No time so I will keep this short. What do you think of Obama re-engaging Cuba? Will the Congress embrace this bold change or balk?
CNN Obama and Cuba
My friend who went their for agricultural business said they have beautiful beaches...
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Another view.
MinnPost What Took so Long
I've held all along that all Cuba has to do to normalize relations was to compensate the owners for everything their socialist government expropriated.
Can't get blood from a turnip.
Don't care. We don't reward criminal theft by helping people/countries/evil dictators out of the jam they make for themselves.
Do you see anyone gaining from keeping the status quo going for another 50 yrs?
In particular, do you see a benefit to the people of Cuba or the people that fled there?
Should we have opened up trade with China, Russia, etc or should we have kept the cold war going until they embraced Democracy and Capitalism as we know it?
Do you see anyone gaining from altering from the status quo? You don't get positive change by ignoring an individual or government's criminal past wrongdoing. Something should have at least been said about how government taking private property without just compensation is wrong. And maybe even that turning a relatively free economy in which a few at the top got very rich into a repressive socialist hellhole in which only a few at the top live well is stupid.
And you've mixed your metaphors. Russia and China were communist/socialist long before we started trading with them. Cuba was a relatively free capitalist trade partner that turned socialist, by expropriating private property.
I assume we were doing business with China and Russia long before they had their revolutions and seized private property.
I don't think so, not in any significant way. Russia went socialist/communist back in 1917, and China officially in 1949. Both were economic backwaters until, and to some degree long after, those dates. And the fact is that the rest of the world had almost no investment in either of those countries; those expropriations were largely from their own people. The Castroites had a legitimate beef that most of the ownership was foreign, and the wealth was unevenly distributed at best, but the darn fools thought socialism was the right answer and at some point you ought to take responsibility for your major blunders. How much has the life of the average Cuban improved?
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer010215.php3
Giving away the store, for these really neat magic beans.
Jewish World Review
I think trying the method we did with China is worth the effort.
Wiki US China trade history
I think Russia is showing that the more dependent we make them on the World banking system, the more power we have to twist their arms by freezing their assets.
And Lord knows Cuba will not see much foreign investment if they don't ensure that those assets will stay private. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
You're going to have to explain how "what we did with China" is remotely applicable here. The Chinese are, certainly at this stage, more capitalist than we are, economically. Naturally we trade with and invest heavily there, and they've not expropriated anything from foreigners since the ROC was formed in the late 40s, that I know of. They start with a clean slate. Cuba doesn't.
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