In their face-to-face meeting, Raul Castro expressed optimism for greater co-operation between two countries, and discreetly pointed out to Mr. Obama that his fly is undone.
Image credit: Washington Times
During the past few months, relations between Cuba and United States have suddenly improved: the U.S. has removed Cuba from the list of sponsors of terrorism, eased travel restrictions, both countries have re-established diplomatic relations, and this week president Barack Obama met with Cuban president Raul Castro – with all that happening after fifty years of embargo and multiple halfhearted attempts to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro. In fact, if the things continue at the rate they are going now, a year from now Cuba and America will be drunk-texting each other at 3am, and the calls between the nations’ leaders will end in “you hang up first! – no, you hang up first! – no, you hang up!” So what’s behind the sudden warming up of US-Cuban relationship? Here are 10 possible reasons.
1) This was yet another unpredictable effect of global warming.
2) After 54 years of American efforts to expand the blockade, it became clear that the no one was willing to help the US in isolating Cuba, except for the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.
3) Barack Obama finally got tired of Republicans calling him a socialist, and decided to give them an example what actual socialism looks like.
4) The American politics is so messed up that is easier to open the whole island, than to close the Guantanamo military base on the island.
5) If Iran’s example is any indication, keeping the sanctions on Cuba increases the risk that Cuba will develop its own nuclear bomb.
6) With 2016 elections coming up soon, the White House has to scrounge up some extra ambassadorships to entice potential donors.
7) With demand for oil plummeting, someone has to buy all that extra oil to keep the prices from falling further.
8) Raul Castro promised Obama that in exchange for ending the sanctions, Cuba will take back Cuban-American presidential candidates Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. (For a few billion dollars in aid, Castro agreed to take Donald Trump, too.)
9) Cuba’s poor human rights record stopped being a hurdle once State Department realized that if the United States were to actually let human rights determine its policy, the U.S. would have to impose sanctions on Texas and Louisiana.
10) With open borders and multiple direct flights to Cuba, it would be much easier to send someone to finally kill Fidel Castro.
List of X 
Reblogged this on The Militant Negro™.
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Thank you for the reblog!
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Love your stuff, thank you for sharing.
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Much of this is probably true. I’m mufflng my laughter so my neighbor doesn’t do bodily harm against me. His or her dog can’t be agitated more.than once. Art made dog have a reaction. This is absolutely hilarious.
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Just who do you have for a neighbor who does not tolerate laughing – Kim Jong Un? Wicked Witch of the West?
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The neighbor who gets annoyed because I laugh at what I think is funny, and dog decides to bark. I don’t have an annoying laugh, but the walls are thin.
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Difficult to have guessed that this is what climatologists meant when they were warning about impending “global warming”. We should never have burned all those fossil fuels.
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That’s probably why some of the fossil fuel supporters argue that we should burn climatologists instead.
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We Canadians are getting tired of hauling Cuban cigars back for American friends. Go get your own.Cutting off the cigar supply always seemed to me to be a bit harsh for harboring Soviet nuclear missiles. I mean the Soviet Union has been gone now for 25 years. What’s a few nukes among friends? Zdravstvuyte, comrades! Come. Have a Stolichnaya with us. We will drink to glasnost! Yes, yes, we’ll take our nukes home – have another drink!
Oh, and by the way – now that Discovery Channel has a new hit called “Cuban Chrome” how are the camera crews supposed to get back and forth unless the rules are relaxed? I mean after all who is the government to interfere with a hit TV program?
Fun Post X.
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You should be thankful that you had such a great business opportunity to trade Cuban cigars to the US without any local competition. Are you telling me that you’ve never ran a trailer full of these cigars to sell them for a tidy sum down here?
But I think it the sanctions weren’t just about nukes – it’s just having a communist country with more or less working government right next to Florida. For example, Cuban free socialist healthcare is on par with American in terms of quality – and while we can tolerate that from Canada, communists are supposed to live under oppressive regime in concentration camp conditions, not have a decent standard of living in the tropical paradise.
As for who is the government to interfere with a TV show – it’s the government. It’s job is to interfere with stuff. The question is only whether government interfering makes things better or worse.
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Yeah Castro had a dream and he really did want better for his people. Trouble is, no matter how you cut it, not allowing people to choose creates some bad things – many good things, but some bad, He made the only choice he could by aligning himself with the USSR – which ended up being the wrong choice. A lot of Canadians vacation in Cuba and come back with stories of how kind the people are and how beautiful the land is. I feel bad for the residents – they have no choice but to accept what they are given. It would be good to reestablish trade with them and help their economy. If just a few manufacturing facilities were set up it would really help them live better. I hope they make out OK.
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This is a show of the political might of the Classic American Car Spare Parts Lobby.
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Exactly – and it was probably them who already brought down Toyota and destroying Volkswagen now.
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All 10 were funny. I think another reason is because the U.S. has secret plans to make Cuba our 51st state. They might be easier won over than Puerto Rico.
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And I think Cubans will be more receptive to the idea than Puerto Ricans, considering that the latter already have US citizenship.
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11. Once we’re “friends” we can try to negotiate down from Raul’s 1.1 trillion dollar reparations demand to something a little more modest.
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Or we could pay that in Zimbabwean dollars, which would set us back by no more than a few American cents.
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Good comeback. When talking Zimbabwe’s dollars, wheelbarrows come to mind.
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All were great, but I love #8 and #9. The only problem is that once Cuba gets Cruz and Rubio, they will probably want to give them back.
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Well, if Cuba decides they don’t want Cruz and Rubio after all, they can just drop them off next door to Guantanamo.
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The American politics is so messed up that is easier to open the whole island, than to close the Guantanamo military base on the island.
Sweet Veles, this rings true!
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This problem could have been solved long ago. Cuba is just an island, so we could just get one of our plutocrats, like the Koch brothers, to go buy it. Easy peasy. Then they could do with it what they wanted.
With regard to Guantanamo, it was captured land based upon false pretenses. Cuba was forced to accept our lease and has refused payment of that least almost as long as the “base” has operated. If POTUS wanted to solve the problem of Guantanamo, he should just give it back to the Cuban people, which should have been done long ago.
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Yes, but how do you pay for the whole island, if Cubans refuse to take our lease money for even a tiny part of it?
Also, we’ve already tried our standard invasion+democratisation approach, and it failed spectacularly.
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And now we have a place to which we can export all those used Volkswagen Diesels!
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Yeah, these Volkswagens can’t be too much worse than the 50-60 year old American cars Cubans have been driving.
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Exactly!
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Great post, X. However, I know the real reason for the warming relations (I read it in the National Enquirer): the cruise industry desperately needs another port to park their ships in. There are so damn many cruise ships in the Caribbean Sea now that the largest ones have their bow in one port before the stern leaves the last port! 😆
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Wow, that’s probably true, too. Although, as I keep seeing the stories about disease outbreaks, engine malfunctions, and other problems plaguing these ships, I did not realize people still use the cruise ships.
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Guilty pleasure confession. The wife and I have enjoyed taking cruises, one every year or two, since retirement and so have observed the growth of the industry. It is amazingly popular, business is booming. It is common for several ships to be in sight of one another at sea, coming and going.
In Fort Lauderdale they are expanding port facilities and building interstate-quality road access. The crowds are replete with retirees, one-percenters, and rich farmers who do not otherwise display their wealth. The lure is not so much foreign travel – the destinations are dowdy and overrun with all the charm of a Brooklyn gift shop. The real enticement is entering a comfort zone that treats you like royalty and includes top cuisine served elegantly. The best lines have achieved an ability to pretend to like you that’s indistinguishable from the real thing. Unfortunately, the trend is toward bigger and bigger ships that are more like floating malls. I foresee a dystopian cliff in the future, but for now, this business is thriving.
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Does this mean that we will soon be able to visit Guantanamo Bay and toss food to the prisoners like animals in a bad zoo???
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I’m pretty sure there’ll be a “Do not feed prisoners” sign on the fence, but there will probably be an area where the base will let you waterboard them.
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like a petting zoo then… cool
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It’s an enhanced petting zoo.
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you crack me up
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Good stuff here. I especially liked #4. Has perhaps even a hint of truth to it. Sigh.
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I love #8 the most. How do we have to cough up for Cuba to take Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin? Then again, maybe we shouldn’t. If we paid Cuba that much, they’d just become another superpower!
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With Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin living in Cuba? Not a chance. 🙂
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And here I was thinking it was because we were running out of spare parts for our classic 50s cars, and needed access to their local-made stockpiles.
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At least these classic cars are still working more or less okay, unlike toxic fume-spewing Volkswagens, brake-less Toyotas, and self-igniting GM’s.
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You didn’t make 8 and 9 up did you? Those were real and you stole them from Hilary’s email server.
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Yeah, sorry, you got me…
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All fantastic reasons. Only thing is regularly scheduled flights to Cuba mean regularly occurring flight delays and cancellations, so Fidel might still be safe.
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And don’t forget the airport security, after passing through which Cuba’s nickname “Freedom island doesn’t seems as inappropriate anymore…
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