All This Is That poetry, arts, and persiflage editor
It's editorial day on All This Is That. Pablo snagged gay marriage and Jack got the Cuban Blockade. . .
click the former President to enlarge - art by Jack Brummet
President Barack Obama's announcement of a U.S. policy shift toward Cuba makes no mention of the "harshest of measures" we imposed on the island, as former Cuban leader Fidel Castro pointed out today. And he's right.
BHO's removal this week of limits on travel by Cuban Americans to their homeland and how much money they can send to relatives falls fall short of being the relief we need to deliver. Does our President really want to continue the punitive and retrograde measures of his predecessors?
Fidel Castro, in his message, said Obama can use his "talents" in creating a constructive policy that would end the embargo that "has failed for almost half a century."
Castro promised his country would "not beg," for an end to the US embargo, which he characterised as a genocidal policy.
“Cuba has resisted and it will continue to resist; it will never beg for alms . . . not a word was said about the harshest of measures: the blockade,” Mr Castro said in a response posted on the internet and published by state-run media just hours after the news broke in Washington.
Obama’s executive order on Monday also did away with some restrictions for US telecommunications companies, allowing them to provide mobile phone and internet services, a big complaint of Cuba’s in the past.
Mister President, it's about 20 years late, but we need to do more, and we need to do it now. End the blockade, let Cuba have access to modern medicines, and our [relatively] cheap food and consumer goods. If you're worried about taming the Communists, remember that we have seen many other examples where free trade with America helped open the floodgates of free speech, and yes, even democracy.
And finally, why not give their flagging economy a boost? They've been seriously in the hole since the fall of the Soviet Union, and the end of subsidies to Cuba. Let's allow them to freely trade (like they do, for example, with our good friends to the north in Canada). Let us help them out by buying their top-notch rum, cigars, excellent music, poetry, art, fiction, and movies. We need to embrace our neighbors, just as we do Canada and Mexico.
President Obama, it's time.
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