I hope LH and the other Canadians here do not think I am picking them personally or on their country in particular.

I am just trying to put some perspective the assertion that that US corporations are the cause of terrorist attacks in the US.

Is Canada aware of evil in cutting deals with Cuba?

by Frank Calzon, director of the Free Cuba Center of Freedom House, a human rights organization founded by Eleanor Roosevelt in 1941 to oppose fascism. He was born in Cuba.

"...Why do Canadian entrepreneurs and others who travel to the island ignore Castro's abyssmal human rights record? His systematic denial of freedoms of speech, assembly, and association? His imprisonment of dissidents and use of electroshock "treatment" against nonviolent pro-democracy activists? Indeed, why do foreigners insist on conducting business-as-usual in Cuba when they would not tolerate one minute such a sordid state of affairs in their own countries?

What about the rights of Cuban workers to organize a labor union, to criticize their employers, or to question the impact of foreign enterprises on the air that they breath or the water that they drink?Consider:

At Moa Bay, in Eastern Cuba, Canada's Sheritt Mining Company runs a nickel mine and smelter. Buildings in the area are beginning to show a reddish tint, the result of emissions from the smelter. Cuban mothers warn their kids to keep their shirts on to avoid skin rashes, and untreated discharges into the bay have killed much of marine life.

Of course, having a job is better than being unemployed, and Cubans are grateful for every small favor. So Sheritt has no labor troubles in Cuba.

The Canadian company - and other foreign capitalists-don't, however, pick their workers. That is a service provided by the government. Sherritt pays Castro $9,500 a year per worker, and Castro pays the workers the equivalent of $10 a month. One can only surmise what would happen if one of these workers dared to suggest collective bargaining or to raise the issue of Sherrit's responsibility for Moa's enviromental degradation..."