Raul Castro: Cuba willing to sit down with US

Perhaps this means that there is a chance for Democracy.

This is just the latest remark, coming straight from the president.

By the way, there is democracy in Cuba. It's not like there aren't fucked up things about their democracy, but their are fucked up things about ours as well. We could and should learn a lot from one another, but for 50+ years, the US has not only been unwilling, but also antagonistic and spiteful.

I must not be up to date on my world History. lol
I thought that Cuba was more of a Dictatorship (for lack of a better term). Do they have Democratic elections?

I don't especially have an opinion about their elections, since I can't say I know them first-hand, and most of what you read is biased either towards or against them.

People here in the UK, where I've lived for the past several years, are baffled by the electoral college and think of it as an assault on democracy. Of course, in the US, I was brought up thinking it was normal. I imagine a lot of Cubans have similar views. My point was that there are an awful lot of things they could change about their democracy, but there are also a number of things we could change about ours. Glass houses and all that...

eta: a belated welcome to DU, by the way!

The electoral college baffles me too.

But given that almost all of U.S.-Cuban relations were based(and will be based again if the Miami exiles and HRC ever get their way)on Cuba being nothing but an American colony and having no right to use its resources for the good of its own people. we have no moral authority to wag our fingers at that country about anything at all.

I assume anyone who isn't a complete reactionary would agree on that.

But I'm still glad I live here! lol

the weather's nice and you can get a good pizza sometimes.

Have a nice Thursday!

They had a party last month with ALL Cuban food. I swear,
they had to roll me out the door !!! Great stuff !!!!

Have a nice weekend.

I wish your neighbors well.

By a weird coincidence, a Cuban family runs a winery next to my mother's house in the West Salem, Oregon hills.

n/t.

Here's a website I just found posted by an Australian woman regarding a visit to Cuba, and a quick stop for a pizza slice on the street:



http://www.travbuddy.com/travel-blogs/60585/Colonial-Beauty-Last-Beach-Trip-17



http://salsatimba.com/articles/havana-street-food-feeling-hungry



http://www.tripadvisor.in/LocationPhotos-g147271-d2446292-w2-Restaurante_Mangle_Rojo-Havana_Cuba.html



http://www.lonelyplanet.com/travelblogs/783/77121/CUBA+1+-+Havana+to+Baracoa?destId=358003



http://www.cubaabsolutely.com/articles/travel/slider_show/slider_paladar.php?cuba=1
http://www.cubaabsolutely.com/



(The customers stand in the street and the restaurant person takes their order and
sends their pizzas down in a basket to them. Restaurant's name is "Pizza from heaven.")

http://www.bdb.co.za/shackle/articles/pizzas.htm
I've only scratched the surface, there are many, many more for anyone taking the time to look for them.

He would start a new cold war with the Soviet Union

so he might send a bomber or two over Cuba for effect.

He is tied to right wing interests in Central America via Bain.

The younger Cubans are more American and do not hold a grudge against Fidel.

The world outside this country has openly condemned the embargo and US hostilities for years and years.

It's too far past the time the Colossus of the North, which spends more on its "defense" in one half day than Cuba does in a year, to clean up its image.

Raul Castro has offered the perfect opportunity. It would take a person of character to step forward and end an ugly chapter in history.

They need their land back, as well. Cuba's post-revolutionary government has never cashed in any of the stunningly paltry annual checks written for the Guantanamo rental, a figure the U.S. chose to pay since 1903 to a puppet Cuban government.

but not holding my breath either, it's not a priority for sure.
We know how Hillary sets policy in Latin America.

Common sense has got to prevail eventually.

and through the eyes of the professional career pro-oligarchy supporters in the State Department.

?4



Maria Victoria Arias Rodham
Miami immigration attorney
wife of Hugh Rodham, Hillary
Clinton's brother.

I've never seen Maria Victoria and Hillary as an evil something in those glasses

Does not control foriegn policy. President Obama sets policy and SOS Clinton implements it.

sister-in-law to bear. Plus, she's had negative dealings with some Latin American leaders and this has influenced the course of events as well.

Obama doesn't have time to be an expert on every international situation.

Poor Obama! He just gets snookered again and again by those clever Cabinet secretaries!

The President sets the policy. He's a smart guy; he knows how to read. He used to teach at law school, he's a very quick study.

He's not incapable of grasping an issue and he doesn't rely on any one individual for advice.

A bit insulting, that whole "Hillary Controls Obama" thing. More than a bit, actually.

job to distinguish what the truth is on that island.

And I'm a fluent Spanish speaker, and I've been there many, many times.

So Obama is 100% likely to take someone else's guidance on this, especially when Hillary has a personal connection.

She's been wrong on many things in Latin America, see Honduras and our support of a military junta that ejected a democratically elected president.

Just so happens that puts Hillary on the same side as the hard right wing in Miami.

Edit to add agreement that ultimately Obama is responsible but the story I believe is that the administration doesn't really care much about Latin America. It's not the area in need of attention compared to others

Most obviously nothing will happen in Cuba because of elections and the power of the hard right congress people.

advice?

Please. The remarks were insulting.

I'll bet Obama doesn't speak Pashtun, or Russian, or Farsi, but he can manage to figure out those issues.

Your assertion that he's a babe in the woods taking advice from the big bad wolf is just insulting. Way off the mark.

please don't hyperventilate over this, I am not making some kind of intense point that's worth arguing.

Your style is over the top for me, and I'm busy at the moment.

I don't think you follow the situation, so that's why we're not going to get anywhere.

sister in law to the point where she'd jeopardize national security, and Obama is too fucking stupid to notice.

That is, in effect, what is being said here after all the bullshit is stripped away.


It's as nasty as the GOP assertions that "oooooooooh....Hillary's AIDE" is bringing the Muslim Brethren into the halls of government to kill us all.


I do follow the situation, and I also follow what is being said in this thread--and it's pretty despicable, bluntly.

have beaten a trail to Miami to wrap themselves in the warm embrace of the hard-right Cuban reactionary loons, followed by certain Democrats, that the Batistianos there have our Cuba policy locked up securely, and no one's going to move a muscle to change it until they say so, or all the old guard finally move on to their Nuevo Cuba en el Cielo, and their new heavenly factories, stores, bars, hotels, plantations with nearly slave-like laborers, and, of course, complete segregation, and NO one of darker skin tones anywhere near them.

Not until the last package of C-4 in Miami has degraded to the point of uselessness.

Hillary's sister-in-law was a major worker in the former President's campaigns in Florida. MAJOR. Miami Cubans don't customarily get behind electing Democratic Presidents as we all know.

Miami Cubans have been involved in the CIA since god-knows-when, as in the Bay of Pigs invasion, the ongoing war of terrorism against Cuba through landings and murders, kidnappings, assassinations of Cuban officials in other countries, bombings, drive(float)-by strafing of beach front resorts from the water, hiring assassins from other Latin Americas to do their dirty work for them, and, as acknowledged in a murder trial of Eduardo Arocena, who assassinated Cuban official Felix Garcia Rodriguez as he sat in his car at a stop sign in New York City on his way to the U.N., that he had, working for the C.I.A., taken biological warfare materials into Cuba himself.

Hillary supports the easy side taken by Democrats who don't want to buck the murderous hardliners in Miami. She supports the hard right's position on Cuba. What a filthy shame. Downright evil. They and their hyper-racist, murderous, greedy clan were the very reason Cuba tried again, for the SECOND time to throw off the rigid, hateful, brutal government they always maintained, and its ugly, ugly way of running right over, viciously, everyone who didn't support them.

What a suprise it was, not, to see the wealthy senator, and publisher of a Cuban newspaper, friend of Fulgencio Batista, and right-wing power of his own, Rolando Masferrer, who commanded a torture/murder death squad of 2,000 men, working closely with Batista's military, move to the U.S. immediately after the revolution. How sad to learn someone blew him up in his car in the U.S., some time later. Some loss, right?

You are right to point out the clear connection between Hillary Clinton and her sister-in-law. Here's an article I just found from "Cubanet" which, as you know, receives funding from the U.S. gummint!

Clinton's Cuban Road To Florida

How Policy Was Turned By A Few
Cuban Americans, Including His
Sister-In-Law

By Douglas Waller/Washington

~snip~
Four years ago, senior State Department diplomats hoped Clinton would breathe fresh air into U.S.-Cuban relations. Miami's fiercely anti-Castro Cuban-American community had long blocked any thaw, though the Pentagon had concluded that Havana posed no threat to the region, and Washington had made peace with almost all its cold war enemies. But half a dozen Cuban-American Democrats who raised huge sums for Clinton in 1992 convinced the new President he could win Florida in '96 if he became even more anti-Castro than Ronald Reagan or George Bush had been.

Senior Clinton aides call the cabal the "core group." It includes Maria Victoria Arias, a Miami lawyer married to Hugh Rodham, the First Lady's brother; and wealthy businessman Paul Cejas, who occasionally stays overnight at the White House. Arias telephones Hillary frequently and often sends Clinton clippings from Florida newspapers. In regular meetings at the Colonnade Hotel in Coral Gables or at Little Havana's Versailles Restaurant, the core group plans strategy and prepares appeals, which are sent by way of private notes to Clinton's top political aides. "When an issue comes up, we try to get a consensus and present a united front," says core-group member Simon Ferro, a Miami Democratic activist.

Clinton came to the Oval Office with his own Castro obsession. In 1980 he lost re-election as Governor partly because Cuban refugees rioted at an Arkansas Army post. As President he ordered the CIA to estimate the chances of an upheaval in Cuba during his first term: the agency said better than fifty-fifty. Clinton aides later pressed the CIA to fund Cuban dissidents secretly. Burned by a dirty-tricks campaign against Castro in the '60s, the agency sidetracked the idea.

Clinton's foreign policy toward Cuba soon became snarled in bureaucratic battles between Administration hard-liners and moderates. In 1994 Castro allowed 33,000 Cubans to flee to South Florida, and the Administration began discouraging more escapees by detaining the rafters indefinitely at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The core group urged Clinton to punish Havana by halting airline flights to Cuba, but State Department moderates lobbied to maintain informal exchanges, including charter flights. Morton Halperin, the National Security Council's point man on Cuba, circulated a draft presidential speech offering carrots to Castro if he adopted reforms. Hard-liners, led by the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America, Michael Skol, allied themselves with the core group and launched a guerrilla war against the conciliatory moves. Clinton shelved the carrots and embarked on the hard line.

More:
http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y96/oct96/29polit.html

I am going to research this more to see how things are changing with some of those players. Cejas went to Cuba to see the Pope, he's a "moderate". In this photo slideshow we see Carlos Saladrigas as well, and maybe Alfonso Fanjul the sugar baron. It's quite a who's who, but it makes me happy they braved the trip. I was looking to see if Joe Garcia made the trip but I don't think so. That means the Cubans are willing to deal with capitalists but not ex-heads of Canf. He wanted to go and applied for a Visa, he's never even been to Cuba but he's our best hope to knock out Rivera, a real right wing hog. The right wing newspapers accuse Cejas and Saladrigas of going soft and meeting with the likes of Eusebio Leal, Havana's historian in charge of restoring Old Havana, in Washington and so on. There's still a gap between die hard capitalists and Raul but Raul literally held out his hand and said "let's do it". He knows they can make it happen and Cuba needs investment, it's a natural.

But it got immediately jettisoned by the hardliners. At this point Hillary's machinations are limited to "we will wait until they die". She said that.. That attitude has to change, as you say she and the administration are taking the easy way out and discounting the importance of taking steps in Cuba. Somehow though I think the pressure will force some kind of change in a couple of years, there just isn't enough strife to keep the countries apart, unless of course the usual suspects invents some.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/26/2715022/pilgrims-land-in-cuba.html

before the last change. He's the one who made dramatic changes in the Herald, keeing all the Page 1 articles very abbreviated, with shorter continuations in back pages, seeing the reading public as being not all that interested in getting a whole lot of information on anything! What a giant in journalism! Wow!

It would be a real shame if Cuba ever allowed the people back who financed assassins, bombers, killers, the men involved in acts of terrorism against the Cuban people.

Enjoyed seeing the photographs. By the way, did you ever see the documentary focusing on a lady who grew up in Cuba in a super wealthy home who came here after the revolution, then returned for a visit with her grown son to visit her old huge home and the Havana Yacht Club, etc.? It was shown on PBS, was named Our House in Havana.

Here's PBS's page for it:
http://www.pbs.org/pov/ourhouseinhavana/

Free downloads here:
http://archive.org/details/linktv_havana20100205

(Haven't tried it, yet, intend to try later today.)

Here's a trailer from Link TV:
http://www.linktv.org/programs/havana

from article in OP:

Later Thursday, Mike Hammer, assistant secretary for public affairs at the U.S. State Department, said that before there can be meaningful engagement, Cuba must institute democratic reforms, improve human rights and release Alan Gross, a Maryland native serving 15 years for bringing satellite and other communications equipment into Cuba illegally while on a USAID-funded democracy-building program.

“Our message is very clear to the Castro government: They need to begin to allow for the political freedom of expression that the Cuban people demand, and we are prepared to discuss with them how this can be furthered,” Hammer said. “They are the ones ultimately responsible for taking those actions, and today we have not seen them.”

Hammer highlighted the brief detention this week of dozens of dissidents outside the funeral of prominent Oswaldo Paya, who died in a car crash last weekend, saying “the authoritarian tendencies are very evident on each and every day in Cuba.”

-----------------------------------------

Regarding Paya and dissidents Castro said this:

“Some small factions are doing nothing less than trying to lay the groundwork and hoping that one day what happened in Libya will happen here, what they’re trying to make happen in Syria,” Castro said.

Looks like no Cuban spring.

...'institute democratic reforms, improve human rights...' has been boilerplate for a couple of decades. Can't we move beyond it?

We have relations with China. Time for Cuba, also.

This is just us still being butt hurt from all that cold war silliness. We're pretty close with Vietnam these days, and we fought a long drawn out war over there because of cold war silliness. How strange.

and they would do it if it was easy enough. Then they'd sell the place off to the highest bidders.

I mean we are run by a bunch of Corporations at this point. Isn't there script a little old, and in need of some updates?

This crap that every single administration continues makes absolutely no sense.

fear losing the electoral vote in Florida nothing will change. Cuban expatriates hold sway over the Florida elections and truly believe they will return to Cuba and get their property returned with Republicans in power because there's a better chance of military invasion and occupation under a Republican president. The record indicates that to be true, but only when oil is involved.

Imagine going back and your home now houses three families. And needs a million in repairs. Many have given up or passed on so that isn't the biggest issue.

The biggest issue, I think, one never really knows, is that Cubans in Miami are making a lot of money off the embargo, entire congressional careers etc. and businesses help Cubans make a bundle off the situation.

Take it away and the Cubans / Cuban Americans in Miami will have to compete with American business.

Plus, what you said about politics but I can see Obama making a few more moves after November, it's a low priority but something..

Try doing that in the USA.

Imagine abandoning a home 53 years ago. Why should the new resident be kicked out for your renewed interest in the home you abandoned 53 years ago.
Ridiculous.

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Somewhere I heard that the US and Cuba had talks about this and Cuba was willing to do some things. It's cited as some kind of road block but doesn't seem to be anything key to normalization.

Our democracy is not the model for every country

Or do you just read comics,

They mow their lawns, wash their cars, even carry lunchboxes to their offices from their humble homes.

Oh, yes, living just like the others in their countries, except for the title.

It's silly to keep a fifty-year-old dispute going just because some gringo corporations didn't get reimbursed for their holdings at the exorbitant rates they felt entitled to(it should have been enougn to reimburse them, as the Cubans offered, at the values the gringos had reported their corporations to be to the pre-Castro Cuban tax officials).

Let the damn embargo end already. We didn't overthrow Fidel and we're never going to overthrow Raul either. Just admit it's over, folks.

but Fidel is still kicking

up all night listening to the Casa owner's radio for news about evacuation.

Never happened luckily. Had some rum to pass the time and good companionship.
One of my best memories of the place.

I've always wondered about Jackson Browne's connection to Cuba, guess he was there in a hurricane!

When Fidel is dead, the embargo imposed in the early 60's is lifted.

http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/news/blog/?2555



House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) today issued her Gold Medal Award for ‘Most Ludicrous Statement Taken Seriously by the Press’ to Raul Castro, for his recent comments claiming that he would like to sit down for talks with the U.S. in order to improve relations between the U.S. and Cuba.

“Raul Castro, who learned the arts of deception and manipulation from one of the greatest of all time – his brother Fidel – took a big chance this week trying to get people to believe his outlandish claim that he wants to improve relations with the United States. In a gold medal performance, he was actually able to get the press to take him seriously,” Ros-Lehtinen said.

“We all know that the Castro regime has zero intention of ever allowing free elections, permitting opposition political parties, ceasing its abuse of dissidents, or abandoning its espionage campaign against the United States or its partnerships with U.S. enemies like Iran,” she added. “But for getting the press to go along with his ludicrous claim, Raul gets the gold.”




Miami Cubans control the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

The speed of response and silly medal indicate that what Raul offered threatens her way of corrupt life as the powerful, ultra-right head of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

The right wing Cubans in congress would rather see millions on the island suffer than give up their gravy train. As would many in Miami who benefit from things as they are.

We have nothing to fear from the Castro Brothers, maybe they'll teach us something, they certainly could be an ally instead of an enemy. 70% of US citizens think the embargo should end.

Hillary Clinton's brother Hugh is married to a right wing Cuban American lawyer who seems to have her ear. Instead of dealing with the issues at hand that impact the health and well being of many Cubans, Hillary will wait until Fidel dies before addressing Cuba.

Meanwhile she's kissing the Chinese and Vietnamese leaders.

They get too much out of things staying the same.

I think he's the stumbling block.

His brother isn't different enough but then again there is something hugely symbolic and there might be movement after Fidel dies. More likely after both Fidel and Raul die, imo.

personal and has withstood the test of time.

We managed to "get over it" --after 58K dead-- with Vietnam. We jumped on the Perestroika bandwagon with the former Soviet Union. Our biggest trading partner is "Red" China.

I just can't believe that a crew of aging, crabby Cuban landowners, some with mob ties, are the sole reason that we haven't tried the full flavor of the carrot instead of the stick when it comes to Cuba. It would be drop dead easy to do, too.

That boy Fidel is simply "unforgiven," and he always will be. Cuba will feel the full sunshine of their fifty state neighbor when he's dead and buried, I think.

I hope I live long enough to learn precisely what the hell it was that made Fidel a permanent persona non grata.

I have my suspcions, but who knows?

But, as your commentary proves out, they make a great patsy.

I know I have laid it out numerous times, on threads you have attended, so I won't bother again... but it does cause me to wonder why you're still wondering why the standoff continues.

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Let's sit down and talk, nothing to lose, so why not? It's time to end the embargo and normalize relation.