nt.

...just as soon as we decide who will own what.

decades ago, and property owners who moved to Canada, Europe, Latin America, etc., everywhere but the U.S. already took the money and moved on. The people who moved to the U.S., or the companies already in the U.S. which owned property there refused to accept compensation.

The books were closed long ago with those owners, but the US-situated owners opted to hold out.

As Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, born in Cuba has said publicly, when her family moved to Florida they assumed one day the U.S. would overthrow Cuba's revolutionary government, and they would simply go back and move back into their homes.

Cuba's offer is still open.

There were some wealthy Cubans who stayed in Cuba, stayed in their homes, didn't leave. They remained in their homes. The ones who moved here after the revolution could have done the same, but many of them feared there would be retribution by the people who wanted the revolution, wanted to throw out the death squads, torturers, murderers, and institutional criminals and political crooks. Those people took off, and they also emptied the Cuban National Treasury on their way out as a token of their respect for the Cuban people.

Agribusiness has been plotting that for decades.

One of them opened a paladar (private restaurant) in their seaside home. We were taken there for lunch one day, a simple but elegant meal overlooking the ocean.

Other fancy houses have been taken over by government agencies or European/Asian corporations or foreign embassies.

Oh really Pope Ratzinger? What about women? Are women allowed the basic freedom to control their own reproduction? Aren't women unfairly burden when you deny them basic contraceptive care? What about children? Are they allowed to grow up free of molestation and abuse?

He needs to clear up his statement. What the Pope really meant was he wanted a society in which grown men weren't denied any freedoms.

"Pope Benedict XVI has criticised the 50-year-old US trade embargo imposed on Cuba, as he ends a visit to the island."

Who is he talking to? The guys running for President in his party (the GOP) are calling for the overthrow of the Castro brothers. Maybe Ratzinger has resigned himself to the reality that Obama will easily win re-election.

If Ratzinger wants to play politics, his ungodly wealthy empire can pay their fair share of taxes for the privelege.
NO EXCEPTIONS.

but why do we still have an embargo up? Why hasn't the President done anything about it? it should have been handled in 2009-2010 in my opinion.

As you've noticed all candidates for the Presidency and others beat a path to Miami every election season to court the same people and their families who triggered the revolution through their corruption, violence, and sense of entitlement when they were the big fish in Cuba's small pond.

They've acquired a power far outweighing their actual importance to this country by gaining control of Florida's state government, many electors, and through their appeal to the U.S. reactionary right-wing.

The right-wing and the Cuban "exiles" rammed through a law, the Helms-Burton, through which they gave themselves the power to override any Presidential decision to drop the embargo, so he no longer has the ability to remove it as long as there is right-wing control of Congress:

Obama Extends the U.S. Trade Embargo on Cuba

Andrew Nagy
Posted: September 15, 2011

The United States' trade embargo on Cuba, the longest such restriction in modern history, will continue for another year after President Obama signed legislation that extends the law on Tuesday.

The Trading With the Enemy Act, which was originally enacted in 1917 and gives the President the power to oversee and restrict the country's trading policy with enemies in times of war, was slated to end on Friday unless Obama intervened.

Obama, though, chose to extend the act, declaring in a memorandum to the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury: "I hereby determine that the continuation for one year of the exercise of those authorities with respect to Cuba is in the national interest of the United States."

The embargo would not have suddenly ended on Friday if Obama did not re-sign the Trading With the Enemy Act. Congress was granted the power to override a presidential decision to end the embargo when it passed the Helms-Burton Act of 1996.

Pelosi and Reid, when they were Congressional leaders, can get the ACA through but could not open up trade with Cuba.

Thanks for the info, though.