January 4, 2011
We've always known the Castro regime was dirty.
Last Wednesday, it announced that soap, toothpaste and detergent will be eliminated from the monthly ration books.
But just as dirty is the factually deficient spin by the AP in reporting this news item, when it asserts:
The ration program began in 1962 as a temporary way to guarantee food staples for all Cubans in the face of the United States' then-new embargo.
And not just the AP, here's Reuters:
The ration was begun three years after Fidel Castro took power in a 1959 revolution to assure Cubans food following the imposition of a trade embargo by the United States.
Talk about historical revisionism, or maybe they're just getting their information from Castro's new version of Wikipedia, Ecured.
Cuba's rationing system began March 12, 1962. It was a result of the Castro regime's illegal confiscation of all of the island's means of production. (It was the confiscation, without compensation, of property owned by U.S. citizens and corporations that led to the trade embargo).
As a matter of fact, food and medicine were fully exempted from the U.S. trade embargo until May 14, 1963 -- more than one-year after Castro's food rationing began -- when specific approval for exports by the Department of Commerce became required.
Thus, Cuba's rationing system was a result of the Castro brothers' zeal for absolute power and central planning of the economy -- not of the U.S. trade embargo.
If the state controls all means of production, then the state must (or should) provide all basic staples, for there are no alternatives.
That's Communism 101 (and its inefficiency). Note that Fidel formally declared Cuba a Marxist-Leninist state on December 2, 1961.
It's also why all communist states (e.g. the former Soviet Union, North Korea, etc.) ration basic staples, regardless of whether sanctioned or not.
Such shoddy reporting might earn AP and Reuters another year's stay in Havana, but it lacks journalistic integrity.
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