Viva Cuba! Viva!

Like a lot of people I have been a little disappointed with the results of Barack Obama's presidency. His "Obama-care" health policy changes were strangled at birth by an implacable Republican party, sentencing millions of indigent Americans to third class medical care or, in many cases, no care at all. But in areas where he could have made a difference he has been depressingly silent- like the Israel/Palestine question, where he has been no more effective than his predecessor, who as we recall was no help at all beyond coining that catchy phrase "the road map to peace" Now there's a road less travelled...


However, in the last couple of weeks we have seen two significant pronouncements coming out of the White House. First, nearly seven years after saying he would do something about the detainees at Guantanamo Bay, he has at last released some of the prisoners. Good work, though I understand there are still many people still held there without charge for more than ten years. But it's a start.


Then yesterday he announced a thawing of relations with their old enemy, Cuba. America loved Cuba under Baptista. He was their kind of leader: ultra-right wing, putting the interests of big business (especially American big business) before the concerns of the ordinary citizen. And naturally they were horrified when Castro and co. ousted that hated dictatorship and began to build roads, schools and hospitals that even the poorest could benefit from. Indeed, so horrified were they that JFK authorised a highly speculative counter revolution to take things back to the good old feudal days. The attempt was an embarrassing failure, and ever since in an attack of pique that has lasted nearly fifty years, they have slapped a trade embargo on that already impoverished country, thereby depriving it of the enormous market that lay only ninety miles to the north.


Now it seems all this hatred and paranoia is going to come to an end, with normal diplomatic relations being resumed and perhaps a lifting of the embargo only just around the corner. Nice one Mr President! I was beginning to wonder if you were ever going to do anything to justify the huge wave of optimism that surrounded your election way back in 2008.