Word: embargos
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...State Department stage by the emotional relatives of jailed Cuban dissidents, 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 against Cuba, and Fidel Castro was predictable as well, writing beforehand that Bush's speech reflected the U.S.'s desire to "reconquer" Cuba...
...benefits most from this war of words? Fidel and his brother Raśl Castro, who is likely to succeed him. With plenty of material support from Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, the embargo is not so painful as it once was, and heated U.S. rhetoric only bolsters their image at home as the island's anti-Yanqui defenders...
...Jake Colvin, director of the Washington-based USA*Engage, which supports dismantling the embargo, insists the resignation "brings a new urgency for President Bush to show that America is open to a different relationship with Cuba. If we do not, the U.S. risks alienating another generation of Cubans and pushing the Cuban government farther into the arms of countries like Venezuela and China...
Raul has called on Cubans in the past year to engage in more open debate - and he has made overtures to Washington, which maintains a 46-year-old trade embargo against Cuba. But he still has a reputation from his earlier years as Fidel's political enforcer, and few expect him to pursue any meaningful political reforms now or even when Fidel eventually dies. Instead, he is widely expected to push China-style economic liberalization, the kind of pragmatic programs, like opening to foreign tourism investment, that he has orchestrated in small, subtle increments to help Cuba survive post-Cold...
...regime will linger on in large part under his brother. (Although it also has to be a downer for Fidel to step down just months short of his golden anniversary in power.) Jose "Pepe" Hernandez, president of the Miami-based Cuban-American National Foundation, which backs the trade embargo, said Fidel's departure "opens a new chapter in Cuban history," but stresses that "we have to see what the successors of Fidel Castro are going to do with these opportunities they [now] have. Now they don't have any excuses, [and] if they are not forthcoming [with reform] our opinion...