President Barack Obama is poised to offer an olive branch to Cuba in an effort to repair the US's tattered reputation in Latin America.
The fumble with Putin, the cold shoulder to Gordo, now this. What's next, a state visit for Hugo?
The White House has moved to ease some travel and trade restrictions as a cautious first step towards better ties with Havana, raising hopes of an eventual lifting of the four-decade-old economic embargo. Several Bush-era controls are expected to be relaxed in the run-up to next month's Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago to gild the president's regional debut and signal a new era of "Yankee" cooperation.
By cozying up to thugs. Yup, that's a new era alright ...
The administration has moved to ease draconian travel controls and lift limits on cash remittances that Cuban-Americans can send to the island, a lifeline for hundreds of thousands of families.
"The effect on ordinary Cubans will be fairly significant. It will improve things and be very welcome," said a western diplomat in Havana. The changes would reverse hardline Bush policies but not fundamentally alter relations between the superpower and the island, he added. "It just takes us back to the 1990s."
The provisions are contained in a $410bn (£290bn) spending bill due to be voted on this week.
For some reason Bambi can't just have a simple piece of legislation that would do this, he has to hide it in the omnibus pork bill.
The legislation would allow Americans with immediate family in Cuba to visit annually, instead of once every three years, and broaden the definition of immediate family. It would also drop a requirement that Havana pay cash in advance for US food imports.
"There is a strong likelihood that Obama will announce policy changes prior to the summit," said Daniel Erikson, director of Caribbean programmes at the Inter-American Dialogue and author of The Cuba Wars. "Loosening travel restrictions would be the easy thing to do and defuse tensions at the summit."
Latin America, once considered Washington's "backyard", has become newly assertive and ended the Castro government's pariah status. The presidents of Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Guatemala have recently visited Havana to deepen economic and political ties. Brazil's president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is expected to tell Obama on a White House visit this week that the region views the US embargo as anachronistic and vindictive. Easing it would help mend Washington's strained relations with the "pink tide" of leftist governments.
Which must be one of our most important foreign policy goals, getting in good with the pink tide ...
Obama's proposed Cuba measures would only partly thaw a policy frozen since John F Kennedy tried to isolate the communist state across the Florida Straits. "It would signal new pragmatism, but you would still have the embargo, which is the centrepiece of US policy," said Erikson.
Wayne Smith at the Centre for International Policy, Washington DC, said: "I think that the Obama administration will go ahead and lift restrictions on travel of Cuban Americans and remittance to their families. He may also lift restrictions on academic travel. There are some things that could be done very easily - for example it's about time we took Cuba off the terrorist list. It's the beginning of the end of the policies we have had towards Cuba for 50 years. It's achieved nothing, it's an embarrassment."
The 'Centre for International Policy' would say that since it's one of the progressive mills that has sprung up in DC. Part of their funding comes from George Soros' Open Society Institute which is a pretty good clue.
Wayne Smith, a former head of the US Interest Section in Havana, famously said Cuba had the same effect on American administrations as the full moon had on werewolves.
Except Fidel allowed his country to be used as a trans-shipment point for drugs and has spent the last fifty years bashing up.
Cuban exiles in Florida, a crucial voting bloc in a swing state, sustained a hardline US policy towards Havana even as the cold war ended and the US traded with other undemocratic nations with much worse human rights records.
Gee, the people who know Fidel best think we should take a hard line towards him. Fancy that ...
To Washington's chagrin, the economic stranglehold did not topple Fidel Castro. When Soviet Union subsidies evaporated, the "maximum leader" implemented savage austerity, opened the island to tourism and found a new sponsor in Venezuela's petrol-rich president, Hugo Chavez.
So it didn't topple him but it exposed the 'paradise' to be a sham ...
When Fidel fell ill in 2006, power transferred seamlessly to his brother Raúl. He cemented his authority last week with a cabinet reshuffle that replaced "Fidelistas" with "Raúlistas" from the military.
Recognising Castro continuity, and aghast at European and Asian competitors getting a free hand, US corporate interests are impatient to do business with Cuba. Oil companies want to drill offshore, farmers to export more rice, vegetables and meat, construction firms to build infrastructure projects.
Notice that it would be easier to drill offshore Cuba than offshore Florida ...
Young Cuban exiles in Florida, less radical than their parents, have advocated ending the policy of isolation. As a senator, Obama opposed the embargo, but as a presidential candidate he supported it - and simultaneously promised engagement with Havana.
Typical Bambi, talking out of both sides of his mouth and speaking nothing but mush. And he got elected with it ...
A handful of hardline anti-Castro Republican and Democrat members of Congress have threatened to derail the $410bn spending bill unless the Cuba provisions are removed, but most analysts think the legislation will survive.
Compared to intractable challenges in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East, the opportunity for quick progress on Cuba has been called the "low-hanging fruit" of US foreign policy.
If you believe in coddling thugs ...
That Obama has moved so cautiously has frustrated many reformers. But after decades of freeze, even a slight thaw is welcome, and there is speculation that more will follow.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/08/2009 10:17 ||
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#1
How about another Mariel boat lift for those Cubans too poor to afford inner tubes?
Posted by: ed ||
03/08/2009 10:40 Comments ||
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#2
All those pseudo human rights groups should be proud that W is now gone. Now they can focus on other money raising schemes to keep their scam going. /sarcasm off
#3
Let it happen. The Bonefish are getting out of hand and need supervision.
Seriously... Jeebus. It's time to examine the situation and conclude that the Commies done won in Cuba and our tactics ain't working worth a damn there. So let's try someting different.
#5
To be clear, I'm for whatever brings the Castro boys and their evil regime down quickest. If that means keeping the embargo, keep it. If that means removing the embargo, remove it.
But I have no confidence that Bambi wants to bring down the commies. I see his moves precisely as a way to prop up the Castro boys, and that's bad.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/08/2009 12:02 Comments ||
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#6
Doc. you're not adressing my main point. The damn Gray Ghosties are going nuts and need me or vicey verse, depending.
Caracas - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Friday called upon US President Barack Obama to follow the path to socialism, which he termed as the "only" way out of the global recession. "Come with us, align yourself, come with us on the road to socialism. This is the only path. Imagine a socialist revolution in the United States," Chavez told a group of workers in the southern Venezuelan state of Bolivar.
The controversial Venezuelan leader, who taunted the United States as a source of capitalistic evil under former president George W Bush, added that the United States needs a leader who can take it to a "higher" destiny and bring it out of "the sad role that it has been given, as a murderous, attacking power that is hated all around the world."
Chavez said that people are calling Obama a "socialist" for the measures of state intervention he is taking to counter the crisis, so it would not be too far-fetched to suggest that he might join the project of "21st century socialism" that the Venezuelan leader is heading.
"Nothing is impossible. Who would have thought in the 1980s that the Soviet Union would disappear? No one," he said.
"That murderous, genocidal empire has to end, and some day there has to come a leader ... who interprets the best of a people who also include human beings who suffer, endure, weep and laugh," the outspoken Chavez said. Or not, another day, another personality emerges. It's so hard to tell with the bipolar personality affected. Hugo Chavez Tells Obama To "Wash His Ass"
Posted by: ed ||
03/08/2009 09:55 ||
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if Hugo wants O to "follow the path of Socialism", he hasn't been paying attention.
Posted by: Slereger Scourge of the Sith3543 ||
03/08/2009 17:56 Comments ||
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#2
There should be one of those propaganda looking graphics with profiles of Chavez, the Castro brothers and Obama all lined up together with a caption that reads "Brothers in Socialism". Maybe you could even work Che in there. I can envision it but I'm not artist enough to actually create it. Somebody could make a fortune with a T-shirt like that.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/08/2009 18:07 Comments ||
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#3
TOPIX > BBC NEWS - OBAMA: US IS NOT WINNING IN AFGHANISTAN.
#4
I think this was stolen from the Onion, with some names changed.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
03/08/2009 7:15 Comments ||
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#5
while they deserve nothing, the Democrats in the usa, (and the socialists in EUrabia) have been bending the rest of us over for a long time to pander to them :<
Posted by: abu do you love ||
03/08/2009 7:16 Comments ||
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#6
The motif of white people throwing themselves into a bottomless pit comes from the Rastafarians, kind of their version of "end times". The pit, while physical, represents materialism and power, which white people and the ruling classes find to be irresistible, so they all converge on it and throw themselves in.
Leaving just the Rastafarians behind, since they don't care for materialism, power, success, hard work, organization, or about anything else than living in shacks and smoking ganja.
#7
Anon:
"Leaving just the Rastafarians behind, since they don't care for materialism, power, success, hard work, organization, or about anything else than living in shacks and smoking ganja."
Don't forget the full moon parties. Rastas can legally use magic mushrooms to alter their reality, so they won't care when whitey is gone.
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