Word: cuba
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...would argue that democracy and human rights are as rare in Cuba as meat and modern appliances. That was duly underscored on Wednesday when President Bush invited the relatives of jailed Cuban dissidents to the State Department for his first policy speech on Cuba in four years. But any expectation of a major policy shift was dissipated after listening to the President. Bush simply gussied up some of the same old bromides - "The socialist paradise is a tropical gulag" - that have marked U.S.-Cuban relations for decades...
Bush reiterated his hard stance against lifting the 45-year-old U.S. trade embargo on Cuba if the seriously ill Fidel Castro, as expected, is succeeded by his brother Raul, who already runs the government. Predictably, Fidel said Bush's speech reflected the U.S.'s desire to "reconquer" Cuba. And the Castro brothers aren't exactly cowed by these traditional verbal assaults. They have thrived on it in the past: heated U.S. rhetoric usually bolsters their image at home as the island's anti-Yanqui defenders. With plenty of material support from Hugo Chavez in Venezuela (about 90,000 barrels...
...result, critics of Bush's Cuba policy argue his address simply helped preserve rather than undermine Cuba's nebulous status quo. And they're urging Washington again to consider stepped-up contact with Raul Castro - widely regarded as more pragmatically flexible than Fidel - as a more effective means of jump-starting a democratic transition. "President Bush is right when he says this is a unique moment in Cuba, but he's missing that moment," says Jake Colvin, director of USA Engage in Washington, which favors moves like lifting the ban on U.S. travel to Cuba - something even most Cuban-Americans...
Bush may also be alienating the very people he is reaching out to by suggesting Washington will be Cuba's post-Castro arbiter. In the eyes of ordinary Cuban citizens, that is perceived as surrogacy for the Miami Cuban exile community - whose anti-Castro hardliners, with their dreams of resurrecting a pre-Castro Cuba, are as disliked by many Cubans on the island as the Castros themselves...
...upon promising to make college “affordable and accessible” to all and when he discussed his plans to help those on public service-oriented career paths pay for their education. The audience also welcomed his promises to close down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; to tell the U.N. that “America is back”; and to be “as careful getting out [of Iraq] as we were careless getting in.” Samuel B. Novey ’11, who attended the event, praised Obama and Patrick because...