Word: havanas
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...good that the Cuban Revolution's 50th anniversary falls on Jan. 1. That's the day for New Year's resolutions, and it's time for Washington and Havana to make some big ones...
They can start by acknowledging that after 50 years of communist revolution in Cuba and counter-revolution from the U.S., both sides can claim only partial victories. Washington and Miami's Cuban exiles can say they kept the U.S. trade embargo against Havana intact. Yet they failed to dislodge Fidel Castro and his government and instead succeeded in alienating the rest of the hemisphere. Congratulations! The Castro regime can say it stood up to a half-century of yanqui aggression while proving that quality universal education and health care are doable. But the price - a basket-case economy...
...this year, will be fit enough to attend the celebration in Santiago de Cuba. In Miami, exile hard-liners are wrestling with a new Florida International University poll showing that a majority of Cuban-Americans there think the embargo should end. The question now is whether Washington and Havana can smell the cafe cubano, leave their cold-war time warp, enter the 21st century - and cease being an impediment to a hemisphere that's trying to do the same. (See the Top 10 News Stories...
...free speech. Raúl Castro said this month he would consider releasing some of those prisoners as a prelude to talks with Obama. He wants U.S. reciprocation, however - like freedom for the Cuban Five. They are Cuban agents who were convicted in Miami in 2001 of espionage but, Havana insists, were in the U.S. only to monitor exile groups that had allegedly aided in bombings of Cuban tourist hotels. A swap release of the five isn't likely. (A U.S. appellate panel did rule that their trial had not been fair, but another panel affirmed their convictions this year...
...parties don't act soon, they risk making the same hemispheric muddle of the first half of the 21st century that they made of the last half of the 20th. And they could also spend this century on the hemisphere's sidelines. The destroyer Admiral Chabanenko just visited Havana for five days - the first Russian warship to dock there since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 - and it symbolized to many how low U.S. influence has sunk in the Caribbean. Cuba, meanwhile, was invited this month to a regional summit in Brazil from which the U.S. was excluded - a reminder...