What a Rockefeller Coincidence on Cuba

capitolhillcubans

David Rockefeller with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

Last month, CHC Editor Mauricio Claver Carone wrote in The Huffington Post:

"Because trade and investment entails dealing only with the Castro's monopolies -- a reality people would (or should) find unpalatable -- it begets the question: How can these monopolies be weakened and dismantled?

Various approaches can reasonably be debated, but it is undeniable that "doing business" with state monopolies strengthens and enriches them. If that were not the case, then democratic nations wouldn't need antitrust laws. Democracies would simply feed their monopolies more business and allow them to magically weaken and fall apart. Imagine what "might have been" if in the early 20th Century, the United States' approach to Big Oil was to strengthen its then monopoly. Today many Americans think the oil industry exerts a disproportionate influence, but if it hadn't been for the "trust-busting" efforts of the last century, we might well have become the United States of Rockefeller, working at the behest of monopolists.

Cubans have no choice; they work for the monopolies of Cuban government under the Castro brothers. Increasing U.S. trade and investment in those monopolies is nonsensical. It defies logic to believe that doing more business with monopolies weakens them."

Just over a month later, the Council of the Americas, whose Honorary Chairman and main financier is David Rockefeller, would publish an open letter to President Obama lobbying him to bypass Congress in easing trade and financial sanctions towards Cuba.

Rockefeller, and his associate, Peter Johnson, were (of course) featured signatories of the open letter.

What a coincidence!