tagged w/ cuban embargo
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Presenting "Just Reasoning" a Caribbean Talk & Discussion show covering issues from news & politics, sports & entertainment to lifestyle & culture. If it matters to Caribbean People, we're "just reasoning" about it.Presenting "Just Reasoning" a Caribbean Talk & Discussion show covering... more
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The End of Prohibition
"I think this would be a good time for a beer," Franklin D. Roosevelt said upon signing a bill that made 3.2-percent lager legal again, some months ahead of the full repeal of Prohibition. I hope Barack Obama will come up with some comparably witty remarks as he presides over the dismantling of our contemporary forms of prohibition—laws that prevent gay marriage, restrict cannabis as a Schedule I Controlled Substance, and ban travel to Cuba. "You may now kiss the groom," perhaps, or—a version of the comment he once made about smoking pot—"I inhaled—that was the point."
Prohibition now is different from Prohibition then. When the 18th Amendment went into effect in 1920, it was a radical social experiment challenging a custom as old as civilization. Its predictable failure—the gross insult to individual rights, the impossibility of enforcement, the spawning of organized crime—came to an end when Utah, of all places, became the 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment in 1933. Today prohibition is a byword for futile attempts to legislate morality and remake human nature.
Our forms of prohibition are more sins of omission than commission. Rather than trying to take away longstanding rights, they're instances of conservative laws failing to keep pace with a liberalizing society. But like Prohibition in the '20s, these restrictions have become indefensible as well as impractical, and as a result are fading fast. Within 10 years, it seems a reasonable guess that Americans will travel freely to Cuba, that all states will recognize gay unions, and that few will retain criminal penalties for marijuana use by individuals. Whether or not Democrats retain control of Congress, whether or not Obama is re-elected, and whether they happen sooner or later than expected, these reforms are inevitable—not because politics has changed but because society has.
Source: http://www.slate.com/id/2234017/The End of Prohibition
"I think this would be a good time for a beer,"... more
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Walter Kendall Myers, 72, and his wife Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, 71, were arrested in Washington DC by the FBI yesterday and were indicted on Friday by a U.S district court as having worked as spies for the Cuban government for 30 years. According to an AP report, the indictment seeks the return of all $1.7 million Kendall Myers earned in his State Department career, along with his $174,867 rollover IRA account. Walter Myers is a former State Department Official, and his wife is a former bank analyst. They apparently received little compensation from the Cubans for their clandestine activities, and according to statements made, expressed 'love' for Cuba, its revolution and its leader, Fidel Castro, whom Myers described as a 'brilliant and charismatic leader' and 'one of the great political leaders of our time'. They did meet the Cuban leader during one of their trips to the island nation in 1995. Myers also had a particular distaste for the United States, which he called 'exploiters who regularly murdered Cuban revolutionary leaders'.Walter Kendall Myers, 72, and his wife Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, 71, were arrested... more
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The UN General Assembly on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly for the 17th year in a row in favor of lifting the 46-year-old US trade embargo on communist-ruled Cuba, as Havana hoped for better ties with a new US administration.
Some 185 of the assembly's 192 members approved a resolution, which reiterated a "call upon all states to refrain from promulgating and applying laws and measures (such as those in the US embargo) in conformity with their obligations under the Charter of the United Nations and international law."
The United States, Israel and Palau voted against the resolution, while Micronesia and the Marshall Islands abstained.
The margin of support for ending the embargo has grown steadily since 1992, when 59 countries voted in favor of the resolution. The figure was 179 in 2004, 182 in 2005 and 184 in 2007.
The UN General Assembly on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly for the 17th year in a row... more
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For decades, the only promise most Cubans saw in the ocean north of their island was the current that carries homemade rafts to Florida...
...Cubapetroleo, or Cupet, has announced a stunning new estimate of more than 20 billion barrrels of oil bubbling off its shores...
...Suddenly it seems as though the hemisphere's sole communist nation might finally end its desperate dependence on oil-rich allies like the former Soviet Union and Venezuela - and perhaps even escape its impoverished economic time warp altogether.For decades, the only promise most Cubans saw in the ocean north of their island was... more
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