Raul Castro pledged to ease travel restrictions.

[Emperor Arcturus Mengsk]

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/16/wo...icy/index.html

(CNN) -- Starting next year, Cubans traveling abroad will face fewer hurdles leaving the country.
The official news site Granma reported Tuesday that the Cuban government will no longer require a travel permit and a letter of invitation.
Until now, Cubans had to pay $150 for an exit visa. A resident in the country that the Cuban wanted to visit would also have to write a letter of invitation.

It's a step in the right direction, making the life of the citizens easier.

But still the announcement was accompanied by a direct criticism on the US and it's allies :

While the report does not say how the law will be altered, it does add that the government will fight brain -- and money -- drain "from the aggressive and subversive plans of the US government and its allies." It will do so by leaving in place measures to preserve "human capital created by the Revolution from the theft of talents practiced by the powerful nations."

So if I get this correctly, Cuba wants to avoid losing intelligent people to other countries.

Weird.

[Sogdog]

Maybe the idiots in the Cuban government should take a hint and go away. A couple of Cuban soccer players defected while the team was in Canada. Our idiots in the ANC managed to get the Cubans to send us their doctors, half of which defected and disappeared.

[Armenum]

Does US still have a travel ban to Cuba? I don't understand why the US would be so concerned about Cuba, given the Cold War is over and US has much more pertinent enemies. US after all does business with countries like China, and several European countries have economic models comparable to that of Cuba's.

[s.rwitt]

Lobbyists and left over Cold War relics still in Washington who are in the process of dying out and retiring. I don't see this Cuba animosity lasting much longer than Castro himself.

[Kanaric]

I would say it has more to do with Flordia, its votes, and the massive vengeful Cuban population that resides there. The government panders to them almost as much as they do Israel.

[I WUB PUGS]

I would love, let me emphasize LOVE for Americans as a whole to be educated about Cuban History and see the error of our ways.

This whole problem is completely our doing and we've allowed our policy towards Cuba to be hijacked by anti-Red Relics in DC and Batistans in South Florida.

I have an entire bookshelf full of memoirs and studies that illustrate pre-Castro Cuba well enough for me to say that that country definitely made a turn for the better with the Revolution.

May I also add that Castro didn't start out as Communist, and his brand of evolved Communism was something entirely different than that of Mao, Lenin or Marx. Fidel is a Revolutionary, it's not about communism per se, but the concept of revolution and progress.

Castro is also from the landed classes and received the finest education possible in Cuba. The man fought injustice. Black or mixed-blooded Cubans weren't even allowed to go to school or perform any work other than working in the fields. Pre-Castro Cuba was nothing short of a parallel with the ing Taliban, just with a glitzy all-white nightlife in Havana.

Now ask yourself this question. If you overthrow a bad guy like Batista who was armed by the US and the US is threatening to invade and destroy the Revolution, who do you turn to? Well in our present world you would be ed, but at that time, Soviet Russia was a good option. I stress the man wasn't even a communist, but he had no one else to turn to and over time Cuba evolved into a communist state. The Communist Party existed in Cuba as Castro was leading the revolution, but they did not have a prominent role. The best way to describe revolutionary Cuba would be that:

"The Communist Party was in a car that it was not driving; the car being the Revolution" - Dr. Joan Casanovas

Cuba has the best beaches in the Caribbean, the hottest women, the best cigars, the best everything in that part of the world. We have been screwing ourselves by settling with the crappy Bahamas and DR for far too long.

Our whole connection with Cuba is based solely on racist policy. That is where we got our slaves from after we outlawed getting them directly from Africa. So instead we just bought them off Spaniards (cubans) who gave Africans Spanish names. The slave trade collapsed after the Civil War but Cuba still provided us with cheap rum and fine tobacco all on the backs of people that were essentially slaves. Our policy towards Cuba is nothing short of the continuation of Jim Crow in the foreign sphere.

It is disgusting that we still isolate that country and the Cubans of South Florida are the offspring of Batista Supporters who fled once their racist regime fell. Those people then bred with the successive waves of dissenters and criminals that were emptied onto our shores.

Scarface isn't fantasy, it's practically a documentary if you bother to learn about Miami in the 1980s. Cocaine Cowboys is a good place to start. Criminals, all of them who offer little in the way of contributions considering they get guaranteed loans to start small businesses as exiles............too bad they never open anything other than coffee or sandwich shops.

/rant

Look at that, I just railed with racial tones againt white-Cubans in South Florida while at the same time calling all of them racist.

[Menelik_I]

I would love, let me emphasize LOVE for Americans as a whole to be educated about Cuban History and see the error of our ways.

This whole problem is completely our doing and we've allowed our policy towards Cuba to be hijacked by anti-Red Relics in DC and Batistans in South Florida.

I have an entire bookshelf full of memoirs and studies that illustrate pre-Castro Cuba well enough for me to say that that country definitely made a turn for the better with the Revolution.

May I also add that Castro didn't start out as Communist, and his brand of evolved Communism was something entirely different than that of Mao, Lenin or Marx. Fidel is a Revolutionary, it's not about communism per se, but the concept of revolution and progress.

Castro is also from the landed classes and received the finest education possible in Cuba. The man fought injustice. Black or mixed-blooded Cubans weren't even allowed to go to school or perform any work other than working in the fields. Pre-Castro Cuba was nothing short of a parallel with the ing Taliban, just with a glitzy all-white nightlife in Havana.

Now ask yourself this question. If you overthrow a bad guy like Batista who was armed by the US and the US is threatening to invade and destroy the Revolution, who do you turn to? Well in our present world you would be ed, but at that time, Soviet Russia was a good option. I stress the man wasn't even a communist, but he had no one else to turn to and over time Cuba evolved into a communist state. The Communist Party existed in Cuba as Castro was leading the revolution, but they did not have a prominent role. The best way to describe revolutionary Cuba would be that:

"The Communist Party was in a car that it was not driving; the car being the Revolution" - Dr. Joan Casanovas

Cuba has the best beaches in the Caribbean, the hottest women, the best cigars, the best everything in that part of the world. We have been screwing ourselves by settling with the crappy Bahamas and DR for far too long.

Our whole connection with Cuba is based solely on racist policy. That is where we got our slaves from after we outlawed getting them directly from Africa. So instead we just bought them off Spaniards (cubans) who gave Africans Spanish names. The slave trade collapsed after the Civil War but Cuba still provided us with cheap rum and fine tobacco all on the backs of people that were essentially slaves. Our policy towards Cuba is nothing short of the continuation of Jim Crow in the foreign sphere.

It is disgusting that we still isolate that country and the Cubans of South Florida are the offspring of Batista Supporters who fled once their racist regime fell. Those people then bred with the successive waves of dissenters and criminals that were emptied onto our shores.

Scarface isn't fantasy, it's practically a documentary if you bother to learn about Miami in the 1980s. Cocaine Cowboys is a good place to start. Criminals, all of them who offer little in the way of contributions considering they get guaranteed loans to start small businesses as exiles............too bad they never open anything other than coffee or sandwich shops.

/rant

Look at that, I just railed with racial tones againt white-Cubans in South Florida while at the same time calling all of them racist.

I appreciate your effort to provide an educated input to this conversation, but as an Angolan I cannot stand see the Cubans and Castro being made saints and somehow progressive black people loving visionaries after they helped in the killing of 18 000 Angolans in a cold blood concentration camp style 2 years of terror and then occupied our country for 15 years.

Sure the USA policy towards Cuba was not all that great, but Castro is still a motherer of an . Happy that the Cubans can travel freely now, but Castro and his regime deserve to die in Hell.

[Vanoi]

I would love, let me emphasize LOVE for Americans as a whole to be educated about Cuban History and see the error of our ways.

This whole problem is completely our doing and we've allowed our policy towards Cuba to be hijacked by anti-Red Relics in DC and Batistans in South Florida.

I have an entire bookshelf full of memoirs and studies that illustrate pre-Castro Cuba well enough for me to say that that country definitely made a turn for the better with the Revolution.

May I also add that Castro didn't start out as Communist, and his brand of evolved Communism was something entirely different than that of Mao, Lenin or Marx. Fidel is a Revolutionary, it's not about communism per se, but the concept of revolution and progress.

Castro is also from the landed classes and received the finest education possible in Cuba. The man fought injustice. Black or mixed-blooded Cubans weren't even allowed to go to school or perform any work other than working in the fields. Pre-Castro Cuba was nothing short of a parallel with the ing Taliban, just with a glitzy all-white nightlife in Havana.

Now ask yourself this question. If you overthrow a bad guy like Batista who was armed by the US and the US is threatening to invade and destroy the Revolution, who do you turn to? Well in our present world you would be ed, but at that time, Soviet Russia was a good option. I stress the man wasn't even a communist, but he had no one else to turn to and over time Cuba evolved into a communist state. The Communist Party existed in Cuba as Castro was leading the revolution, but they did not have a prominent role. The best way to describe revolutionary Cuba would be that:

"The Communist Party was in a car that it was not driving; the car being the Revolution" - Dr. Joan Casanovas

Cuba has the best beaches in the Caribbean, the hottest women, the best cigars, the best everything in that part of the world. We have been screwing ourselves by settling with the crappy Bahamas and DR for far too long.

Our whole connection with Cuba is based solely on racist policy. That is where we got our slaves from after we outlawed getting them directly from Africa. So instead we just bought them off Spaniards (cubans) who gave Africans Spanish names. The slave trade collapsed after the Civil War but Cuba still provided us with cheap rum and fine tobacco all on the backs of people that were essentially slaves. Our policy towards Cuba is nothing short of the continuation of Jim Crow in the foreign sphere.

It is disgusting that we still isolate that country and the Cubans of South Florida are the offspring of Batista Supporters who fled once their racist regime fell. Those people then bred with the successive waves of dissenters and criminals that were emptied onto our shores.

Scarface isn't fantasy, it's practically a documentary if you bother to learn about Miami in the 1980s. Cocaine Cowboys is a good place to start. Criminals, all of them who offer little in the way of contributions considering they get guaranteed loans to start small businesses as exiles............too bad they never open anything other than coffee or sandwich shops.

/rant

Look at that, I just railed with racial tones againt white-Cubans in South Florida while at the same time calling all of them racist.

This was a good post, but i can't agree with you calling all Cubans in Florida Batista supporters. I went to school with a Cuban girl once. She hated Batista and she hated Castro. She acknowledged that Castro did bring some good changes, but just like Batista, he curbed any basic freedoms.

Castro may have brought some good changes to Cuba, but at the same time he continued acting like Batista in regards to basic human rights.

[Emperor Arcturus Mengsk]

Interesting post, you wub pugs, thanks plus rep <3

[I WUB PUGS]

Read this book. Great read, but heartbreaking and eye-opening at the same time.

“I am Reyita, a regular, ordinary person. A natural person, respectful, helpful, decent, affectionate, and very independent. For my mother, it was an embarrassment, that I—of her four daughters—was the only black one. I always felt the difference between us, because she didn’t have as much affection for me as she did for my sisters. . . . I was the victim of terrible discrimination from my mother. And if you add that to the situation in Cuba, you can understand why I never wanted a black husband. I had good reason, you know. I didn’t want to have children as black as me, so that no one would look down on them, no one would harass and humiliate them. Oh, God only knows! I didn’t want my children to suffer what I’d had to suffer.”—from Reyita

[Bobz]

Good for Cuba. I hope they can continue down the road of peaceful reform that has been started with the recent restructures of the economy, and that the American embargo will end to. The only thing that has achieved is harm everyone.

[Armenum]

Lobbyists and left over Cold War relics still in Washington who are in the process of dying out and retiring. I don't see this Cuba animosity lasting much longer than Castro himself.

Oh but I forgot the powerful Cuban lobby.

On top of that, I doubt there's any more animosity between Cuban people and Americans. I guess it's a matter of time, but taking too long.

[Kanaric]

Of course the US wont east restrictions in response because its election season and you can't have vengeful cuban-american butthurt destroy your chances in florida.

[King Gambrinus]

When you look at American relation with Vietnam and China, it's hard to believe America is still mentally at war with Cuba.

Definitive end of the Cold War...

[I WUB PUGS]

There really just seems to be something about Fidel that is ingrained in the American Psyche. Literally no one bats an eye about doing business in China or Vietnam, that's just "them commies coming to their senses".

We had almost no progress in relations with Cuba while Fidel was in charge, almost immediately after Raul took the reigns things began to slowly evolve.

No worries, for a while now you can fly to Canada and then down to Cuba if you really want to. You can bring 20 Cuban Cigars into the US every entry, my father has been doing it for years.

HOWEVER! For some idiotic reason you cannot bring them back from Afghanistan. Several non-US exchanges sell Cuban Cigars but you are not allowed to bring any back. My father sent me maybe 3-4 dozen or so that he bought in Europe that I gave out on Christmas and New Years to my Marines. I still had several left over at the end of the deployment but I had to leave them because only clearly labeled non-contraband cigars were permitted through customs.

[I WUB PUGS]

International Politics is a nasty business. Sorry your country was the playground of larger powers, but what happened in Angola has little if anything to do with the sweeping reforms that Castro brought forward to remove as best as possible the racism endemic to Cuba.

The other side of that conflict was supported by Apartheid South Africa not exactly the best of places for racial equality.

[Menelik_I]

International Politics is a nasty business. Sorry your country was the playground of larger powers, but what happened in Angola has little if anything to do with the sweeping reforms that Castro brought forward to remove as best as possible the racism endemic to Cuba.

The other side of that conflict was supported by Apartheid South Africa not exactly the best of places for racial equality.

We don't have racial problems in Angola, so whether Castro was supposedly anti-racist or not doesn't make 18 000 dead people less dead, as for the South Africans, they never had ambitions to impose their system on us, so their help was most welcome especially since the Cubans invaded first and helped the killing those people before the South Africans had a chance to do more than damage control.

Also take not that most Cuban soldiers in Angola were Black Cubans and they were systematically ill treated and ill equipped, they used to go around town to sell their supplies to buy alcohol. So I rather have difficulties to believe in the emancipation of Black people by Castro. Only thing that saved them was Angolan cannon fodder, and to this day we have to sell the Cuban under-priced oil.

The Cubans helped the massacre of 18 000 Angolan, the South African didn't do something similar, so lets not play the equally bad BS.

[Col. Tartleton]

I'd far rather see Castro shirts than Guevara shirts.

I can respect Castro even if I don't really like him.

The Cold War was a dangerous time to be a minor power.

Africans did a good chunk of the dying during that undeclared world war. I wouldn't blame Havana so much as the real shot callers in Moscow. Cuba was totally reliant on the USSR for pretty much everything and that's just what happened.

[I WUB PUGS]

The whole Che thing is just so...

I want to throw my topsiders at anyone wearing one those damn t-shirts.

[I WUB PUGS]

So you were conquered by Cubans and there weren't any Communists in Angola even though the particular party in question existed even in the 1950s.

South African injustice has as much to do with Angola as Cuban Black Emancipation. That is to say, it has jack to do with it, but you seem to think it does. I was just pointing out that South Africa has a piss poor track record of racial equality even if they didn't kill 18,000 Angolans. Bad people on both sides but nothing in Angola has anything to do with Cuba itself.