While Obama has reduced funds this year, in view of the economic crisis, they both should be shut down.

Cubans can easily pick up Florida stations, as well as Mexican ones less than 100 miles away.

When I grew up in Canada we used to listen to KSL (Salt Lake City) and KOA (Denver), thousands of miles away.

Forget trying to influence Cubans with propaganda from Miami. They know what’s going on.

And relay travel experiences like yours. Americans in general, don’t know jack about the Middle East or Asia either…

I believe Marika was thinking of writing a Balk about world travel experiences – favorite destinations, etc. Which could lead to more stories like yours.

I think the cable access may have just been for tourists in the hotels. Don’t
think average Cubans have anything other than broadcast TV, owned and programmed by the state.

But since the U.S. has had an isolation policy in place for 50 years against Cuba, I wouldn’t know for sure… ;^)

While walking past a war museum a young soldier on a balcony gestured to us, seems he wanted us to take his picture!

There were problems with water in one hotel, but all the bulbs were fluorescent.

Havana may not be free, as we were told by a young man, but the hysteria of lack of free speech is fed by the anti-Castro Cubans in Florida.

During our brief stay we met Swedes, Canadians and other Europeans who could travel freely without having to sneak in from another country.

But it’s time to normalize relations IMO, as soon as possible.

Friday on arrival, Obama had a handshake for Hugo Chavez – which I’m
sure sent the NeoCon blogosphere screaming ’round the bend. (…but
I never actually pull that garbage up, to know for sure ;^)

Does anyone else perceive, how quickly Obama and Hillary are diffusing tensions with adversaries all around the world?

In response to the partial loosening of embargo restrictions on Cuba by Obama, Raul Castro on Friday offered to meet with everything on the table (read; political prisoners, free press, etc), saying they (the Castro’s) could have been wrong on some things. Bush never came close, to obtaining such a conciliatory remark in 8 years on the job…

Fifth Summit of the Americas

Hillary’s Town Hall of the Americas, held Friday in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic;

Digital Town Hall of the Americas

-

Let the US companies go in there and make Cuba a modern country, rather than having the 1950′s cars there being the main form of transportation. Personally, I’d love to visit there, and to be able to go back and forth as I please.

Doubt much of our programming will be allowed in Cuba, but agree the Castro’s are probably in their 9th inning. When Fidel goes, will Raul hold
on to power?

I favor normalization and anything that delivers peaceful co-existence. The Cuban people have a right to self-determination, which they are currently being denied. Many Americans do not know what fueled Fidel’s revolution: the United States had propped up a brutal dictator Fulgencio Batista, similar to what we’ve done in the past across Latin America, Shah of Iran, the list goes on.

It was largely out of concern, paranoid or legitimate, over holding Soviet expansion in check. Many people will point to imperialist objectives also, which usually had U.S. corporations exploiting citizens of these nations in slave-labor circumstances, and taking the gains of that labor from those nations and into their private coffers.

But the Soviet Union is gone and Latin America is evolving now. We are
not interfering when a nation like El Salvador recently elects FMLN, which for decades was a socialist insurgency movement. It is up to Obama at
the Summit of the Americas (Trinidad & Tobago 4/17-4/19), to let those south of us know we are finally ready to be a good neighbor.

Here is a link to the Op-Ed which Obama wrote yesterday in the Trinidad Express, St. Petersburg Times, Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald;

‘Choosing a Better Future in the Americas’