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Cuba, U.S. to restore relations

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by wicked, Dec 17, 2014.

  1. HanSenSE

    HanSenSE Well-Known Member

    Used to be the highlight of my mornings when I did wire pages at a p.m., the obligatory Marisleyis-walking-Elian-to-school photo.


    Alas, just a 6.
     
  2. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    Wait till the Carnival Cruise ships start rolling in. Cuba will want to rescind the agreement.
     
  3. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

  4. heyabbott

    heyabbott Well-Known Member

    [​IMG]
    Guantanamo's McDonald's
    In 1986, Guantanamo became host to the first and only McDonald's restaurant within Cuba.[55][56]

    A Subway sandwich shop was opened in November 2002.[57] Other fast food outlets have followed. These fast food restaurants are on base, and not accessible to Cubans. It has been reported that prisoners cooperating with interrogations have been rewarded with Happy Meals from the McDonald's located on the mainside of the base.[58]

    In 2004, Guantanamo opened a combined KFC & A&W restaurant at the bowling alley and a Pizza Hut Express at the Windjammer Restaurant.[59] There is also a Taco Bell, and the Triple C shop that sells Starbuckscoffee and Breyers ice cream. All the restaurants on the installation are franchises owned and operated by the Department of the Navy.[60] All proceeds from these restaurants are used to support morale, welfare, and recreation (MWR) activities for service personnel and their families.[61] In the 1980s, there was even a Baskin-Robbins ice cream store, the first franchise to open on the base.[citation needed]
     
  5. doctorquant

    doctorquant Well-Known Member

    As a junior in college I had a Spanish professor who had been a lawyer in pre-revolutionary Cuba. I suspect he had been among the upper crust. Helluva guy, brilliant, played a mean game of tennis ... and he was stuck teaching Spanish to bored undergraduates for some very pedestrian sum.
     
  6. old_tony

    old_tony Well-Known Member

    Great. Can we also tell the Sharptons and Jacksons that slavery was 150 years ago and the civil rights movement was 50 years ago and to "get over it"?
     
  7. JayFarrar

    JayFarrar Well-Known Member

    If the U.S. can trade with China, Vietnam and Russia what's so special about Cuba that says America can't trade with them?

    I'm honestly curious as why Cuba has this status and other communist or former communist countries aren't held to the same standard.

    If anyone has an answer besides the obvious presidents want to win Florida, I'd be happy to hear them.
     
  8. britwrit

    britwrit Well-Known Member

    Exactly. If we get into the bed with the monsters who run countries like Saudi Arabia and China, opening up relations with the mildly less worse leaders in Havana should be no problem.

    But I'll try... You see, Latin American communists are so, so, so much more evil than Communist governments elsewhere....
     
  9. Riptide

    Riptide Well-Known Member

    Battle of personalities. Castro would never bow down to his U.S. neighbor, so he became the whipping boy for dictators in our hemisphere. And he thumbed his nose at us and sent his spies and fraud artists here, so that didn't help. But Castro still ate well, so what did he care?
     
  10. BTExpress

    BTExpress Well-Known Member

    For a nation to be enemies with us for 50+ years, they should have done something really serious TO us, no? So let's see, what did Cuba do?

    "Well, they became Communist!"

    OK, they changed governments. But what did they do TO us?

    "But they were COMMUNIST! The Soviets LIKED them. Thus, they HAD to be our enemies."

    Why? Batistia's government was corrupt and his country was a sanctuary for American organized crime figures. But he was our puppet (and got a cut of the enormous business the U.S. was doing there), and our puppets are always OK, no matter how bad they really are.

    They became our enemies because they nationalized their industries, and that included many U.S.-owned industries. We got our panties in a wad, started imposing trade restrictions and cut off oil supplies . . . FORCING them to turn to the USSR for this much-needed commodity. They never NEEDED to be the Soviets' friend. We just gave them little choice.

    — Earl T. Smith, former American Ambassador to Cuba, during 1960 testimony to the U.S. Senate[

    — Former U.S. state department advisor William Wieland

    50+ years of overreaction all because some nation refused to be our puppet. American foreign relations in a nutshell, and it has only changed for the worse.
     
    Last edited: Dec 22, 2014
  11. Guy_Incognito

    Guy_Incognito Well-Known Member

    Why would you lump former communist countries in there?
     
  12. heyabbott

    heyabbott Well-Known Member

    If the US can have diplomatic relations with Vietnam I dont see how Cuba, who we havent fought with since the Spanish American War, could be ignored.

    BTW: after50 years of sanctions are they any closer to capitulating?
     
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