday forms, principally
from familiar cultural models represented as a matter of the commonplace and common sense: that is,
metaphor as a means of cognitive access to conceptual realms in which the premise of power as- sumes the guise of propriety. "Figurative
language," psychologist Catarina Cacciari correctly suggests, "is arguably the most powerful source for meaning creation
and sense extension."• Indeed, Cacciari argues, metaphors "force us to see things in a different perspective and to reconceptualize
them accord- ingly.""
Only by understanding the metaphors behind the imperial project, can we attempt to
reverse imperialism
Perez, 8 PhD, J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of History at University of North Carolina (Louis A. Pérez Jr.,
2008, “Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos”, Google Books)//EM
Metaphor has been central to the premise of empire. It has served as a source of plausible purpose by
which the colonial polity imagines the creation of empire as self-explanatory and self~confirming, thereupon transacting
the exercise of power as an obligation of duty and a deed of disinterest. To invoke the figurative was to assemble a stock of usable imagery of
power hierarchies, usable in the sense that it propounded the rationale of domination as a matter of self-evident propriety. Metaphor
concealed the ideological content of lan- guage, a process that purported to persuade without the need to explain and validate the propriety of
power as a premise of normality, what anthropologist Christopher Tilley suggested metaphors "utilized
as vehicles of power in
the sense of social domination and control." The very raison d'être of colonialism was inscribed within pretension to
plausibility, derived from time-honored representations of mission civilatrice: with domination depicted as deliver- ance, self-interest
represented as selfless purpose, and subjugation rendered as salvation. The choice of metaphor hence offers insight
into political
purpose. Metaphorical constructs as modes of representation were intrinsically self- confirming and
provided normative plausibility to the exercise of power. ln- sofar as the use of metaphor involved choice, it necessarily
implied purpose and suggested means, and more: to choose one metaphor-and not another- was to propound a perspective on the nature of
the world, to call attention to some attributes and ignore others, not as a matter of serendipity but as a function of intent. Metaphors
have their politics, and their politics consist of either disguising differences or suggesting similarities. That
is their purpose. The use of figurative representations, sociologist Mary Douglas notes, acts to "create to some extent the realities to which they
apply."" It
thus becomes nec- essary to approach metaphor as a function of its political meaning, that is,
from the perspective of the implications it was designed to suggest and the inference it sought to invite, purposefully,
as a cognitive process by which it acted to narrow the choice of perception to the one desired. Point of view was inscribed within the metaphor,
which is to suggest that the politics was em- bedded within the image.
Reframing our metaphorical representations of Cuba is critical to reverse imperialism
Perez, 8 PhD, J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of History at University of North Carolina (Louis A. Pérez Jr.,
2008, “Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos”, Google Books)//EM
Cuba came to the attention of the world at large principally by way of figura- tive depiction, more precisely, in the form of metaphors imbued
with colonial meanings: in the sixteenth century as "the Key of the New World" ("Ia Llave del Nuevo Mundo"•), "the Key to the Gulf " ("lr1 Llave
del GoUo"•), and "the Bulwark of the West Indies"• ("eI Antemural de las Indias Occia'enta1es"); in the nineteenth century as "the Queen of
the Antilles,"• "the Pearl of the Antilles," "the Gem of the Antilles," and "the richestjewel in the royal crown," by which time, too, it had earned
the designation of "the Ever Faithful lslc"• ("Ia Siempre Fidelilsima Isla ")."˜5 Metaphorical representation also developed
into
the principal mode by which the Americans propounded the possession of Cuba as a matter indispen
sable to the future well-being of the United States. To advance a plausible claim to a territory governed by Spain, and to which its
inhabitants presumed rightful succession to rule, required the Americans to create a parallel reality by which they
persuaded themselves-and sought to persuade others-that Cuba rightfully belonged to them, not only,
however, and indeed not even principally, as a matter of self-interest but as a function of providential pur- pose and moral propriety.
Metaphorical constructs were central to the process by which national interest was enacted as idealized
purpose: at once a combi- nation of denial and dissimulation, a source of entitlement, and a means of empowerment. To understand
the North American use of metaphor is to gain insight into the use of cultural models and social
relationships in which the U.S. imperial project was conditioned. Metaphors of Cuba served to advance
U.S. interests and were, in turn, mediated by racial attitudes and gender hierarchies, on one hand, and
prescience of destiny, on the other. They worked best within those belief systems from which Americans obtained their cues concerning matters of civic duty and moral conduct and, indeed, were the principal means by which intent of purpose and reception of meaning were
transacted. Figurative depiction drew into complicity all who shared a common cultural system from which collectively to receive the meaning
desired of metaphor, what Herbert Clark and Catherine Marshall described as "mutual knowledge based on com- munity membership."" That
this process was at the same time a source of knowledge further in- vites attention to the role played by metaphor in the maintenance of
systems of domination, and more: it is to be sensible of the cognitive determinants by which the propriety of power was inferred. This was
knowledge with conse- quences, for it was assembled as a function of North American needs, that is, interests, and acted upon as a matter of
North American normative systems, that is, culture. The importance of metaphor in this context is related directly to its capacity to facilitate
moral accommodation to empire, as a way to think about the exer- cise of power and thereby make sense-indeed, to make common sense-of
the imperial project. Metaphor
provided the means by which Americans came to an understanding of the
world around them, the way, psychologist C. C. Anderson suggested, by which metaphors generally make "the unfamiliar, the
incongruous, and thc inexplicable" comprehensible." To understand the ways that Americans engaged the Cuba of
their imagi- nation is thus to obtain insight into the moral dimension of power, as both a model for conduct and a
mode of knowledge."• This necessarily involves, Hrst, the examination of the cultural representations by which power insinuated itself into the
normative order of daily life. But it also requires attention tothe character of information with which Americans assembled their knowledge of
Cuba, as well as its fonn and function-neither ofwhich should be presumed to be a matter of happenstance-and always with the understanding
that this information arrived principally in the fomi of culturally conditioned depic- tions. But most of all it requires attention to the ways that
these representa- tions themselves were a product of power. This was knowledge assembled as the ideological framework in which the
exercise of power was transacted in the form of presumed propriety, whereupon it passed into realms of conventional wisdom and received
truths. The efficacy of the
metaphor as a medium of representation was contained in its capacity to suggest
a moral context into which to inscribe the normative logic of American hegemony. It was to refer the imagination
to those shared culturally cletennined behaviors that, when summoned into the service of po- litical purpose, ratified the premise of imperial
practice. Metaphor reached deeply into those semiconscious realms of sentiment and sensibility, there to arouse strong feelings that often
propelled Americans to act because they "felt"• it was the right thing to do: to manipulate emotions and foster predis- position toward some
matters and prejudice to others."• This was to draw Cuba into domains of North American awareness by way of culturally coher- ent models,
derived from familiar experience, thereupon to serve as source for complex narratives by which the logic of domination was validated." Anthropologists Deborah Durham and James Femandez posit "a sense of complicity of language"• between the author and audience, as one person
"making of a metaphor, readily grasped by another, can become an instrument of consen- sus and thus community between them."
Philosopher Ted Cohen suggests an- other level: metaphor as a means "to form or acknowledge , . . community and thereby to establish an
intimacy between the teller and the hearer/'Z' Metaphorical representations were
essential to the claim of moral
intent with which Americans presumed to insert themselves into the lives of Cubans. It was not sufficient that
Americans persuade themselves of the generosity of their purpose; it was also necessary to persuade Cubans of the benelicence of American
motives. Therein lay the moral sources of North American hege- mony in Cuba. The process by which power was exercised-and experiencedhad everything to do with the capacity to advance a version of reality to which both peoples more or less willingly subscribed.
2ac internal link
The Cuban embargo imperialist and hurts Cubans – empirics prove
Lawson-Remer 99 – [Terra Lawson-Remer writes for The Yale Herald, a newspaper run by undergraduate students at Yale University “Lift
the Cuban embargo” 1/22/99 http://www.yaleherald.com/archive/xxvii/1999.01.22/opinion/p10remer.html //NG]
United States foreign policy is central to the life of every Cuban, enforcing the dearth of essentials and
luxuries, from medicine to cosmetics to automobiles. With the exception of Cuba, the United States is the single largest trading partner of
every Latin American country. Clearly, hacking these ties would create an economic hemorrhage in any Latin American nation. The U.S.
embargo against Cuba, only mentioned in this country between glimpses of unbuttoned trousers and political cockfights, lacerates
the Cuban people every day. Although clothed in the rhetoric of freedom and democracy, the trade
embargo is fundamentally a tool of economic imperialism. When President Bill Clinton, LAW '73, said that "the overarching goal
of American policy must be to promote a peaceful transition to democracy on the island [of Cuba]," he wasn't telling the full truth. Clearly,
Cuban-style democracy wouldn't qualify as "free" by most definitions. Yet other nations
with far worse human-rights records,
including Guatemala, China, Chile, and Indonesia, have received U.S. economic and political support
despite their atrocities. Hiding behind the rhetoric of liberty in dealing with Cuba is supremely hypocritical. The real motive
behind U.S.-Cuban policy is economic imperialism, not democracy. American involvement with Cuba
dates back to the Spanish-American War, when the United States forced Cuba to add an amendment to
its constitution allowing the U.S. to intervene in Cuba's internal affairs. Political imperialism gradually
gave way to economic imperialism. By the eve of the Cuban revolution, foreign corporations, with the complicity of
Fulgencio Batista's repressive regime, owned the vast majority of Cuban assets. Consequently, the U.S. lent covert military
support to dictator Batista from 1957 to 1959 by sending weapons and intelligence to fight Castro's rebel army. Even after the revolutionaries
came to power in 1959, the CIA continued to sponsor a counter-revolutionary army within Cuba. It's no wonder that in 1960, when the
revolutionaries nationalized Cuba's extensive wealth, they failed to compensate U.S. companies, while corporations from nations that hadn't
fought against the rebels were adequately paid. This seizure of property was the primary reason for the Cuban embargo. As Michael
Ranneberger, the State Department's Coordinator for Cuban Affairs, said, "One of the major reasons for
the imposition of the embargo was the Cuban Government's failure to compensate thousands of U.S.
companies and individuals." In other words, the embargo is the vestige of an imperialistic policy, dating
from 1901, which has been characterized by U.S.-backed dictators and the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Now that the "democracy defense" of the Cuban
embargo has been exposed as a farce, what is left to defenders of the status quo policy? Cuba
remains a communist nation,
defying free trade laws, the trend toward global capitalism, and the U.S. corporate appetite for profit.
One could say, in the rhetoric of the Cold War, that the U.S. is simply standing strong against the communist menace
90 miles from our shore. Yet it seems evident that the small island off the shore of Florida poses no
security threat to the United States. More importantly, communism has been good to the Cuban people. The infant mortality rate
in Cuba is one of the lowest in the world (12 per 1,000 live births). Life expectancy in Cuba far exceeds that in the rest of Latin America (73.5
years as opposed to, for example, 64.3 years in Ecuador). The illiteracy rate has declined from 25 percent of the population before the
revolution (mid-'50s) to 4 percent in the mid-'90s. It's important to note that all this was achieved without the support of the U.S., the World
Bank, or the International Monetary Fund. Perhaps Soviet support until 1989 compensated for the lack of global financial involvement—but it's
doubtful. More importantly, Cuban farm workers now have access to potable water, decent housing, education, and health care at a rate
almost unparalleled in the rest of Latin America. Before the revolution, Cuba had a higher GNP, but it was concentrated in the hands of the very
rich. Today the wealth of Cuba benefits every Cuban. Cuba is not an island paradise. Although the Cuban people have, on the whole, benefited
from communism, the system is currently close to collapse. This is due primarily to the loss of its largest trading partner, the USSR, as well as to
inherent economic inefficiencies. The lack of a free democracy in Cuba also remains an important issue—it's impossible to support a system
that denies full freedom to its citizenry. So what stance should the U.S. take toward Cuba? If
we are truly interested in freedom,
democracy, and prosperity, we must consider the best interests of the Cuban people. In order to regain
prosperity and establish democracy, Cuba must make the transition from a state-planned economy
under Castro to a market economy under a democratic government. This cannot happen as long as
Castro and communism are synonymous with anti-imperialism—and they will remain synonymous as long
as the embargo is in place. Cuba will need the help of economists in order to find a non-capitalist alternative to communism. While
laissez-faire capitalism would wipe out all the gains achieved under communism, a non-capitalist market economy could create prosperity
without poverty. It's
time to eschew the hackneyed rhetoric extolling the virtues of capitalism, admit that
communism has been far more beneficial to the majority of Cubans than rampant capitalism was before
the revolution, and lift the Cuban embargo.
Unrealistic and self-serving conditions on lifting the embargo make a mockery of
Cuban sovereignty
Dominguez, 97 – Antonio Madero Professor for the Study of Mexico at Harvard University, where he is also Vice Provost for International
Affairs in the Office of the Provost, Senior Advisor for International Studies to the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Chairman of the
Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, and a member of the executive committee of the Weatherhead Center for International
Affairs; described by Foreign Affairs as the dean of US Cubanologists, has published various books and articles on Latin America and, in
particular, Cuba (Jorge I., “U.S.-Cuban Relations: From the Cold War to the Colder War,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Vol.
39, No. 3, Autumn 1997,pp. 49-75, online at http://www.jstor.org/stable/166485)//BI
The Monroe Doctrine is often presented as a statement in the tradition of Realpolitik, whereby the United States
sought to deter European reconquest in the Americas beyond the colonies the European powers still held. That reading is,
literally, a half-truth. The operative sentence of President James Monroe's Message to Congress (December 2, 1823) features an ideological
policy: We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we
should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.
(Perkins, 1963: 56-57) It
was not just their power but also their system, which was "essentially different," that Monroe
sought to keep away from the Americas. Monroe's ideological intent was instantly understood by Austrian chancellor Klemens
von Metternich. The United States, he wrote to his Russian counterpart, had "distinctly and clearly announced their intention to set not only
power against power, but, to express it more exactly, altar against altar." If the United States were to prevail, Metternich continued, "what
would become of our religious and political institutions, of the moral force of our governments...?" (Perkins, 1963: 392). Ideological goals have
been integral to US policy toward Latin America ever since. President Theodore Roosevelt amended the Monroe Doctrine in his Message to
Congress of 1905. "There are, of course, limits to the wrongs which any self-respecting nation can endure," he wrote. Such wrongs include
"some State unable to keep order among its own people...and unwilling to do justice to those outsiders who treat it well." Those circumstances
"may result in our having to take action to protect our rights," though "such action will not be taken with a view to territorial aggression"
(Perkins, 1963: 223). The US
government thus claimed the right to intervene in the affairs of its near neighbors to
stop internal disorder, as it defined it, or to redress perceived injustices done to foreigners. From the outset
of the formulation of what came to be known as the Roosevelt Corollary, economic "injustices" committed against foreigners-that is,
nonpayment of debts-would warrant US intervention. Under
these and related policies, the United States occupied
Cuba militarily from 1906 to 1909. From the 1930s to the 1980s, the U.S. propensity to intervene in Latin American countries for these
reasons was tempered by the structure of the international system and, in particular, by competition with Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Cold War interventions, for example, characteristically featured a strong "anti-Soviet" component; the United States rarely intervened in the
internal affairs of its near-neighbors unless it perceived a superpower threat.4 With
the collapse of the Soviet Union and the
transformation of the international system, the United States was liberated to pursue once again
ideological interests in the Monrovian tradition. US interventions in Panama in December 1989 and Haiti in September 1994 exemplify
the renewed willingness of the United States to deploy force to reshape the domestic politics of its near-neighbors in the absence of a threat
from another superpower. The collapse of the USSR was, of course, especially pertinent to US-Cuban relations: the
Soviet Union no longer sought to stop the United States from attempting to remake Cuban domestic politics. Free at last to rediscover its
history, the US Congress enacted the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996. The
Helms-Burton Act captures well
this ideological tradition in US foreign policy. Section 201, "Assistance to a Free and Independent Cuba," affirms that "the selfdetermination of the Cuban people is a sovereign and national right of the citizens of Cuba which must be exercised free of interference by the
government of any other country." Subsequent sections, however, indicate
that the United States still claims the right to
determine in intrusive detail which "system" of governance is permissible in the Americas (US House of
Representatives, 1996: sec. 201). Section 205 stipulates the definition for determining when Cuba will have a
transitional government. It requires that Cuba free all political prisoners, legalize all political activity, and
make a public commitment to organize free and fair elections. But the definition of the transitional government also
includes ceasing interference with Radio Marti or Television Marti, permitting the reinstatement of
citizenship to Cuban-born persons returning to Cuba, and "taking appropriate steps" to return
expropriated property to US citizens or compensate them accordingly. It also requires the exclusion of Fidel and Raul
Castro from Cuba's government, a provision closed to the hypothesis that Cuba's people might choose them as their governors in a
free and competitive election. Even if a transitional government were to carry out all these procedures, Section 202 still seeks to limit US
assistance to such a government principally to humanitarian aid (food, medicine, emergency energy needs) and to "preparing the Cuban
military forces to adjust to an appropriate role in a democracy" (US House of Representatives, 1996: sec. 202). The
definition of a
democratic government, under Section 206, stipulates some widely accepted criteria, such as free and fair elections, respect for civil
liberties, an independent judiciary, and so forth. But part of the definition also stipulates
that Cuba must be "substantially
moving toward a market-oriented economic system" and show "demonstrable progress in returning to United States
citizens" once expropriated property or "providing full compensation for such property" (US House of Representatives, 1996: sec. 206). Even if
one were to agree that TV Marti should be seen and heard in Cuba, that those who lost their citizenship should regain it, that market economics
works best, that Fidel and Raul Castro's services are not needed in a future Cuban government, and that property should be returned or
compensated, all
of these desiderata go well beyond any internationally recognized criteria for the
determination of democratic or transitional democratizing governments under the charters of the United Nations or
the Organization of American States. Mandating them in US legislation as defining characteristics of a democratic or transitional
Cuban government makes a mockery of the pledge to respect Cuban sovereignty. The Helms-Burton Act is,
however, quite faithful to the themes of the Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt Corollary. It claims for the
United States the unilateral right to decide a wide array of domestic policies and arrangements in a
nominally sovereign post-Castro Cuba. In the Monroe Doctrine, the United States asserted its right to specify which system of
government was acceptable in the Americas. In the Roosevelt Corollary, the US government claimed the additional right to stipulate specific
economic and other policies and specifically to redress the nonpayment of debts. The
Helms-Burton Act rediscovers the
ideological brio of imperialism. At the end of the twentieth century, as in centuries past, the United States is demanding the right to
set the framework for the political and economic system it would tolerate inside Cuba.
2ac extraterritoriality internal link
The embargo is a hypocritical and imperialist tool of American foreign policy—its extraterritoriality
claims extend the tentacles of American imperialism worldwide while oppressing the Cuban people
Hirnandez-Truyol, 9 Profesor of Law at University of Florida (Berta Esperanza Hirnandez-Truyol, 2009,
“Embargo or Blockade? The Legal and Moral Dimensions of the U.S. Economic Sanctions on Cuba”,
Intercultural Human Rights Law Review,
http://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1219&context=facultypub)//EM
From an internationalist's perspective, two
sticky points of the U.S. policy stand out. One is its express
extraterritorial reach aimed at regulating the conduct of foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies which, under
international legal principles, are nationals of the state of incorporation and not U.S. nationals. The other is the tension of the
sanctions with the idea of free trade central to the World Trade Organization (WTO), the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade (GATT), and also embraced by the North American Free Trade Agreement governing U.S.-Canada-Mexico trade. Opponents claim
that the extraterritorial reach of and the barriers to trade created by the embargo violate international
law. Moreover, it has a disastrous impact on the people of Cuba including establishing a roadblock to
feeding the hungry or treating the sick.(FN6) On the other hand, proponents of the policy argue that it is a perfectly legitimate
exercise of sovereignty by the world's only surviving superpower with the valid and laudable objective of strangulating an already failed
economy and bringing democracy (and thus freedom) to the people of Cuba.(FN7)
The embargo also imposes extraterritoriality on the rest of the world
Gordon, 12 Professor of Philosophy at Fairfield University and Senior Fellow at
the Global Justice Program at Yale (Joy Gordon, Winter 2012, “The U.S. Embargo against Cuba and the
Diplomatic Challenges to Extraterritoriality”, http://www.invisiblewar.net/wpcontent/uploads/2010/08/The-US-Embargo-Against-Cuba-and-the-Diplomatic-Challenges-toExtraterritoriality3.pdf)//EM
The U.S. embargo is not limited to unilateral measures of the sort described above. The
embargo is also extraterritorial: it
interferes in Cuba's trade with companies located in third countries. The Torricelli and Helms- Burton laws greatly
increased the extraterritorial impact of the embargo, and they came at a time when Cuba's economic situation was particularly precarious.
Eighty-five percent of Cuba`s trade had been with the Eastern bloc, and in the aftermath of the collapse ofthe Soviet Union, Cuba made drastic
changes in its economy In 1991, Cuba rapidly began establishing new trading partners, focusing on Canada, Mexico, Europe, and Latin America.
Thus, the extraterritorial measures imposed by the United States were particularly damaging at the juncture when Cuba was working as quickly
as possible to establish new trade relations. In 1992, Congress passed the "Cuban Democracy Act,"• introduced by Senator Robert Torricellif
Since 1975, foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporations had routinely been given licenses to trade with Cuba, as long as the subsidiary functioned
independently of the parent corporation and no U.S. goods or U.S. dollar transactions were involved/ The Torricelli law prohibited these
licenses, with the result that foreign subsidiaries were treated the same as U.S. corporations, with violators subject to the same penalties as
U.S. companies. This constituted a clear international law, which holds that "a company is ordinarily considered to be a national of the state
under the laws of which it is organized."• In addition, the Torricelli law imposed restrictions on shipping: any vessel that enters Cuba to
provide goods or services, regardless of the country of origin, cannot stop at a U.S. port for 180 days; otherwise, both the ship and its cargo are
subject to confiscation. This applies even to goods that the United States considers permissible such as Cuban imports of food from third
countries. The Torricelli law also prohibits third
countries from selling goods to the United States that contain any
amount of Cuban materials or any materials that have passed through Cuba."• For example, no metal products can
be sold to the United States that contain even trace amounts of Cuban nickel, one of Cuba's major exports. Likewise, no Belgian chocolate may
be sold in the United States unless the Belgian government provides assur- ances to the U.S. government that the chocolate contains no Cuban
sugar, an export that is critical to the Cuban economy."• In 1996, the
Helms-Burton Act, known as the "Libertad Act,"•" added
other extraterritorial provisions. Title III of the act stipulates that foreign companies that invest in Cuban properties that were nationalized by the Cuban state after the Revolution are subject to suit by the original
owners, if they are now U.S. nationals, in U.S. courts."• Thus, a former Cuban citizen who owned a plantation in Cuba in
the 1950s could now sue a Spanish hotel chain that built a hotel on that land in 2010, if the ex-Cuban is now a U.S. citizen. In addition, Title IV
provides that the officers and executives of companies using or investing in those Cuban properties, and their families, may be barred from
entering the United States."• The Helms-Burton Act also prohibits the import of any goods that are of Cuban origin, in whole or in part, or were
manufac- tured or produced in Cuba, in any part, or were ever located in or trans- ported from or through Cuba. These restrictions apply not
only to goods imported into the United States, but to transactions that take place entirely outside the
United States.14
2ac exceptionalism impacts
American exceptionalism is the root cause of interventionism and militarism
Edwards, 12 Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Bridgewater State University in
Massachusetts. (Jason A. Edwards ,Summer 2012 “An Exceptional Debate: The Championing of and
Challenge to American Exceptionalism”, Rhetoric & Public Affairs Volume 15, Number 2, Project
Muse)//EM
Although Mr. Gingrich might be a champion of American exceptionalism, quite a few authors have challenged those ideas and how
they are operationalized. Geoffrey Hodgson is one such critic. Hodgson’s Myth of American Exceptionalism questions the very nature of
exceptionalism. Mr. Hodgson is a British national who has been “thinking about the United States, reading about the United States, and
experiencing American history all my life” (ix). He considers himself to be a friend of America and until the late 1990s, “remained an ‘American’
in my politics” (xii). However, Hodgson maintains that
something has been fundamentally wrong with U.S. politics
over the past thirty years. What troubles Hodgson most has been the propensity to “a new insistence that
America be admired, almost worshipped” (xii). In the last thirty years, U.S. political culture seemed to develop a
disdain for journalists and commentators who pointed out the shortcomings of American society and its
leaders. As Hodgson reflected on this change, he came to the conclusion that American history had been distorted. The uniqueness of
the U.S. political tradition has been overstressed. America’s greatness is not truly her own, because she owes
a good chunk of it to Europe, a point which often is ignored. With that in mind, Hodgson spends the next six chapters discussing how the
United States is not as exceptional as it believes itself to be. In chapter 1, Hodgson examines the historical development of
American exceptionalism, while at the same time challenging the uniqueness of the American experience. Throughout this chapter, Hodgson
demonstrates that the rise and expansion of the United States was not wholly of its own making, but relied upon the help and influence from
European states and peoples. For example, many trace the origins of American exceptionalism to Puritans who immigrated to the United States
seeking religious and political freedom. Yet Puritans like John Winthrop and William Bradford were not Americans, but Europeans. And
Hodgson notes they were not unique in their search for political and religious freedom. All over Europe, people struggled to extend the
freedom of others. Accordingly, any exceptional ethos derived from the Puritans is at least partly European in nature, and not solely American.
Ultimately, Hodgson insists that the “United States did not emerge like Athena from the brow of Zeus, or by a kind of geopolitical virgin birth”
(20). Chapters 2–4 continue this motif of debunking the American exceptionalist mythology. In chapter 2, Hodgson examines American history
until the [End Page 357] Civil War. He demonstrates how many items that make the United States exceptional—the Declaration of
Independence, the Constitution, the wide availability of education, territorial expansions westward—were directly linked to experiences in
Europe. Chapter 3 investigates the development of America’s exceptionalist ethos from the Civil War to the Cold War. As in chapter 2, Hodgson
demystifies some of the myths about the American experience. For example, the reform movements of emancipation and labor and the
expansion of rights such as woman suffrage that the United States celebrates as providing a beacon for the world to emulate, had already taken
place or were taking place in Europe. Consequently, America’s political development is not as unique as some would believe. Chapter 4
explores the time period comprising the height of the liberal consensus of the 1960s to the ascendancy of conservatism in the 1990s and 2000s.
Hodgson describes how items that made the United States exceptional before, such as a reliance on its own natural resources, have led it to
undercut its own claims to exceptionalism. The expanding militarism of the United States has repudiated a tradition of being suspicious of
standing armies and has led the United States to intervene in the affairs of other nations. This militarism caused fits for American politicians,
policymakers, and pundits. America, which once declared its opposition to colonialism, is now a modern empire. In chapter 5, Hodgson presents
how the United States is truly exceptional in ways that are profoundly negative. This negative exceptionalism includes the rise of social
inequality between classes, the highest murder rate in the world, the continual use of capital punishment, the continued problems with access
to health care, and the increasing influence of money in politics. Hodgson traces the acceleration of this negative exceptionalism to the 1970s,
when U.S. political culture began to swing to the conservative and the United States began to consume more than it produced. In the final
chapter, Hodgson answers a series of rhetorical questions about American exceptionalism not answered throughout the preceding pages. For
example, he poses the question, “[I]s there, then, any truth at all, or has there been no merit in exceptionalism?” (172). Hodgson answers that
American exceptionalism inspires the lives of countless Americans and people across the world. Nevertheless, he asserts that “what has been
essentially a liberating set of beliefs has been corrupted over the past thirty years or so by hubris and self-interest into what is now a dangerous
basis for national policy and for the international system” (175). Andrew Bacevich’s The Limits of Power, like Hodgson’s work, challenges [End
Page 358] America’s exceptionalist ethos. A primary difference between the two books is that Bacevich does not deny that the United States is
exceptional; rather, he maintains that exceptionalism as it is currently construed has
been one of the leading culprits in
America’s current crisis. Since the beginning of the War on Terror, Bacevich has advocated, in two previous books, that the United
States needs to revise its foreign policy, and he has argued that the United States has begun a slow march to
empire.9 Those two books laid the groundwork for many of the ideas presented in The Limits of Power. However, this book is his manifesto.
Over an introduction, three chapters, and a conclusion, Bacevich argues that the malevolent actions of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin
Laden cannot explain why the United States seems to be perpetually involved in conflict. Instead of looking abroad
for an explanation, Bacevich perceives the crisis is “of our own making” (6). It stems from America’s supposed
providential duty to spread freedom. “Freedom is the altar at which Americans worship, whatever their nominal religious
persuasion,” Bacevich asserts (6). Conversely, that freedom comes at great cost. As Americans pursued freedom, they
generated a penchant for empire. Consequently, they racked up obligations and debts that make it increasingly difficult for the
United States to operate within the world. While the country increased its commitments abroad, it has not sacrificed at home. Our appetites for
consumption continue to grow. Demand for cheap products and our sense of entitlement because of American power have led the United
States to a set of interlocking crises—economic, political, and military—that put America’s domestic health at risk. The Iraq and Afghanistan
conflicts exacerbate a problem that has been building since the end of World War II. Yet it is those conflicts that may serve as a wake-up call for
the United States to get its political house in order.
American exceptionalism is a ruse for imperialism in the name of security and humanitarianism
Chace, 2 Paul W. Williams Professor of government and PUblic Law at Bard College and the director of
the Program on Globalization and INternational Afffairs of Bard/New York (James Chace, Spring 2002,
“Imperial America and the Common Interest”, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40209786)//EM
Almost two decades ago, the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. referred to America s empire as an
"informal" one, not colonial in the
traditional sense of using military forces and colonial administrators to run territory acquired and occupied by the
imperial power, often against the wishes of the locals. Rather, in Schlesinger s words, it was one "richly equipped with imperial
paraphernalia: troops, ships, planes, bases, proconsuls, local collaborators, all spread wide around the
luckless planet."2 What I propose to do is to discuss the growth and reach of the American imperium not by emphasizing its economic dimension - for
example, that the United States expanded in order to seek and secure markets - but rather by showing that its expansion came about primarily
because Americans wanted to feel safe. Even as the United States has quite clearly become an economic giant, whose prosperity fuels global
prosperity and whose economic travails infect even such economic leviathans as the European Union, the growth of the American empire has
come about not so much through a search for economic wellbeing as through a quest for absolute security, that is to say, invulnerability.
Although U.S. political and military leaders want to ensure the interest and security of the state, which has also meant promoting trade and foreign investment,
there is also a peculiarly American cast of mind that has linked this quest for absolute security to American exceptionalism. In essence, this was the belief that
America was a great experiment, fraught with risk but animated by the conviction - as John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts, famously described it in
1630 aboard a ship off the New England coast - that America should be "as a city upon a hill," the eyes of all people upon us, and if we should fail to make this city a
beacon of hope and decency, and "deal falsely with our God," we should be cursed. At times, this
has given Americans a messianic mission
to redeem the world, as Woodrow Wilson believed; at other times even the founders of the nation, who preferred to see the United States as a model
for all mankind, believed that the infant American republic was "a rising empire." "Extend the sphere," wrote James Madison in the 1780s, evoking the image of an
"extended republic" as "one great, respectable, and flourishing empire."3 While the United States expanded, seeking new territories by intimidation and treaty, as
in the acquisition of Florida in 1819, or by military action, as in the Mexican War of 1846, it coupled its quest for absolute security with a belief in its own moral
superiority, seeing itself as either an example for the world or a crusader for an empire of liberty. With this heritage, can America today find common ground with
other great powers, such as the European Union, China, Russia, Japan, and India, seeking areas of shared interest that will prevent a balance of power being
organized against us? Solitude, Not Isolation Since the earliest days of the Republic, the United States has sought to ensure the territorial integrity of the nation
without the assistance of outside powers. Of course, Americans have on occasion also found it in their interest to follow George Washington's advice to "safelyt rust
to temporarayl liances for extraordinary emergencies." This was notably true with the treaty of alliance with France, signed in 1778, without which America could
not have won its independence at the time. But in 1800, the treaty with France was abrogated. The United States henceforth remained freedom any long-term
alliance until the founding of NATOin 1949. As a whole, though eager to cooperate with other nations in economic matters, America has been singularly unwilling to
allow others to dictate policy in questions of national safety. This unilateral approach
to security has carried with it an implicit
message that allies can inhibit America's freedom of action, and thus undermine its security. For this reason,
America has never shied away from employing force unilaterally - either in defense of its own borders or in foreign regions
viewed as vital - in response to perceived threats to the security of the state. To be sure, the American nation has gone to war for a
variety of specific reasons: to expand territory and seek markets for economic gain; in response to
affronts to the national honor - as in Jefferson's military and naval actions against the Barbary pirates from 1801 to 1805; when attacked; and to
play out the nation's role as promoter of democratic values. Moreover, the overarching response to the American need for safety
and well-being - from the assertion of the Monroe Doctrine to the current war on terrorism - has been
to take unilateral action as the surest way to achieve national security. The Monroe Doctrine, which declared that the
United States would not permit any foreign power to intervene in the Western Hemisphere, was echoed by Grover Cleveland, who insisted that Great Britain accept
American arbitration in a dispute between Britain and Venezuela in 1895. William McKinley's taking of the Philippines in the Spanish- American War, and Woodrow
Wilson s military interventions in Mexico in 1914 and 1916, continued this policy. This is not to say that all American political leaders believed absolute security was
an immediately attainable goal. But for well over two centuries this aspiration has been seen as central to an effective American foreign policy - and never more so
than at the outset of the twenty-first century, with the terrorist attacks against New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Political leaders
have
only two basic tools at their disposal when enforcing the national interest - diplomacy and force. But diplomatic negotiation
implies compromise. Absolute security, however, cannot be negotiated; it can only be won. Achieving
invulnerability in this manner is a lonely task. The American reluctance to use diplomatic means before resorting to military force as a way of ensuring national
security cannot be viewed as isolationism. Despite the popular myth to the contrary, the United States has never been isolationist. Even in the period between the
two World Wars, America was isolationist only toward Europe, and even there international naval reductions agreements were signed between the United States
and the European nations; in the Western Hemisphere, especially in Central America and the Caribbean, the United States was openly interventionist; and in East
Asia and the Western Pacific it played an active role. The Margin of Safety To be sure, most American leaders have fully appreciated the large measure of safety
from external threats - what has been called "frees ecurity"- that America'sg eographical position offered and may have also contributed to the belief that absolute
security could be achieved. As Thomas Jefferson said, the fact that the United States was "separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of
one quarter of the globe" was a blessing to the cause of American security. Today, the development of missiles has reduced the margin of safety the oceans once
provided. But even before the air age, no American leader, including Jefferson, has ever been prepared to see the nation's safety rely on that blessing alone. Military
interventions - not only in the Western Hemisphere but in all parts of the world - have been viewed as necessary to safeguard the American people. Until the First
World War, real or perceived threats to the nation's security were physical. For example, our activist foreign policy in the early and late nineteenth century centered
on our continued anxiety over British meddling in the Western Hemisphere following the War of 1812. But that policy did not disappear when the presumed British
threat clearly evaporated after 1895. At the turn of that century, with the closing of the continental frontier, American leaders feared that such rising naval powers
as Germany and Japan threatened access to foreign markets in East Asia. In the years immediately before and after the First World War, however, radical ideologies
of the left and right gravely affected the American perception of security. Threats
from anarchism, communism, and fascism, while not
perils that could undermine the strength and even the physical safety of
the American commonwealth by promoting internal dissent and civil strife. These threats were countered by American
presidents, most notably Woodrow Wilson, not only by curbing civil liberties at home but also by exporting
American liberal democracy- more often than not imposed by American troops - to Latin America,
Europe, and Asia. Traditional territorial fears thus merged with ideological threats in determining
America's international behavior. During the Second World War, and the Cold War that followed it, these anxieties prompted the
adoption of internationalist policies unprecedented in their global scope, and the expansion of American
power worldwide. Beginning with the Reagan presidency, and now seen as a legacy of the Cold War, the need for a universal response to both physical
purely territorial, were nonetheless seen as
and ideological threats has finally resulted in a National Missile Defense program that takes our historic quest for absolute security into a new realm - outer space.4
American exceptionalism is antithetical to our goals and will turn American into a
“security state”
Hodgson, 9 director of the Reuters' Foundation Programme at Oxford University (Godfrey Hodgson,
2009, “The Myth of American Exceptionalism”, pp 159-162)//EM
In recent decades this second, material exceptionalism. now less clear, has helped to breed or to strengthen a third,
missionary exceptionalism. This is the belief that it is the destiny, some say the God-given des- tiny, of the United
States to spread the benefits of its democratic system and of its specific version of capitalism to as many
other countries as possible. This view is not wholly new. Seeds of it can be seen in early Protes- tant religion. It played at part in the
patriotic rhetoric of the new Republic, in the confidence of the champions of Manifest Destiny that theirs was an "empire ofliberly."and in the
belief system of many American leaders. in~ cluding especially Woodrow Wilson but also, in different ways, Theodore Roosevelt. Franklin D.
Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John E Kennedy. One specific new element in the American belief system, from the last quarter ofthe twentieth
century, was the elevation of American capitalism, alongside American freedom and American democracy. in the pantheon of American
exceptionalism. Of course, America has been the home of capitalism from the start, though not its only home. There was a fascinating episode
in the earliest years of the Pilgrims' struggle to sur» vive in Plymouth Colony, described in William Bradford's classic ac- count. At First the
Pilgrims intended to hold all land and wealth in common. But when the young colony was desperately worried about the shortage of food, the
governor, Bradford, "with the advice of the chiefcst among them," assigned land as property to each Family. This experience, Bracltord com
ments, "may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plaids and other ancients applauded by some of later times; that the taking away ol'
property and bringing in community [meaning communism or at least common ownership] into a commonwealth would make them happy and
flourishing, as ifthey were wiser than God."• Although ideas of communal ownership of property were to be found in the sixteenth and
seventeenth century-for example. among the Anabaptists in sixteenth-centu ry Westphalia, Moravia. and Bohemia and the
seventeeulh~century Levellers and Diggers in Englancl-capital ism was closely associated with Protestantism, in Holland and Germany as well as
in Britain and New England. as has been argued by great mod- ern historians, including Max Weber and R.H. 'lawney." Ifmodern capi- talism
was largely developed in Holland and Britain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and carried across the Atlantic by Protestant colonists,
capitalism itself is as old as civilization. its fundamental ideas, such as the idea olinvesting in the hope offuture prolit, areas old as agri- culture,
and the part played by markets in setting prices can be traced back at least as far as the earliest towns in the Near Past. lt is true that at certain
times and in certain places-for example, in the ancient river val- ley civilivations, when economic behavior and prices were regulated by royal
authority, and in thc European Middle Ages, when usury was pro- hibited by the church-capitalism was subordinated to temporal or spiritual
authority. But capitalism existed long before the United States of America. Economic historians distinguish a series of successive phases in the
development of capitalism, for example, petty capitalism, mercantile capitalism, industrial capitalism, and nnance capitalism. None of these can
be said to have developed exclusively or even mainly in the United States. lt is true, however, that in the twentieth century many European
societies reacted to economic crisis by adopting one or another version of socialism. Even in the United States, from 1933 to the 19708, the
federal government embraced a lorm of social democracy, though control olen- lerprise was exercised not mainly by state ownership but by
state regula tion. In Western Europe, as well as in the former British dominions and in Latin America, though various "socialist" devices,
including public ownership. were more widespread than in the United States, the eco- nomic system was still one variant or another of
capitalism, more or less regulated. (Sometimes it was described as a "mixed economy.") It is pos- sible therefore to speak of the United States
as having led the way in the propagation of neoliberal ideas in the late twentieth century, but mis- leading to suggest that capitalism such is in
any way an American in- vention. In the past thirty years or so, however, and especially after the pres- idenq/ ot' Ronald Reagan, an
exceptionalist philosophy has been more confidently enunciated and more openly accepted as the basis
for Amer- ican foreign policy. This missionary spirit has come in two variants. One is the gentler and more consensual version, as
preached and practiced by the Clinton administration. Its leaders acknowledged that they were fol- lowers of Woodrow Wilson, and that they
inherited his desire to bring the benefits of American democracy to the world. But they wanted to do so, as far as possible, only to the extent
that others wanted those benefits. They were keen that America should be the leader. But they interpreted that to mean that others were
eager to be led. They wanted to act out their beliefs, so far as possible, with the agreement of as many other nations as possible. This, too, had
been the instinct, or at least the practice, of the previous Republican administration of George H. W. Bush. At least as long ago as the debates in
the early Cold War years over the National Security Act, and over NSC-68 and the sharp consequent increases in defense budgets, there had
been those, the "hawks," who were impatient of restraint.7 They saw the nation as being virtually at war with communism. They resented the
occasional reluctance of allies to endorse American interests or to go along with American initiatives. They called
for maximum
military readiness and brushed aside those who warned of the dangers of transforming America into a
“garrison state” or a “national security state.” Surprisingly, perhaps, it was not when the danger of communism was at its
height, but when it had to all intents and purposes disappeared in the early 1990s, that the partisans of aggressive, unilateral missionary
policies finally triumphed. In Chapter 4, I have argued, as many others have now done, that these
policies have been disastrous,
not only for the damage they have inflicted on the domestic American economy or even for America’s reputation in
the world, but also for any realistic prospect of achieving their own goals. There can be little doubt that the
prospects of spreading American ideals of democracy have weakened, not improved, especially in the Middle
East, since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Survey data from late 2007 suggest that roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of the world’s population
disapprove of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. The prospects of American democracy would be seriously damaged by an attack
on Iran or even by a nod and a wink to an Israeli attack on Iran. Nor has the prosperity of the United States been enhanced by the new
aggressive foreign policy. An America on bad terms with its suppliers of energy, raw materials, cheap manufacture good, migrants, and credit is
not going to be a stronger America, especially if its finite resources have been dissipated in competently planned military adventures. Finally
the domestic regime that accompanies conservative foreign policy seems unlikely to strengthen the society in the long term. An America, for
example, in which the richest 1 percent were piling up ever greater fortunes, and chief executives of corporation earned many hundreds of
times more than their average employee, while half the population could not afford to buy a home or go to the doctor, would not be a stronger
America, however spectacular the fortunes accumulated by a few.
American imperialism justifies racialized interventions globally, all under the guise of
bringing stability
Kaplan, 3 former President of the American Studies Association as well as a professor of English and the
Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Endowed Term Professor in the Humanities at the University of
Pennsylvania (Amy Kaplan, 10/17/3, “Violent Belongings and the Question of Empire Today Presidential
Address to the American Studies Association”, October 17, 2003, Project Mus)//EM
1. Empire I write with a sense of urgency and bewilderment—urgency because I believe that our work must speak to
the current crisis as the United States occupies Iraq and marshals violent force around the world and the
government increases its authoritarian incursions against civil liberties, the rights of immigrants, and the
provision for basic human [End Page 1] needs. We should have much to say about these critical times, from the diverse
perspectives that come together—and don't come together—under the broad rubric of American studies. Yet I also wish to share my
bewilderment, my sense that contemporary events have exposed certain limitations of our available tools and that they call for new questions
and avenues of inquiry that we have yet to articulate. Articulating the meanings and the histories of this crisis should be a part of our work.
What the Bush administration calls the "war on terror" reduces the complex interactions of the United States with the world to a Manichean
conflict "to rid the world of evil," a definition that evacuates the present moment of politics, history, agency, and struggle. As Toni Morrison has
written, physical violence enforces the rule that "definitions belong to the definers—not the defined." 1 I will focus on the dramatic redefinition
of the American Empire in current public discourse in the United States. While the daily reality of U.S. imperialism isn't news to millions around
the world, a decade ago the notion of the American Empire would have been rejected in the United States as a left-wing polemic, a
contradiction in terms; it seemed to say more about the persons using the term than about the phenomenon itself. Yet today, across the
political spectrum, policy makers, journalists, and academics are embracing the term and talking endlessly about empire. It's fashionable, in
fact, to debate whether this is a new imperialism or business as usual, whether the United States should be properly called imperial or
hegemonic, whether it is benevolent or self-interested, whether it should rely on hard power or soft power, whether this empire most closely
resembles the British Empire or the Roman, and whether it is in its ascendancy or in decline. 2 I see a parallel with the way the word capitalism
shifted after the Cold War from a subversive critical term used by socialists and Marxists to an apolitical word taken for granted. I don't,
however, recall as much attention being called to the shift itself. I am not interested in joining these debates here but in discussing the
language that frames them and how the word empire appears in a constellation of other words in the political lexicon, such as terrorism and
homeland. On the one hand, one can't help but welcome this development. At a time when the United States shuts itself off from the world it
seeks to control, naming the empire has the potential to put us in conversation with critics around the world; it may help make the contours of
U.S. power more visible, and thus subject to criticism. Indeed, since [End Page 2] antiquity, the idea of empire has always paradoxically entailed
a sense of spatial and temporal limits, a narrative of rising and falling, which U.S. exceptionalism has long kept at bay. Some commentators
today believe that the nomenclature of empire is being used now only to compensate for the actual weakness and incoherence of U.S. global
dominance. 3 On the other hand, I am disturbed that all this talk about empire conceals more than it reveals and makes certain kinds of
utterances unspeakable. Along with other scholars, I have argued that the denial and
disavowal of empire has long served as
the ideological cornerstone of U.S. imperialism and a key component of American exceptionalism. So I feel
blindsided when I find champions of empire making a similar argument for different political ends. Niall Ferguson, for example, in his popular
revisionist history of the beneficence of the British Empire, chides America for being "an empire in denial," calling on it to accept
its rightful heritage of the white man's burden. 4 Indeed he quotes Rudyard Kipling's 1899 poem, pointing out, as many of us have, that it was
dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt with the aim of encouraging the United States to annex the Philippines. This uncanny mirroring makes me
wonder about the limits of my own approach, which we might call a method of exposure, one that reveals the repressed violence embedded in
cultural productions or that recovers stories of violent oppression absent from prior master historical narratives. At this political moment, in an
administration committed to secrecy and deception, lies and acts of violence appear hidden on the surface, and the unpacking of a complex
ideological construct often seems irrelevant. The language of exposure is part of the current discourse of empire: "People are now coming out
of the closet on the word empire," said the conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer. "The fact is no country has been as dominant
culturally, economically, technologically and militarily in the history of the world since the Roman Empire." 5 The metaphor of coming out is
striking, part of a broader trend of appropriating the language of progressive movements in the service of empire. How outrageous to apply the
language of gay pride to a military power that demands that its soldiers stay in the closet. Ferguson too writes that America "is an empire, in
short, that dare not speak its name." 6 In praising Bush for speaking what Ferguson calls "The 'E' Word," he is not referring to the love between
men, but is showing that Bush isn't a sissy, "unlike his predecessors, who thought [End Page 3] peace could be brought by touchy-feely peace
talks, Mr. Bush has grasped that military power is key: the magical spear that heals even as it wounds." 7 This inversion of peace and war also
turns domination into victimization, masculine heterosexual violence into illicit sexuality, oppressed by the effeminate politically correct crowd.
In this light it might not be surprising to read the following in the Wall Street Journal: "A decade ago, being against empire would have been like
being against rape. To all but the perverse few who cheered for the wrong side in Star Wars movies, 'empire' was a dirty word. Today, it has reemerged, newly laundered." 8 Can rape too be laundered? Is outing the empire a contemporary version of manifest destiny? This coming-out
narrative, associated primarily with neoconservatives, aggressively celebrates the United States as finally revealing its true essence—its
manifest destiny—on a global stage. We won the Cold War, so the story goes, and as the only superpower, we will maintain global supremacy
primarily by military means, by preemptive strikes against any potential rivals, and by a perpetual war against terror, defined primarily as the
Muslim world. We need to remain vigilant against those rogue states and terrorists who resist not our power but the universal human values
that we embody. This narrative is about time as well as space. It imagines an empire in perpetuity, one that beats back the question haunting all
empires in J. M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians: "One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how
not to die, how to prolong its era." 9 In this hypermasculine narrative there's a paradoxical sense of invincibility and unparalleled power and at
the same time utter and incomprehensible vulnerability—a lethal combination, which reminds us that the word vulnerable once also referred
to the capacity to harm. Another dominant narrative about empire today, told by liberal interventionists, is that of the "reluctant imperialist."
10 In this version, the United States never sought an empire and may even be constitutionally unsuited to rule one, but it had the burden thrust
upon it by the fall of earlier empires and the failures of modern states, which abuse the human rights of their own people and spawn terrorism.
The United States is the only power in the world with the capacity and the moral authority to act as military policeman and economic manager
to bring order to the world. Benevolence and self-interest merge in this narrative; backed by unparalleled force, the United States can save the
people of the world from their own anarchy, their descent into an [End Page 4] uncivilized state. As Robert Kaplan writes—not reluctantly at
all—in "Supremacy by Stealth: Ten Rules for Managing the World": "The purpose of power is not power itself; it is a fundamentally liberal
purpose of sustaining the key characteristics of an orderly world. Those characteristics include basic political stability, the idea of liberty,
pragmatically conceived; respect for property; economic freedom; and representative government, culturally understood. At this moment in
time it is American power, and American power only, that can serve as an organizing principle for the worldwide expansion of liberal civil
society." 11 This narrative does imagine limits to empire, yet primarily in the selfish refusal of U.S. citizens to sacrifice and shoulder the burden
for others, as though sacrifices have not already been imposed on them by the state. The temporal dimension of this narrative entails the
aborted effort of other nations and peoples to enter modernity, and its view of the future projects the end of empire only when the world is
remade in our image. This
is also a narrative about race. The images of an unruly world, of anarchy and chaos,
of failed modernity, recycle stereotypes of racial inferiority from earlier colonial discourses about races
who are incapable of governing themselves, Kipling's "lesser breeds without the law," or Roosevelt's "loosening ties
of civilized society," in his corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. In his much-noted article in the New York Times Magazine entitled "The American
Empire," Michael Ignatieff appended the subtitle "The Burden" but insisted that "America's empire is not like empires of times past, built on
colonies, conquest and the white man's burden." 12 Denial and exceptionalism are apparently alive and well. In American studies we need to
go beyond simply exposing the racism of empire and examine the dynamics by which Arabs and the religion of Islam are becoming racialized
through the interplay of templates of U.S. racial codes and colonial Orientalism. These
narratives of the origins of the current empire—
that is, the neoconservative and the liberal interventionist—have much in common. They take American exceptionalism to new
heights: its paradoxical claim to uniqueness and universality at the same time. They share a teleological narrative of
inevitability, that America is the apotheosis of history, the embodiment of universal values of human
rights, liberalism, and democracy, the "indispensable nation," in Madeleine Albright's words. In this logic, the United States
claims the authority to "make sovereign judgments on what is right and what is wrong" for everyone [End
Page 5] else and "to exempt itself with an absolutely clear conscience from all the rules that it proclaims
and applies to others." 13 Absolutely protective of its own sovereignty, it upholds a doctrine of limited sovereignty for others and thus
deems the entire world a potential site of intervention. Universalism thus can be made manifest only through the threat and use of violence. If
in these narratives imperial power is deemed the solution to a broken world, then they preempt any counternarratives that claim U.S. imperial
actions, past and present, may have something to do with the world's problems. According to this logic, resistance to empire can never be
opposition to the imposition of foreign rule; rather, resistance means irrational opposition to modernity and universal human values.
2ac plan popular
Plan is popular with both labor unions and the Chamber of Commerce
Lamrani, 13 (Salim Lamrani, 2013, “The Economic War Against Cuba”,
http://books.google.com/books?id=4FIx_3gFJGYC&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68&dq=%22a+Cold+War+anachron
ism+kept+alive+by+Florida+politics%22+%22&source=bl&ots=JQhx9zZsW&sig=5E0BkGf1wu9bz7WWPyNuSdDTs6k&hl=en&sa=X&ei=WvLWUdy4DofGrQH_uYDACg&v
ed=0CDUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22a%20Cold%20War%20anachronism%20kept%20alive%20by%20
Florida%20politics%22%20%22&f=false)//EM
The powerful AFL-CIO, which brings together more than fifty U.S. trade union organizations, adopted a
resolution at its Constitutional Convention in September 2009 that urged Congress to lift the sanctions against Cuba and to
fully norma- lize relations with Havana." The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, representing the busi- ness world and the country's
largest multinationals, has also expressed its opposition to the status quo. It sees Cuba as a natural market in
which other nations, such as China, Vene- zuela, Canada, and members ofthe European Union, are already invested.""' With the support of
several members of Congress, the agency launched an initiative calling for the lifting of trade restrictions. "Common sense tells us to change a
policy that does not work. We have tried for 50 years without results. It 's time to find something else,"• said Thomas_]. Donohue, president of
this umbrella organization that includes nearly three million U.S. companies. He added, "We are
losing great business opportunities in a market that lies within 90 miles from our shores. Other countries, China for instance, are profiting from this
market. It is not too late for us to begin to recuperate our losses."• ""
Chamber of commerce key to the agenda
Economist, 12 (The Economist, 4/23/12, “The Chamber Of Commerce Has Been Transformed Into One
Of The Most Powerful Political Forces In Washington”, http://www.businessinsider.com/thomasdonohue-has-transformed-the-us-chamber-of-commerce-into-a-powerful-political-force-2012-4)//EM
The organization he inherited was cash-strapped and lacked punch. His goal, he wrote at the time, "is simple--to build the
biggest gorilla in this town--the most aggressive and vigorous business advocate our nation has ever
seen." He has succeeded on many measures. Today the Chamber is by far the most muscular business lobby group in
Washington. From its historic headquarters opposite the White House it wields huge political influence, spending heavily
to sway congressional contests. In doing so it has become more controversial and, say critics, more pro-Republican. This has done its
coffers no harm: in 2010 it took in $189m in contributions and grants, roughly five times its pre-Donohue inflows. Today’s Chamber is not
shy about staking out strong (some would say extreme) positions on hot-button issues: it has led the running on
supporting tort and entitlement reform and greater domestic energy production, and in opposing "excessive" regulation, government-run
health care and cap-and-trade schemes. Its leaders seem to love locking horns with the left, not least the Labour unions that spend hundreds of
millions promoting their views in each election cycle. "Our adversaries will never leave the field, so neither can we," says Bruce Josten, the
Chamber’s chief lobbyist. Labour groups have been so spooked by its surging testosterone that they have set up US Chamber Watch, an outfit
dedicated to undermining it.
Unions are specifically key to immigration
Preston, 13 (Julia Preston, 6/11/13, “As Senate Begins Debate, Organized Labor Makes Immigration
Push”, http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/as-senate-begins-debate-organized-labormakes-immigration-push/)//EM
As the Senate opens debate on an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws, organized
labor is picking up the pace of its
advocacy for the bill. The Service Employees International Union, which claims more than two million members, said it had purchased
more than $1 million in television advertising to run in June on cable networks nationwide. Five advertisements, which will rotate, feature
police officers, Republicans and small-business owners — not traditional supporters of labor — calling
on Congress to stop fighting
over immigration and “fix what’s broke” in the system. The ads call for a pathway to citizenship for 11 million immigrants in
the country illegally. The A.F.L.-C.I.O., the nation’s largest labor federation, said it would take 50 union leaders from 27 states
to Washington on Wednesday to lobby in the Senate and the House. The organization said it was also starting a call-in
campaign by union members focusing on about two dozen senators, including lawmakers from Alaska, Georgia, Illinois, North
Carolina, Ohio and Tennessee, who have not made public their positions on the legislation. Richard L. Trumka, the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.,
was among an array of supporters who appeared with President Obama when he spoke from the White House on Tuesday morning to urge the
Senate to pass the bill. Immigrant workers, especially Latinos, have brought growth to unions that had struggled for years with declining
membership. The A.F.L.-C.I.O reached a hard-fought agreement with business earlier this year on a program for future temporary low-skilled
foreign workers, which is included in the Senate bill.
2ac terrorism
Lifting the embargo is key to prevent terrorist attacks on the mainland and massive
post-Castro Cuban instability
Arzeno, 3 Major in the U.S. Army and M.B.A (Mario A. Arzeno, 2003, “The U.S. Embargo on Cuba: A
Time for Change?” http://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=727317)//EM
Present day menaces include transnational threats like terrorist cells operating and planning attacks
from Cuba against the United States, relatively unnoticed by U.S. intelligence agencies because of our inability
to enter the island. Another ever - present threat is the possibility of the drug cartels using the island as a staging
base or drug transit zone between South America and the U.S. Illegal migration is another major transnational
threat affecting our nation and the Western Hemisphere in general. With the increasing number o f Cuban Americans
among our society, it is only natural that these Americans have the well - being of their families left in Cuba on their minds. If conditions do not
improve on the island, Cuban Americans may feel that their only recourse for the well - being of their families is to continue bringing them to
the U.S. by any means possible to include illegal means. A 1998 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Threat
Assessment refers
to Cuba’s possibility of developing Weapons of Mass Destruction, at least i n the research and development
phase. Cuba possesses the scientific facilities and expertise to develop Weapons of Mass Destruction and if misguided or
supported by outside terrorist resources it could result in grave consequences to U.S. national security.These are
very real issues Americans have ignored for over ten years that deserve our attention before we wake up one day and the media is reporting
Fidel Castro’s death, and we find ourselves unprepared to handle the situation in Cuba. A
post - Cas tro regime may result in
Cuba becoming a rogue state vulnerable to terrorist cells, drug cartels, and an economic crisis like the 1991
crisis, another mass exodus of Cuban refugees to the United States and worst of all another Cuban Missile Crisis. The U.S .
government is aware of these issues and the consequences of the embargo, but because of political reasons and a small percentage of Cuban
Americans influencing our politicians and the lack of interest in general by our nation, our
the embargo and develop a strategy for improving conditions in Cuba.
leadership has chosen n ot to act on
2ac at: Postmodernism
Universal human rights give meaning to personhood, but action is necessary – postmodernism
disregards ethical obligations
den Ouden, 97 – Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hartford, PhD from the Hartford Seminary Foundation (Bernard,
“Sustainable Development, Human Rights, and Postmodernism,” Society for Philosophy and Technology, Vol. 3 No. 2, Winter 1997, online at
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/SPT/v3n2/DENOUDEN.html)
There are, however, limits to the postmodernist and social constructionist perspectives. To say that cultures are
different and that they are undergoing continuing fragmentation is not necessarily to conclude that the members of humankind
cannot have anything in common. We share a dependence on earth, air, fire, and water. We have relatively similar bodies. The
deforestation and reforestation in which we engage have dramatic effects beyond all of our borders. The burning of high sulfur fuels affects
everyone. The decreasing supply of fresh, potable water is now affecting and will increasingly affect all humankind. Furthermore, universal
human rights are not only possible to articulate, but they are necessary to the human condition. We should have the
right to personhood regardless of gender or culture. All humankind have the right to the fruits of their labors. We also have
the right to due process in legal matters. In addition, individuals should have the right to marry or not to marry. They should be able to leave
their country of origin or return to it. (I grant that in many countries or contexts this is only something that world citizens hope for in the
future.) My argument is a simple one. Unless we understand and work with cultural differences and the best of indigenous values, economic
and social development is not sustainable. However, we must infuse this process with the values and ideals of universal human rights for which
all of us are responsible. Without
creating or protecting fundamental human rights for our fellow world
citizens, sustainable development will not occur. The fruits and benefits of improvement or the
development of economic strengths will go to the wealthy and the powerful. Unless the rights and lives
of the poorest of the poor in India and Nepal are attended to and protected, systematic deforestation will
continue to occur at a traumatic rate in that region. Unless the water subsidies and privileges of agribusiness in California are carefully
scrutinized, challenged, and changed in order to take into account all the citizens of the Western part of North America, access to potable water
and to an environment even relatively safe from harmful chemicals will continue to be compromised. The economies of Russia and the many
former Communist states may continue to grow, but a strong shared base of economic development will not occur unless and until Russia and
its surrounding neighbors become societies based on just laws. Marxism has much to say about self-formation and a sense of common
humanity. However, one
reason why Marxist regimes failed is that they tried, even while retaining class and economic
privilege for many party members, to change and improve material conditions in their societies while neither believing
in nor genuinely implementing constitutions that respected personhood, cultural diversity, due process, or the right
to leave the country of origin. One can create economic growth through cowboy capitalism and by means of economies of extortion. But
without laws and respect for persons, economic development that is broad-based and sustainable will
not occur. Human rights are tied to global responsibilities. We can, for example, discuss the rights of children, but it is
imperative to have moral courage. When children are being enslaved or when they are "parts-out" or used for organ sales which
are in turn sold on the black market, to take refuge in differing views of humanity and cultural values is to retreat from our responsibilities.
Cultural difference needs to be understood; however, if
tolerance is to be real it must have limits. No government or people, for
example, should do or be allowed to do what European Americans have done to the people and cultures of the American Indians. Conquest
is not a right, and no rights follow from conquest. Quite simply, much (though perhaps not all) of postmodernism
ends in hopeless relativism and moral impotence. If we conclude and/or accept that all relations are purely power relations
and that all values are historical, relative, and accidental, then today we could just as well be planning or implementing conquest and slavery
rather than trying to extend human understanding or to contribute to the unending struggle against cruelty and barbarism. As Kwame Anthony
Appiah says in an excellent essay entitled, "The Post-Colonial and the Postmodern" (1995), postmodernism suffers from the same exclusivity of
vision it rejects and pretends to abhor. Although allegedly nothing can be said about all cultures, because all cultures are only fragments of
difference and meanings, the claim is made for all cultures. Absolute
cultural relativism legitimates genocide, sexism,
and abusive power relations. Ethical universalism need not be tied to European world views or imperial domination. Appiah is
looking for a humanism fully cognizant of human suffering; one which is historically contingent, anti-essentialist, and yet powerfully demanding.
He bases his ethics in a concern for human suffering and asserts that obligations or
responsibilities transcend cultural
differences and national identity. To maintain that we live only in our cultural fragments is to inhabit what Kumkum Sangari (1995)
calls "present locales of undecidability" and to live lives void of moral action. Sangari, in "The Politics of the Possible," offers an argument
parallel to that of Appiah. She contends (1995, p. 143) that postmodern epistemology "universalizes the self-conscious dissolution of the
bourgeois subject." Again, the same contradictory claims. There are allegedly no universal values or modes of knowledge, yet the truth of this
assertion is made for all cultures. Sangari regards one of the most important weaknesses of postmodernism to be that it "valorizes
indeterminacy as a cognitive mode, [and] also deflates social contradiction into forms of ambiguity or deferral, instates arbitrary juxtaposition
or collage as historical 'method,' preempts change by fragmenting the ground of praxis" (Sangari, 1995, p. 147). Postmodernism
universalizes cultures into insularity. It generalizes its own skepticism which is its dogmatic
epistemological preoccupation. It instantiates the imperialism of relativism. It gives no philosophical or social place
to political responsibility or ethical values. In this mode of discourse and inaction, we can only engage in
involuted descriptions or in the articulating of ephemeral world pictures which are lost in themselves or at best captured in
paralyzed discourses. Action in this mode is as valuable or as hopelessly tragic as inaction. Without the possibility and
actuality of moral action, I would argue that we are at best what Dostoevsky referred to as "neurotic bipeds."
Absolute human rights are necessary to identify and combat oppression
Mohr, 95 – Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Richard D., “The Perils of Postmodernism,” The
Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review, pg. 9-13, Fall 1995, online at http://hem.passagen.se/nicb/mohr.htm)
But this sense
of equality as non-degradation presupposes a culturally-neutral claim that each and every person
worthy of equal regard and that we have some means of determining this moral fact outside
of the moral twists and turns of any given society. Due to its relativistic commitments, postmodernism can never provide this
presumption. If a society thinks, in the manner of the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott decision, that slavery is acceptable because blacks
presumptively is
are lesser beings, and if values are socially and historically specific - all culture-bound and culturally determined as postmoderns claim - then
there is no fulcrum and lever with which one could dislodge this belief about blacks by showing it to be false. But then, if blacks are inferior,
they are not treated worse than they should be when they are treated as slaves rather than as full persons. We can tell from within a culture
(say, from its jokes and slang) that some group is humiliated, held in contempt; but without culturally-neutral values, one cannot
tell whether that group does or does not indeed deserve that contempt. Without such values, we cannot know that certain groups aren't simply
being put in their proper place. Postmodern theorists like Judith Butler, author of Gender Trouble, brand as fascist any appeal to culturallyneutral values and the metaphysics such values inevitably entail. But without such values we
are unable to tell when ill
treatment and ill-will are warranted and when they constitute oppression. The moral relativism of postmoderns leaves them
unable even to refute Nazi views on homosexuals: "Himmler recounted to his SS generals the ancient Germanic mode of execution for
homosexuals - drowning in bogs - and added: 'That was no punishment, merely the extinction of an abnormal life. It had to be removed just as
we now pull up stinging nettles, toss them on a heap and burn them.'" (from James Steakley's 1975 The Homosexual Emancipation Movement
in Germany) The moral relativism of the postmoderns destroys the very foundations of the sort of equality which they want to espouse. Talk,
Discourse, Free Speech When, as in postmodernism, there are no culturally neutral criteria with which one could properly show to be false a
socially held belief that some group is worthy of derision, all one can do is to change the belief itself from within the culture, thus transforming
the culture into a different one with its own, new values, which again, thanks to moral relativism, are unassailable. Inevitably, then, under
postmodern pressures, equality rights have no separate standing from concerns about how to persuade
people to change their values. At best, equality rights against oppression and degradation must be
abandoned in favor of rights to free speech, by means of which one side or faction in society tries to upgrade the status of certain groups
within the culture. But most postmoderns have not embraced free speech rights. Ruthann Robson, for example, guts the First Amendment in
one sentence: "The First Amendment is a rule of law with its roots in European liberal individualism and property-based notions. Its value to
lesbians must be decided by us, not assumed by us." Free speech rights are good only if they "assist us" - i.e., us lesbians. This stance, holding
that asserted rights really are rights only when the asserting group says they are, does away with free-speech rights altogether once some other
competing and winning group makes the same claim for itself: "we believe in free-speech rights only when they work for us, and we've won, so
no speech rights for you." In short, majorities, on this
the "rights"
account, get to determine what rights there are - which is to say
are not rights at all, but majority privileges.
***NEG
1nc tourism
Their portrayal of sex tourism isn’t quite accurate—Cuban sex workers aren’t victims,
but well-educated professionals who have chosen to enter the sex industry
Karseeboom, 3 (Jennifer Karsseboom, 3/26/3, “Poverty Pushes Cuban Women into Sex Tourism”,
http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/211/44367.html)//EM
Unlike prostitution in the U.S. and other wealthy nations, Cuban sex workers are not organized or
integrated into networks controlled by "pimps" and it is not just a direct exchange of sexual relations for
dollars. "Jineterismo" often means the exchange of sexual favors for food, clothing or other basic needs.
At a rooftop restaurant overlooking the Malecon, Cuba's shoreline which runs almost the entire length of Havana, scores of Cuban men can be
found working as translators for the women and their potential clients in hopes of getting a small cut, perhaps a drink and on a successful day a
full meal. On the streets some men remind the passing tourists that they know beautiful Cuban women who would like to know foreigners and
also make the introductions between the foreign men and Cuban women. One such man is Manuel who explained that he passes
entire days trying to make such introductions. "I become richer by introducing foreign men to Cuban
ladies than I would working any government paid job. All day I do this work. It is more money than working in a store or anywhere else," he
remarked. "Besides, I wouldn't get a job in a hotel or restaurant because I am black. Only the white Cubans are working with tourists making
dollars. In Cuba, if you have no dollars, you have nothing." When
asked if he controlled the women's business he
laughed and added, "No, they control my business. They give me something and the tourist gives me
something for making the meeting." Horse jockeys and gold-diggers In Cuba, one would find that many of the "jineteras" are
young and most are of African descent. Some are medical students, some used to be professors or doctors. A few
continue to hold professional positions during the day and work as prostitutes in the hotels and bars at
night. One thing most have in common is that they are well educated and multi-lingual. While others call them "jiniteras", they
call themselves "Cuban girlfriends" for foreigners and their job duties range from accompanying lonely
businessmen on tours of Cuba to escorting them to dinner and then often back to their hotels. Generally,
one of the only times a Cuban woman is let into a "tourist" hotel is when she is accompanying a foreign man. Another thing these women have
in common is their
choice of prostitution as a profession is out of necessity. None of them appear to work to support
arisen
largely due to the fact that it takes approximately $100 a month to live comfortably in Havana today, but
government salaries in pesos are worth, at most, a fifth of that. In Cuba, a prostitute can earn in a week the
equivalent of a doctor's annual salary paid by the state in pesos. Outside of the tourism industry, where workers make tips
drug habits or college education; they work to survive and ensure their families' survival. "Jineterismo" as a profession has
in dollars, all jobs are paid in pesos and salaries come from the Cuban government since the government runs all industries. Government
salaries for professionals, such as professors and engineers, paid in pesos total close to $10 a month. Many establishments will not even accept
their own national currency because of its minimal value, welcoming only U.S. dollars and making it impossible for those who do not work in
the tourism industry to obtain dollars to buy goods.
Sex tourism low now, but lifting the embargo will increase it
Cribb et al 13 Toronto Star and El Nuevo Herald reporters (Robert Cribb, Jennifer Quinn, Julian Sher, and
Juan O. Tamayo, 3/17/13, “U.S. child-sex tourism to Cuba hardly exists”,
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/17/3291012/us-child-sex-tourism-to-cuba-hardly.html//EM
Washington’s trade embargo on Cuba and tough U.S. laws on sex tourism has kept down the
number of U.S. travelers who fly to the island to abuse underage girls and boys. U.S. residents account for an
estimated — and chilling — 25 percent of child-sex tourism worldwide, said Miami-based FBI Special Agent Heather
Armstrong, a member of the Crimes against Children Squad. About one-quarter of the child-sex tourists in Cambodia surveyed about
An odd combination of
10 years ago were from the United States and Canada, said Carol Smolenski, head of the U.S. branch of the global monitoring group End Child
Prostitution and Trafficking. And U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says its Operation Predator led to the arrest of a record 1,655
child pornographers, child-sex tourists and facilitators, human smugglers and traffickers of minors in fiscal year 2012. Florida accounted for 406
of the arrests, including 81 in the Miami district. Yet U.S. child-sex tourism to an island just 90 miles off the coast of Florida falls far short of the
levels of exploitation by Canadians and Spaniards found by a joint investigation by the Toronto Star and the El Nuevo Herald. “When
we
talk about hotbeds of activity, [Cuba] is not one that comes up,” said one ICE official familiar with childsex tourism cases. 100-YEAR SENTENCE Federal prosecutors in South Florida said they knew of no cases of
child exploitation in Cuba since 2004. That’s when Miami Beach resident Angel Mariscal was sentenced to 100 years in prison for
having sex with underage girls in videos shot in Cuba and his native Ecuador. He was HIV-positive.
2nc no impact
Their information on sex tourism is incorrect—it is just an attempt to discredit Cuba
Brett, 13 (Andrew Brett, 3/17/13, “Toronto Star makes up facts in exposé of sex tourism in Cuba”,
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/andrew-brett/2013/03/toronto-star-makes-facts-expos%C3%A9-sextourism-cuba)//EM
"There is truly no prostitution healthier than Cuba's," said Fidel Castro in 1992. Or so claims the Toronto Star.
But did he really? Not at all. Castro actually said, "There is truly no tourism healthier than Cuba's." This
just scratches the surface of the fact-free reporting of the Star in its new series The Ugly Canadians, an exposé of a
supposed epidemic of Canadians travelling to Cuba for child sex tourism. "Canadians are travelling to Cuba in surprising numbers to sexually
exploit young people," the first article in the series says. Just how surprising are these numbers? Well, they can't say. The same article admits
that they don't actually know, because the Canadian government doesn't reveal the number of Canadians prosecuted in Cuba for sex crimes.
The only facts they can point to are in a 2011 RCMP report that lists Cuba as "a top destination in the
Americas" for sex tourism. No, not the top. One of them. In the Americas. And where does Cuba rank in this list? The
article doesn't say. So why have they decided to highlight sex tourism to Cuba instead of, say, the actual top destination? Why do
the Cubans quoted happen to be a "dissident lawyer" and a "dissident blogger"? Why did the article print a
fabricated pro-prostitution quote attributed to Castro? The series on Cuban sex tourism is not being published by the
Star alone. Its partner in the series, El Nuevo Herald, is the Spanish-language sister publication of the Miami Herald, known for editorializing
against the Cuban government and for employing journalists paid by the U.S. government to disseminate anti-Cuban propaganda. Could this
joint series actually be a deliberate attempt to stigmatize the Cuban tourism industry, a backbone of the Cuban
economy? A modern-day, liberal version of the "red scare"? In 2004, President Bush similarly warned about child sex tourism to justify his
government's travel restrictions on Cuba, without any evidence to suggest the problem is more prevalent on the island.
No sex tourism—if it exists, it’s entirely the woman’s choice
Roberts, 2k former English professor and political activist (Glen Roberts, 2000, “Misconceptions about
Cuba”, http://www.iammyownreporter.com/misconceptions.htm)//EM
7. Harsh
conditions have given rise to a Cuban sex industry. Wrong! This is a lie spread by Miami. There is
no actual sex industry in Cuba. A lot of Cubans say that sex is the national sport. Cuban girls are widely regarded as the world's
champion flirters. There's little religion. There's total health care and sex education, and unabashed birth control availability. It's hot and
clothing is light. But there are no red light districts, no houses, few pimps, and no real need to sell one's body .
There is a tiny amount of professional prostitution, and there's a fair amount of amateurism in tourist centers, and there are gold diggers
exploiting foreign boyfriends or girlfriends. But this isn't rampant, and is without the manner or method of a sex industry. More
important, it is not motivated by harsh conditions. It is motivated by silly desire for showy clothes and
other status symbols glamorized in American movies and TV and further promoted by Miami relatives and the insidious
presence of what look like rich tourists to the Cubans, because the government has opted for the wrong kind of tourism (against Fidel's advice
I've heard).
2nc embargo good turn
Liberalization of the embargo increases prostitution—empirics prove
Karseeboom, 3 (Jennifer Karsseboom, 3/26/3, “Poverty Pushes Cuban Women into Sex Tourism”,
http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/211/44367.html)//EM
Sex tourism has bloomed in part as a result of "dollarization," which is the legalized use of the U.S. dollar
in Cuba in addition to pesos, the national currency. The U.S. dollar was legalized in Cuba as an attempt to boost the stagnant economy but
instead has created a two-tiered society in Cuba: the privileged foreigners and the underprivileged locals. In an effort to get more
tourist dollars, the government created tourist stores, restaurants, nightclubs, hotels and even taxis that are accessible to foreigners with
hard currency. Dollarization, in conjunction with the embargo, has opened the door to a proliferation of prostitution
called "jineterismo" (a derogatory word translated literally to "horseback riding", in colloquial form translating to "gold-digger").
1nc imperialism
Multiple alt causes—embargo is only a small part of the problem
PSL, 12 (PSL, 8/30/12, “U.S. imperialism tries to rebound in Latin America
Democrats working hard to reverse the region’s left-wing turn”,
http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/newspaper/vol-6-no-11/us-imperialism-tries-to.html)//EM
While Washington’s political and military tactics have varied, its objectives
in the region today are essentially
unchanged: economic domination. In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, Washington installed and armed military dictatorships and
regimes in Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil, Uruguay and Haiti. It fueled genocidal proxy wars to crush insurgent popular
movements in Central America, as well as Nicaragua’s Sandinista government in the 1980s. The U.S. military directly intervened in Panama and
Grenada, and Cuba continues
to be punished with a severe blockade and the occupation of part of its national
territory, Guantánamo Bay. The military and fascist repression of previous decades eventually gave way to elections and civilian
governments, but only the form of domination changed. Under a more “democratic” façade of government, the new leaders signed
onto free-trade programs, allowing U.S. capital to dictate terms and dominate national economies like
Mexico and Argentina. With rising overproduction of U.S. commodities and the never-ending drive for expansion, U.S. multinational
corporations and banks used Latin America as an outlet for their “surplus” production and capital. Neither Democrat nor Republican will give
Latin America a moment of peace. For Mexico, the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement was the major turning point. Mexican farmers,
in mostly small-scale production, could not compete with highly subsidized and mechanized U.S. agribusiness. Mexican agriculture collapsed
and over 6 million workers and farmers were forced for their survival to leave their country for the United States. A historic rejection of
Washington’s rule An inspiring new development—the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (or ALBA)—arose in Latin America in
the mid-2000s. Unprecedented in the continent’s history, a successful alliance of Latin American and Caribbean countries started to deliver real
advances for their people through cooperation and solidarity. It began with Cuba and Venezuela signing a pact known as the Bolivarian
Alternative for the Americas in 2004. In the following years, Bolivia joined ALBA in 2006 after Evo Morales’ election the previous year, Nicaragua
joined in 2007 after Daniel Ortega became president and Ecuador joined under Rafael Correa’s presidency in 2009. Caribbean members have
also joined: Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Hugo Chávez ‘buries’ free trade In a famous episode in Mar del
Plata, Argentina, in November 2005, Hugo Chávez spoke to tens of thousands of Latin American activists in an outdoor stadium at the
conclusion of a massive “People’s Summit.” The People’s Summit was organized to protest the U.S.-led “Summit of the Americas” in the same
city. There, George W. Bush headed the U.S. delegation and tried to pressure other member states to accept the Free Trade Area of the
Americas. It was clear the FTAA would fail. Too many countries had been ravaged by already-existing free trade, and growing movements had
re-awakened in resistance, inspired by Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolutionary process and by Cuba’s determined survival. At the People’s rally,
Chávez waved a shovel above his head and the crowd cheered as he said, “We have come here to bury the FTAA!” He announced a
groundbreaking economic pact with Argentina, beginning with the very first oil shipments ever delivered to Buenos Aires by Venezuela. Chávez
then spoke of ALBA’s Petro-Caribe accord with 14 Caribbean nations, essentially offering oil for barter. In Mar del Plata, George W. Bush
refused to back Argentine President Nestor Kirchner’s request for support in that country's impending debt renegotiation with the World Bank.
This was punishment for Argentina for openly rejecting the FTAA and improving relations with Cuba, a reversal of the open hostility displayed
by previous administrations. As a harbinger of what ALBA could mean for the peoples of the continent, Venezuela stepped in and helped
eliminate Argentina’s billion-dollar debt. Today, U.S. imperialism is less able to impose its will on a growing number of countries, in particular
those states in the ALBA alliance. U.S. role evident in Latin America reversals On May 20, 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama gave a
major “Latin America speech” that included a veiled threat to Venezuela and ALBA. Having chosen to give the
speech in Miami, he strongly condemned Cuba and promised to maintain the blockade. Obama then warned of “demagogues like Chávez” who
had “stepped into this vacuum” left by the discredited Latin American establishment, cautioning that this new trend had “made inroads from
Bolivia to Nicaragua.” The speech denied the social advances of these countries, calling them mere “false promises.” Only six
months into
Obama’s presidency, in June 2009, the Honduran military seized democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya
and expelled him from the country. Honduras had just joined ALBA, and Zelaya, who came from a moderate
ruling-class party, began to adopt a more progressive stance. In a sharp shift from his past politics, for instance, he supported a
popular drive for a constitutional assembly. New constitutions had already been adopted under the administrations of Chávez, Morales and
Correa; while not socialist, these offered more opportunities for the government and the people to challenge the rule of the oligarchy and
foreign capital. Both Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton refused
to condemn or even characterize the
military coup as such. Later, the U.S. government offered recognition to the 2010 sham election of Porfirio
Lobo. Honduras is now solidly back in the U.S. sphere of influence and is no longer part of ALBA. There has been a dramatic rise in political
repression and murders of opposition leaders, women, journalists and LGBT activists. Then, in June of this year, Paraguay’s democratically
elected President Fernando Lugo was deposed without due process in a lightning-speed impeachment. His illegal removal means that the huge
agribusiness operations of Monsanto and Cargill, which own enormous tracts of land for gigantic transgenic soy and corn production, can go on
unimpeded. In 2008, the Pentagon,
with no notice to or consultation with any Latin American governments,
reactivated the Fourth Fleet, which had been deactivated 58 years earlier. They claimed the purpose of the Fourth Fleet was to
promote peace, but the real aim was clear: to bully and threaten a Latin America breaking free of their
control. Whether the president is a Democrat or Republican, U.S. imperialism will not give the peoples of Latin America
and the Caribbean a moment of peace. A vast array of diplomats, generals, think tanks and corporations
are working day and night, in coordination with their ruling-class friends across the region, to undermine
and reverse the left-wing tide. Inside the belly of the beast, the Party for Socialism and Liberation is working to expose these efforts,
and stands in solidarity with the people’s resistance and unfolding revolutions of the new Latin America.
2nc inevitable
The aff doesn’t solve—imperialism is inevitable around the globe
Amer, 12 PhD (Sam Amer, 11/26/12, “America: The World's Remaining Imperialist Power”,
http://www.opednews.com/articles/America-The-World-s-Remai-by-Sam-Amer-121124-733.html)//EM
If we look at the United States today, one
can easily see the prime example of the modern imperialist power,
and most advanced military in the world.
It has alliances with like-minded countries in NATO and is forging similar ones in other parts of the world. Israel is also the strongest
military power in its region. The United States and Israel frequently demonstrate their willingness to use military force to
achieve their ends. The United States military budget is greater than that of the next fifteen nations
combined. It has over 400 military bases spread all over the world and is capable of deploying those forces anywhere in
followed closely by its puppy Israel. The United States maintains the strongest
the world within hours. It is willing to use, and has used, its military, to subdue other nations to its desires. Similarly, Israel's military budget is
greater than the sum of the military budgets of all the countries that surround it. For Israel, attacks on its neighbors using its superior military
power are incessant. Its colonization and complete subjugation of the Palestinians is legendary. For the US, the American-led wars in Vietnam,
Korea, Iraq, Grenada, Cuba and Afghanistan come to mind. Both the United States and Israel are now
threatening to start another
war with Iran for no other purpose than to extend their hegemony over the entire Middle East. If this is
not modern-day colonialism, I don't know what it is. Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran never actually presented
clear and identifiable security threats to the United States per se. The US, with its chorus of like-minded nations, is also applying severe
economic pressure on Iran to make sure the Iranians do not develop nuclear weapons. This is done without much regard to the suffering of the
Iranian people. This is a repeat to what the United States did with Iraq. The United States is determined to direct the much older and historic
Persia on how to conduct its foreign policy, how to rule itself, what it can and cannot do, and how to administer its own economy. The United
States does not see any conflict in that other nations such as France, the UK, Russia, India, Pakistan and even lowly Israel "etc. already have
nuclear weapons. In the mind of the United States, Iran should not have nuclear weapons, period. It is clear that the
American attitude
towards the rest of the world is in need of major examination. As it stands now, all other nations must implement the
American view of world affairs. Otherwise, the Americans will attack militarily or otherwise. The United States has appointed itself
the global leader and policeman. It assigned itself the prerogative of waging "preventive war'. By its trigger-happy
behavior, the United States signals to other recalcitrant nations the fate awaiting them should they mess
with Uncle Sam. The US and Israel have also established for themselves, targeted assassinations as the centerpiece of their nationalsecurity policies. They have given themselves the right to met punishment on those who dare disagree with them. They have acquired for
themselves the legitimacy to place their forces on other people's lands without their consent. The Americans always have military bases closeby. They also have long-range aircraft, aircraft carriers, space weapons, drones "etc. that can be summoned in just minutes. Most of the
offensive weapons that Israel uses is also US made. In one-way or the other, the
entire civilized world is America's colony. No
Egypt, for
example, dared to chart an independent course for it disapproved by the United States, US military aid would be
immediately suspended, loans from the International Monetary fund and other financial sources would dry out
and relations with Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf Kingdoms would be jeopardized. Just look at what happened
country can assume any position contrary to that of the United States without severe punishment. It is the unwritten law. If
to Iraq or what is now happening to Iran. The United States would not allow Palestine to even be recognized by the United Nations.
Similarly, the Philippines, Japan, Belarus or any other country would not dare antagonize the United States.
The economic, political and possibly military consequences would be unbearable. The only exceptions to the rule are the countries that are run
by dictators or absolute monarchs. Those states are the natural allies of the United States since the opinions of the people living in those
countries are important neither to their ruling despots nor to the United States. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf kingdoms are among the closet allies
of America.
1nc human rights
Lifting the embargo will only increase Castro repression—they’re on the brink of a
transition now
Radosh, 13 Adjunct Fellow at the Hudson Institute and PhD in History (Ron Radosh 3/18/13, “The Time
to Help Cuba’s Brave Dissidents Is Now: Why the Embargo Must Not be Lifted”,
http://pjmedia.com/ronradosh/2013/03/18/the-time-to-help-cubas-brave-dissidents-is-now-why-theembargo-must-not-be-lifted/?singlepage=true//EM
What these liberals and leftists leave out is that this demand — lifting
the embargo — is also the number one desire of the
Cuban Communists. In making it the key demand, these well-meaning (at least some of them) liberals echo precisely the
propaganda of the Cuban government, thereby doing the Castro brothers’ work for them here in the United
States. And, as we know, many of those who call for this actually believe that the Cuban government is on the side of the
people, and favor the Cuban Revolution which they see as a positive role model for the region. They have always
believed, since the 1960s of their youth, that socialism in Cuba has pointed the way forward to development and liberty based on the kind of
socialist society they wish could exist in the United States. Another brave group of Cuban opponents of the regime has actually taped a
television interview filmed illegally in Havana. “Young Cuban democracy leader Antonio Rodiles,” an American support group called Capitol Hill
Cubans has reported, “has just released the latest episode of his civil society project Estado de Sats (filmed within Cuba), where he discusses
the importance U.S. sanctions policy with two of Cuba’s most renowned opposition activists and former political prisoners, Guillermo Fariñas
and Jose Daniel Ferrer.” The argument they present is aimed directly at those on the left in the United States, some of whom think they are
helping democracy in Cuba by calling for an end to the embargo. In strong and clear language, the two dissidents say the following: If at this
time, the [economic] need of the
Cuban government is satisfied through financial credits and the lifting of the
embargo, repression would increase, it would allow for a continuation of the Castro’s society, totalitarianism would
strengthen its hold and philosophically, it would just be immoral … If you did an opinion poll among Cuban
opposition activists, the majority would be in favor of not lifting the embargo. Next, they nail the claim that travel
without restrictions by citizens of our country to Cuba would help spread freedom. The men respond: In a cost-benefit analysis, travel to
Cuba by Americans would be of greatest benefit to the Castro regime, while the Cuban people would be the
least to benefit. With all of the controls and the totalitarian system of the government, it would be perfectly able to
control such travel. We know this, as I reported a few months ago, about how a group of Americans taking the usual state-controlled
Potemkin village tour came back raving about how wonderful and free Cuba is, and how Cuban socialism works. Finally, the two former
prisoners made this point about lifting the embargo: To lift the embargo at this time would be very prejudicial to us. The government prioritizes
all of the institutions that guarantee its hold on power. The regime’s political police and its jailers receive a much higher salary and privileges
than a doctor or engineer, or than any other worker that benefits society. We’ve all seen municipalities with no fuel for an ambulance, yet with
10, 15, 20, 50 cars full of fuel ready to go repress peaceful human rights activists. Indeed, just this past week, more evidence came out
substantiating how the secret police killed Cuba’s leading political opponent Oswaldo Paya, and sought to blame it on a car crash for which he
and those with him were responsible. Last week, the Washington Post in a tough editorial made the point: Mr. Payá, who pioneered the Varela
Project, a petition drive in 2002 seeking the guarantee of political freedom in Cuba, was killed in a car wreck July 22, along with a youth activist,
Harold Cepero. The driver of the vehicle, Ángel Carromero, a Spaniard, was convicted and imprisoned on charges of vehicular homicide; in
December, he was released to Spain. He told us in an interview published on the opposite page last week that the car carrying Mr. Payá was
rammed from behind by a vehicle with government license plates. His recollections suggest that Mr. Payá died not from reckless driving but
from a purposeful attempt to silence him — forever. This is the kind of treatment effective opponents of the regime get from Cuba’s secret
police, measures taken upon orders of Raul Castro, whom useful idiots like Danny Glover and Sean Penn regularly visit. They fawn at his feet
and those of his ailing brother, Fidel Castro. This week, Sanchez and her colleague come to testify before Congress. They will speak as well at a
public forum today, Tuesday, at the Cato Institute. You can watch on a live stream at 12:30 p.m. on the organization’s website. The Cuban
people have suffered long enough at the hands of a regime that came into power promising freedom and democracy,
and instead inflicted on the Cuban people a totalitarian government modeled on that of the old Soviet Union. Cuba is
finally on the verge of change, and it is time the people of our country give whatever support we can to those within Cuba bravely
working for the creation of a real democracy in Cuba, and an end to the decades of rule by the Castro brothers.
No human rights abuses or oppression—it’s all a story created by Americans
Roberts, 2k former English professor and political activist (Glen Roberts, 2000, “Misconceptions about
Cuba”, http://www.iammyownreporter.com/misconceptions.htm)//EM
2. Cubans
eat only one meal a day. Wrong! This is an example of typical Miami warp. Because Cuba guarantees
every child up to 7 a healthy ration of milk, no matter how tough times are, the "exiles" claim 8-year-old kids aren't
"allowed" to drink milk. In fact, free meals are served in schools and on the job, and Cubans get at least enough
subsidized food on the ration for one meal a day at home. This can easily be doubled for 20 pesos a month or tripled for
40. This system ensures people can eat enough (I personally get fat on one meal a day; how about you?) and lets them decide what 1/3 to 2/3
of their food will be (it's virtually a saying in Cuba that Cubans eat 3 times a day). They also eat lots of ice cream and cheese, there's plenty of
powdered and canned milk, and as the number of dairy cows grows and new breeds are added, there is more milk every year. 3. Cubans
live in miserable slums. Wrong! In fact, the only slum in Cuba is Old Havana, foolishly (in my opinion) kept for the
tourists. Most Cubans who once lived in shanties now live in institutional apartment buildings, just like most
Spaniards. A substantial number live in old houses considered substandard by the government and scheduled to be replaced. But very few
of those have dirt floors. Far more live in 50's era homes that are perfectly alright. More and more are living in new apartments and
casitas that put the Russian concept Cuba accepted for too long to shame. The only dirt floored shanty towns (actually some small clusters) I
have seen in Cuba are the unnecessary, non-systemic result of a minority of refuseniks who abandon good houses in their home towns to come
to Havana or Santiago to hustle dollars. One of their scams is to show off their artificial poverty to foolish tourists for donations. Most small
cities in Cuba are nice to beautiful places where there's nothing that looks like a slum. 4. The
embargo causes intense suffering
and many deaths. Wrong! In fact, almost no other country observes the embargo. Certainly, it causes problems,
because America should be a closer and cheaper source of many things Cuba, which is an island of limited resources, regularly buys. But
Mexico is just as close. Venezuela, a major oil producer, is now very friendly. Cuba makes most of its own
medicines; I ask in every pharmacy I pass and they always tell me they fill virtually all prescriptions; and when I went to the
Ministry of Health and asked for a list of actually critical medical needs, I got a very short list. Most
importantly, the absence of any general suffering in Cuba is dramatically visible to the naked eye. 5. Cuba is guilty of gross human
rights abuses. Wrong! Punch up human rights and Cuba on your Computer and read stories in the New York Times about how the
U.N. Human Rights Commission, Amnesty International, and the Red Cross all rated Cuba's justice
system as normal, i.e. no better or worse than ours. That was before the Bush administration. In the last 4 years, Cuba has been way
above the U.S. in the area of human rights. While Cuba was being criticized for executing 3 terrorists and for jailing 75 people proven to be
working for and in the pay of a foreign power self proclaimed to be Cuba's enemy for the purpose of sabotaging the Cuban system, the Bush
administration was being criticized and protested by millions of people all over the world for killing, maiming, and crippling thousands of people
for no acceptable reason, and for jailing nobody even knows how many people for no known reason. Did I make that up?
2nc embargo good turn
Embargo crushes the regime and prevent human rights abuses
Gutierrez, 8 former Secretary of Commerce (CARLOS M. GUTIERRez, 6/9/8, “The Cuba Embargo Should
Stand”, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/06/08/AR2008060801671.html)//EM
I respectfully disagree with Eugene Robinson. U.S. policy on Cuba, supported by presidents from John F. Kennedy to Bill Clinton to
George W. Bush, has worked by denying resources to a regime that systematically brutalizes its people and
funds anti-American terrorist activities around the world. The Castro brothers have used resources from foreign
investors and tourists only to maintain their privilege and power. Ironically, while some criticize the
embargo, it is the American people who are the largest providers of Cuba's food and medicine, and U.S.
remittances are the largest source of direct support to the Cuban people. Recent "reforms" by the Cuban regime
serve only to highlight the depth of oppression and control under which the Cuban people have lived. Why do some express outrage
against Sudan and Burma yet turn a blind eye to Cuba's half a century of human rights atrocities? Until
political prisoners are freed and fundamental human rights are granted, we will not fuel the fires of
oppression. We will support real change in Cuba by standing with the Cuban people rather than legitimizing the
Castro gulag.
Lifting the embargo only supports the regime
IBD, 9 (Investor's Business Daily, 5/20/9, “What Cuba Embargo?”, Proquest)//EM
Trade: Many Americans favor ending the trade embargo on Cuba, saying sanctions don't work and Cubans' lives will improve. But
a recent
AP report unwittingly proves that trade only props up the oppressive regime. Some 34,000 American tourists sneak into
Cuba illegally each year, determined to get an "authentic" Cuban experience on Varadero Beach or in old Havana. In Cuba's old hotels, they sip
daiquiris, a pre-revolutionary Cuban cocktail, like Ernest Hemingway. These travelers kick in a share of the $1.2 billion tourist income to the
Cuban economy. The Associated Press found the experience they get is largely Made In America. The daiquiri mix used in Havana, for instance,
is the same stuff you get in an Atlanta fern bar. The AP also found the Communist Party's propaganda "newspaper" in the tourist hotel is made
from genuine Alabama wood pulp. Meanwhile, the Cuban bureaucrats who deny that same Alabama newsprint to a free press go shopping in
special stores for the party elite brimming with goods stocked from -- you got it -- Uncle Sam's empire. Ordinary Cubans get nothing. The whole
tourist experience is bogus, with U.S. businesses telling AP that since Cubans are too poor -- making $18 a month, on average -- to buy their
goods, they want more U.S. tourists to do so. This shows that what passes for an embargo on Cuba really isn't one. The U.S. sells $718 million in
goods to Cuba through a 2000 legal loophole that permits the sale of food, medicine and lesser-known goods like chemicals, crude materials,
machinery and transport equipment, according to the Census Bureau. The goods do
nothing for average Cubans. No, these
goods merely prop up the Castro regime through the circular dynamic of tourists and goods. The
daiquiris come from the U.S., the tourists follow to drink them, and Castro's regime skims the profits. No
end to the embargo will stop that, because there is no consumer market for goods or services in Cuba;
there's only bureaucratic distribution. The one thing Cuba's regime cannot create is a real economy that produces things of value,
like tasty daiquiris. For an authentic Cuban experience, tourists would need to "savor" rationing, shortages, long lines and bureaucratic
indifference, because that's the real product of Cuba's regime. The tourist illusion is pernicious, because for outsiders it creates a picture of a
nation that only needs goods. The AP report shows that goods are plentiful -- or potentially so. The
real problem is communism -not lack of trade. The only people the embargo's end will help are the party's oppressive elites.
Lifting the embargo increases oppression, destroying human rights
Ahearne, 1 (Douglas J. Ahearne, 9/4/1, “Keep Cuba embargo” Bangor Daily News, Proquest)//EM
To lift the U.S. embargo will only prolong the oppression of the Cuban people. New revenue that the Castro
regime obtains will not be used for social services. Additional resources will be used by Castro's military, Cuba's
communist leadership and Castro himself. If the embargo is lifted and American companies were allowed to do business in Cuba it is
an illusion to believe that the people of Cuba would receive a better life. The truth is, as foreign companies doing
business in Cuba know, the Cubans who work for these companies do not receive any pay check from these companies. Rather, the company
will forward the total salaries owed, in U.S. currency, directly to Castro's regime. Castro's regime then pays the Cuban workers. The amount
received from the Castro regime is substantially less and is in a worthless currency, the Cuban peso. The rest is pocketed by the Castro regime.
To lift the embargo will not bring any form of relief to the Cuban people. Rather, it will subsidize an old relic of the
Cold War and perpetuate a failed and useless ideology. Real relief will come once Castro's chokehold on freedom is broken and the people of
Cuba are free to make their own decisions.
1nc/2nc human rights k
The affirmative’s rhetoric of bringing “fundamental human rights” to Cuba
perpetuates imperialism
Saito, 8 professor of law at Georgia State (Natsu Taylor Saito, 2008 “Human Rights, American
Exceptionalism, and the Stories We Tell”,
http://www.law.emory.edu/fileadmin/journals/eilr/23/23.1/Saito.pdf)//EM
The legitimacy of
the paradigm of Western civilization rests on its claims to be bringing the twin virtues of
all of humanity. 81
Resistance to the imposition of Western “v alues” is portrayed as an attempt to revert to a preEnlightenment “stage” of civilization, in which societies are ruled by dictators of one sort or another, unconstrained
by the need to respect individual rights. 82 In order for Western civilization to represent the apex of human history, rather
than simply one of many possible forms of social organization, it had to define itself in opposition to the Other, for
without that Other it could not validate its claims to supremacy. 83 Although the rights of peoples to maintain their
material well-being (“development”) and the protection of human dignity (“universal rights”) to
culture and identity have been recognized over the past few decades, 84 the movement to expand the catalogue of universally agreed-upon
rights also has gained momentum, leading to debates about the legality and acceptability of particular social practices or legal sanctions. 85
The emphasis of the current human rights paradigm, like that of development, on raising all peoples to a
“higher” level of civilization, rather than on erasing the distinction between the “civilized” and the “uncivilized”—or the “developed”
and the “un(der)developed” 86 —is part of what allows it to be challenged as simply another attempt by the
Western powers to remake all other cultures in their own image. 87
The aff’s attempt to defend “human rights” is only another tool for the imperialist
project to expand
Perez, 8 PhD, J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of History at University of North Carolina (Louis A. Pérez Jr.,
2008, “Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos”, Google Books)//EM
The Americans thus assigned themselves
the role of a moral force in defense of those inalienable rights
with which they had invented themselves. The undertaking was assumed as a duty of destiny-as a matter of
providential design-celebrated in hymns and prayer, in song and poetry as well as fiction and film, in political discourse and historical
scholarship. Men and women both of means and of modest social origins; essayists, poets, and lyricists; civic associations and women's
organizations-all in varying degrees and at dif- ferent times, by way of aesthetic production and scientific pronouncements, as religious
conviction and philosophical musings-contributed
to the moral environment in which imperialism flourished. The
proposition of beneficent intent and benign motive in defense of free- dom and liberty in the world at large, very much
derived from the experience of 1898, served to ascribe moral purpose to political conduct. It was a powerful selfconfirming proposition, from which to defend empire as a matter of prin-ciple and expand power as a
defense of virtue.The notion resonated as a public discourse. The felicity of the imagery sat well with the popular
imagination, disposed to celebrate its virtues, and especially when those virtues constituted the principal attributes of a nation new in the
history of the world. Americans were smitten by their self-constructed selves: a people providentially chosen to bring light to a dark world. "We
have expanded into an empire," exulted naval analyst H. C. Taylor in 1899, "and are now the imperial republic of the world .... Plans for the
future must be made by minds willing to acknowledge that imperial resources may be needed to preserve these possessions that have fallen to
us, to protect their feeble peoples, and to aid them in the their efforts to secure a political happiness and freedom hitherto denied them."•"˜Â°
Those who opposed the imperial project, scofled Indiana senator Albert Beveridge the following year, were "either insincere, or else
unbelievers in the soundness of American institutions, the purity of the American heart, and the noble in- tention ofthe American mind."•"
President William McKinley rebuked
critics who opposed imperialism for having "no confidence in the virtue
or capacity or high purpose or good faith of this free people as a civilizing agency.""• Cer- tainty of purpose was
always more important than consideration of conse- quences. This was foreign policy propounded explicitly as a faith in
national character, where motive mattered more than means and outcomes mattered less than
intentions. This was the making of the American sublime.
Their rhetoric of promoting human rights is grounded in imperialism
Gott, 2 Associate Professor at Depaul and PhD from UC Berkeley (Gil Gott, 2002, “Moral Imperialism”,
pp 19-20)
THE HISTORICAL ANTECEDENTS of present-day human rights dis- course and practice are usually sought in the tenets of liberal political
philosophy and Enlightenment-era ideas about universal human dig- nity. A critical historicization of modem
human rights,
however, must include looking beyond inherited intellectual frameworks to a consid- eration of the social and political
contexts of precursor movements. By studying such movements we can see how humanitarian norms have interacted with broader
sociohistorical frameworks. A
historicized un- derstanding of these dynamics is indispensable as we strive to
recon- struct human rights discourse and practice in light of shifting (globaliz- ing) social and political contexts that
"contaminate" human rights- based normativities and projects. This chapter contributes to a critical historicization of the
modem human rights project by examining the development of transnational humanitarianism during the "long nineteenth century," from the
17805 through the first decade of the twentieth century By analyzing the rela- tionships between the early humanitarian movements, the
Victorian era's imperial system in Africa, and the initial intemational legal codi- fication of the humanitarian impulse
as part of the
imperial dual man- date to "civilize" and control subaltern peoples, this chapter will pro- vide a historical dimension to
the current project of constructing a crit- ical human rights theory and practice. The record of nineteenth-century European
imperialism in Africa is remarkable for its blending of humanitarian thought and action with a callous,
sometimes bloodthirsty aggressiveness. Despite this record few scholars make a point of problematizing the
integral connections be- tween humanitarianism and imperialism as mutually constituting sides of a
single dialectic: "imperial humanitarianism" or "humanitarian imperialism." Histories of nineteenth-century
imperialism typically in- clude "add-on" descriptions of contemporaneous missionary and hu- manitarian activities, while specific histories of
the era's humanitarian- ism treat the imperial context as background, or offer economic deter- minist explanations that view humanitarianism
as a function of class interest, To the extent that a more complex relationship between impe- rialism and humanitarianism is problematized,
scholars usually con- clude that sincere humanitarians sometimes unwittingly, tragically, and perhaps even carelessly served the European
states' and capitalist in- terests in colonizing the periphery."˜
Humanitarianism is a ruse for imperialistic expansion
Gott, 2 Associate Professor at Depaul and PhD from UC Berkeley (Gil Gott, 2002, “Moral Imperialism”,
pp 34-36)
This chapter somewhat self-consciously projects the contemporary critique onto a complex historical record and, not surprisingly, derives a
cautionary tale. Like the
Victorian adventurer in Africa tracing the easy cohabitation of early humanitarian
internationalism with Victo- rian-era imperialism, we confront a somewhat fractured though dis- cernible likeness of ourselves, of
the way today's mainstream human rights culture may channel power?" The (hi)story shows how transna- tional humanitarianism is
integrally linked to a deeper cultural process of representation, whereby a Victorian cosmopolitan identity arises from a
process of mutual constitution between the metropolilan/na- tional self and its international / subaltern other. Humanitarianism and
imperialism come together as part of a representational structure that is a distinctive and central
feature of modern international engagement. The cosmopolitan self, the subject of modern international engagement, is
fixed through a process of projection in which humanitarianism has played a leading role. This projection
process occurs in various cultural, social, and legal sites, each of which is touched on above. From here, the moral of the
(hi)story is that a critical human rights project must break with received forms of humanitarianism and con- comitant representational
structures. It is not just that legal structures, doctrines, and rights are culturally inflected, as legal anthropologists have told us. Rather; cultural
(representational) structures provide the very conditions of possibility for modern cosmopolitan legal projects such as human rights. Legal
rights channel power in a way that consti- tutes political principle which orders and selects from a surplus of signitiers"• in the cultural realm."
But, in addition, international
human rights discourse and practice themselves derive from a powerful his- torical
system of signification, which has always drawn on humanitar- ian-imperial constructions of others.
1nc patriarchy link
Their attempts to rescue Cuban women are rooted in patriarchy
Perez, 8 (Louis A. Perez Jr., 2008, “Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and Imperial Ethos”, pp
81-88)//EM
The power of the metaphor of Cuba as woman lay in its capacity to summon moral indignation. Power
brokers and opinion makers, the evidence suggests, almost all of whom were men, detected in allegations of Spanish
mistreat— ment of women a violation of the very responsibility by which men were held accountable and indeed the very obligations upon
which the moral claim to patriarchy rested. If manly
men in the United States failed to respond and vindicate the honor
of American manhood7 that, too, would signal a break of the responsibility of patriarchy. The metaphor was
packed with culturally pre scribed codes of conduct understood intuitively by all and in which men were especially
implicated. To represent Cuba as woman was to depict the island as distressed and forsaken, helpless and
defenseless; it was to sensationalize the mistreatment of women in Cuba and to summon men to discharge
their manly duty and uphold responsibilities inscribed in norms of manhood. “At heart,“ historian W. E. Woodward
would later write with pride of the war with Spain, “we are a nation of Sir Galahads.”“’4 On occasion men in power could be also goaded by
Women to fulfill their manly duties. “There can be no compromise short of absolute liberty [for Cubal," insisted Mrs. Gordon of Atlanta. “To my
woman's thinking it seems that the United States should realize this, and that its manhood, so to speak, should so act that this carnival of blood
at its own door should Marie Madison, editor of the women's monthly American Home Magazine, excoriated American political leadership for
failure to act in Cuba: “Shame, shame that [President Grover Cleveland] has allowed the wholesale hutehery ofwomen and children at his very
door." 19“ The Woman 's Tribune was categorical: “Immediate and earnest effort is necessary, not only to relieve the present suffering in the
island, but to show that all our national talk and sympathy with Cuba, proclaimed that “humanity demands that we cry a halt and force a
cessation of these barbarous conditions.” Conditions in Cuba lamented Woman’s Exponent, were deplorable, “and naturally one would think
that this country should send help.” With the passage of the congressional war resolution in April 1898, the Woman’s Tribune was exultant:
“The United States, having undertaken in the interests of humanity and civilization to protect its weaker neighbor, is waging a more holy war
than even if it were in self-defense….The United States is the weapon in the hand of destiny to limit the power of a nation to continue to bloody
atrocities which have always marked it career.” 200 That President McKinley appeared to have delayed taking decisive action had in fact raised
question about his manhood. “For this he has been vilified,” commented the Brooklyn Eagle. “For this he has been told that he has been
recreant and nerveless and of meager manhood.” For this he has been vilified,” commented the Brooklyn Eagle. “For this he has been told that
he has been recreant and nerveless and of meager manhood. For this he has been taunted and reviled.” 201 In March 1898, the New York
Journal published an editorial cartoon depicting President McKineley dressed as an elderly woman attempting to sweep back the incoming tide
of public opinion. It was indeed as a
matter of manly duty that vast numbers of Americans determined to rescue
Cuba from her abusive male captors. Historian Kristin Hoganson has written persuasively about the fin de siècle gender angst in
the United States, as North American men were beset with deepening concern about their manhood. The depiction
of Spanish men as “savage rapists who lacked the moral sensibilities and se-restraint of civilized men,” Hoganson suggested, thus invited
American men “to assume the role 0f the heroic rescuer t0 the Cuban damsel. . . .A failure to intervene . e would
reveal a lack of chivalry in American men.”202 These concerns did much to define the terms and set the tone of the na tional
debate during the late 1890s.The representation of the conflict in Cuba entered those discursive realms in
which the very manhood of North American men was placed in question. To doubt “the natural promptings of
humanity and feelings of indignation coursing through the masses of the people,” warned one letter writer to the New York Times, would have
been “to doubt the manhood of the Nation.”203 The New York World appealed to metaphor: “If a policeman or any able—bodied citizen
should see a attempting to der a woman," asked the World, “ought he to refrain from interfering on the ground that he might get hurt or that it
was none of his A pusillanimous cad who spends his time lying about his neighbors and sneering at ‘abstractions’ like duty and honor and
courage would no doubt run away to his club as quickly as possible. A man would interfere.”204 Ohio representative John Lentz called For war
against Spain “in the name of the American manhood," while Delawarc senator George Gray vowed to “rally the manhood ofAmerica” to end
the bloodshed in Cuba?“ “The pitiful cries of the helpless, starving Women and children of Cuba can be borne no longer,” General P. S. Michie
exhorted. “Our helping hand must be stayed no longer. Our patience is exhausted and our very man hood cries out against us as we stand with
full granaries and over— flowing hearts7 ready to act. . . . Let us end the reign of terror, rapine, murder, and treachery that has so long
prevailed at our very doors.”206 The Reverend Howard of the First Presbyterian Church affirmed outright in March 1898 that at stake were no
longer political matters but that, rather, “the ques— tions at issue were questions of manhood."207
1nc paternalism link
The aff’s attempts to save Cuba are rooted in paternalism
Perez, 8 (Louis A. Perez Jr., 2008, “Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and Imperial Ethos”, pp
104-107)//EM
The propriety of power was inscribed in accessible cultural models of hierarchy. The Americans designated
Cubans as wards
and assigned themselves the role of care providers. The idea of guardian suited North American needs
perfectly. The imagery enacted self-interest as beneficent purpose, that is, the exercise of power as the right—minded and
righteous discharge of responsibility within generally shared normative assumptions having to do with the dutv to do good. “We owe the ward
that which every high-minded guardian feels incumbent upon him to do for his ward in every walk in life," pronounced New York representative
Sereno Payne in 1903, “and that is to see to it that the ward is started out on the right path.”32 Woodrow Wilson was stern in his injunction
against “complete individual liberty or the full-fangled institutions of American self—government. . . for undeveloped peoples," insisting that
they be “still in the childhood of their political growth.”33 Wilson Was succinct: “The fact is this, that liberty is the privilege of maturity, of self—
control, of self-mastery and a thoughtful care for righteous dealings,—that some peoples may have it, therefore, and others may not.”34
Wilson imagined the process of “maturity” as a “long apprenticeship of political childhood” and thereupon
provided the moral framework for the prerequisite of self-government: “Self—government is not a mere form of institutions, to be had when
desired, if only proper pains be taken. It is a form of character. It follows upon the long discipline which gives a people self-possession, self—
mastery, the habit of order and peace and common counsel, and a reverence for law which will not fail when they them— selves become the
makers of law: the steadiness and self-control of political maturity. And these things cannot be had without long discipline.HS The
idea of
“political childhood” had far-reaching implications. The need for an alternative figurative depiction with which
to imagine—and enact—a new relationship found enduring expression in the representation of Cuba/
Cubans as child/children. A new metaphor had come into existence. *** The metaphor of colonized people as children has long served as a
discursive staple of colonialism, a time—honored depiction by which European colonial projects since the sixteenth century have almost
everywhere sought to render the enactment of domination as a self-explanatory and self-confirming exercise of power.36 The imagery
served to validate power as a matter of binding reciprocity: authority, properly exercised by adults, and
obedience, commonly expected of children. To depict colonized people as children was to evoke
metaphor as a moral, a way to insinuate normative plausibility into the logic by which power was
exercised and experienced. The norms of conduct expected of adulthood and behavior associated with childhood—no less than the
conventions that defined the private interaction and public practice between parents and children, including matters of duty and responsibility;
issues of care, conduct, and control; and questions of obedience
and deference constituted discursive spaces into
which to inscribe the plausibility of colonial hierarchies. Metaphor in this instance Worked as a mode of transfer, to
export and expand norms derived from familiar social domains into new political realms. That the image
ofchild as a colonial trope worked at all was itselfan attribute of metaphor to transcend the real and literal, to contemplate the implausible as
possible. The capacity to “see" adults of another culture as children, that is, to see another people collectively in a condition of infancy,
represented a vast leap ofimagination into the realm of the preposterous that must itself be understood as the capacity of power to fashion a
version of reality of its own needs. Metaphor allowed for a suspension of disbelief as a condition necessary to sustain the moral certainty of
power. In this regard philosopher Douglas Berggren was indeed correct to draw attention to the reach of metaphor as believed absurdity,
believed because the absurdity goes unrecognized.”37 The
characterization of a colonized people as children raises
questions as to what attributes the subject population was perceived to share in common and by what attributes it was differentiated
from the colonizers to enable the identity of the Self as adult and the Other as child. Metaphor provided a means
of moral transport to a usable domain of jurisdiction by which to exercise authority as a function of the normative commonplace. It served
as source of logic and legitimacy, to be sure, but also as a means of self—confirming justification for the
exercise of power. The representation of the colonizer as adult and the colonized as children developed into the colonial narrative of
choice, in part because it privileged the narrator, of course, but mostly because it provided a coherent cognitive framework into which to
inscribe the pursuit of self-interest as a matter of self— righteous purpose. The metaphor
implicated larger moral
dichotomies imagined as contrapuntal facets of the human condition: civilization versus barbarism, the rational against
the irrational, order and progress, on one hand, and chaos and backwardness, on the other.38 Just as human beings were perceived to
pass through successive stages of infancy, childhood, and adolescence to reach adulthood, so, too, all the families of humankind were imagined
as having evolved through stages of barbarism and various phases of savagery to arrive at civilization. Knowledge, reason, and discipline, on one
hand, were products of adulthood; ignorance, improvidence, and backwardness, on the other, were associated with childhood. In this scheme
of things, some cultures had evolved more than others, that is, they were “older” —in other words, more experienced in matters of political
arts, more mature in economic organization, and Wiser in social organization. The moral duty of a people of progress—indeed the very
definition of a people of progress was responsibility to the mass of humanity that remained in conditions understood variously as backward and
uncivilized. Historian F. S. Marvin alluded to the obligations of “Western races to the world”—“distin— guished from all the rest by higher
achievements in knowledge and collective power” —as the “work of trustees,” by which he meant “to see that their wards . . . are preserved
sound in life and limb, but, above all, they have the duty of developing their human powers to the utmost.”39
This metaphor moves beyond just that of a child, encompassing violent gender, age,
and racial relations
Perez, 8 (Louis A. Perez Jr., 2008, “Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and Imperial Ethos”, pp
136-140)//EM
The metaphor of child situated Cubans in readily recognizable cultural hierarchies, within those social
arrangements that elicited something of second nature impulses. It suggested a compelling and indeed an incontrovertible
way to make the need for the exercise of North American authority both obvious and obligatory. The power of the
metaphor lay in its capacity to represent power as a matter of normative common sense, to impose an obvious
logic on the otherwise complex enactment of national interests. This was imperialism enacted as an etiquette: power was
represented as caregiving authority and exercised as responsibility. The power of the metaphor as a commonplace constrtict, to be sure,
resided in its capacity to enable self-deception. At least as important, however, it possessed the capacity to raise self-deception to the level of
self-righteous purpose, and once power was imagined at the service of self-righteousness, it would be exercised ruthlessly as a matter of moral
rectitude. The metaphors were modeled on
familiar norms of authority, as a function of age differential, as a
matter of gender binaries, or as a facet of racial attributes—that is, as children, as Women, and as blacks. As an adult female, Cuba
was usually depicted as white; as a female child, Cuba was often repre sented as black. The exercise
of power was almost always
depicted as an adult male undertaking. This was age as a social category, not an unremarkable (les ignation, to be sure, but one
that implied a usable framework to enact duties, rights, and privileges. The representation of the United States as male, almost invariably in the
form ofUncle Sam, summoned to rescue Cuba, depicted as a helpless child or a damsel in distress, conformed to gender-determined norms of
duty associated with manhood. But the metaphor in pictorial representation often turned established gender roles on their head. Cognitive
psychologist Steven Pinker has suggested that “the metaphors of our language imply that the nurturing parent should be a mother, beginning
with ‘nurture’ itself.” “‘0 This may indeed be correct in many domains, but not in the realm of power. The frequency with which men were
portrayed discharging the nurture functions traditionally associated with women at the dawn of the overseas empire must be seen as nothing
less than astonishing, an indication that on the matter of the representation ot‘power— that is7 the imagery of colonial relationships—the
realm of metaphorical construct was almost entirely a man's world, even if it obliged men to discharge traditional female roles. The United
States was depicted as male but east in roles ordinarily and otherwise associated with women: as caregiver; supervisor of children at play, of
the feeding and bathing ot'children, and of putting children to sleep; and as elementary school teacher. One caricature near the end of the
second U.S. intervention (1906—9) depicted the infant Cuba in a carriage pushed by Provisional Governor Charles Magoon dressed as a woman
preparing Cuba for self-government. In another, General Leonard Wood was shown as bathing the child Cuba. Most typically, it was the United
States as Uncle Sam given to the discharge of traditional female roles. It should be noted, moreover, that a female representation of the United
States was readily available in the person of Columbia. In fact, the depiction of the United States in the form of Columbia was not common.101
1nc word pic
The affirmative’s reference to economic sanctions as an embargo represents it as legitimate and
legal—only referring to it as a blockade points out the biopolitical and imperialist nature of this policy
Hirnandez-Truyol, 9 Profesor of Law at University of Florida (Berta Esperanza Hirnandez-Truyol, 2009,
“Embargo or Blockade? The Legal and Moral Dimensions of the U.S. Economic Sanctions on Cuba”,
Intercultural Human Rights Law Review,
http://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1219&context=facultypub)//EM
In the middle of this debate squarely sits the elephant in the room: the almost fifty-year old U.S. economic policy towards Cubame embargo
that is the topic of this essay. Indeed, not even on the naming of the economic policy can the camps agree. To
those antagonistic to
the revolution the policy is an embargo -- an economic sanction constituting a legitimate government
action that legally restricts the now of goods, services and capital to the island in order to try to influence the Castro
regime into changing its undemocratic ways. Such lawful restrictions simply signal justifiable disapproval of another country's policy with the
goal of changing the state's behavior that is perceived as a threat to the sanction-imposing slate's national security or economic well-being. To
those supportive of the regime, however, the
U.S. action is a "blockade," an illegitimate use of power to try to
make the state march to a different tune -- one not of its own sovereign imagination or desire.
1nc gentriv link
Comparing to embargo to genocide devalues real victims of genocide, especially since
the US gives aid
Godard, 10 Ambassador, U.S. Senior Area Advisor for Western Hemisphere Affairs (Ronald D. Godard, ,
10/26/10, “Explanation of Vote by Ambassador Ronald D. Godard, U.S. Senior Area Advisor for Western
Hemisphere Affairs, on the Cuba Resolution, in the General Assembly Hall”,
http://usun.state.gov/briefing/statements/2010/150012.htm)//EM
My delegation regrets that the delegation from Cuba continues, year after year, to inappropriately and
incorrectly label U.S. trade restrictions on Cuba as an act of genocide. Such an egregious misuse of the
term diminishes the real suffering of victims of genocide elsewhere in the world. Additionally, those who
charge the United States sanctions as being the cause of deprivation among the Cuban people should be reminded
that the United States holds no restriction on humanitarian aid to Cuba and remains Cuba’s largest provider
of food. The United States sold $533 million in agricultural products, medical devices, medicine, and wood to
Cuba in 2009. In agricultural products alone, the United States exported $526 million in goods to Cuba. Once again, in 2009, Cuba reported that
the United States was its fifth largest trading partner. The United States in 2009 also
authorized $237 million in private
humanitarian assistance in the form of gift parcels filled with food and other basic necessities, non-agricultural humanitarian
donations, and medical donations.
1nc at: labor unions link turn
Labor unions have no influence
James, 12 executive director of the Center for Global Governance, Reporting and Regulation at Pace
University’s Lubin School of Business (John Alan James, 11/28/12 “Organized Labor's influence not what
it once was”, http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-a-budget/269543-organized-laborsinfluence-not-what-it-once-was)//EM
However, I believe the Congress and
the general public should not be misled about the grass roots acceptance of union
policies and especially union leadership. It just does not exist and has not for more than 50 years. The current AFL-CIO
officers are fostering policies focused on using union membership numbers and especially their dues to gain more political clout, and, by the
way, hopefully expand membership dues to solve their huge financial
deficits in union managed pension and benefit
programs. Most of these, originally developed in the late 1950s and 1960s are at least 50% underfunded and in great need
of new capital inflows. Several events during this past year need to be closely analyzed by anyone with responsibility for evaluating
union strengths and influence. Probably the biggest defeat organized labor has recently suffered came on November 6. The exit polls in
Michigan (the Mecca of unionism) indicated that while voters from union families had voted overwhelmingly for President Obama, the margin
of defeat of the union movement for amending
the Michigan State Constitution to give unions monopoly power
indicated that union households had voted ‘no’ with a margin that exceeded their ‘yes’ vote for the
Democrats. Another significant defeat came earlier this year when organized labor with their united efforts to recall Governor
Walker of Wisconsin failed. All the money, the bringing in of organizers from every major affiliate and actually taking control of the
State House for weeks fell flat with Wisconsin voters. Not only that. Within a few weeks the number of teachers and even public service union
members dropping their union membership reached the thousands. Since then the focus on organization leadership has also alienated both
employees and the general public with their strident anti-business messages and their tactics which have disrupted travelers at LAX on Friday,
harassed shoppers at Walmart stores and caused 185,000 employees of Hostess Brands to lose their jobs. For many years, actually since the
end of WWII, leadership within and between union organizations has been focused on conflicting goals. Going back even to the 1930s, the craft
unions (AFL) were opposed to using dues for political purposes. Since the merger of the two major union groups (AFL/CIO, 1955) the internal
struggle over political power versus organization for better working conditions has continued, and, today splits both unions and their
constituents. It is most likely that the unions with the biggest pension deficits will continue to focus on organizing anyone with a job and a pay
check, whether the employees of the firm are interested or not. Why have unions failed to capture new workers or convince the public of their
sincere best interest for the economy? Membership in the private sector is less than 10% and falling. Now, there appears to be major losses in
even the newly formed lower income and public service areas. Union
leadership for the past 60 years has made no
strategic or tactical changes. In fact, their messages to both those employed with satisfactory jobs and the public have been totally
out of synch. The more they have been rejected the more strident their words and tactics have become. They just have not gotten the
message. Their support among those of us who work for employers and our families has fallen and will continue to fall until and
unless they come to grips with realities. Political leaders are advised to pay close attention to the public pulse.
Other
2ac at: imperialism k
Their anti-American rhetoric is dangerous—alternative is Chinese imperialism and
oppression
Gunter, 10 (Lorne Gunter, 10/12/10, “Lorne Gunter: Next to Chinese imperalists, the Americans don’t
look so bad”, http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/12/10/lorne-gunter-next-to-chineseimperalists-the-americans-dont-look-so-bad/)//EM
If you’re on your way down to the barricades to protest American imperialism (just as soon as your dad gives you
gas money), consider this: Would you really want the alternative? Chinese imperialism? As bad as the
Americans may or may not be in their role as the world’s sole superpower, the Chinese would be far worse. There’d
be no protests, for one thing. So there’d be no need for barricades. And you wouldn’t have a car, so you wouldn’t need your dad
to buy you gas, which is a good thing, too, because he’s be in a distant re-education camp, anyway. Through the 2008 Olympics
and other public-relations ventures, the Chinese government had hoped to convince the world a new China was emerging. Gone were the
purges and forced labour camps, the great leaps forward and the cultural revolutions with their tens of millions of killings. Here to stay was a
sophisticated, commercially aggressive, worldly wise new superpower. But old habits die hard. Look at the reaction of China’s
communist rulers to the October announcement that pro-democracy activist Liu Xiaobo would be the
recipient of the 2010 Nobel peace prize. For his role in drafting the Charter 08 – a sort of constitution for a future democratic
China – and for writing six essays in defence of its provisions, Mr. Liu is now serving 11 years in prison for “openly slandering and
inciting others to overthrow state power.” Ever since the Nobel committee announced his selection in October, Mr. Liu’s wife, Liu Xia,
has been under house arrest. She has been denied visitors and has had all means of contact with the outside world cut off, including
telephones, faxes, the Internet and even television. Family and close friends have been under around-the-clock surveillance for nearly two
months. And more than 100 known associates and supporters of Liu Xiaobo have been denied permission to travel outside China, just so none
of them could attend the Nobel presentation ceremony on his behalf. This
is the first time since 1936 – when the Nazis
prevented German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky and his family from attending the award presentation – that
the award was not actually given out. Mr. Liu was represented at Oslo Town Hall by an empty chair. While the ceremony was being broadcast,
the Chinese government blocked Internet streams from CNN, the BBC and other outlets that were showing the event live.
Web pages, tweets and emails containing Mr. Liu’s name have been censored for weeks now. The Chinese have also put intense pressure on
national governments to boycott the Nobel celebrations. In the end, 18 of the 65 nations invited to attend decided to skip the presentation out
of deference to China’s demands. Even the UN high commissioner for human rights chose to stay away in an egregious example of cowardice
over conviction, even by UN standards. The communist government even went so far are to create its own peace prize, the Confucius Peace
Prize, which awarded Thursday to a former Taiwanese vice-president, Lien Chan, who didn’t turn up to receive it and who claimed not even to
know of the prize or his selection as the winner. As Full Comment editor Kelly McParland pointed out Thursday, Beijing instead found some sixyear-old girl to whom to give the trophy, because children symbolize peace. (This is eerily reminiscent of China’s use of a pretty nine-year-old to
lip-synch “Hymn to the Motherland” at the Olympics opening ceremonies because the actual child doing the signing was deemed to homely for
international broadcast consumption.) Anti-American
they just might get it.
activists the world over should be careful what they wish for,
Ambiguous cuba imperialism card
Cuba is the keystone state in the broader U.S. imperial project
Perez, 8 PhD, J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of History at University of North Carolina (Louis A. Pérez Jr.,
2008, “Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos”, Google Books)//EM
Cuba occupies a special place in the history of American imperialism. It has served as something of a laboratory
for the development of the methods by which the United States has pursued the creation of a global empire,
In the aggregate, the means used by the United States in Cuba constitute a micro- cosm of the American imperial
experience: armed intervention and military occupation; nation building and constitution writing; capital
penetration and cultural saturation; the installation of puppet regimes, the formulation of clien- tele
political classes, and the organization of proxy armies; the imposition of binding treaties; the establishment of a permanent military
base; economic assistance-or not-and diplomatic recognition-or not-as circumstances warranted. And after 1959, trade sanctions, political isolation, covert operations, and economic embargo. All that is American imperialism has been prac- ticed in Cuba. But it is also true that, for all the
ways that Cuba stands as an embodiment Of American imperial practice, it is at the same time different- so different, in fact, that it must be considered as a case
apart. Cuba
seized hold of the North American imagination early in the nineteenth century. What made awareness of
Cuba particularly significant were the ways that it acted on the formation of the American consciousness
of nationhood. The destiny of the nation seemed inextricably bound to the fate of the island. It was impossible to imagine the former without attention to
the latter. All through the nineteenth century, the Americans brooded over the anomaly that was Cuba:
imagined as within sight, but seen as beyond reach; vital to the national interest of the United States, but in the
possession of Spain. To imagine Cuba as indispensable to the national well-being was to make pos- session of
the island a necessity. The proposition of necessity itself assumed something of a self-fulfilling prophesy, akin to a
prophetic logic that could not be explained in any way other than a matter of destiny. The security and perhaps many insisted - even the very survival of the North American Union seemed to depend on the acquisition of Cuba. The men and women who gave thought to affairs
of state, as elected leaders and appointed oflicials; as news- paper editors and magazine publishers; as entrepreneurs, industrialists, and investors; as poets and
playwrights; as lyricists, journalists, and novelists; and an ever-expanding electorate-almost all who contemplated the future well- being of the nation were
persuaded that possession of Cuba was a matter of national necessity. Not everyone agreed, of course. It was with a sense of exasperation that Vermont senator
]acob Collamer protested in 1859 that "the idea that the pos- session of Cuba is necessary to the actual existence of this country, is a mere figment of the
imagination."1 But that was exactly the point: the convention- ally wise were indeed persuaded that possession of Cuba was indispensable to the "actual
existence"• of the United States. And, as will be argued in the pages that follow, precisely because Cuba revealed itself as a "figment of the imagi- nation," the island
inscribed itself deeply into the very certainties by which Americans arrived at a sense of themselves as a nationality and as a nation. Years ago Ronald Steel
suggested the possibility that "the American em- pire came into being without the intention or the knowledge of the Ameri- can people." Many would disagree,
certainly, but there is a kind of truth in Steel's observation, one that engages the very ways that Americans imagined the world at large and acted within the scope
of their imagination. All through the nineteenth century, and into the twentieth, Americans were preoccupied with two overriding concems: self-interests and selfrepresentation. It was to be the genius of U.S. imperialism that the Americans learned to conflate the two into an imperial narrative of remarkable endurance. They
embarked upon empire by way of self-deception and sell'-delusion, through an idiom of denial as a means of disavowal. Perhaps it was simply easier that way: a
the U.S. experience with Cuba
had a defining impact on the sense of purpose with which the Americans would project their power
abroad: to be more specific, that Cuba contributed to shaping the nor- mative determinants by which the Americans
fixed their place and defined their purpose in the world, attributes that were subsequently transmuted into the very
moral logic of the U.S. imperial project. Certainly this had to do with Americans thinking highly of themselves, but it also had to do with an
abiding concern to be thought well of by others. In- deed, both were vital to the ways that the Americans came to define and defend their claim to Cuba, The
American way to imperialism was inscribed within cultural forms as sources of usable modes of
knowledge and deployed by way of metaphorical constructs as usable models of conduct. Cuba entered the
polity and its political leaders in collusion to spare each other the truth of their purpose. This book will argue that
American imagination early in the nineteenth century principally by way of metaphor: depictions fashioned as a function of self-interest, almost always in the form
of moral imperative in which the exercise of power was represented as the performance of beneficence. It is not that the metaphorical motifs the Americans used
to represent Cuba were necessarily original or unique to the United States. On the contrary, the vemacular of empire reaches deeply into the history of colonial
narratives. What
was different about Cuba, and what will be argued in the pages that follow, was the prominence of metaphor
as a mode of North American discourse, which is to say, the prominence of meta- phor in the production of knowledge. What was different
about Cuba was the degree to which metaphor so utterly displaced altemative cognitive possibili- ties. Virtually all the metaphors in the stock of imperial tropes
were fully ag- gregated into a single narrative of remarkable endurance-itself evidence of the power of the pathology that was Cuba.