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In Breakthrough, US and Cuba To Resume Diplomatic Relations
HughPickens.com writes: Peter Baker reports at the NYT that in a deal negotiated during 18 months of secret talks hosted largely by Canada and encouraged by Pope Francis, the United States will restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba and open an embassy in Havana for the first time in more than a half-century. In addition, the United States will ease restrictions on remittances, travel and banking relations, and Cuba will release 53 Cuban prisoners identified as political prisoners by the United States government. Although the decades-old American embargo on Cuba will remain in place for now, the administration signaled that it would welcome a move by Congress to ease or lift it should lawmakers choose to. "We cannot keep doing the same thing and expect a different result. It does not serve America's interests, or the Cuban people, to try to push Cuba toward collapse. We know from hard-learned experience that it is better to encourage and support reform than to impose policies that will render a country a failed state," said the White House in a written statement. "The United States is taking historic steps to chart a new course in our relations with Cuba and to further engage and empower the Cuban people."
There's exactly one fact that actually counts about Cuba's "universal healthcare": When Comrade Fidel gets a cold, the doctors that treat him are flown in from Spain via charter jet.
Don't believe me? Even pro-Castro sources flat out say it: http://www.laht.com/article.as...
The rest is a bunch of empty Michael Moore fapping.
P.S. --> Shouldn't the embargo make Cuba stronger? After all, the Revolution shouldn't be contaminated by evil American Capitalist Imperialism.. right?
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
You mean the US stopped behaving like a petty child and decided to grow the fuck up.
Well, Iraq was pushed to collapse. That did not go so well. Syria was pushed to collapse. Not ideal either.
Burma/Myanmar was not pushed to collapse, and instead relations were softened. That is going fairly well.
I am not sure the push-to-collapse strategy has any successes to its name. Well possibly Germany 1945.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
We found useful amounts of oil off the Cuban coast not terribly long ago. It just took this long for the oil companies in this country to put enough pressure on the US government to move towards "normal" relations.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Cuban cigars are desired because they're good.
I used to smoke cigars, and I live in a country where you can readily buy Cuban ones. They're not illegal for me, but they were damned fine cigars ... much much better than some of the other countries.
And, real Cuban rum ... also tasty stuff, and something they're quite good at making. In Cuba, it's affectionately called "Vitamin R".
Maybe to Americans they're better because they're illegal. But to the rest of the world they're better because they're better.
Cuba has pretty much an awesome climate for growing both tobacco and sugar cane.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Here are some other facts that actually count:
CIA World Factbook Infant mortality rates:
Cuba: 4.76 / 1000 live births
USA: 5.2 / 1000 live births
CIA being a well-known source of Michael Moore types.
How about life expectancy?
Life expectancy at birth (years), UN World Population Prospects 2010:
Cuba: 78.50 (rank 37)
USA: 77.97 (rank 40)
World Health Organization has USA ranked 34 and Cuba 36, FWIW. Close in any case.
Let's look at an "evil government" index to determine the "evilness" of Cuba among authoritarian regimes. A good one is the Democracy Index put out by the Conservative economics journal "The Economist".
Cuba ranks at 124, which puts it in the top 20% of authoritarian regimes, so 80% of them are "more evil". We certainly don't do any business with those 80% do we? Near the bottom of that list is our old friend Saudi Arabia, a regime we absolutely should not support right? Others in the "evil 80%" are Nigeria, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Tunisia, China, Qatar, Oman, Vietnam, and the UAE. No way we do we have diplomatic relations, do any business, or offer any support to any of those guys!
Of course six of these Evil Nations have oil, which makes everything good, correct? Well, it turns out that Cuba has useful offshore oil as well, so geology automatically promotes them to Tolerable Oil Nation, even if their much higher democracy ranking does not.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
end 2 wars
While starting completely new ones. Hooray!
bring unemployment below 8%
*cough* bullshit *cough*
Hooray though, we added 300,000 jobs in the last quarter. The economy did that in most years of the 1960s, when the population of the United States was significantly less than today. Success!
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
In addition, American doctors toured the Cuban health care system and published their results in the New England Journal of Medicine. Cuba has one of the best medical schools in Latin America. The Swedes helped them set it up. As a result they have a major modern biotechnology industry that discovered and manufactures some vaccines that are used worldwide.
oh geeze, strike that. I suck.
Oh, and that infant mortality statistic is complete B.S. In Cuba, they just let the premature babies die and it never counts as a live birth to mess up the statistics. In the U.S. they bend over backwards to save babies but since they aren't always successful, the statistics get skewed.
Proof: http://www.nationalreview.com/...
Nothing in that article says that Cuba measures its infant mortality differently than the WHO standard, or even mentions Cuba.
So the fact remains that the Cuban infant mortality rate is lower than the U.S., by any standard measurement.
The main reason for that is the lack of access to health care, and health care doesn't do much good without access to nutrition, housing and basic living standards, which the poor don't have in the U.S. That's why we have so many premature infants. True, it's not just Cuba's health care system, it's also their nutrition programs. I concede that the poor in the U.S. have worse nutrition too, which contributes to their higher infant mortality.
Every honest doctor who follows international health statistics knows this, in contrast to guys like Scott Atlas who cherry-picks his statistics and publishes them in the National Review.
Let me know when you find something in a peer-reviewed journal that says Cuba's infant mortality statistics use definitions that distort them to make them better. I'm not holding my breath. There was an exchange of letters about this in Science, and the anti-Castro people couldn't come up with anything, so I don't think you will.