Castro and Obama meet in New York (Video)
HAVANA TIMES – Presidents Raul Castro and Barack Obama met on Tuesday (Sept. 29) on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. It is the first meeting on U.S. soil between a Cuban and U.S. president in 60 years, reported ABC News. And the last Cuban president to do so was not Fidel Castro.
Obama and Raul Castro first met in April at the Summit of the Americas in Panama – the first bilateral meeting between each country’s president since the revolution. They have also spoken on the phone three times, the first time following the Dec. 17 announcement to restore diplomatic ties between the two countries.
“The meeting between Castro and Obama sustains the momentum of the historic rapprochement they are pursuing,” Peter Kornbluh, author of “Back Channel to Cuba,” told ABC News. “With two meetings and three phone conversations in the last nine months, they are actually building a relationship that will benefit their respective nations.”
The U.N. General Assembly is expected to vote for the 24th time to condemn the U.S. embargo against Cuba. Of the 193-nation assembly, last year 188 countries voted for the nonbinding resolution, with only the United States and Israel voting against it. There is speculation that both the U.S. and Israel may abstain from voting this year – making it a clean sweep.
Cubans have access to the whole world right now. I am as proud an American as they come, but I don’t see what difference more Americans will make? 1 million Canadians visit Cuba each year and there is no magic pixie dust they leave behind. A bunch of rowdy Texans will hardly be an improvement. (No offense intended Texas)
Moses, there are steps needed to allow Cuban’s to see for themselves what life is like outside the guarded gates where most Cubans are held. Travel
to the US is an extraordinary step along with American’s now flooding the island. I witnessed this in 1971 when as a 22 year old, state department sanctioned trip to Romania, hot time in the cold war stage, and saw for
what life was like outside of the capital, Bucharest. Met Russians
along the Black Sea and my conclusion was the change needed for eastern europe was beginning. I was right but it took some time. Cuba will be faster, mainly due to the cyberspace world which will lead to ideas and possibilities
that the average Cuban has no clue exists. The embargo will also speed up this change, in my opinion, but the big news will come within the Cuban government. That’s my prediction and I believe that’s happening as I type.
Read Bloomberg article released this morning, 09.30.15. Very well done.
My spin, and alluded to this early this year, is change within the present government could be radical. To have this happen we must have the capability to enter Cuba and bring the Big Players onto the field. Google,
Microsoft, Verizon, Oracle, Caterpillar, Netflix, to name a few.
Bjmack, you seem, by your comments, to be genuinely interested in the future for Cubans. Lifting the embargo will not bring freedom and democracy to Cuba. Cuba is free to trade with the whole world today, less, of course, the US. Why are there no potatoes in Havana this week? It has NOTHING to do with the US embargo. A better future for the Cuban people is best secured by the freedom to work and live as free people.
If your “invade countries” reference relates to Iraq, please remember that invasion was authorized by UN resolution. Guantanamo is a country club by the world standard. Far from being the “worst in the world” as you claim. I am a decent American but I appreciate your comment. I don’t know where you are from but I would encourage you to get the facts first. If you carry an anti-US chip on your shoulder, which is your right, you should not allow your biases to be evidenced by your expression of misinformation.
You sound like a decent American,who’s to say who is the worst in this American made war with as you say their own country doesn’t want them back, still does not give the Yanks the right to invade countries and instill prisons that are the worst in the world.
Time will tell if all that’s transpired with the US olive branch and hopefully the ending of the embargo.
It’s a beginning and for the Cuban people a much needed hope for a better future.
Cuba is already on the world map. Closing the detention center at GITMO is no easy task. The remaining detainees are the worst of the worst. Even their own countries don’t want to take them back. Given the cost of maintaining the prison, US taxpayers “those Yanks”, that you are referring to, want to get out ASAP as well.
National leaders have to shake hands even bloody ones. Obama is shaking the hand of a man who executed 78 people in one day, without trial.
As one who’s home is in Cuba, I long for the day when Cubans are no longer controlled by a totalitarian communist dictatorship. Cuba is a beautiful country with a wonderful people who deserve freedom, Human rights, freedom of speech, freedom of the media – as we who write here know it, and freedom to be able to lift their eyes to the clear blue sky, knowing that their country can take its place in the free world and shake off the shackles of the Castro family regime and “Socialismo”.
The US Congress can lift the embargo and by so doing, expose the incompetence of the socialist economic system which currently inhibits development in Cuba. The appalling record of declining levels of production of everything from sugar, to toilet paper, to coffee, to poultry. It has been far too easy for the regime to ascribe blame for its own faults, to the embargo.
The Cuban people have been subject for far too long to a systematic repression of dissent. CDR members spy on their neighbours and complete ‘Opinion Collection Forms’ to report what their neighbours are saying during daily life and in particular political opinion – in Cuba, the walls have ears! There is one CDR President for every 140 Cubans.
It is too easy for casual visitors spending only brief periods in Cuba to experience the realities of daily life for the average Cuban existing as they do on an average of 33 cents per day.
Do those visitors know for example that each child has a ‘Cumulative School File’ which includes measuring “revolutionary integration” and goes with that child for life? Do they know that by law, no parent has the right to “deform” the ideology of their child?
How many of those casual visitors – including those with multiple visits, have experienced being with senior citizens gong with their Liberetta (the ration book) to obtain their monthly rations and pay for them out of their $8 a month pension?
Raul Castro Ruz is a dedicated communist and has been so since the very early ’50’s. He has carefully constructed under military control, a system which now controls 80% of Cuba’s economy. The remainder being run by the so-called government. Would those who in these very pages support the Castro family regime and the Communist Party of Cuba, wish to see the military in their own countries gain similar control?
it is far too easy to sit comfortably at home in the free democratic world and to pontificate about how evil others are to Cuba and what a wonderful system the regime in Cuba would be, if only the embargo was lifted.
From day one when Alfred E. Newman ,AKA G.W. Bush moved in to Gitmo, a property leased to Americans in 1903 was for coaling purposes only, however Bush and his band of thieves, Powell, Rumsfeld, Rice, and the Bush entourage insulted the world with this invasion on Cuban turf,Castro’s are right on getting Gitmo closed down and ridding itself of the cancer from within brought in by the US of A.Hopefully it happens soon as I would love to see Cuba back on the world map.Been there 20 plus times, beautiful people, honest and respectful, my second home.Get those Yanks out of there ASAP.