Cuba and Venezuela's Sicko Alliance.
By Sandra Lea Wise Posted in Liberals — Comments (4) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Story reported by Steve Harrigan on Fox News.
In a unique exchange program, Fidel Castro sends Cuban doctors to Venezuela and Hugo Chavez sends oil to Cuba. The deal is supposed to highlight how the two allies are building socialism for the future, with free medical care for the poor.
There is one problem with this perfect set up. The Cuban doctors are not staying put. Benny Alfonzo was one of them but is now safe in Miami. He said: “Right now there are 20,000 Cuban doctors in Venezuela. How many would like to leave? Every single one of them that gets the chance. I am sure of it. The only ones who stay are the ones with small children back in Cuba who don’t want their families to be destroyed.”
The first stop on the escape route is usually Colombia. Currently as many as 500 Cuban doctors are in Bogota, hoping for a U. S. Visa. The Cubans who try to cross the border face a huge risk. If they are caught, it could mean 25 years in a Cuban jail. Those who have fled said that the Cuban government has been taking extreme measures. Carlos, a Cuban Medical Technician who managed to escape, reported: “They controlled our every move. We were watched from the time we left our hotel in the morning to the time we got to work. We were never allowed to go out alone. To run an errand you always had to be with someone else.”
Cuba has a tradition of sending it’s doctors overseas to do emergency relief. But in recent years the practice has become a hard currency money maker for the government. Camilla Ruiz Gallardo, of the Cuban American National Foundation, says: “It is slave labor, by all definitions that’s what it is. They are confiscating their salaries, they are forcing them in many cases to go abroad.”
In Cuba, these doctors earn about $15 per month, but at clinics in Venezuela they earn more than ten times that. The down side is that 80% of their pay goes directly to the Cuban government. A prime motivator they say to escape across the western border.
Michael Moore, in his movie Sicko, promotes the idea of socialized medicine for America along the lines of the Cuban example. He claims our system is too money ridden. With the election of Hillary, could we finally achieve a Sicko plan of our own?
Sandra Lea Wise
South America has been ignored for many years, and Communism is taking hold there. Bush has tried to get a free trade agreement going with countries in S.A., but has been unsuccessful. He also has tried to get an agreement with Brazil, for sugar cane based fuel.
I had not heard that the Democrats had voted to put the Peru and Panama agreements on hold. That is really bad, because as long as the countries remain poor, it's the perfect place for communism to take hold. America, I fear, is going into an isolationist period.
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"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
"However, the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives has essentially rejected the Colombia-US FTA, citing concerns about ongoing political violence, particularly against labour activists"
The labor unions in these countries, as well as other countries,
are often sources of communist influence, so the effect is of American Democrats increasing the spread of communism in this vote.
Peru and Panama's free trade agreements are on hold. Every thing like this just makes it that much harder for Cuban doctors to find support to escape from Venezuela and the long arm of the Castro regime in Havana. Losing Columbia, to the Communists would be a disaster for the Cuban doctors and America.