Cuba would be a great travel destination.
Their cigars aren't as on par anymore as far as I know, but there's potential there, Nicaragua and Dominican Republic basically make the best ones last I checked.
Nicaragua and Dominican Republic are garbage compared to Cubans, still to this day. Several times while in the US (where I've lived in the past few years) I tried to smoke non-cuban cigars. Not once I found something that was remotely close to the worse cuban I've had.
My basic understanding is because of two factors: 1. The tobacco doesn't grow anywhere else like it does in Cuba. It's an island with very specific combination of soil and weather that can't be replicated. The tobacco leafs are huge in Cuba and that makes a big difference when making a cigar which ideally should use as few leafs as possible. 2. The best workers that know how to select, blend and roll a cigar are still all in Cuba. Other countries tried to replicate but they don't come close in terms of skills and knowledge.
I don't have sources for the two factors above but my experience tells me it adds up.
I only heard people complimenting non-cuban cigars here in the US. Nowhere else. Which sounds fair or else the entire cigar industry would have gone bankrupt without access to the best stuff. Overtime you won't find people in the US who understands what a cuban cigar is like because they have no exposure to it.
While the tobacco itself is unbeatable, Cuban cigars have quality control issues. You regularly run into draw issues, for example. Aging is typically required for best experience, which also isn't easy.
I smoke Olivas and Arturo Fuentes regularly, despite having access to Cubans.
I'll try those 2 you mentioned and see if it's to my taste. Dona Flor, made in Brazil, are pretty decent. Unfortunately they are not easy to come by near where I live.
Arturo Fuente Hemingway Short Story is quick, and an alternative to the Trinidad Reyes in that respect. Different taste profile, of course.
In both cases — not Cubans, so no grassiness, and heavier, but not bad at all.
It's been a while since I visited places outside the US, but one of the shocking things was travel ads for Cuba everywhere.
From what I can tell, US-Cuban relations seem to be at the whim of the US President. Most of the US population doesn't care; most of the rest of the world has fine relations with Cuba, but isn't going to pressure the US. Nobody is sending missiles to Cuba anymore.
Or are they?
https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/12/americas/russian-navy-cuba-in...
What about propaganda where he will capture the whole EU after Ukraine?
You mean his own words? https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-ally-warns-enemy-...
The only time he makes the news in the west is when he mentions nuking some random European country, which for the record happens quite frequently.
You should never take anything he says seriously.
He's there to blow things out of proportion locally, he just happens to be translated from time to time for clicks. There's no significance to his words. He doesn't speak on behalf of Putin, he's not there to leak some super-secret internal plans for the future, he's just there to yap about how Russia can totally take over the entire Europe.
Russia is just barely sustaining its war with Ukraine and the production capacity behind restocking destroyed and lost supplies. Never mind a war with NATO, unless they're willing to use nukes and risk utterly destroying themselves, and I don't quite think Putin is that insane. Even if he is, I don't think those surrounding him are, and their sycophancy would rapidly evaporate if faced with a real, immediate threat of their boss unleashing something that makes their decades of hard-stolen self-enrichment become irrelevant.
As a practical matter, Americans can travel to Cuba without much trouble. Several of my friends have gone.
When Florida was a swing state, that was enough to make every presidential candidate be pro embargo.
Now that Florida is a red state, it might be different.
"No, absolutely not. Don't even waste your time considering it. Castro ruined it and it will never be the same".
I think the moral is that for many Cubans the embargo isn't against the people, it's against the Cuban government, and they genuinely hate the government with every fiber of their existence. They hate what Castro took from them and have no dissolutions that letting up the embargo would strengthen that governments rule while only providing minuscule benefits to the people. Until the government regime changes in Cuba, any pressure we can apply is worth it.
It was a traumatic event in his father’s life. There is no illogic in despising the people and organizations that brought about that misery on his father.
The answer to this question is so obvious I have trouble believing you are asking in good faith.
Most of the rest of the world didn't get Soviet nuclear missiles pointed at them by Cuba.
https://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/23/opinion/castro-wanted-a-n...
Castro not only accepted the missiles, he demanded they be used: https://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/23/opinion/castro-wanted-a-n...
If you are arguing this is normal or in some way explainable, I don't know what to tell you. There is ample reason why relations aren't good and you cannot exclusively blame others (the US) for it.
Most people fleeing Cuba blame current regime for their suffering with good reason. So they have a desire to see it overthrown.
Florida is important in Presidential elections.
US elections are structured such that dumb stuff like a relatively small—but loud—and also hopeless interest in a single US state can influence policy and make a whole bunch more lives worse for no good reason.
AFAIK that’s basically the story.
We have sanctions on Cuba for the same reason we have sanctions on Russia and Venezuela now- we don't want to fund what their government is doing, and allying with them gives us little to nothing in return.
That said, it's pretty obvious that economic sanctions aren't bringing about regime change. I don't think anyone has the stomach for putting boots on the ground, though.
Seems more likely sanctions would cause a steady state where the sanctioned country is some n months/years behind where it would otherwise be, speaking as a complete geopolitical layman anyway.
On the flip side, you have China, where US pretty much helped build up their economy and hoped for a peaceful and democratic outcome. How well did that go?
and yet US is spending taxpayer money to defend Ukraine.
"So?
I'd rather live in the modern day, "unequally" with the rich, than starve or die of disease equally with the rich of the middle ages.
Just because the rich have 100Xed in quality of life over the last century, doesn't negate the fact that the poor have 10Xed in quality of life.
Making everyone equal is easy. Just make them all equally dead, starving, or miserable, just like they were in past centuries."
Shows a lack of historical knowledge. If all were so miserable, how did they built the greatest civilization, Christendom? Did Newton or Leibniz starve to death? The picture you are drawing here of past centuries is ahistorical and completely disregards the unbelievable quality of art and architecture that was possible during times where people were, according to you, "dead, starving, or miserable". (As if they aren't today.)
I don't want to live at all. I would kill myself immediately did I not fear God, Christ, and eternal damnation.
Thats the point. They are taking nothing but losses. All for some land that is now worthless after the war.
Oh they are absolutely have motivations against their own people dieing in the hundreds of thousands and they have motivations against them losing significant military assets and having massive amounts of economic damages.
Those are normal motivations they every county has.
That's why the best way to get them to change behavior is to "motivate" them with those consequences.
Current analysis is that Russia has maybe another year and a half left in their war before it ends due to these "motivational factors".
Still a ways to go, but manageable.
Those machines are not fit for a war with China, which is our current fear, and have to be replaced anyway. It literally costs obscene amounts of money to scrap and disarm them, but it turns out it's very cheap to let them save a few Ukrainian lives.
Nearly every dollar "spent" for Ukraine was either spent in the 80s military build up or is loaned to Ukraine so they can purchase our stuff.
The Russia/USSR transition is more akin to that of the Roman Republic to the Principate/Dominate. Or the different stages of other closely related empires throughout history after dealing with internal regime, partial reversals and so forth.
Even Putin sees Russia/USSR as parts of a organic historic continuum, and this is a key component of his rhetoric. That the USSR's territorial losses are Russia's losses and must be reversed if Russia it to "save face" and so on.
USSR was a necessary collaborator in this invasion.
Recent events have shown that to be very much not the case. Over the past few weeks we've had news of the Russian Navy paying port calls and the Chinese building major signals intelligence capabilities. Wouldn't it be better to have them as an ally?
It's always interesting to contrast our relationships with Cuba vs Vietnam. We fought a long hot war with Vietnam yet today we have good relations with them. Obviously we can't say we would have a good relationship with Cuba if we had been nicer to them but it certainly makes me think.
I strongly suspect the possibility of normalizing relations while the Castros held power would have been impossible.
I had actually expected some progress on this front after they got new blood in a few years ago, but he's much the same, and given their relations with other sanctioned countries like North Korea, and calling Israel a terrorist state, I don't really see much desire for change from either side.
Many senior government officials over the years, including then Vice President Cheney, have plainly said that our interest in Venezuela is their oil. The sanctions, as in any country, are about wanting control over their resources.
What is their government doing that is so terrible?
Anyway let's suppose Cuba is a brutal dictatorship, even though it really isn't by any metric. Why are there no sanctions on Saudi Arabia? Why no sanctions on Taiwan during the white terror? Why no sanctions on Chile when they threw alive protesters from flying helicopters? I could go on for a while.
Surviving while Communist.
The thing is that people would get killed for disagreeing even under Batista. If your family was happy with Batista then I don't think they were in a clean line of business.
Now let's try practicing some empathy: How would you feel if I just took that from you?
Other than the revolutionary war from 1776 to 1785, the other break we had was from 1812-1815 during the War of 1812.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom%E2%80%93United_...
It’s a tale as old as time!
The bright side is, despite the suffering involved, moving to America is the greatest thing that could have happened to my family.
Russians were more aligned with usa tho...
2. As for Bulgaria...not deporting Jews to their death for one small period of time != lack of antisemitism in the past few hundred years.
According to the USHMM,[1] Bulgaria's actions in World War Two included:
Instituting laws that, among other things, forbid Jews from marrying non-Jews and restricted where Jews could live and what jobs they could have.
Deporting Jews who were not in Bulgaria pre-war (its borders expanded) to their deaths.
Sending Jews to slave labor camps. [1]https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/bulgaria
So, no, Bulgaria was antisemitic in the past few hundred years.
Most of the examples of antisemitic repression in Poland took place during the post-partition era in the 19th century, when Poland was ruled by Russia, and Poles themselves faced similar repression by the Russian authorities.
It is actually interesting, a state converting to single-party rule significantly reduces the electoral leverage it has.
Obama won it in 2012.
That isn't that long ago in electoral cycles.
They should've learned from the French making sure there's nobody left to hold a grudge.
The comment pokes fun at people holding grudges for that long, on behalf of their ancestors, and at the whole situation in general. Ultimately is is meant to make people think whether demanding reparations from a less well-off people is really a better idea than just moving on. If everyone held grudges like that, no two people on earth would have good relations and we'd all sit in our little caves brooding over some slight our neighbor's ancestors inflicted on our family ten generations ago.
No, I'm not arguing for genocide. But thanks for the laugh.
I received a compensation 60 years after WW2, but it was few thousand euros (many generations have passed). And by the way it was the polish, not Ukrainian government that compensated us.
I can tell you, not just the US.
See: farmers having an absolute chokehold on the EU despite virtually everyone hating them, and them only being a tiny percentage of population, votes or GDP.
Essentially, it's because producing food doesn't give you the right to be pampered by everyone else and make economically bad decisions.
In Europe specifically, it would be in part because of the "tractor protests" where tractors were mass driven into city centers in protest, especially the Netherlands because they didn't like being restricted on nitrogen pollution. It would be especially irksome when you can get most peoples' votes for bad policy just by saying "support farmers, they grow your food." Except that all that nitrogen in the Netherlands goes to actually growing exported food ($$)...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/16/nitrogen...
And that still doesn't explain the continual drain happening, to this day, as is evidenced by this very article we're commenting on. What, are these 10% also filthy capitalists somehow?
As a Serb whose parents fled an eerily similar situation to Cuba's way back when for greener pastures to the literal other side of the planet, this thing where people blame the citizens rather than the worthless piece of shit government for fleeing these socialist hellholes is always an amusing one for me.
Are we sure and can be trust that this numbers are really correct?
Alternative hypothese: Maybe a part of this people "left the country" in 2022 by covid 19 and statistics were masked to avoid public embarrassment. I would not bet against it.
Democrats took an L for freedom, prosperity and common sense and Republicans capitalized to win back the presidency.
Anyone who believes the US acts to punish evil authoritarians in defense of freedom and democracy is delusional. Look at our allies in the middle east.
Why does not the Communist regime in Cuba "open up"? Because they know the day Cuba becomes a multiparty state with elections -- they have to run out of the country. Both Cuban and Venezuelan elite along with many Caribbean states are active in Drug Dealings and Money Laundering.
Yes, the hawks in US have a role but they are not only active players, there are hawks in Cuba too.
Do something horrible to your neighbour - be surprised that he doesn't keep good behaviour torwards you.
bottom of the hn guidelines:
Japan declared war on the US. Didn't surrender when it became obvious they were going to lose and instead decided to inflict as many casualties on the as they could on the way down. So they got nuked.
> Why the US is keeping Israel as their toy?
The US inherited a lot of messes after WWII. Not really the US fault the Palestinians always make bad choices.
> Why the US entered the Vietnam war (hint: no, not to avoid the spread of communism)
Hint you are 100% self servingly wrong about that.
> US is the bad boy of this planet, just because they can
I've come to the opinion people that say this are upset that the US stands in the way of some nastiness they want to inflict on someone.
Careful visiting if you want to use the ESTA to visit the United States.
https://ogletree.com/insights-resources/blog-posts/u-s-visa-...
Florida to stop being a swing state? We are almost there..
It's irrelevant. Hard-line socialist countries don't voluntarily decide to change their government: their countries collapse and start over again.
While sanctions on Cuba are irrelevant to the US these days, it doesn't change the fact that Cuba would be a dysfunctional society in any case. Venezuela was a resource rich nation and 7.7 million people fled (>20% of the population). The Soviet Union was one of the most resource-rich entities in the world, with similar failures.
I find it somewhat astonishing that people in tech—an industry built around the belief that well-built systems can produce good results—are so dismissive of the role of agency when it comes to these issues. Somehow it's America's fault that people are leaving Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico... and left to their own devices, those places would be paradise.
This is true of any regime which refuses to adapt to reality. And in any case it's more or less tautological: a "hardliner" is defined precisely by the refusal to budge even when it might be to their benefit.
Trump reverted the relationship back to Cold War status when he took office.
If you understand the origin of the sanctions against Cuba, you know the answer to this question is that the US wants control over Cuba and their resources.
There are many similar destinations, and all of them are still poor. Besides, Cuba has already tourists from Canada and Europe.
My guess their best chance is to start manufacturing for cheap. Close to US makes them more competitive. But for this to happen commies government has to go.
You’re going to need sources on that. Cubans are still the best dollar for dollar.
Open the doors to US investors to exploit every single resource Cuba has to offer.
Kicking out Batista the dictator and closing those doors was the reason sanctions were applied in the first place.