Posted on 04/10/2015 2:27:44 PM PDT by jfd1776
The following transcript could not be authenticated. It was broadcast from a wiretap accidentally placed in a conference room in Havana, but with the generally low quality of the antiquated electronics available in Cuba, some of the audio was muffled… and there’s always the little matter of questionable translations from the Spanish… but here is what we have, submitted for your consideration without any warranty whatsoever...
Lead Voice #1: Let’s get to work, men. I meet with the Great Satan tomorrow.
Underling Voice A: You’re dying, boss?
Lead Voice #1: No, you idiot, I mean the president of the United States! (Who took this fool off my prisoner list and let him back in the politburo, anyway?)… We need to work out our final list of demands to allow them to reopen an embassy here.
Underling Voice B: We should probably start with reparations, sir.
Lead Voice #1: REPARATIONS??? I’m not paying reparations! We confiscated those billions of dollars worth of land and businesses and accounts over fifty years ago! The statute of limitations is long past!
Underling Voice B: Sorry, sir, I didn’t mean that… although technically, umm… there isn’t really any statute of limitations on nationalization of another country’s property… anyway… the thing is, maybe we could get the USA to pay us reparations.
Lead Voice #1: Interesting… keep talking…
Underling Voice B: Well, you know how they’ve refused to do business with us for over 50 years? We could charge them for all the lost profit from all the import/export trade, and tourist trade, and cigar sales, and sugar sales, and so forth, that we’ve suffered due to the USA refusing to do business with us.
Lead Voice #1: You said the word “profit.” I hate that word. Don’t ever say that again.
Underling Voice B: Oh yes, of course, I’m sorry sir. Perhaps there’s another word we could use in the final documents. So here’s what I was thinking, if we just look at the commercial activity we had with the United States during the 1950s, and extend the graph forward to the present, converting the figures as we go along to adjust for inflation, we could claim that the US sanctions have cost our state coffers many tens of billions of dollars’ worth of unrealized profit, and…
(Loud gunshot noise is heard, followed by a thud, like something falling to the floor)
Lead Voice #1: I said not to say that word again. Someone remove the body. With age, my nose has grown sensitive…
Underling Voice C: Good shot, sir. Um…. I didn’t realize you still carried.
Lead Voice #1: Every day. Everywhere. You never know when you may need to enforce the law. There are traitors to the revolution everywhere you look. Always be wary… Now, where were we? Oh yes, the reparations idea. I like that. Can someone continue?
Underling Voice A: Well, sir, um, what I think Jose was saying was that we can go into the negotiations with a graph showing how much the USA’s economic sanctions have cost us over the past 50-plus years, and demand payment of that delta as a condition of building an embassy. Worth a try, huh?
Lead Voice #1: But everything we would have sold them, we just sold to Russia, Venezuela, Europe, everyone else. We can only make so many cigars; there’s only so much sugar… Wouldn’t we have lost all those other sales if we’d sold it all to the Great Satan?
Underling Voice A: We don’t have to talk about that, boss. Nobody expects them to fight us on anything; they want to build an embassy here.
Lead Voice #1: Hmm… Well, I don’t understand it, but okay. Make it a condition. Next idea?
Underling Voice C: Let’s set a minimum quantity of cigars that they have to buy every year.
Lead Voice #1: Or what?
Underling Voice C: Or… um… or we nationalize their embassy again.
Lead Voice #1: Okay, I know how to do that… put it in. Minimum number of cigars. Say, two billion cigars per year.
Underling Voice C: That’s a fifth of the total U.S. market, boss! We can’t expect that!
Lead Voice #1: Fine. Then we confiscate their embassy. Put it in. Done. Next idea?
Underling Voice A: How about we require that the USA drop us from their formal list of Sponsors of Terrorism? That could be really helpful with buying products on the world market, bidding for engineering contracts on sensitive technologies, getting back our frozen accounts in US banks… we could finally reopen some of our old factories…
Lead Voice #1: We’re never going to stop sponsoring terrorism. What’s wrong with you? It’s what we do, it’s what we’ve always done. Where would the FARC be without us, hmmm? Where would Maduro be in Venezuela, hmmm? Don’t you EVER propose that again, you traitor to the revolution!
Underling Voice A: I’M SORRY SIR!!!! I’m so sorry… that’s not what I meant…. I didn’t mean we had to actually change anything, just that we want them to remove us from the list.
Lead Voice #1: You mean we don’t have to stop sponsoring terrorism for them to stop identifying us as a sponsor of terrorism???
Underling Voice A: Right, boss. We can keep doing what we’re doing… we just have to tell them to remove our designation to free up our economic activity.
Lead Voice #1: I see. Good. That makes sense then. We’ll then have enough money to ramp up our efforts in the jungles of Colombia again. We haven’t been able to support FARC the past few years anywhere near as well as I’d like. Our surrogates haven’t bumped off a judge down there in months…
Underling Voice A: Yes indeed, sir! You can spend all the new profits any way you want to, sir!
(Loud gunshot noise is heard, followed by a thud, like something falling to the floor)
Lead Voice #1: I SAID to never use that word. Don’t people ever learn? Anyway… it’s a good idea. Keep it in. Next idea?
Underling Voice C: Guantanamo Bay, sir?
Lead Voice #1: What about it, man?
Underling Voice C: We could demand it back, sir!
Lead Voice #1: What? The USA has held Guantanamo Bay twice as long as we’ve been in power… they’ll never give it back!
Underling Voice C: But their president hates having it there. He doesn’t want it. He wants us to get it back.
Lead Voice #1: You think they’d give us a military base they use as a prison, a training ground, a refueling stop, and a spy base? They’d have to be idiots to give it up. I don’t believe it.
Underling Voice C: Well, we can’t be sure it would get through congress, sir, but the president WANTS to close it. If we demanded it back as a condition of letting them reopen their embassy, then he’d have an easy way to close the prison, and then he could maybe go over the heads of people who know better, and get the public to support giving it all back!
Lead Voice #1: But what would happen to all those Islamic terrorists they’re holding there?
Underling Voice C: I don’t know. He’d let them go, I guess. That’s what he always does.
Lead Voice #1: Bloodthirsty, vicious lunatics. Hmm… Are there any bomb-making experts among them? Any snipers? Any chemical weapons experts?
Underling Voice C: I don’t know, boss. I could find out, I guess. I think the prisoners’ dossiers are available somewhere…
Lead Voice #1: Good. Find out. Get their resumes. And I like the idea. We’ll keep it in … we’ll not only get the dirty Americans off our island, we might get a few dozen new recruits as part of the package. Make sure the deal includes the prisoners. Make it conditional on that. I don’t want Guantanamo unless I get those terrorists too!
Underling Voice C: Yes, sir! We’ll put it right in the document. It’ll be one of our non-negotiable demands, sir. We’re definitely going to make the USA pay, this time. Man, they’ll give us everything we want. Heh heh… this could be really funny, if we get it all, the document that gets us off the Sponsors of Terror list can provide us with new terrorists to unleash on our enemies! This dinner of yours with their fool boss is going to turn one heck of a profit, sir! I mean… Oops… I mean…
(Loud gunshot noise is heard, followed by a thud, like something falling to the floor)
Lead Voice #1: Next? Next? Hmmm… we still have more work to do… (yelling loudly now) Hey, people! Get me some more underlings in here! We have work to do! And clean up this place; it’s a mess!
(end transmission).
Copyright 2015 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicago-based international transportation consultant, amateur actor, and recovering politician. His columns are published regularly in Illinois Review.
This is a work of fiction. Any similarity with any person, country or event is somewhat coincidental. For the real details of the dangerous foreign policy negotiations discussed here, see the Washington Times or other similarly reputable sources.
Permission is hereby granted to forward freely, provided it is uncut and the IR URL and byline are included. Follow John F. Di Leo on Facebook or LinkedIn, or on Twitter at @johnfdileo, or on his own webpage at www.johnfdileo.com.
Obama would not see this as humor, but, rather, a gold mine of good ideas. I suspect Obama is going to pour money on the Castros along with any opening of a US embassy.
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