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posted by Blackmoore on Thursday December 18 2014, @10:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the pigs-flying-in-a-bay dept.

Peter Baker reports at the NYT that in a deal negotiated during 18 months of secret talks hosted largely by Canada and encouraged by Pope Francis, the United States will restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba and open an embassy in Havana for the first time in more than a half-century. In addition, the United States will ease restrictions on remittances, travel and banking relations, and Cuba will release 53 Cuban prisoners identified as political prisoners by the United States government.

Although the decades-old American embargo on Cuba will remain in place for now, the administration signaled that it would welcome a move by Congress to ease or lift it should lawmakers choose to. “We cannot keep doing the same thing and expect a different result. It does not serve America’s interests, or the Cuban people, to try to push Cuba toward collapse.

We know from hard-learned experience that it is better to encourage and support reform than to impose policies that will render a country a failed state,” said the White House in a written statement. "The United States is taking historic steps to chart a new course in our relations with Cuba and to further engage and empower the Cuban people."

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday December 19 2014, @02:44AM

    by Thexalon (636) on Friday December 19 2014, @02:44AM (#127352)

    What is definitely true is that immediately after the Revolution, a lot of people were executed without all the niceties of public trial. Che Guevera carried out quite a few of them personally, and wrote about how he felt after shooting people in the head.

    There's not a lot of evidence that Cuba was much worse than anybody else in Latin America in regards to their human rights abuses, though. Many of the most notorious regimes during that period were brutal, the best known examples being Chile under Pinochet, the Nicaraguan contras, and El Salvador's junta. And a lot of those groups got their backing and training from Washington DC.

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  • (Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Friday December 19 2014, @06:41AM

    by Jeremiah Cornelius (2785) on Friday December 19 2014, @06:41AM (#127403) Journal

    And you can bet that if there ARE inhumane treatments and "justice" meted in Cuba without benefits of legal protections?
    US being best buddies will do nothing to change these conditions - only some of the people receiving.

    Like Bahrain or Saudi Arabia. Or Uzbekistan or Israel. Or Columbia or Burma. Or...

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