Cuba

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Bottom Feeder said:
Yeah, like they're doin in Seattle.
Busses only lanes on both sides of what used to be a four lane thoroughfare.
Chop out the center three lanes of what used to be a four lane thoroughfare for the trolley tracks.
And the bicycle lanes on one side (sometimes both sides) of all the other streets making them moar narrow.
And Jersey barriers closing off one of two downhill lanes for the bicyclists so they don't have to compete with cars.
One of the highest car tab and gasoline taxes in the states.
Yeah, REAL helpful…
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Not only.

One problem we have with the US rail infrastructure is, it's hard to move...to relocate.

Plant goes up - during WWII. Major steel mill. The site CHOSEN was chosen because it was half a mile from a rail yard and on a trunk line.

For, say, the Delaware Lackawanna & Western railway.

Time moves on. Steelworker unions get militant - and the company that owns the mills is sold to a multinational Globalist concern. It has steel mills in Belgium, mills in India...and in the US.

There is a major difference between operating a plant and BLEEDING it. That is what happens here. Capital improvement stops. Maintenance is limited to what cannot be deferred. Meantime, the smirking lower-management gives the union goons all they demand. HOORAY!

AND....the DL&W railroad is merged; and then the Erie-Lackawanna bankrupted, forced into a much larger corporate ownership, Conrail. And in the course of a decade, the DL&W lines are ripped out. The plant has to either maintain an access industrial spur, or ship by truck.

Meantime, a new technology - mini-mills, with electric furnaces. Going up everywhere. The old mill cannot be revamped.

The owning company, a subsidiary of Big Global Steel, is bankrupted. And all the rail lines, including the ones that remained and connected to the industrial spur...are now "not cost effective." And are abandoned.

Building new rail lines to the new mini-mills is often not possible - over a million dollars a mile, AFTER the land is bought. So Big Rail just cedes that business.

If any of this sounds familiar, it should. I just described the last years of Bethlehem Steel's Lackawanna plant, their last.

The same applies to streetcars/LRT. The fashionable, desirable neighborhoods NOW, are likely to be filled with hominoid dross in 20 years. God, I've seen THIS - both in Cleveland and Houston.

In Cleveland, the city built the Red Line heavy-rail commuter line, electrified, to take the place of the Cleveland Streetcar Company, when it closed in 1950. It ran from the Windermere neighborhood in East Cleveland, to the West Park neighborhood, with plans to extend to the airport.

It did make the airport. But no one living in Windermere goes to the airport, except to work as a custodian or porter.

And no airline passengers would take the dangerous trip. Anyway, they come from far outside Cleveland.

There is not the money to re-route the rail system. GCRTA did explore buying the old Nickel Plate mainline through town to run gas-powered railcars - and played with the idea with a demonstration project in 1985. Even if the county got the rail line for free, the cost of operation, people, training, rail dispatch, maintenance, was far more than they could even raise off UMTA in Washington. Even though they love choo-choos in the UMTA.

It makes no sense. Buses work far better.

But the imbeciles in government, are not only not very bright, they're of arrested development. Still want to be playing with toy trains.
 
Fatrat said:
The Embassy of the United States of America in Havana (Spanish: Embajada de los Estados Unidos de América, La Habana) is the United States of America's diplomatic mission in Cuba. On January 3, 1961, U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower severed relations following the Cuban Revolution of the 1950s.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassy_of_the_United_States,_Havana#cite_note-1"><span>[</span>1<span>]</span></a> In 1977, U.S. president Jimmy Carter and Cuban leader Fidel Castro signed an Interests Sections Agreement that permitted each government to operate from its former embassy in Havana and Washington D.C., which were called Interests Sections; they were prohibited from flying their respective flags. First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba Raúl Castro and U.S. president Barack Obama restored full diplomatic connections on July 20, 2015.
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Thank you. I did not know that.
 

Donald Trump says US will take over Cuba 'almost immediately'​

President Donald Trump said Friday during remarks in Florida that the United States would take over Cuba “almost immediately,” suggesting an aircraft carrier could be positioned offshore after the conflict in Iran.

The comments came the same day Trump signed an executive order significantly expanding U.S. sanctions on the Cuban government and its affiliates.

Cuba’s government, foreign companies doing business on the island and U.S. allies in the region could face heightened pressure amid a sharp escalation in rhetoric and economic penalties.

Newsweek has contacted the White House for clarity on what Trump meant.

More:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/poli...most-immediately/ar-AA22dLdI?ocid=socialshare
 
Looks like Trump wants everything West of Europe and East of China.
 
The peace President thats been taken over by the neocons.

Yea lets go after Cuba, the one country thats invaded absolutely 0 other countries in the last 60 years. Well, more than 1 but they have nothing to fight with. Probably dont even have fuel for the 1 mig they own. LOL.
 
There was an agreement for the US to never invade Cuba if they gave up Russian missiles. Never formalized but up until now it was adhered to by the US.

Never trust the US in any negotiations. Not once in it's history has it ever adhered to any treaty or agreement.

www.mikegravel.org

Did the US agree to never invade Cuba again? - Mike Gravel

Did the US Agree to Never Invade Cuba Again? The question of whether the US pledged to never invade Cuba is complex. While there isn’t a formally ratified treaty explicitly forbidding an invasion, a specific, informal agreement was reached during the Cuban Missile Crisis that did involve such...
www.mikegravel.org www.mikegravel.org
 
Cuba should be opened up. As far as owning any damage caused by the USA, it's a reasonable tradeoff. The majority of the people have poor living standards and nothing to lose.

It would cause Miami to boom even more and turn into the economic engine of Latin America. There would be billions of dollars invested into Cuba and it could be another country that could ultimately buy our treasuries.
 
nickndfl said:
Cuba should be opened up. As far as owning any damage caused by the USA, it's a reasonable tradeoff. The majority of the people have poor living standards and nothing to lose.

It would cause Miami to boom even more and turn into the economic engine of Latin America. There would be billions of dollars invested into Cuba and it could be another country that could ultimately buy our treasuries.
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It is not our possession or our property.

At some point, the fate of Cubans depends on Cubans. We can't impose "democracy" - how many neoliberal Nation-Building exercises do we need to fail at, to grasp that?
 
Just a thought by why not come to some kind of deal / treaty with Cuba where any and all sanctions are lifted, normal trading is begun, travel between the U.S. and Cuba is normalized & mayhaps help them financially in return for intelligence & military installations on the isle? Could be a win - win.
 
searcher said:
Just a thought by why not come to some kind of deal / treaty with Cuba where any and all sanctions are lifted, normal trading is begun, travel between the U.S. and Cuba is normalized & mayhaps help them financially in return for intelligence & military installations on the isle? Could be a win - win.
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That would require rational, sane, intelligent government and officials.

Have we any of that, of those?
 
The Cuban government like many or most in Latin America is corrupt. Even more than the USA. The USA should approach Cuba like the Marshal Plan after WWII (eleven).
 
nickndfl said:
Cuba should be opened up. As far as owning any damage caused by the USA, it's a reasonable tradeoff. The majority of the people have poor living standards and nothing to lose.

It would cause Miami to boom even more and turn into the economic engine of Latin America. There would be billions of dollars invested into Cuba and it could be another country that could ultimately buy our treasuries.
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Ahhh, don't look now, but you just described most Caribbean countries. I cruised a few and most were poverty stricken messes.
 
Besides, the Mafia still thinks it should own Cuba.
 
Fatrat said:
Besides, the Mafia still thinks it should own Cuba.
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Would it hurt to let them keep on thinking that? Cuba run by the Mafia, was a fun, desirable resort area. Yes, even the Cubans benefited - not as much as the Families, but they had good jobs and many, good lives.

Side note: One historian I heard, discussing the current collapse of Las Vegas...delved into its history. I knew much of it - a railroad tank town, always something happening as the trains came in, the crews went to their dorms or looked for a brothel. Twenty-four-hour lunch counters. Plenty of card rooms and faro games - neither legal nor illegal; Vegas was wide-open.

But that's all it was. A railroad crew-change and watering point.

Until Cuba fell to Castro. I forget the name, of the first Mafia don who opened The Sands, on what became The Strip...but the aim was, to recreate Havana. Las Vegas was chosen because there was almost nothing there, including legal oversight. What government there was, was open to "dipping the beak" - getting a cut in the action.

So, starting with nothing but a vague idea, and an agreement that Las Vegas would be a neutral town for all the Mafia families...they built. And they wanted the public to accept it, so, in addition to the private games and accommodation for the high-rollers, they had restaurants and buffets operating below cost. They had rooms for the Little People, at about cost. Laws remained loose - there was vice law, it was only enforced if things got to egregious. Keep it on the down-low, and all the hooking, all the rigged games, all the rolling of belligerent drunks, could go on apace.

And even as Vegas got cleaned up of the Mob money in the late 1960s, the new gaming companies used what had been, as their model. They wanted a clean show, but they wanted to keep the attraction. Typically, a corporation would be the owner of each casino - like Caesar's Gaming, or Circus-Circus Hospitality.

Steve Wynn launched the mega-casino model, and in answer, corporations merged to where now there's only IIRC, two. They own all the major casinos. Own the BUSINESSES - they sold the land and structures, to REITs. Which makes a difference, because now the operating corporations have no incentive to continuously upgrade facilities. Just run things into the ground - and cook the books to make the quarterly reports look good.

That is what's happening now.

If Vegas got re-Mafia-ized, it would be its salvation.
 
^
Now the question here is is this actually true?
 
Someone in Cuba RN was saying that gas there is 28 bucks a gallon. Not many cars on the road.
 
American government doesn't care about the rules...
 
Cigarlover said:
Someone in Cuba RN was saying that gas there is 28 bucks a gallon. Not many cars on the road.
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Well, there's a difference there. As with Eurostan.

I could easily bicycle across Cuba, given the distance - and I'm not a kid, either. It's a relatively-small island.

Wheras, in Cleveland, I had to drive - yup, drive - over 30 miles to work. "Work," the rail yard, was smack dab in the middle of the ghetto. Which of course was a libburl creation, made by prohibiting established property owners and neighbors from having any say-so in the norms and mores of their district/region/neighborhood.

Garbage in, decent people out, as happened with blinding speed during the "civil rights" era. So, Irish-Italian Collinwood became "diverse" - and the new "working class" didn't work anything other than cans of St. Ides.

So in order to be secure in my persons and property (especially given urban gun-prohibition laws) I had to live 30 miles away. Since I worked on-call, and since buses are slower than bicycles, often, I had to drive.

Other major cities, the same. Only one I was able to walk to work, was Denver - 35 years ago, and I wasn't living in a great neighborhood, then.

A little different from Europe, where the whole of NATO is like a drive from Cleveland to New York. Taking a bus is a fair option. If we had trains, instead of Amtrash, a train could do it faster.

But we're not like Eurostan, and an Amtrak trip across the country is three days of dubious sanitation and miserable food.

Of course, Eurostan is gonna be more like US, soon - now that the Moose Slimes and Sub-Saharans have moved in. They're experiencing the kind of crime that Europe hadn't seen since the Russian conquest of Eastern Europe. Worse, even...the Soviets were organized, these New Europeans are just mentally retarded.

Cuba, even if it has NO gasoline, would be a decent alternative. If we got the passive, stupid, mixed-race NPCs who tolerated Marxism for 65 years, out...

Relax. That won't happen, either.
 
I think people do bike the entire island but it takes them 3 or 4 weeks probably. It's around 700 miles long.

I haven't been since 2004 and it was relatively safe back then. Probably still is. People are poor but happy. They have a roof over their head and food on the table. They tend to laugh a lot easier than people in the US. Much friendlier country overall. They also cant really over throw the gov since no-one has guns. Overall it is probably what small town America was in the 1950's. Once it opens up to the US the people will become debt slaves like everyplace else in the world and thats not really a good thing. The easy going nature will disappear once that happens and everyone has o work to pay for all the stuff they start to accumulate. The feel of the place will change a lot as well once the American corporations get involved.
 
Cigarlover said:
The feel of the place will change a lot as well once the American corporations get involved.
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This corporate criminality won't continue past the Fourth Turning.

It'll rise again, but that's not "corporations" - it's human nature. People are avaricious. Greedy. It's the nature of Man.

As an organized system with food and material surplus, matures, the more aggressive figure out how to game the system. The resources flow to that smaller class, and when it gets small enough and ungodly rich...blood flows in the streets. As with King Louis. As with other revolutions - not always insanely bloody, but always, the 1-percenters are deposed.

Corporations today, Trusts a century ago, Roman Senators, Indian Rajahs...Russian oligarchs, who did NOT suddenly appear; they were deep in the Communist government before its fall.

I don't think we'll have time to take over Cuba before we face our reckoning. We won't have time to finish it with Financialization, for sure.

The Cubans will probably be exploited again - like the Mexicans, and probably that's in our future, too. But it's the rhythm of History. Rinse and repeat.
 

Cuba announces it has exhausted all its fuel reserves: 'We have absolutely nothing'​

Cuba is definitively out of fuel. Cuban Minister of Energy and Mines Vicente de la O Levy announced Wednesday afternoon that the country has not a single drop of diesel or fuel oil left, vital for powering the country’s ailing electrical grid, which suffers from constant and increasingly prolonged blackouts. “We have absolutely no fuel oil, absolutely no diesel. We have no more reserves,” the minister explained in a televised statement. “Cuba is open to anyone who wants to sell us fuel,” he added, without mentioning the strict energy embargo imposed by the United States, which is tightening its grip while simultaneously maintaining an open channel of negotiation with the Castroist regime, which is seeking some room to maneuver while the population struggles to survive.

More:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mar...solutely-nothing/ar-AA23aAjx?ocid=socialshare
 

Cuba stockpiles drones and creates list of US targets, report says​

Cuba has reportedly spent recent years stockpiling more than 300 military drones from Russia and Iran and has discussed striking U.S. targets if relations continue to deteriorate, as President Donald Trump blockades the island and flirts with plans to “take” it over.

U.S. intelligence sources told Axios that while they don’t believe any threat is imminent, the acquisition effort has ramped up in the last month, as Cuba has sought to learn how Iran has used its large drone program to repel U.S. forces in the ongoing war. Military advisers from Tehran have been in Havana recently, the officials said.

More:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/worl...gets-report-says/ar-AA23qsRy?ocid=socialshare
 
searcher said:

Cuba stockpiles drones and creates list of US targets, report says​

Cuba has reportedly spent recent years stockpiling more than 300 military drones from Russia and Iran and has discussed striking U.S. targets if relations continue to deteriorate, as President Donald Trump blockades the island and flirts with plans to “take” it over.

U.S. intelligence sources told Axios that while they don’t believe any threat is imminent, the acquisition effort has ramped up in the last month, as Cuba has sought to learn how Iran has used its large drone program to repel U.S. forces in the ongoing war. Military advisers from Tehran have been in Havana recently, the officials said.

More:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/worl...gets-report-says/ar-AA23qsRy?ocid=socialshare
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So they can get shipments of military hardware but cant get any oil through? LOL. Next we will be hearing that Cuba has a massive weapons of mass destruction program and must be invaded immediately or the US could get nuked or attacked with chemical weapons.
 
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