Convention Discussion: Some thoughts on changing our name
| June 13, 2014 | 10:37 pm | About the CPUSA, Action, Analysis, National, Party Voices | Comments closed

http://cpusa.org/convention-discussion-some-thoughts-on-changing-our-name/

by: Jarvis Tyner
May 29 2014
Submitted by Jarvis Tyner, Executive Vice-Chair, CPUSA

I am not for changing our name.

I think we can build a large and influential CPUSA in the 21st Century.

We can change our name but there is no way it won’t be widely viewed by right, left and center as a retreat from the struggle against the menace of anti communism.

I assume that comrades pushing for dropping “Communist” from our name see it as positive step forward. I don’t think it will be. I think it will send the message that we no longer think it is possible or necessary to overcome the slanderous attacks against our courageous Party.

Defeating anti Communist intimidation and fear is connected to the fight against racism, for peace and social progress in general. It remains a basic part of the struggle toward advance democracy and Socialism.

There is uneven development but our actual party experience today is that we are growing, we do have influence and we are not isolated. This is a reality that comrades in every region of the country are experiencing on one level or the other.

But even if we were stagnating organizationally and with diminishing influence politically, I still don’t think we should panic. We need a measured and sober assessment of our real situation and fact-based analysis of how we should improve our situation and ultimately accelerate our rate of growth and influence.

We need to study the polls not just recite the numbers. The numbers mean something. There are real human beings expressing views today that 30 year ago were only whispered.

The polls on Socialism I’ve seen are very promising. Most people think socialist and communist are cut from the same ideological cloths and while Socialism is more popular, they are related.

I am encouraged by those polls that show our country trending towards a more favorable attitude towards Socialism. The results that show most youth prefer Socialism to Capitalism are very important to our Party. How could it be otherwise?

Our goal is Bill of Rights Socialism and it is in harmony with what is trending among the youth.

There was also a Rasmussen poll, conducted March 12-13 2011 on Capitalism vs Communism as reported in the People’s World article by Dan Margolis.That poll showed that 11% of those polled consider Communism “morally superior to Capitalism”.

The fact that more than 1 in 10 adult Americans ( we assume they did not poll children) thought Communism was morally superior to the system they are living under everyday should have set in motion a serious effort by our Party to analyze and figure out the real meaning of those figures. Those polls have pages of data and information that could be very valuable to us in developing a campaign to build our party in a new way. But we did not take it seriously.

We kind of let it pass us by. We all should be self critical on that point.

If 11% think Communism is morally superior, what is the percentage that does not support anti-communism or don’t like the right wing red baiting every decent ideal that’s proposed. The media is definitely playing the new anti-communist/anti-Russian card on the Ukraine crisis. Does the lack of any enthusiasm for US military intervention there have to do with the diminishing impact of anti communism? I think it does.

That 2011 poll showed an additional 13% said they were not sure which system is morally superior. I consider, the “not sure” people to be a group in political transition. It is safe to assume that most people have not heard an honest presentation of existing Socialism nor of our Party’s views. These are people living in the richest and most powerful capitalist country in the world in the midst of all the anti communist propaganda yet they are “not sure”. That says a lot.

In pure numbers not counting children 11% is around 25 million people.

And it is very important; that the 2011 poll was taken 20 years after the tragic collapse of the Soviet Union and most of the other Communist Party led Socialist countries. It was a big set back.The collapse was supposed to have made world communism “irreversibly irrelevant.” I don’t think it did.

If we all agree that we need a larger party to play the role we must play in order to advance towards greater democracy and socialism I think we must take these poll results seriously. A lot of most active comrades will tell you that these polls results do reflect their experiences.

Every day people are joining our party on the internet.Where comrades are successful building the size and influence of our party today they are tapping into that 1 in ten group (a group that is growing). The People’s World now has over 64,000 likes.

Through honest struggle, coalition building, debate and discussion, we can convince many more that the slanders against our Party are wrong and our party is a force for good.

The view that as long as we are called Communist Party we will have no future I don’t think can be proven. There is 95 year of struggle that refutes that. The polls and political trends among the American people are saying it is other wise.

Today, more progressive, left-of-center, openly socialist, are winning elections even when they are viciously red-baited. A year after the 2011 poll, Obama ran and was red-baited and he won reelection. Again these polls need to be thoroughly analyzed.

The polls certainly mean a lot more than the empirical arguments like, “comrades don’t feel comfortable admitting they are communist.” Or, “some people think being a communist is silly”.

We all know that everybody doesn’t have to be public to be effective. And of course some people who don’t agree love to make cynical and slanderous remarks about our Party. The question is, do we answer them and engage them? We cannot give in to these cynical insults.

Rather than panic and change the name; a move that will cause great division and raise many more negative questions, we need to unite around a long-range effort to intensify our mass work, to greatly elevate our internet presents with our focus on the primacy of the working class and the immediate fight against extreme right. We need to build the party and the YCL.

Back in the mid 90’s Gus Hall gave his New Years’ speech on CSPAN and we put our 800 number right under Gus as he was speaking.

When it was aired Joe Sims and I were at the national office to answer the calls.We thought we would get a few dozen mostly negative calls. Within a few minutes of Gus’s speech our phone system was overwhelmed with 100s of calls.

We were able to talk to maybe 20% and there were very few right wingers calling.

We did set up a few new clubs but did not have the structure then that we have today to follow through and build functioning clubs.

The CSPAN experience took place just 4 years after the tragic collapse of the USSR and 13 years before Obama’s run for President.

Today the struggle is on a higher level. The historic battles against inequality that helped defeat the right 08 and 12 have created whole a new movements.

To me these developments bring with it heighten consciousness and the necessity to reject racism, anti immigrant, homophobia, anti Semitism: all forms of bigotry and anti communism in order to build unity. Most significantly, today these movements do not exclude Communist.

Where is our evidence that changing the name will bring great results for us? I think calls to change the name are also related to proposals to stop calling our ideology, Marxism Leninism.

I think we need to be very careful that what may be intended to be a change in style and approach, can easily evolve into a change in our ideology and the basic character of the Party.

I know most of the comrades who are pushing for the name change have the best interest of the party at heart. But I think to change our name is objectively a retreat from a principled and honorable struggle for our right to exist, that we have waged for 95 years.

I propose that we table the issue of name change, make a real study of the growing mass sentiments against anti communism. That we examine the many options we have to seriously think through not only why people don’t join our party but why people are joining our party and how to step up our efforts to combat anti communism and build unity of all the progressive forces.

We must step up our efforts to build our party.

Forward!

Group of 77 will Condemn US Hostile Policy against Cuba
| June 12, 2014 | 8:38 pm | Action | Comments closed

HAVANA, Cuba, Jun 13 (acn) The final declaration to be adopted by the upcoming Summit of the Group of 77 plus China will condemn US’s unilateral and offensive actions against Cuba, including the most recent and subversive Twitter program Zunzuneo.

According to the island’s permanent mission at the United Nations, the draft document strongly rejects the sanctions imposed by North countries against nations in the South, based on issues like terrorism, traffic in persons and drug traffic.

The forum, made up of 133 nations, is also expected to reject the use of information technologies in violation of international law and in this regards the Group of 77 plus China has noted that the US-sponsored program known as Zunzuneo against Cuba exposes its illegal use of such modern technologies.

The summit will also back Havana against Washington’s blacklisting of Cuba as a state sponsoring terrorism, which is an excuse to justify the over-50-year economic blockade against the Cuban people.

The Group of 77 agenda also includes initiatives about climate change, migration, agriculture, health and education, the millennium goals and the post 2005 working agenda for sustainable development.

Interview: Cuba’s science “going through a good moment”: official
| June 12, 2014 | 8:36 pm | Action | Comments closed

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/xinhua-news-agency/140612/interview-cubas-science-going-through-good-moment-official

SANTIAGO, June 11 (Xinhua) — Science in Cuba “is going through a good moment,” according to Danilo Alfonso Mederos, Cuba’s deputy Minister of Science, Technology and Environment.

In an interview with Xinhua in Santiago, Chile on Wednesday, Mederos explained: “it’s a good moment because (science) has increasingly developed in recent years, and kept with the main interests and challenges for the development of the country.”

Mederos was in Santiago to attend the first meeting of the Conference on Science, Innovation and Information and Communications Technologies on Tuesday, which was organized by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

In Cuba, “science is acknowledged as one of the pillars of sustainable development,” said Mederos.

The last Cuban Communist Party congress has given “a prominent place” to the policies of the Science, Technology and Environment Ministry, said Mederos.

“The goal is to make the island’s development sustainable, to prevent the waste of resources and always use them to benefit the general development of the country,” he said.

The minister especially mentioned Cuba’s advances in biotechnology, which was praised during the conference, saying they are “homegrown” and wholly developed in Cuba.

Several decades ago, he said, former Cuban leader Fidel Castro identified biotechnology as a field of vital importance to Cuba’s future development and gave primacy to the sector.

Mederos quoted Castro as saying: “we cannot be strong in everything, we have to choose in which fields we can be strong and biotechnology was a primary option, in which Cuba has developed highly.”

Mederos also mentioned Cuba’s cooperation with China in the field of biotechnology. “Cuba and China have set up biotech companies in the Asian country … to jointly produce biotech products.”

Such cooperation “has great development potential,” said Mederos.

Cuba-Russia Bonds Strengthened, says Cuban General
| June 12, 2014 | 8:34 pm | Action | Comments closed

HAVANA, Cuba, Jun 12 (acn) Brigadier General Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez, president of Cuba-Russia Friendship Association, praised the constructive path of bilateral ties between the two countries in the economic, political and cultural sphere.

Tamayo Méndez, first Latin American who traveled to the cosmos in a Cuban-Soviet joint flight, said that those ties will strengthen the role of both countries in international debate spaces.

The Brigadier-General told the institution he presides will mark its 50th anniversary soon, and recalled the strong support offered to the Caribbean nation by the former Soviet Union, which contributed to raising the technical and professional level of Cubans.

He also commented that despite the economic and financial crisis affecting the world, the economic relations with Cuba will grow thanks to the political will of both countries.

Tamayo Mendez also stressed the realization of many objectives in these years of friendship, now strengthened by several associations and by the actions of his entity.

Russia stands out as an example of solidarity work with our country, he noted, example of this is the position of its government against the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States to Cuba.

Another sign of support is its position in favor of the immediate release of Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labañino and Antonio Guerrero, Cuban antiterrorist fighters unfairly imprisoned in U.S. jails, he stated.

Cuba-Russia Friendship Association was founded in 1964 by two great men of history, Ernesto Guevara and the world’s first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin.

This organization forever sealed a friendship that endures and gets strengthened today despite the vicissitudes of history.

KKE on the elections of May 18 and May 25, 2014
| June 11, 2014 | 10:29 pm | Action, Analysis, International | Comments closed

Statement of the Central Committee CP of Greece (KKE), on the results of the elections of May 18 and May 25, 2014.

May 27, 2014

1. The CC salutes the thousands of party members, friends of the party and KNE, people who cooperate with the KKE, the voters who fought in this battle, joined forces with the party and contributed to the strengthening of the KKE. The party fought in a unified way throughout the country, with the list of the KKE in the EU elections on 25th May, with the lists of the “People’s Rally” in the municipal and regional elections both in the first round on 18th May as well in the second round on 25th May.

In the EU parliamentary elections the KKE increased its percentage (6,1%) and votes (347.817) in relation to its percentage (4,5%) and votes (227.227) in June 2012, electing two MEPs. In addition, it won the elections in the municipalities of Patras, Haidari, Petroupolis and Ikaria. It had an increase in the country’s 13 regions, receiving 8.8% and 498,573 votes. It increased its votes in 214 municipalities. In 50 municipalities its percentage exceeded 10%. The percentage of the KKE in the EU parliamentary elections and in the regional- municipal elections reflects a trend for the rallying of forces around the KKE and the influence of its positions on new voters.

It also demonstrates, to a certain extent, the acceptance of the fundamental position of the KKE against the EU, the monopolies and the governments that support the “EU one way-street”. On this basis it is necessary for the party, from the CC to each Party Base Organisation, to tighten its relations with all the working people who took this step, came to the side of the KKE and supported it in the elections. The party organizations will discuss with the friends and the people who cooperated with the party about the conclusions and the significant experience drawn from the battle as well as about the goals and ways to organize the struggle and rally the people for a pro-people way out of the crisis.

2. The election result demonstrates the people’s anger towards ND and PASOK which undertook the burden of implementing the anti-people governmental policies and the “EU one way- street”. The election result as a whole does not demonstrate any reversal of the anti-people balance of forces; it does not constitute any “new political scene” in favour of the people.

Although a significant section of the voters of SYRIZA made this choice with the expectation of a left orientation, the first position of SYRIZA does not express any strengthening of the left, radical, antimonopoly, anti-imperialist political line. The election result, where SYRIZA took the first place, more ro less maintaining its percentage from June 2012, was formed under the pressure for an immediate change in government that would allegedly halt the current anti-people political line.

Nevertheless the political line of SYRIZA for the management of the system does not constitute any true opposition to the government’s anti-people policies. SYRIZA is neither willing nor capable of providing a pro-people solution. It is not on the people’s side. The results –above all in the EU parliamentary elections- indicate the consolidation of the tendency to substitute the visibly weakened PASOK by SYRIZA, as part of the reshuffling of the political scene that started in June 2012.

At the same time, the course of other social democratic formations appears to be volatile e.g. the “OLIVE TREE” which was the main electoral formation of PASOK. The “OLIVE TREE” rallied some forces but received a smaller percentage than in June 2012. Furthermore, the percentage of the Democratic Left was reduced in favour of the new formation “THE RIVER” that appeared with unclear and blurred slogans. Although the tendency of the KKE to rally forces and receive new votes is positive, the election results as a whole do not express any significant tendency towards the emancipation of the workers’ and people’s forces from the parties of the “EU one way- street”, the interests of capital and the monopolies.

The most extreme expression of this discrepancy is the high percentage of Golden Dawn. Generally there is a retreat as regards the people’s consciousness, a strengthening of conservatism. The ruling class and the system still possess significant reserves that allow it to appear with different mantles. This assessment is based on the votes and programmes both of SYRIZA, as well as of the “OLIVE TREE” and the “RIVER”. As a whole, the recomposition of the political system is underway, the creation of new barriers to radicalization, something that we must specifically monitor in the next period.

3. The line of counterattack and rupture against the capitalist path of development, the EU and the policies that support this path via assimilation and passivity must be further strengthened within the working class, the youth and the movement. Irrespective of the political developments and the correlation of forces among the parties that support the EU and the bourgeois management, the day after the elections the people will have to face the EU permanent memoranda and the policies that serve the competitiveness and the recovery of capital. These policies lead to the even greater bankruptcy of the people and cannot solve the acute popular problems such as the problem of unemployment.

This path is served both by government and SYRIZA as well as by the other parties. It is an anti-people and barbaric path of development which, despite their efforts, cannot be prettified. Thus, the governmental parties are making false promises that investments and capitalist recovery will allegedly relieve the people, while SYRIZA fosters the illusion that it will change the EU.

4. The Nazi Golden Dawn maintains a high percentage of the vote. In the recent period, alongside the other factors that reinforced Golden Dawn and which the KKE has repeatedly highlighted, we must also add the stance of the other political forces towards the voters of Golden Dawn, which treat them as electoral clientele. Isolating Golden Dawn so that it loses votes from the popular strata is something completely different from the opportunistic and dangerous tactic of the other parties that foster the rationale of its toleration and exculpation in order to fish for votes.

The KKE is committed to undertaking more initiatives in the movement, in the workplaces, in the popular neighbourhoods, amongst the youth, in order to expose the fact that Golden Dawn is supported by mechanisms of the system, by sections of capital, by the political line of the EU.

5. The overall electoral results in the rest of the EU countries are negative for the peoples. They highlight the need for the regroupment of the communist movement and the strengthening of the CPs and the mass popular movements in a direction of rupture and overthrow of the power of capital and the monopolies.

The tangible popular opposition to the EU, to its political line and institutions, which was also expressed by the mass abstention from the EU parliamentary elections in many member-states as a result of the many years of experience of the peoples regarding the EU, instead of acquiring an anti-monopoly and anti-capitalist orientation is trapped in conservative, reactionary parties, in nationalist and racist forces, fascist organizations, of so-called “euro-skepticism”, which serve the aims of various sections of capital.

These sections of capital seek the reformation of the Eurozone and EU, even via the withdrawal of countries from it, in order to serve their particular interests, to strengthen their competitiveness. These parties do not dispute the anti-people political line, the intensification of capitalist exploitation, the accession to some form of imperialist alliance. Consequently, they are not a solution for the peoples of Europe.

The parties that are rallied in the “European Left Party”, to which SYRIZA belongs, as well as communist parties that have abandoned the struggle against the EU and for the overthrow of the power of capital, also bear responsibilities for this situation. These parties, with the political line of prettifying the EU, their compromised stance in the movement, through their participation in anti-people governments in previous years, damaged the labour-people’s movement in their countries, led it to defeat, leaving the workers in these countries exposed to the populism of reactionary and fascist parties.

6. The atmosphere of the confrontation is being cultivated and focused, in the period immediately after the elections, on attempts to trap the people in the question regarding “which government will have the greatest negotiating capability” inside the walls of the EU and the capitalist development path. The people must not be trapped into waiting and choosing the allegedly lesser evil, which will consolidate today’s anti-people correlation of forces.

The KKE will strengthen its efforts and initiatives regarding the sharpening problems of the people, as it also did in the previous period with its proposals concerning the relief of the unemployed, the popular households etc. It will strengthen the efforts for the regroupment of the labour-people’s movement, the construction of the People’s Alliance, in order to strengthen the anti-capitalist and anti-monopoly direction of the struggle and the rallying of forces.

It will struggle, utilizing its elected MEPS, mayors, municipal and regional councilors, in order to expose the anti-people plans that are being concocted both in the EU parliament as well as in the regional and municipal councils. It will fight against all the anti-people measures of the EU, the governments and the local and regional bodies that support it.

It will make every effort so that solidarity and the common struggle of the peoples against the wars unleashed by the EU, NATO and the USA at their expense gain ground, especially today when dangerous developments are being witnessed in the entire region, from Thrace and Cyprus to Syria and Ukraine. It will make every effort so that the struggle for socialism is strengthened, which will liberate the workers and peoples from exploitation and oppression.

The KKE is the only party that provides the perspective of the country and people being freed from the shackles of the predatory alliance and all the debt, by overthrowing the owners of the accumulated wealth. A people sovereign and capable of appointing their own government, of workers’-people’s power, means a people capable of taking the wealth it creates into its hands, transforming it into the people’s property for its own prosperity. Then central planning of the economy in favour of the people will become a reality and the relations with peoples and countries will develop with their mutual interests as the criterion

May 26, 2014

The CC of the KKE

Don’t Destroy the VA—Fix it and staff it!
| June 11, 2014 | 8:44 pm | Action, Analysis, Labor, National | Comments closed

Those who want to privatize Medicare, Social Security and the Post Office
are at it again. The waitlists for veterans have spawned an attack on the
whole Veterans Administration health system. Those who would turn our
public systems over to profit-making corporations falsely use problems at
the VA to disparage single payer health care.

“If VA care were not generally very good, the VA would not continue to
rank extraordinarily high in independent surveys of patient satisfaction,”
says Phillip Longman, author of a book on the VA, “Best Care Anywhere.”

So we need to fix the problem and bring quick care to the patients–not
destroy the VA. As usual, the best ones to ask are those who do the
work. Here’s what J. David Cox Sr., a former VA nurse and current
National AFGE President, has to say.

Want to End Secret Wait Lists? Staff the VA

J. David Cox Sr.
National President, American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/j-david-cox-sr/want-to-end-secret-wait-va_b_5372387.html

The public’s outrage over excessive wait times and rigged recordkeeping at
Veterans Affairs hospitals is more than justified. As a former VA nurse, I
understand all too well that depriving veterans of timely access to care
is a disservice to them and their sacrifice to this nation.

But cleaning house in the VA’s executive ranks will only treat the
symptom. The disease plaguing the VA healthcare system is chronic
understaffing of physicians and other frontline providers.

Until we fill thousands of vacant positions, open closed hospital beds and
provide more dollars for building and maintaining medical facilities, we
will never heal what ails the VA.

Physicians are dealing with excessive caseloads and insufficient support
staff. Since 2009, 2 million veterans entered the VA health care system
for a net increase of 1.4 million new patients. Each physician should be
responsible for no more than 1,200 patients at a given time, according to
the VA’s own guidelines, yet many VA doctors are treating upwards of 2,000
patients each.

Simply put, there isn’t enough time in the day for the available doctors
to treat every veteran who is seeking care in a timely fashion.

Compounding matters is a performance system that sets unrealistic goals
and incentivizes managers to increase the number of patients served,
instead of improving the quality of care. Rather than face the
understaffing issue head-on and risk poor ratings, many managers have
taken the easy way out and have cooked the books to mask the wait times.

But blaming those managers for a performance system that was doomed from
the start won’t help our veterans get the care they seek any faster.

Truth be told, there is nothing wrong with the VA that can’t be healed by
what is right with the VA: the frontline providers who care for our
veterans every day.

No one is complaining about the quality of care our veterans receive.
That’s because the federal employees who look after our nation’s heroes
work hard each and every day to provide them with world-class service.

Unfortunately, those same employees have lived in fear of speaking out
about the problems they witness due to an established history of
retaliation, including loss of duties and unfounded disciplinary actions.
Our members have paid a heavy price for voicing concerns, submitting
letters to agency leaders, raising issues in labor management meetings,
and testifying before Congress on wait time issues and veterans’ access to
care. When they have sounded the alarm, our members have faced retaliation
and intimidation time and time again.

Employees shouldn’t feel afraid to speak up when they see managers more
concerned with securing bonuses than providing patients with timely access
to care for critical medical conditions. In fact, they should be
encouraged to bring up these issues so they can be rectified before more
veterans go without the treatment they so desperately need.

The waitlist and understaffing issues are one and the same. Until Congress
gives the VA the resources to hire enough frontline clinicians to meet
demand, our veterans will continue to face long waits. And to be clear,
sending veterans to expensive health care providers outside the VA system
on a massive scale will not fix the underlying resource deficiencies
plaguing our veterans medical centers.

According to the Independent Budget for the Department of Veterans
Affairs, developed each year by leading veterans groups, the Veterans
Health Administration is facing a $2 billion funding shortfall for the
upcoming fiscal year and another $500 million shortfall for fiscal 2016.

As the nation prepares to honor our fallen soldiers this Memorial Day,
there is no better time to strengthen our support for the health care
system that treats those veterans who made it home.

It’s time for the VA to get back to basics and focus on improving access
to care for our nation’s veterans.

The agency must cut excess management layers and use those resources to
boost frontline staffing of doctors, nurses and others directly involved
in patient care. The growth of middle management positions within the
agency has ballooned to unprecedented levels, from fewer than 300 in 1995
to more than 1,700 by a recent count, costing taxpayers $203 million
annually.

The VA long has been held up as a model healthcare delivery system that
all other hospitals should emulate. The care our veterans receive is
second to none, but that only counts when our veterans actually are
treated.

J. David Cox Sr. is national president of the American Federation of
Government Employees, which represents more than 670,000 federal and D.C.
government employees nationwide
Follow J. David Cox Sr. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JDavidCoxSr
https://www.afge.org/Index.cfm?Page=StaffTheVA

Distributed by:

All Unions Committee for Single Payer Health Care–HR 676
c/o Nurses Professional Organization (NPO)
1169 Eastern Parkway, Suite 2218
Louisville, KY 40217
(502) 636 1551

Email: nursenpo@aol.com
http://unionsforsinglepayer.org
6/9/2014

Time for an evolution in U.S. policy on Cuba
| June 10, 2014 | 9:47 pm | Action, International, Latin America | Comments closed

http://www.washingtonpost.com/katrina-vanden-heuvel/2011/02/24/ABMj4XN_page.html

By Katrina vanden Heuvel, Tuesday, June 10, 8:00 AM

The sad irony of U.S.-Cuban relations is that Cuba, under the leadership of 83-year-old Raúl Castro, is changing rapidly, and the United States, despite President Obama’s promises of a “new beginning,” remains largely frozen in a self-destructive Cold War policy.

The fifty-plus year-old embargo of Cuba continues. The administration still lists Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism.” The United States continues to sponsor covert activities — this time a U.S. Agency for International Development attempt to generate “smart mobs” through a secret text-messaging program — to help destabilize the regime. Ten presidents after the embargo began, U.S. policy remains dedicated to folly.

Meanwhile the world, the hemisphere and Cuba have changed. If anything, the embargo isolates the United States, not Cuba.

Washington’s relationship with the region is deteriorating, corroded by its policy toward Cuba. With few exceptions, the left-leaning governments that govern across Latin America have normal relations with Cuba and scorn the U.S. attempt to isolate the little island. At the last Summit of the Americas in 2012, the presidents of Brazil and of Colombia, one of the few remaining U.S. allies, joined several other countries in announcing they would skip the next summit in 2015 if Cuba is not invited. And well they should, as the summits become increasingly irrelevant, with regional trading and political ties developing with the United States, not Cuba, on the sidelines.

My recent trip to Cuba, as part of the nation’s first educational exchange trip to that country, reaffirmed what Josefina Vidal, head of the North American Division of Cuba’s Foreign Ministry, told our delegation in a wide ranging 90-minute conversation: “The U.S. is facing the risk of becoming irrelevant in the future of Cuba.”

The conservative Republican head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Tom Donahue, while visiting Cuba last month, reiterated the chamber’s call to lifting the embargo in his speech at the University of Havana. Donahue understands that the major victims of the U.S. blockade are U.S. businesses.

Cuba has just passed a new law facilitating foreign investment. A new rush is on. A Brazilian firm captured the major project of modernizing the port at Mariel. A Chinese company is building 34 wind turbines. And another Chinese company sells the new cars that are starting to be seen on the streets. A British developer has just initialed a deal to build a “luxury golf resort.” The European Union has opened a formal dialogue with Cuba on trade, investment and human rights.

The pace of change in Cuba is accelerating — and is visible on the ground. Paladares (private restaurants), tapas bars and even night clubs are sprouting up in private homes. When Obama rightly eased restrictions on the travel and remittances of Cuban Americans, visitors bearing gifts flooded the island.

Remarkable changes in sex education and official attitudes are apparent, with the state going from imprisoning homosexuals to launching campaigns against sexual violence, considering legalizing same-sex marriage, subsidizing sex-change operations and banning discrimination based on sexuality at the workplace. Castro’s daughter, Mariela Castro, the charismatic head of Cuba’s National Center for Sexual Education, has become a renowned figure both in Cuba and across the world for her work in this area. Despite her government’s restrictions on political speech, Castro is an outspoken advocate for more open sexual discourse. When we met with her at the center, she expressed frustration at continuing official resistance to legalizing gay marriage and spoke of herself as a fighter — fighting for a new way of thinking about sexuality and supported by a growing Cuban grassroots network of activists.

Of course, Cuba faces severe challenges. The regime still keeps a heavy hand on the press and social media and, as I learned in conversations with a leading Cuban journalist, the recent Twitter scandal has made reform-minded Cuban journalists’ fight to modernize the country’s social-media infrastructure more difficult.

Human rights are still constricted. The regime knows it has to change but hopes to maintain core advances (particularly in health care and education) that are the signatures of the revolution.

With foreign investment, expanding private enterprises and increasing tourism comes greater inequality and increasing tension. Yet, as veteran journalist Marc Frank explains in his fascinating new book, “Cuban Revelations: Behind the Scenes in Havana,” there is a “grey zone” — a significant segment of Cubans whom Castro is trying to win over with his efforts to modernize the economy.

Amidst all of these changes, the United States is fighting yesterday’s war. At present, Cubans are freer to travel to the United States than Americans are to go to Cuba. What fears or fantasies support that idiocy?

U.S. policy is frozen in large part because bureaucratic inertia is reinforced by the hold anti-Castro zealots have on our policy — most notably Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), who represents Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood, and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Robert Menendez (D-N.J.). But these zealots are growing ever more isolated. Recently, nearly four dozen former government officials, diplomats, retired military officers, wealthy Cuban emigres and business leaders warned in an open letter to the president that the United States is “increasingly isolated internationally in its Cuba policy,” and called on the administration to act on its own to ease travel for all Americans and allow increased trade and financial exchanges. Even Hillary Clinton — who has a hawkish track record on Cuba — claims in her new book that she urged Obama to ease or lift the embargo, although she seems content with the minor reforms that were made

Obama has said he needn’t wait for the Congress, he has a “phone and pen” to take executive actions. He could act now to negotiate with the Cubans the long-overdue trade of the Cuban Five (now three) jailed for espionage in the United States for USAID contractor Alan Gross, jailed in Cuba nearly five years ago for distributing communications equipment to Jewish groups. Obama could open up exchanges and travel for all Americans, while loosening financial restrictions.

In discussions with our delegation, former Cuban foreign minister Ricardo Alarcon noted that the fact the White House is prepared to negotiate with the Taliban but not its neighbor raises questions about how “rational” U.S. policy is. Sustaining a policy that has failed for over 50 years and 10 presidents, an embargo that has isolated the United States in its own hemisphere, a blockade that damages U.S. businesses and restrictions that constrict the rights of Americans — no, that doesn’t sound rational.

The experts suggest there is a window of time for the president to act — after the midterm elections and before the middle of 2015. The promised “new beginning” would be better late than never.