{"id":7188,"date":"2004-10-12T12:48:11","date_gmt":"2004-10-12T19:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2004\/10\/12\/and-well-be-watching.html"},"modified":"2004-10-12T12:48:11","modified_gmt":"2004-10-12T19:48:11","slug":"and_well_be_wat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/10\/12\/and_well_be_wat.html","title":{"rendered":"“And we’ll be watching!”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I fully agree that the Castro regime in Cuba is a repressive, evil bunch of bastards, and we’ll all be better off when he and they are gone. <\/p>\n

That said, US foreign policy viz <\/em>Cuba remains bizarre due to the truckling of both parties to the vocal Cuban-American population in swing state Florida. For all that Cuba is and does (and shame on those glitterati who hob-nob with its leadership whilst dissidents rot in Cuban prisons), it is certainly no worse than other countries that the US does business with (China and Saudi Arabia come to mind).<\/p>\n

Which means that oddities like this news blurb<\/a> just makes me roll my eyes:<\/p>\n

The [US Treasury Dept.] notice also clarifies that Americans are barred from not only purchasing Cuban goods in foreign countries, but also from consuming them in those countries.<\/p>\n

The penalties for violating the prohibitions include maximum criminal fines for individuals of $250,000 and imprisonment for up to 10 years. Corporations can be fined as much as a million dollars.<\/p>\n

See? Not only are US citizens barred from importing Cuban goods (except with certain restrictions), but they are barred from buying them when in another country<\/em>, or even consuming them while there.<\/em><\/p>\n

I don’t smoke, but the next time I’m overseas, I’m tempted to buy and smoke a nice Cuban cigar in protest to such silliness. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I fully agree that the Castro regime in Cuba is a repressive, evil bunch of bastards, and we’ll all be better off when he and they are gone. That said,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitical-brouhaha"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2674,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/05\/20\/they_call_me_cu.html","url_meta":{"origin":7188,"position":0},"title":"They call me Cuban Pete …","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 20-May-02 9:26am","format":false,"excerpt":"Fidel Castro is an autocratic thug who, ostensibly in the name of the Cuban people, has led his country through decades of repression and tyranny. But you can say the...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":131676,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/09\/29\/trump-cuba-and-no-surprise-more-lies.html","url_meta":{"origin":7188,"position":1},"title":"Trump, Cuba, and (no surprise) more Lies","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 29-Sep-16 7:44am","format":false,"excerpt":"While no fan of the Castro regime (no, oppressive and authoritarian governments are not a good thing), it was clear for decades that the US economic embargo of the island was driven less by geopolitcal attempts to correct human rights abuses and more by trying to garner support from Florida's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":133695,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/06\/16\/trump-postures-pugnaciously-on-cuba.html","url_meta":{"origin":7188,"position":2},"title":"Trump postures pugnaciously on Cuba","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 16-Jun-17 12:41pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Though portraying it all as a get-tough crack-down on a tyrannical regime that he says was aided and abetted by Obama, Trump's new policy plans on Cuba don't seem to actually do all that much.Calling out Cuba for special draconian treatment in the face of human rights violations is, of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":39406,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/10\/29\/the-cuban-embargo.html","url_meta":{"origin":7188,"position":3},"title":"The Cuban Embargo","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 29-Oct-13 9:47pm","format":false,"excerpt":"While I'm no particular fan of the government of Cuba or its human rights policies in a number of ways, I'm by no means convinced that they are any worse than, say, China. Or Saudi Arabia. Or any number of countries that the use tolerates and\/or cozies up to for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":133696,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/06\/17\/tweetizen-trump-2017-06-17-cuba-libre.html","url_meta":{"origin":7188,"position":4},"title":"Tweetizen Trump – 2017-06-17: "Cuba Libre!"","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 17-Jun-17 10:31am","format":false,"excerpt":"After two days of screedifying about the Russia investigations, Donald, how could you possibly follow up on that?You pivoted to sunny Cuba!Your Social Media Minions posted about remarks you made (video! transcripts) on your new Cuba policy [1P], and on a memorandum \"Strengthening the Policy of the United States Toward\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/Trump%2Bhuman%2Brights%2Bcuba.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/Trump%2Bhuman%2Brights%2Bcuba.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/Trump%2Bhuman%2Brights%2Bcuba.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":49005,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/12\/17\/normalizing-relations-with-cuba-about-time.html","url_meta":{"origin":7188,"position":5},"title":"Normalizing relations with Cuba? About time","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 17-Dec-14 8:34pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I mean, really -- Nixon went to China in 1972. We have embassies in Russia. Viet Nam is a trading partner. We maintained an embassy in Caracas all during Hugo Chavez' reign. We trade and have diplomatic ties with all sorts of countries whose policies don't please us. The US\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7188\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}