BUT RICH YANKEES STILL SMOKE A GOOD CUBAN CIGAR

For more than forty years the US has been trying to strangle the Cuban revolution and for more than forty years it has succeeded in, well, in helping to to isolate itself and to impose indiscriminate hardship on the Cuban people . It is a strange and twisted policy, but one that Democrats and Republicans alike seem to love...FLORIDA anyone. Anyway, the below comes from Caribbean Net News.


Washington's embargo against Cuba 'inhumane' says US bishop
02-28-2006

HAVANA, Cuba (AFP): The presiding bishop and primate of the US Episcopal Church, Frank Griswold, issued a forceful criticism Monday of Washington's trade embargo against Cuba, calling it "inhumane".

Griswold, who is visiting Cuba this week, said he was saddened to see the "suffering caused by the policies of my country's government".

"The US embargo has helped fuel inhumane poverty among your people," Griswold said during an address at Havana's Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, according to a text of the speech released by the Episcopal Church to AFP.

"The Episcopal Church in the United States strongly opposes the blockade against Cuba."

The senior American bishop also said the embargo had "brought large parts of your magnificent cities and infrastructure to ruins, and cut off Cuban families from the support, financial and otherwise, of their loved ones in the United States".

A clearly moved Griswold levelled further criticisms at Washington's four-decade-old trade embargo against this Caribbean island, located some 90 miles (145 kilometers) off the coast of the US state of Florida.

"This division and separation of people from people is scandalous to a Church which claims the ministry of reconciliation as its work in the world.

"The strongest supporters of the blockade in my government frequently make the claim that until Cuba changes its political structures, Americans and Cubans cannot even come to the same table and together explore avenues toward healing.

"Such thinking -- in which the responsibility for repentance, restoration and healing falls exclusively on one side of a disagreement -- is not the way of reconciliation laid out for us by the Scripture," Griswold said.

The US embargo dates back to 1961, after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion under US president John F. Kennedy. It was maintained by subsequent administrations, partly due to staunch opposition to Cuban President Fidel Castro during the Cold War.

Griswold is not the first religious leader to criticise the US embargo. During his papacy the late Pope John Paul II, a critic of communism, bluntly condemned the trade embargo, denouncing it as "unjust and ethically unacceptable".

Griswold added that upon his return to the United States he would urge the Episcopal Church to rededicate itself to advocacy against the embargo.