Capitalism is, after all, very good at hiding its contradictions. The soccer balls, for example, that we buy on sale in K-Mart, are not advertised as items made by child slave labor in Pakistan. Nor is that information prominently displayed in the prospectus that the soccer ball company mails to prospective shareholders. The Ostrich syndrome is thus, another contradiction, in fact, by which capitalism defines and hides itself. We then absorb the contradiction as part of our individual personality and national unconsciousness.
Capitalism prefers it that way.
The laws that Jeremy Scahill writes about lead to the decline of a nation's food supply, which in-turn increases the need for medical supplies while at the same time, denying the very same medical materials. Both of these laws come on top of the US embargo of Cuba which has been in place for the past 37 years. The Torricelli Act, was passed in 1992. It also authorizes the penalizing of foreign companies and governments doing business with Cuba. It makes no mention of the collapse of the country's major supporter, the Soviet Union or the original US embargo.