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Obama Lands In Cuba As First US President To Visit In Nearly A Century (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Barack Obama descended on Cuba with a pomp unmatched by the Pope on Sunday, becoming the first American president to visit Cuba in nearly a century, and the first since a revolution led by Fidel Castro toppled a U.S.-backed strongman in 1959. As he arrived, Obama used a Cuban phrase meaning "what's up?" when he tweeted: "Que bola Cuba? Just touched down here, looking forward to meeting and hearing directly from the Cuban people." "This is a historic visit," Obama said as he greeted U.S. Embassy staff and their families at a Havana hotel. "It's an historic opportunity to engage with the Cuban people."
One of the many results of the new diplomatic relations between the two countries is the ability for Cuban residents to become more connected to the internet. Reuters is reporting that Alphabet Inc's Google is poised to expand internet access in Cuba. "One of the things that we'll be announcing here is that Google has a deal to start setting up more Wi-Fi and broadband access on the island," Obama said in an ABC News interview that aired on Monday. The U.S. Treasury Department has even authorized San Francisco's Airbnb service to expand its home rental listings in Cuba to non-U.S. travelers.
Because even if he's breaking laws, that's not treason...
Treason has a rather specific definition, and not merely "I don't like that guy..."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The US does business with countries like China and Saudi Arabia, so why would Cuba be left out in the cold? Besides, the national interest is best served by not having China replacing Russia as a major force in Cuba, which is exactly what will happen if relations and trade with Cuba are not normalized.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Flip it around. Has our policy of embargo and detachment helped any of those people? How many "prisoners of conscience" does China hold? Is Cruz proposing we embargo them too? I doubt it. I'm not sure if opening relations with Cuba will fix it. But we know that China is more open now than it was. At least it's worth trying.
Here is what Senator Ted Cruz wrote about this:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/obama-cuba-visit-ted-cruz-213749
If you are a fan of President Obama, could you please explain to me why you think Senator Cruz is wrong about this? Because at the moment I agree with Senator Cruz. President Obama's administration has dropped the embargo and helped out the government of Cuba, and I'm not aware of a single demand that Cuba has granted in return. Set free political prisoners? Allow Amnesty International to visit the prisons? Maybe beat the political prisoners a little bit less? No, no, and no.
Not only did President Obama not make any demands of Cuba, but now Cuba is making demands of President Obama. Pay reparations, return Guantanamo Bay.
I do hope that President Obama will at least use his "bully pulpit" to say something about human rights in Cuba. Words are what he is best at. I would have preferred a binding agreement, but he already didn't do that.
Maybe because the embargo probably really isn't doing any good and there's no reason to continue it? Nobody is going to try and host nuclear weapons there ever again, I don't think. And we're not going to win any friends by trying to destroy the economy of the country. I'm not saying that we should concede to any demands about Gitmo (though I do not agree with the prison camp there), but we could certainly be better neighbors to Cuba and many other Latin American countries.
And yet due to Reagan, you don't exactly see all that many Lenin statues in the world anymore.
Sadly I don't see hipsters & their Che t-shirts going away anytime soon.
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As opposed to say what Saudis do, or the Chinese? I don't understand why people get fixated on the problems with Cuba when other nations that do far, far worse are our best pals and we do billions of dollars of business with those dirtbags.
the countries we do billions of dollars of business with a year do far, far worse than Cuba and no one gives a shit. why make Cuba special, I don't get it.
What has the fifty or sixty years of the embargo achieved on that front? The status quo has achieved nothing so far.
Let Cuba have a hit of sweet, sweet capitalism. Once they get hooked, we can refuse to offer more unless they start doing what we want.
How much do you know about Cuba? Have you been there?
I've been there several times, and trust me, the levels of abject poverty in Cuba is a lot higher than you seem to think. You don't need to go very far to find people living in cinder block homes with dirt floors and a couple of chickens scratching in the yard. And that's a couple of notches above poor by Cuban standards.
The official rations people get? A bit of beans and rice per person, and people who are trained as engineers and doctors are working as bartenders because it pays a lot more.
Yes, they have education and health care, but much beyond that and there's probably a lot of people who are literally starving.
That cuts two ways. Cuba isn't a land of plenty, they've come a long way, but there's still a tremendous amount of poverty, and there are many many things they simply cannot get ... like basic toiletries and the like.
Cuba is a very poor country, with pockets where some people can make a lot of extra money working in the tourist trade.
But there's also people who are pan-handling, and waiting for the side of the road to catch a ride on an overcrowded bus which wouldn't even be legal to operate in a first world country.
The difference between the resorts and the rural parts of Cuba are massive. And increasingly in the larger cities there are huge signs of outright poverty.
It's very complex indeed. But if you think people aren't actually at risk of starving, you really know a lot less than you think.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The US does business with countries like China and Saudi Arabia, so why would Cuba be left out in the cold?
I'm not a fan of dictatorships but I do understand the realities of the world. The USA can't just snap its fingers and reform China or Saudi Arabia, or even Cuba.
But what I'm talking about is using the historic, one-time-only opportunity of getting something in exchange for lifting the embargo. We don't have any similar embargo on China and Saudi Arabia, so they are not very relevant to my question: why did the Obama administration simply unilaterally drop the embargo without getting anything in return?
the national interest is best served by not having China replacing Russia as a major force in Cuba, which is exactly what will happen if relations and trade with Cuba are not normalized.
So, it's not worth making even the smallest effort to help out the prisoners of conscience? The one-sided deal where the government of Cuba gets what it wants, and the USA demands nothing, is the best possible deal?
Maybe it is. If so, I'd like for someone to make that case.
I do agree that China having Cuba in its pocket is undesirable. And I realize that really major demands (break the dictatorship and hold free elections, etc.) would never be met. But again, the appearance here is that the Obama administration granted a huge boon to the government of Cuba, no strings attached, and I don't understand why that's a good deal (or even the best possible deal).
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
The mark of a true leftist, is that they always view themselves as the political center. There's always room to move farther left, and every who disagrees is to the right.
I think he's blaming Reagan for the Barbary pirates.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
The mark of a true leftist, is that they always view themselves as the political center.
Does the expression "Fair and Balanced" strike a familiar note?
It took way too long for this to happen. Back when we gave China MFN status, what, early 90s? I was already complaining about the hypocrisy. The rationale was that by engaging with China we would eventually transfer our ideas as well as our goods. The theory behind this was called "Constructive Engagement".
But if CE was really the proper way to deal with these regimes, what about Cuba? It never really worked anyway. CE was just justification--it was all about the money, and earlier it was about playing China against the USSR. It was hypocritical on its face, right from the start.
I've literally been complaining about this since before some of you were born. Sheesh! Look, I get it. Castro stole your stuff, and you're mad; but most of the people who directly lost are dead. Aside from that, conquest happens. It's how America was built. At some point you have to write that off.
Don't get me wrong. Communism sucks. It's an evil little anachronism that exists down there; but our way of dealing with it didn't work. Time to try something different... finally!
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?