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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."
Long overdue. Time for cigars and mojitos all around!
I wonder if it's any accident that this happened AFTER the mid-term elections, but well before the 2016 presidential election season really gets underway...
(You think Christmas comes early? Hah!)
Cuban exiles are a big voting block in a big battleground state, but obviously somebody decided to risk kicking this hornets' nest now in the hopes that the furor will die down by 2016.
US Government: hey cuba, since most of our refugees over 60 that remember why we shitlisted you are either dead or accidentally disenfranchised after the latest voter registration law, wanna kiss and make up?
Cuban Government: *sigh* sure. russia quit returning our phonecalls about 20 years ago anyway. Hey thanks for not making a huge deal out of castros death
US Government: yeah no problem. thanks for letting us run a torture prison in your country without complaining about it
Cuban Government: yeah.....that.....
Good people go to bed earlier.
Great! I've always wanted to visit Cuba. My parents honeymooned there back in 1955. A trip to Havana has been on my bucket list since I was a boy, but the US government has always made it difficult and only questionably legal since I was born.
The Cuban people survived 55 years of near total trade embargo, with universal healthcare intact, and no one starving in the streets.
A definite failure if I ever heard of one.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
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?
When the whole rest of the world wants sanctions, as with South Africa, they may be useful. When the whole rest of the world trades with Cuba and we don't, we're just shooting ourselves in the foot. Also, the South African government was far more malleable because it was elected by white citizens who suffered from sanctions -- the Cuban government is not elected by anyone who can be hurt by sanctions.
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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.
No, it's the Platt Amendment (the one which allows Guantanamo) and the American embargo which has made Cuba a failed state.
You seem to know nothing at all about Cuba.
America has been fucking with Cuba for over 100 years, and seldom to the benefit of the Cubans.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The curse is that a small few are about to make huge profits on land and state enterprises. I don't care how the laws will be worded, any time you have a major economic shift like this, opportunists will take incredible advantage of the situation.
The other curse is that Western 'culture' - McDonald's, Burger King, Coke and Pepsi will invade. They will do tremendous harm to the health of the average Cuban.
Lastly, the wonderful beaches and hotels will be overrun. Cuba is so close to the U.S. that development will explode and tourism will skyrocket. The 'pristine' aspect of Cuba will quickly disappear in a morass of tawdry tourist traps.
Adios Cuba viejo y bienvenido al futuro.
*** Don't be dull.***
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
Pushing Germany to collapse after WW1 was an incredible success! We need more successes like that!
> I hope 'no one starving in the streets' isn't how you measure success these days.
Actually it's a pretty good thing compared to 'people starving in the streets'.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
You must be American.
I'm Canadian. I have traveled to Cuba for vacation a couple of times.
It is (or was) an absolutely beautiful place. Pity that will end with the arrival of Americans.
Last time we were there we stayed in a 5 star resort. (Cuba's 5 star is not the same as a North American's 5 star.)
My son cut his foot on a broken tile in the pool. The pool attendant patched it up best he could, with what he had.
I went to the 'International Clinic' down the road for bandages. It was close enough for me to walk to.
Keep in mind, this 'facility' is targeted towards foreigners/tourists, and is kinda a combination of emergency room/hospital/pharmacy.
The 'Pharmacy' is about the size of my bathroom at home, and less well stocked. What limited item selection they had, they only had 1 or 2 of each item. They had surgical tape for sale, but did not have any gauze. It was not what I would call a 'clean' facility. I had to speak to the doctor on call to explain the injury, and ask for gauze. While speaking to him, we ended up in an examination room. It had a plain steel table, an open window with no screen. He went and found the gauze, and took it from the hospital's supplies. It came wrapped in a brown paper wrapper, folded over (reminded me of industrial paper towel).
More photos. https://www.google.ca/search?q=cuban+healthcare+expose&safe=off&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=ZNSRVO_HPIf9yQTK7oG4BA&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1440&bih=789
Many of the lights in the hallways/rooms were not functioning.
The tape was the equivalent of 3 or 4 dollars for the roll. The gauze was 'free'.
Keep in mind, the a local cuban worker only makes between $18 and $22 per month. The maid cleaning my room made more than that just from tips. Currently, they have more incentive to be a maid or bartender, than a Dr, Engineer, etc. It will cause some upheavel when this changes - people who have been making (relatively) good money being maids and the like no longer will be, and 'skilled' people such as trades, Doctors, engineers, etc will make huge gains.
Things you take for granted, like baby Tylenol is just not available. What is available is completely unaffordable for them. Imagine having a headache, but a bottle of aspirin costs 1/3 of your monthly income.
Every time I go, I bring along over the counter medicine and other supplies and give it away.
People are not starving in the streets, because they will be jailed.
The only way people survive without starving is by participating in the black market, and prostitution.
Our tour guide admitted to buying food from the black market for his family to keep from starving.
The police have road side checks - they are not checking for impaired driving, or seatbelts - they are checking cars for people with 'illegal' food (ie - maybe a Cuban went fishing, and caught a fish).
So - yes they have survived 55 years of near trade embargo, but they have not thrived. People are hungry, and the poverty is crushing.
But - the attitude is changing. Last year we had a conversation with out guide that would have not happened the on our 1st visit.
I believe that the American embargo has certainly contributed to this, but is not fully responsible. The embargo seems more than a little hypocritical seeing as the USA has trade relations with North Korea, but has an embargo with Cuba.
Catpcha: intruder
My god, are you that delusional?
You toppled a government, but you sure as hell didn't "conquer" them.
You barely got out of there with your asses intact, and every single justification for going in there in the first place was provably false before anybody got sent in. Oh, and your inept fumbling about led to the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians -- far far more than were killed in 9/11.
The entire reason for being in Iraq the second time was a colossal lie perpetuated by a chimpanzee of a president trying to finish what daddy started.
You were in the wrong fucking country, because Iraq had nothing at all to do with 9/11. And now you've left a giant power vacuum which has destabilized the entire region.
Being in Iraq was such an epic failure that only people who can call it a success were the private companies who made huge profits, and the lying bastards who got you in there in the first place.
If you think that's a template for how to fix the worlds problems ... the world doesn't want any more of your "help".
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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.
The property which was seized was mostly owned by foreign countries, and benefited the existing dictatorship of Bautista -- who was a brutal bastard, but friendly to the US so America was fine with it. America only objects to dictators who dislike them.
When Baustista was in power, the average Cuban worker was pretty much a serf, and all of the economy benefited only a few.
You're a drooling idiot.
I'm not an American, and I have no idea of what the DNCs talking points are on this. But your childish little hamster brain apparently needs to make this a Republican v Democrat issue, so you're only capable of seeing thatg.
I've been to Cuba a bunch of times. I've read books my Castro and Che, as well as the history of how the Platt Amendment came to be foisted on Cuba despite their not wanting it. I've also read about the history from non-Cuban sources so try to see the whole picture.
The vast majority of Americans really have no clue about Cuban history. They boil it down to about a 10 year period, and then haven't bothered to learn anything which happened before or since. Cuba and Casto are just the bogeymen to get yourselves worked up about.
So, it's tragic you're so ill informed and are tied to whatever idiotic talking points you're repeating.
Because clearly don't know a damned thing about it you haven't been spoon fed.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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.