How Bad Global Warming Science Hurts the Environmental Movement
Saturday, January 11, 2020
ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL CUBAN IN THE USA
ADDING TO THE LONG LIST OF SUCCESSFUL
OR FAMOUS CUBANS IN THE USA ,HERE IS ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF WHAT AMERICA IS MADE OF.
Eddy Cue
Senior Vice President,
Internet Software and Services
Eddy Cue is Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, reporting to CEO Tim Cook.
The son of a Cuban mother and a Spanish father,
Eddy oversees Apple’s industry-leading content stores including the iTunes Store and Apple Music, as well as Apple Pay, Maps, Search Ads, Apple’s innovative iCloud services, and Apple’s productivity and creativity apps. Eddy also leads the newly created team responsible for developing all aspects of Apple’s worldwide video programming. Eddy’s team has an excellent track record of building and strengthening online services to meet and exceed the high expectations of Apple’s customers.
He joined Apple in 1989 and leads a large organization of amazing people. Eddy was instrumental in creating the Apple online store in 1998, the iTunes Store in 2003 and the App Store in 2008. He also played a key role in developing Apple’s award-winning iLife suite of applications.
In his early years at Apple, he was a successful manager of software engineering and customer support teams.
Eddy was recognized by renowned cancer research center City of Hope with their 2014 Spirit of Life Award, honoring an individual whose work has fundamentally impacted the music, film and entertainment industry.
Eddy earned a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Economics from Duke University.Personal life
The son of a Cuban mother and a Spanish father, Cue resides with his wife Paula (met at Duke University[15]) in Los Altos, California, and tries hard to maintain a low profile.[16][10] Cue is an avid fan of rock music, with Bruce Springsteen as one of his favorite artists.[10] Cue was recognized by cancer research center City of Hope with their 2014 Spirit of Life Award, honoring an individual whose work has fundamentally impacted the music, film and entertainment industry.[17]
Duke University
Cue earned bachelor's degrees in computer science and economics at Duke University.[18][19][20] Cue is an avid Duke basketball fan, and both of his sons Adam and Spencer studied Computer Science at Duke University as well.[5] Cue's recent involvement with Duke has included encouraging undergraduate women to study computer science and electrical engineering as part of the Duke Technology (DTech) Scholar program launched in 2016.[21] Additionally, Cue joined Duke Men's Basketball Coach Mike Krzysweski in founding Power Forward, a mobile video network which targets the B2B market offering subscriptions to video content and case studies aimed to help corporations foster leadership and build teams.[22]
Thursday, January 9, 2020
Monday, January 6, 2020
Report Reveals US Created ISIS
http://ian56.blogspot.ca/2015/06/the-terrorist-threat-has-been.html?m=1
DIA Emails: ISIS was deliberately armed and funded by Obama & Hillary Clinton
The terrorist threat has been deliberately manufactured and exacerbated by:-
Invading Iraq and the resultant highly predictable sectarian civil war, that was deliberately encouraged by US actions following the overthrow of Saddam
Using Islamic Extremists to overthrow Gaddafi in Libya and turning Libya into a failed State
Attempting to overthrow Assad with Al-Qaeda and ISIS etc. and turning Syria into a failed State
Recently released Defense Intelligence Agency emails from August 2012 reveal that the Obama admin knowingly armed, trained and funded Al-Qaeda and ISIS and expected a Caliphate to be set up in Eastern Syria.
They also show that the planned attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi was widely known about within the US government 10 days before the attack occurred and that all the stories about the attack being caused by a video were deliberate lies:-
http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-defense-state-department-documents-reveal-obama-administration-knew-that-al-qaeda-terrorists-had-planned-benghazi-attack-10-days-in-advance/
Secret Pentagon Report Reveals US "Created" ISIS As A "Tool" To Overthrow Syria's President Assad
Hillary knew that she was arming and training Al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria from the very beginning recently released Defense Intelligence Agency emails from August 2012 reveal.
She was also warned that the Islamic Extremists were likely to become so strong that they would declare a Caliphate in Syria and Iraq - exactly as happened 2 years later.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-23/secret-pentagon-report-reveals-us-created-isis-tool-overthrow-syrias-president-assad
U.S. Intel: Obama Coalition Supported Islamic State in Syria
http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/asia/item/20943-u-s-intel-obama-coalition-supported-islamic-state-in-syria
A false excuse , a deceitful excuse !:
2012 Defense Intelligence Agency document: West will facilitate rise of Islamic State “in order to isolate the Syrian regime”
http://levantreport.com/2015/05/19/2012-defense-intelligence-agency-document-west-will-facilitate-rise-of-islamic-state-in-order-to-isolate-the-syrian-regime/
The Covert Origins of ISIS
https://www.popularresistance.org/the-covert-origins-of-isis/
Canadian military (correctly) predicted Libya would descend into prolonged civil war if foreign countries helped overthrow Gaddafi
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/canadian-military-predicted-libya-would-descend-into-civil-war-if-foreign-countries-helped-rebels-overthrow-gaddafi
It is now more evident than ever before that Qatar is playing a vital role in stoking up the chaos which is tearing Syria apart.
Informed sources have recently exposed that in the heart of Doha stand centers for training assassins of different nationalities who are dispatched to Syria to fight against the government of Bashar al-Assad. These would-be assassins are subjected to heavy military training as well as Wahhabi teachings.
In point of fact, Qatari elements have ratcheted up their activities in several countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Chechnya and embarked on an intensive recruitment of ready-to-combat warriors. Recruitment is conducted covertly by front organizations working under the banner of job centers for foreign workers.
The truth is that Qatar State Security eyes impoverished countries as good markets for death warriors. To the Qataris, Wahhabi teachings are first priority. After recruitment, these people are transferred to training centers in Doha on a weekly basis and subjected to military training and ideological indoctrination under the supervision of Qatari Special Forces.
Established in June 2004 through a merger of the former General Intelligence Service (mukhabarat) and the Investigation and State Security Service (mubahith), Qatar State Security is tasked with supervision of these centers and works in close cooperation with officers who used to be part of Saddam Hussein’s Baath army. The trained warriors are then infiltrated into the Syrian soil through Libya, Turkey and Jordan.
Between January 3, 2012 and April 2013, Qatari military planes have carried out 90 flights to Libya, Turkey and Jordan and transferred the trained death warriors to Syria through these countries.Read more:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/death-squads-receiving-training-in-joint-usqatar-operation-report/5416611
The Patriot Act never had anything to do with "counter terrorism" - it is useless for that and hasn't stopped a single terror plot.
The Patriot Act was always about building a Surveillance Dossier on everyone for Domestic Political Control.
The USA Freedom Act legalizes Mass Data Collection in ways the Patriot Act couldn't do
http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/the-so-called-freedom-act-would.html
The purposes of manufacturing/exacerbating the terrorism threat are to:
Enable draconian Police State laws to be passed for domestic political control
Create wars and conflicts
"Justify" massive war and military budgets
Increase global arms sales as the direct result of the deliberately created increase in global tensions, thus increasing arms company profits.
Increase Surveillance budgets, thus increasing the profits of domestic "security" companies like the Chertoff Group and Booz Allen Hamilton (where Snowden worked).
Edit 06/18
Media Blacks Out Pentagon Report Exposing U.S. Role In ISIS Creation
http://www.mintpressnews.com/media-blacks-out-pentagon-report-exposing-u-s-role-in-isis-creation/206187/
It's not exactly a surprise that the entire mainstream media is covering up the activities of the US government. That is their main function.
Some people might find it surprising that, for example, Fox News would pass up a major opportunity to dish some major dirt on Hillary Clinton and wreck her Presidential ambitions by providing wall to wall coverage of the DIA email revelations
(or to similarly destroy Obama).
Other more seasoned watchers of mainstream media will not be surprised at all that Fox helped cover it up.Update 08/08
Ex Intelligence Agency Chief, General Michael Flynn, stresses that it was a conscious decision to support Islamic Terrorists in Syria in 2012, expecting this to result in an Islamic Caliphate being set up. Michael Flynn was head of the DIA until mid 2014.
http://levantreport.com/2015/08/06/former-dia-chief-michael-flynn-says-rise-of-islamic-state-was-a-willful-decision-and-defends-accuracy-of-2012-memo/
Former US Intelligence Chief Admits Obama Took “Willful Decision” to Support ISIS Rise
http://journal-neo.org/2015/08/13/former-us-intelligence-chief-admits-obama-took-willful-decision-to-support-isis-rise/
Pentagon Report Reveals US Created ISIS
http://www.liverostrum.com/pentagon-report-reveals-us-created-isis/21477.html
Further Reading and References
Syria: Death Squads Receiving Training in Joint US/Qatar Operation Since Before January 2012
http://www.globalresearch.ca/death-squads-receiving-training-in-joint-usqatar-operation-report/5416611 #
ISIS Terrorists: The US Creates them, Turkey Trains them, Qatar Finances them
http://www.globalresearch.ca/isis-terrorists-the-us-creates-them-turkey-trains-them-qatar-finances-them/5436583
Brzezinski's Wrecking of Afghanistan & the US Engineered Syria Uprising Using Islamic Extremists
http://www.globalresearch.ca/isis-terrorists-the-us-creates-them-turkey-trains-them-qatar-finances-them/5436583
Using Islamic Extremists For Regime Change Is US Policy, Not An Accident
http://www.globalresearch.ca/american-imperialism-and-the-rise-of-islamic-extremism-in-syria-and-iraq/5400508
Climbing into Bed with Al-Qaeda
In late 2013, Saudi Arabia went on a buying spree, purchasing more than 15,000 Raytheon anti-tank missiles at a total cost of more than $1 billion. The purchase raised eyebrows since TOW’s are mainly useful against tanks and other armored vehicles, a threat that the Saudis have not had to face since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
But now it all seems clear. Up in arms over supposed Shi‘ite advances in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, the arch-Sunnis of Riyadh purchased the missiles with the intention of transferring them to the Syrian Salafists in the hopes of reversing the Shi‘ite tide.
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/05/02/climbing-into-bed-with-al-qaeda/
December 2013: US Supported Death Squads (Al-Nusra) Massacre Syrian Civilians
The UN (Ban Ki Moon) is helping to cover it up
http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-supported-death-squads-massacre-syrian-civilians/5361796
Irish Mercenaries Training Syrian Death Squads
http://www.globalresearch.ca/irish-mercenaries-training-syrian-death-squads/5346204
Posted 1st June by Ian Shilling
Pentagon Report Reveals US Created ISIS
http://www.liverostrum.com/pentagon-report-reveals-us-created-isis/21477.html
Global Affairs Canada
With open gates: The forced collective suicide of European nations
===========0000=============
A wake up call to an Islamic insurgency in Europe?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44vzMNG2fZc
Obama Admits He Is A Muslim
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCAffMSWSzY
343-
American Muslims celebrating 9/11
Obama Admits He Is A Muslim
American Muslims celebrating 9/11
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5BtQgTGOI4
203-
THE SMALL CITY OF CARDENAS
THE MONUMENT TO THE CUBAN FLAG WAS SET IN CARDENAS WHERE FOR THE FIRST TIME THIS FLAG WAS FLOWN .
THE CUBAN NATIONAL FLAG
THE CRAB IS THE SYMBOLIC ICON OF THE CITY BECAUSE THE HUGE NUMBERS OF CRABS THAT ABOUND IN THE VECINITY OPEN FIELDS OF THE TOWN
Cárdenas, Cuba
"The Banner City"
("Ciudad Bandera")
Welcome to the Cárdenas, Cuba, Home Page
The Cuban Flag was first raised over Cuban soil in this once picturesque and historic city of straight and narrow streets, horse-drawn carriages, industry and "cangrejos" (blue crabs).
My name is Ernesto J. de la Fé (my friends call me Ernie), and I'm proud to have been born in Cárdenas in 1953. When I was 7 years old, in November of 1960, my mom and dad, along with their five small children, had to leave Cuba and their beloved Cárdenas, fleeing the repressive Communist regime of Fidel Castro. My parents died without ever having returned.This Web site is as much a tribute to my parents, grandparents and family as it is to all "Cardenenses" and their ancestors who, over a period of 170 years, built a small village on Cárdenas Bay into a prosperous and progressive city. The city has suffered mercilessly during the Castro years. In recent times it became a virtual slum, neglected and scorned by the regime as a result of "pots and pans demonstrations" carried out on the streets by residents during the early years of "the Revolution". Avenues once teeming with commercial activity and automobiles fell silent, giving the city an erie ghost-town appearance except for the passing of occasional bicycles or horse-drawn carts.Here you will find photos, images and writings that have come from various books, old publications and post cards as well as from my family and friends. A special thanks goes to my cousin Silvia De Dios, who took some photos of Cárdenas during a visit in 1991, and also to my cousin Lourdes de la Fe, who photographed many parts of the city for me before finally being able to leave Cuba and coming to the U.S. in 1993.This site will be under construction and continually growing for a long time (kind of like Disney World). I hope you will come by occasionally to check out what's new. It is a fully bilingual site so that all Cardenenses, as well as our Spanish and English-speaking friends, relatives and descendants can enjoy it.I also hope that this site will provide its visitors with a greater understanding of pre-Castro Cuba by giving them insight into the life and being of the citizens of a Cuban city other than Havana. For reasons that I will never be able to understand, the world at large has been all too willing to accept dictator Fidel Castro's version of Cuban history: that "pre-Revolutionary" Cuba was a despicable place in need of his Communist revolution. Maybe some people will finally realize that the reverse is true.
Photo: Gonzalez-Miró, Real y Princesa Publishers, Post Card made by E.C. Kropp Co. Milwaukee, Wis
[INDEX]
Cárdenas Index
Last Update: December 13, 2001
Cárdenas' Coat of Arms and legend (Dec/95)
|
Special - Memorial to Ernesto G. de la Fé, the author's father, who died November 15, 1997.
BEFORE JANUARY 1959, CUBA WAS A WELL DEVELOPED NATION
January 8, 1958. p. 49.
New York Times
Monday, February 25, 2008
Perspectives Cuba Before Fidel
by : Eric Baklanoff
A detailed look at Cuba's economy before Fidel Castro.
An economy that was semi-industrialized and
showing robust growth.
Following World War II, Cuba's investment climate was one of the most favorable in Latin America, the author points out. Here Cuba's old congress building. (Photo: LBC archives)
About 80 percent of the Cuban land mass was under cultivation or used for grazing in the 1950s. The top soil is exceedingly fertile, deep, rich and well-watered, and the topography favorable to widespread use of farm machinery. An absence of climatic variation, however, limits the island to the cultivation of tropical and semi-tropical crops and to livestock raising. Domestic production supplied about 70 percent of Cuba’s food consumption. (...)
Cuba was one the most capitalized nations in
Latin America.
The World Bank Mission observed that:
In the 161 sugar centrales,( sugar factories) in the excellent central highway, in the extensive system of public and private railroads, in the harbor installations, in the cities, and their utilities, Cuba has the basis of exceptionally fine equipment for modern economic activity and further development.
An extensive, well-integrated system of highways provided the basis for rapid postwar advance in the island's motorized transport industry. In 1957, Cuba’s real income percapita (national income divided by population) was $378, or fourth, in Latin America. Only Venezuela, Argentina, and Uruguay ranked above Cuba and even Spain ($324) and Portugal ($212), failed to reach Cuba’s level. Except for Venezuela, Cuba probably enjoyed the highest percapita income among all countries in the wet tropical zone, extending from the Tropic of Cancer to the Tropic of Capricorn.
Other measures provide a better approximation of the degree to which real income was shared among the population. Cuba ranked third in Latin America on a percapita basis in daily calorie consumption, steel consumption, paper consumption and radios per 1,000 persons. In 1959, Cuba had one million radios and the highest ratio of television sets per 1,000 inhabitants. (...)
The level of wages in Cuban manufacturing contributed significantly to the nation’s relatively high living standards. In 1957, wages averaged $6 for an eight-hour day in manufacturing as a whole and ranged from over $4 for unskilled workers to $11 for skilled employees in Cuba's sugar mills. Real wages in Cuba were higher than any country in the Western Hemisphere, excepting the United States and Canada.
Between 1949-58, the average annual share of national income paid in workers’ remuneration (wages, fringe benefits, pensions) was 65 percent, and it showed a noticeable tendency to rise. Surprisingly by 1958, as [Carmelo Mesa-Lago notes in Revolutionary Change in Cuba, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971], Cuba’s percentage was surpassed by only three developed Western countries: Great Britain, the United States, andCanada. (...)
Cuba’s new development strategy aimed at reducing the economy’s dependence on its traditional export staple while stimulating industrial and agricultural diversification. Several measures were taken by the government to give substance to this diversification strategy. In 1952, Cuba negotiated a new trade agreement with the United States, superseding the one in force since 1934. This agreement, notes Antonio Jorge [in The Cuban Economy: Dependency and Development, University of Miami North-South Center for the Research Institute for Cuban Studies, 1989] was favorable to Cuba for it allowed the country moderate protection for its infant industries while simultaneously promoting diversification of exports to old and new markets.
Unlike, e.g., Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay which—following the so-called ECLA (CEPAL) Doctrine—pursued strongly inward-looking trade strategies, Cuba in the late 1950s chose the more prudent middle course.
An Industrial Promotion Law was enacted in 1953 that granted, among other things, tax incentives to new industries.
Finally, credit was mobilized through official development banks set up during the early fifties. These included the Banco de Fomento Agrícola e Industrial de Cuba (1951); the Financiera Nacional de Cuba, organized in 1953 mainly to provide credits for public works; the Banco Cubano de Comercio Exterior, founded in 1954 to encourage nontraditional exports; and the Banco de Desarrollo Económico y Social, established in 1955 to administer the government’s development program. The public works projects included the construction of a good water system for Havana, a toll road and the tunnel under Havana Bay, and a new highway, the Vía Blanca. ( there were 40 different Banks in Cuba )
Cuba’s balance of payments position was strengthened in the 1950s by the development of the island’s tourist industry and the growth of export earnings for products other than sugar. The expanded operations of the U.S.government-constructed Nicaro Nickel Co. and the Moa Bay Mining Co., a subsidiary of Freeport Sulphur Company, assured Cuba a position as a major supplier of nickel in the world.
Hotel construction from 1952 to 1958 almost doubled the existing hotel existing hotel capacity in Havana and other major cities. In addition, numerous hotels and motels were under construction in 1958, involving a total investment in excess of $90 million and a projected capacity of 6,066 rooms. Foreign tourist expenditures in Cuba increased from $19 million in 1952 to a yearly average of $60 million in 1957-58.
Four large hotels, the Habana Hilton, **owned by cubans and american Hilton chain **,
the Capri, the Habana Riviera, and the Nacional— owned by U.S. citizens or corporations—figured importantly in the island’s expanded capacity to accommodate tourists seeking first class service.
Cuban agricultural diversification gained momentum after 1952 and was reflected in gains in exports of farm and livestock products other than sugar.
Rice production, advancing from 118,000 tons in 1951 to 261,000 tons in 1957, was a notable case of foreign exchange savings.
The livestock industry, second only to sugar as a source of farm income, prospered during the fifties; Cuba's cattle herd was built up rapidly from about 4 million head in 1952 to 5.8 million head in 1959.
Starting from a small base, Cuba’s fish catch grew notably, from an annual average of 8,300 metric tons (MT) in 1948-52 to 22,600 MT in 1957.
Industrial diversification gained momentum in the 1950s with particularly sharp increases registered from 1952 to 1957 in the output of cement (56 percent), rubber tires (66 percent), and chemical fertilizers (46 percent).39 Production of electric energy grew at a cumulative annual rate of 10.6 percent from 1952 to 1957. Rapid advances also were made in the manufacture of paper from bagasse, in flour milling, and the dairy products industry. Cuba achieved self-sufficiency in petroleum refining with a capacity at the end of 1959 of 83,000 barrels per day supplied exclusively by two U.S. affiliates, Texaco and Exxon, and the Royal Dutch-Shell group.
According to the Banco Nacional, investment in Cuban industrial installations exceeded $600 million from 1952 to 1956.
Of this amount, $324 million was invested in 154 new plants and $288 million in the expansion of existing plants.
The magnitude of these industrial undertakings can better be appreciated by comparing the $600 million investment increment with the accumulated industrial capital stock in the sugar sector of $1,159 million (cited earlier): the new investment in diversification equaled over half the capital in the sugar industry.
In its review of Cuba’s economy, the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America observed that a significant number of projects were underway in 1957:
The purpose of these investment programs in the manufacturing sector is to make Cuba completely self-sufficient at an early date in cement, tires and tubes, glass containers, aluminum sheet and copper wire and cables, and relatively self-sufficient in light steel products.
During the latter 1950s Cuba’s steel mill, Antillana de Acero,
was mounted and operated by a Cuban entrepreneurial group (...)
With 1953 as a base year, the index of manufacturing production (excluding sugar) rose from 133 percent in 1958 to 145 in 1959.43
This robust growth rate during the first year of the revolutionary regime suggests that many of these investment projects were still in their gestation phase when Batista fell from power.
Examples include the Moa Bay plant which started operations in 1959 and the Cuban Telephone Co. which, in 1957, began a five-year development program.
From 1953 to 1957, the Cuban economy experienced a sharp upward trend in real capital formation, both private and public, signifying growing autonomy of this key variable from the exigencies of international trade.
As Table 1 indicates, real gross investment increased from 220 million pesos in 1953 (about 11 percent of Cuba’s GDP) to an average annual level exceeding 480 million pesos in 1956-57 (nearly 19 percent of GDP). The accelerated capitalization of the Cuban economy in sectors other than sugar production is also reflected in the changing composition of imports. The purchase abroad of fixed capital goods (Table 2) climbed steeply from less than $100 million (20 percent of total imports) in 1953 to an average of $207 million annually (27 percent of imports) during the two years 1957-58.
Of the fixed capital goods purchased abroad in 1957-58, 63 percent was invested in industry, 10 percent in diversified agriculture, 13 percent in motorized transport, and an equal share represented construction equipment. The share of consumer goods, mainly foodstuffs, in total imports fell from 46 percent to 1953-54 to 38 percent in 1957-58. These data […] indicate that Cuba, in the 1950s, made important gains in diminishing its dependency on the sugar sector.
U.S. DIRECT INVESTMENTS
Following World War II, Cuba's investment climate was one of the most favorable in Latin America. The Constitution of 1940 guaranteed the protection of property and established the judicial procedure for special cases involving expropriation. Property could be expropriated only for just cause involving a public utility or social interest and, then, only through prior indemnification of the owner in cash as determined by the courts.
In sharp contrast to the more general postwar experience in Latin America, Cuba enjoyed financial stability through the period analyzed. The cost of living remained relatively stable, the peso continued at par with the U.S. dollar, and foreign exchange operations were free of control. The magnitude of the nation's external public debt 45 and the debt-service ratio were of minor importance throughout the 1947-1958 period. Profits, interest, and other factor payments could be freely remitted abroad and the risk of currency devaluation was negligible.
From 1946 on, new U.S. investments in Cuba assumed a highly diversified pattern and flowed into a spectrum of Cuba’s economic activities: infrastructure, manufacturing and commerce, petroleum refining, diversified agriculture, mining, and the tourist industry. The augmented production capabilities represented by U.S.subsidiaries and branches in Cuba were primarily directed to meet the requirements of the local market. Of the $403 million increment in U.S. direct investments in 1946-59, petroleum refining accounted for $129 million, manufacturing for $75 million, public services for $60 million, and commerce for $32 million. New investments in diversified agriculture, mining, and hotels account for the remaining $107 million. These U.S. business investments in Cuba were decisive in the growth of electric power and telephone service, in the rapid advance of petroleum refining, and the mining of nickel, and helped support the diversification and growth of manufacturing. (...)
Total sales of Cuban subsidiaries and branches of U.S. firms were about $730 million in 1957, of which $456 million (63 percent) were directed to the local market and $273 million (37 percent) to foreign markets. Of the $310 million agricultural sales, 80 percent were exported (principally sugar), and the balance reflected U.S.operations in cattle ranching, rice and tobacco growing. The preponderant share of the $150 million of manufactures sold by the U.S. affiliates (86 percent) was absorbed by the Cuban market, as were also the sales of petroleum products (98 percent). Exports of manufactured goods ($21 million) comprised mainly processed nickel. The services provided by U.S. affiliates—electric power, telecommunications, and public service railroads— were sold exclusively to Cuban customers ($118 million).
U.S. firms operating in Cuba also made critical contributions to the nation’s balance of payments position in 1957 through export earnings ($273 million), net capital inflows ($88 million), and foreign exchange saved through import substitution ($130 million). Offsetting these contributions were income remittances plus fees and royalties (totaling $56 million) and imports (other than imports of trading companies or of petroleum to be processed in Cuba) amounting to roughly $100 million. By this calculation, U.S. companies accounted for a direct net foreign exchange gain or saving to Cuba on the order of $335 million. (Analytically, one should deduct from this value an allowance for net production which would be yielded by total resources operating without the capital and organization provided by the U.S. subsidiaries. Considering the (a) existence of substantial slack in the Cuban economy and (b) the unlikelihood of Cuban entrepreneurs to engage in large-scale mineral development, one can conclude that the above-noted adjustment would not significantly alter the value added to Cuba's real national income.)
The U.S. subsidiaries in Cuba employed an estimated 160,000 persons in 1957 and of 2,000 supervisory, professional, and technical personnel, less than 500 were sent from the United States.48 Foreign subsidiaries were cited by the World Bank Mission as “among those employers who pay the highest wages and who, for the most part, scrupulously observe Cuba’s labor legislation.” While employing only seven percent of Cuba’s labor force, the U.S. companies in 1957 accounted for one-third of the island’s merchandise export earnings and a little under one-fifth of total government revenues. (…)
The participation of U.S. direct investments in the structure of the Cuban economy in the latter 1950s was considerable, as indicated by the following approximate shares: electric power and telephone service (90 percent), raw sugar production (37 percent), commercial banking (30 percent), public service railways (50 percent), petroleum refining (66 percent), insurance (20 percent), and nickel mining (100 percent).
Notwithstanding these large U.S. equity holdings in Cuba, it is very important to observe that private Cuban groups succeeded in winning ownership and control over economic activities formerly dominated by U.S. and other foreign investors. The outstanding cases are sugar, banking and insurance, and air transportation. A majority of the stock in the leading airline, Compañía Cubana de Aviación, originally a wholly-owned U.S.subsidiary, passed eventually into Cuban hands.
From the 1930s on, Cubans purchased a large number of sugar mills from U.S., Canadian, Spanish, Dutch, and French interests. [..]
The U.S. share of Cuban sugar production declined from 62 percent in 1935 to 37 percent in 1958. Other foreign investors, whose sugar mills produced 25 percent of Cuba’s sugar in 1935, had sold virtually all of their holdings by 1958. The divestiture of sugar mills by foreign enterprises was accompanied by the transfer of cane land to Cuban ownership. Significantly, the small farmers grew only nine percent of Cuba’s cane in 1932, but by 1958 their share was well over 50 percent. In consequence, Cuban capital controlled three-fourths of the sugar mills; and these, in turn, accounted for 62 percent of the island’s sugar
production in 1958. Local business interests, whose share of Cuba's sugar production had been reduced to a mere 13 percent in 1935, thus regained their position of dominance after the Second World War.
Transfer of these foreign assets into Cuban ownership proceeded through normal commercial channels and procedures—a manifestation of the progressive maturation of the island’s business community and postwar prosperity.
ROBUST ECONOMY On the eve of the Cuban Revolution, the island had an essentially semi-industrialized market economy with a strong orientation toward the United States— its predominant trading partner and external source of direct investment. Cuba’s relatively small population (6.5 million in 1958), its location on the threshold of the United States, the largest “common market” in the world with which it had concluded preferential trade agreements; its tropical climate; and specialized resource endowment—these and other factors conditioned the island’s intimate commercial and financial ties with the United States.
(…)
The newly-installed Castro regime inherited an economy undergoing robust investment in the non sugar sector. Several industrial projects were still in their development phase and continued into 1959. Domestic and U.S.enterprises clearly were mobilizing their capital resources in preparation for the anticipated Caribbean tourism boom of the 1960s of which Cuba could have been the principal beneficiary.
Eric Baklanoff is a research professor emeritus of economics, finance and legal studies at The University of Alabama. This column is based on an excerpt from his presentation Cuba On The Eve Of The Socialist Transition: A Reassessment Of The Backwardness-Stagnation
Thesis presented at the 8th Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE) in Miami, Florida, August 6-8, 1998. Republished with permission from the author.
New York Times
ONLY THE USA AND ARGENTINE SURPASSED CUBA IN THE 1950s
BY ALL THE STANDARDS INDICATORS IN THE UNESCO AND UNO STATISTICS...!!!!
Monday, February 25, 2008
Perspectives Cuba Before Fidel
by : Eric Baklanoff
A detailed look at Cuba's economy before Fidel Castro.
An economy that was semi-industrialized and
showing robust growth.
Following World War II, Cuba's investment climate was one of the most favorable in Latin America, the author points out. Here Cuba's old congress building. (Photo: LBC archives)
About 80 percent of the Cuban land mass was under cultivation or used for grazing in the 1950s. The top soil is exceedingly fertile, deep, rich and well-watered, and the topography favorable to widespread use of farm machinery. An absence of climatic variation, however, limits the island to the cultivation of tropical and semi-tropical crops and to livestock raising. Domestic production supplied about 70 percent of Cuba’s food consumption. (...)
Cuba was one the most capitalized nations in
Latin America.
The World Bank Mission observed that:
In the 161 sugar centrales,( sugar factories) in the excellent central highway, in the extensive system of public and private railroads, in the harbor installations, in the cities, and their utilities, Cuba has the basis of exceptionally fine equipment for modern economic activity and further development.
An extensive, well-integrated system of highways provided the basis for rapid postwar advance in the island's motorized transport industry. In 1957, Cuba’s real income percapita (national income divided by population) was $378, or fourth, in Latin America. Only Venezuela, Argentina, and Uruguay ranked above Cuba and even Spain ($324) and Portugal ($212), failed to reach Cuba’s level. Except for Venezuela, Cuba probably enjoyed the highest percapita income among all countries in the wet tropical zone, extending from the Tropic of Cancer to the Tropic of Capricorn.
Other measures provide a better approximation of the degree to which real income was shared among the population. Cuba ranked third in Latin America on a percapita basis in daily calorie consumption, steel consumption, paper consumption and radios per 1,000 persons. In 1959, Cuba had one million radios and the highest ratio of television sets per 1,000 inhabitants. (...)
The level of wages in Cuban manufacturing contributed significantly to the nation’s relatively high living standards. In 1957, wages averaged $6 for an eight-hour day in manufacturing as a whole and ranged from over $4 for unskilled workers to $11 for skilled employees in Cuba's sugar mills. Real wages in Cuba were higher than any country in the Western Hemisphere, excepting the United States and Canada.
Between 1949-58, the average annual share of national income paid in workers’ remuneration (wages, fringe benefits, pensions) was 65 percent, and it showed a noticeable tendency to rise. Surprisingly by 1958, as [Carmelo Mesa-Lago notes in Revolutionary Change in Cuba, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971], Cuba’s percentage was surpassed by only three developed Western countries: Great Britain, the United States, andCanada. (...)
Cuba’s new development strategy aimed at reducing the economy’s dependence on its traditional export staple while stimulating industrial and agricultural diversification. Several measures were taken by the government to give substance to this diversification strategy. In 1952, Cuba negotiated a new trade agreement with the United States, superseding the one in force since 1934. This agreement, notes Antonio Jorge [in The Cuban Economy: Dependency and Development, University of Miami North-South Center for the Research Institute for Cuban Studies, 1989] was favorable to Cuba for it allowed the country moderate protection for its infant industries while simultaneously promoting diversification of exports to old and new markets.
Unlike, e.g., Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay which—following the so-called ECLA (CEPAL) Doctrine—pursued strongly inward-looking trade strategies, Cuba in the late 1950s chose the more prudent middle course.
An Industrial Promotion Law was enacted in 1953 that granted, among other things, tax incentives to new industries.
Finally, credit was mobilized through official development banks set up during the early fifties. These included the Banco de Fomento Agrícola e Industrial de Cuba (1951); the Financiera Nacional de Cuba, organized in 1953 mainly to provide credits for public works; the Banco Cubano de Comercio Exterior, founded in 1954 to encourage nontraditional exports; and the Banco de Desarrollo Económico y Social, established in 1955 to administer the government’s development program. The public works projects included the construction of a good water system for Havana, a toll road and the tunnel under Havana Bay, and a new highway, the Vía Blanca. ( there were 40 different Banks in Cuba )
Cuba’s balance of payments position was strengthened in the 1950s by the development of the island’s tourist industry and the growth of export earnings for products other than sugar. The expanded operations of the U.S.government-constructed Nicaro Nickel Co. and the Moa Bay Mining Co., a subsidiary of Freeport Sulphur Company, assured Cuba a position as a major supplier of nickel in the world.
Hotel construction from 1952 to 1958 almost doubled the existing hotel existing hotel capacity in Havana and other major cities. In addition, numerous hotels and motels were under construction in 1958, involving a total investment in excess of $90 million and a projected capacity of 6,066 rooms. Foreign tourist expenditures in Cuba increased from $19 million in 1952 to a yearly average of $60 million in 1957-58.
Four large hotels, the Habana Hilton, **owned by cubans and american Hilton chain **,
the Capri, the Habana Riviera, and the Nacional— owned by U.S. citizens or corporations—figured importantly in the island’s expanded capacity to accommodate tourists seeking first class service.
Cuban agricultural diversification gained momentum after 1952 and was reflected in gains in exports of farm and livestock products other than sugar.
Rice production, advancing from 118,000 tons in 1951 to 261,000 tons in 1957, was a notable case of foreign exchange savings.
The livestock industry, second only to sugar as a source of farm income, prospered during the fifties; Cuba's cattle herd was built up rapidly from about 4 million head in 1952 to 5.8 million head in 1959.
Starting from a small base, Cuba’s fish catch grew notably, from an annual average of 8,300 metric tons (MT) in 1948-52 to 22,600 MT in 1957.
Industrial diversification gained momentum in the 1950s with particularly sharp increases registered from 1952 to 1957 in the output of cement (56 percent), rubber tires (66 percent), and chemical fertilizers (46 percent).39 Production of electric energy grew at a cumulative annual rate of 10.6 percent from 1952 to 1957. Rapid advances also were made in the manufacture of paper from bagasse, in flour milling, and the dairy products industry. Cuba achieved self-sufficiency in petroleum refining with a capacity at the end of 1959 of 83,000 barrels per day supplied exclusively by two U.S. affiliates, Texaco and Exxon, and the Royal Dutch-Shell group.
According to the Banco Nacional, investment in Cuban industrial installations exceeded $600 million from 1952 to 1956.
Of this amount, $324 million was invested in 154 new plants and $288 million in the expansion of existing plants.
The magnitude of these industrial undertakings can better be appreciated by comparing the $600 million investment increment with the accumulated industrial capital stock in the sugar sector of $1,159 million (cited earlier): the new investment in diversification equaled over half the capital in the sugar industry.
In its review of Cuba’s economy, the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America observed that a significant number of projects were underway in 1957:
The purpose of these investment programs in the manufacturing sector is to make Cuba completely self-sufficient at an early date in cement, tires and tubes, glass containers, aluminum sheet and copper wire and cables, and relatively self-sufficient in light steel products.
During the latter 1950s Cuba’s steel mill, Antillana de Acero,
was mounted and operated by a Cuban entrepreneurial group (...)
With 1953 as a base year, the index of manufacturing production (excluding sugar) rose from 133 percent in 1958 to 145 in 1959.43
This robust growth rate during the first year of the revolutionary regime suggests that many of these investment projects were still in their gestation phase when Batista fell from power.
Examples include the Moa Bay plant which started operations in 1959 and the Cuban Telephone Co. which, in 1957, began a five-year development program.
From 1953 to 1957, the Cuban economy experienced a sharp upward trend in real capital formation, both private and public, signifying growing autonomy of this key variable from the exigencies of international trade.
As Table 1 indicates, real gross investment increased from 220 million pesos in 1953 (about 11 percent of Cuba’s GDP) to an average annual level exceeding 480 million pesos in 1956-57 (nearly 19 percent of GDP). The accelerated capitalization of the Cuban economy in sectors other than sugar production is also reflected in the changing composition of imports. The purchase abroad of fixed capital goods (Table 2) climbed steeply from less than $100 million (20 percent of total imports) in 1953 to an average of $207 million annually (27 percent of imports) during the two years 1957-58.
Of the fixed capital goods purchased abroad in 1957-58, 63 percent was invested in industry, 10 percent in diversified agriculture, 13 percent in motorized transport, and an equal share represented construction equipment. The share of consumer goods, mainly foodstuffs, in total imports fell from 46 percent to 1953-54 to 38 percent in 1957-58. These data […] indicate that Cuba, in the 1950s, made important gains in diminishing its dependency on the sugar sector.
U.S. DIRECT INVESTMENTS
Following World War II, Cuba's investment climate was one of the most favorable in Latin America. The Constitution of 1940 guaranteed the protection of property and established the judicial procedure for special cases involving expropriation. Property could be expropriated only for just cause involving a public utility or social interest and, then, only through prior indemnification of the owner in cash as determined by the courts.
In sharp contrast to the more general postwar experience in Latin America, Cuba enjoyed financial stability through the period analyzed. The cost of living remained relatively stable, the peso continued at par with the U.S. dollar, and foreign exchange operations were free of control. The magnitude of the nation's external public debt 45 and the debt-service ratio were of minor importance throughout the 1947-1958 period. Profits, interest, and other factor payments could be freely remitted abroad and the risk of currency devaluation was negligible.
From 1946 on, new U.S. investments in Cuba assumed a highly diversified pattern and flowed into a spectrum of Cuba’s economic activities: infrastructure, manufacturing and commerce, petroleum refining, diversified agriculture, mining, and the tourist industry. The augmented production capabilities represented by U.S.subsidiaries and branches in Cuba were primarily directed to meet the requirements of the local market. Of the $403 million increment in U.S. direct investments in 1946-59, petroleum refining accounted for $129 million, manufacturing for $75 million, public services for $60 million, and commerce for $32 million. New investments in diversified agriculture, mining, and hotels account for the remaining $107 million. These U.S. business investments in Cuba were decisive in the growth of electric power and telephone service, in the rapid advance of petroleum refining, and the mining of nickel, and helped support the diversification and growth of manufacturing. (...)
Total sales of Cuban subsidiaries and branches of U.S. firms were about $730 million in 1957, of which $456 million (63 percent) were directed to the local market and $273 million (37 percent) to foreign markets. Of the $310 million agricultural sales, 80 percent were exported (principally sugar), and the balance reflected U.S.operations in cattle ranching, rice and tobacco growing. The preponderant share of the $150 million of manufactures sold by the U.S. affiliates (86 percent) was absorbed by the Cuban market, as were also the sales of petroleum products (98 percent). Exports of manufactured goods ($21 million) comprised mainly processed nickel. The services provided by U.S. affiliates—electric power, telecommunications, and public service railroads— were sold exclusively to Cuban customers ($118 million).
U.S. firms operating in Cuba also made critical contributions to the nation’s balance of payments position in 1957 through export earnings ($273 million), net capital inflows ($88 million), and foreign exchange saved through import substitution ($130 million). Offsetting these contributions were income remittances plus fees and royalties (totaling $56 million) and imports (other than imports of trading companies or of petroleum to be processed in Cuba) amounting to roughly $100 million. By this calculation, U.S. companies accounted for a direct net foreign exchange gain or saving to Cuba on the order of $335 million. (Analytically, one should deduct from this value an allowance for net production which would be yielded by total resources operating without the capital and organization provided by the U.S. subsidiaries. Considering the (a) existence of substantial slack in the Cuban economy and (b) the unlikelihood of Cuban entrepreneurs to engage in large-scale mineral development, one can conclude that the above-noted adjustment would not significantly alter the value added to Cuba's real national income.)
The U.S. subsidiaries in Cuba employed an estimated 160,000 persons in 1957 and of 2,000 supervisory, professional, and technical personnel, less than 500 were sent from the United States.48 Foreign subsidiaries were cited by the World Bank Mission as “among those employers who pay the highest wages and who, for the most part, scrupulously observe Cuba’s labor legislation.” While employing only seven percent of Cuba’s labor force, the U.S. companies in 1957 accounted for one-third of the island’s merchandise export earnings and a little under one-fifth of total government revenues. (…)
The participation of U.S. direct investments in the structure of the Cuban economy in the latter 1950s was considerable, as indicated by the following approximate shares: electric power and telephone service (90 percent), raw sugar production (37 percent), commercial banking (30 percent), public service railways (50 percent), petroleum refining (66 percent), insurance (20 percent), and nickel mining (100 percent).
Notwithstanding these large U.S. equity holdings in Cuba, it is very important to observe that private Cuban groups succeeded in winning ownership and control over economic activities formerly dominated by U.S. and other foreign investors. The outstanding cases are sugar, banking and insurance, and air transportation. A majority of the stock in the leading airline, Compañía Cubana de Aviación, originally a wholly-owned U.S.subsidiary, passed eventually into Cuban hands.
From the 1930s on, Cubans purchased a large number of sugar mills from U.S., Canadian, Spanish, Dutch, and French interests. [..]
The U.S. share of Cuban sugar production declined from 62 percent in 1935 to 37 percent in 1958. Other foreign investors, whose sugar mills produced 25 percent of Cuba’s sugar in 1935, had sold virtually all of their holdings by 1958. The divestiture of sugar mills by foreign enterprises was accompanied by the transfer of cane land to Cuban ownership. Significantly, the small farmers grew only nine percent of Cuba’s cane in 1932, but by 1958 their share was well over 50 percent. In consequence, Cuban capital controlled three-fourths of the sugar mills; and these, in turn, accounted for 62 percent of the island’s sugar
production in 1958. Local business interests, whose share of Cuba's sugar production had been reduced to a mere 13 percent in 1935, thus regained their position of dominance after the Second World War.
Transfer of these foreign assets into Cuban ownership proceeded through normal commercial channels and procedures—a manifestation of the progressive maturation of the island’s business community and postwar prosperity.
ROBUST ECONOMY On the eve of the Cuban Revolution, the island had an essentially semi-industrialized market economy with a strong orientation toward the United States— its predominant trading partner and external source of direct investment. Cuba’s relatively small population (6.5 million in 1958), its location on the threshold of the United States, the largest “common market” in the world with which it had concluded preferential trade agreements; its tropical climate; and specialized resource endowment—these and other factors conditioned the island’s intimate commercial and financial ties with the United States.
(…)
The newly-installed Castro regime inherited an economy undergoing robust investment in the non sugar sector. Several industrial projects were still in their development phase and continued into 1959. Domestic and U.S.enterprises clearly were mobilizing their capital resources in preparation for the anticipated Caribbean tourism boom of the 1960s of which Cuba could have been the principal beneficiary.
Eric Baklanoff is a research professor emeritus of economics, finance and legal studies at The University of Alabama. This column is based on an excerpt from his presentation Cuba On The Eve Of The Socialist Transition: A Reassessment Of The Backwardness-Stagnation
Thesis presented at the 8th Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE) in Miami, Florida, August 6-8, 1998. Republished with permission from the author.
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