Posted on 08/17/2007 3:40:28 PM PDT by Hi Heels
Castro: Cuba not cashing U.S. Guantanamo rent checks By Anthony Boadle 2 hours, 23 minutes ago
HAVANA (Reuters) - The United States pays Cuba $4,085 a month in rent for the controversial Guantanamo naval base, but Cuba has only once cashed a check in almost half a century and then only by mistake, Fidel Castro wrote in an essay published on Friday.
The ailing Cuban leader, who has not appeared in public for more than a year, said he had refused to cash the checks to protest the "illegal" U.S. occupation of the land which he said was now used for "dirty work."
"The base is needed to humiliate and to do the dirty work that occurs there," he said of the detention camp where some 355 terrorism suspects are still being held with no legal rights despite international criticism.
Castro, who turned 81 on Monday out of public sight, said the U.S. checks are made out to the "Treasurer General of the Republic," a position that ceased to exist after Cuba's 1959 revolution.
He said only one U.S. check was ever cashed -- in 1959 due to "confusion" in the heady early days of the leftist revolution.
Castro's refusal to cash the checks to protest the "illegal" occupation has been long known. In a television interview years ago, he showed the checks stuffed into a desk drawer in his office.
The final installment of Castro's long historical essay on Cuba's hostile relations with the United States -- written for future generations -- was published by the ruling Communist Party newspaper Granma.
The essay entitled "The Empire and the Independent Island" recounted Castro's view of U.S. efforts to control Cuba since U.S. troops landed on the island in the Spanish-American War that secured Cuban independence from Spain in 1898.
The United States retained 46.8 square miles (121 square kilometers) at the entrance to Guantanamo Bay in eastern Cuba for a naval base, which has been used as a prison camp for Taliban and al Qaeda terrorism suspects since the Afghanistan war following the September 11 attacks in 2001.
The base was initially a coaling station for the U.S. Navy to protect the approaches to the Panama Canal.
Castro said the enclave was "illegally usurped" by the United States, adding that the base no longer had any strategic military purpose in the age of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers packed with fast fighter-bombers.
"If we have to wait for the collapse of the (capitalist) system, we will wait," Castro wrote. He said Cuba was always on alert to the threat of a U.S. invasion.
Castro handed over power to his brother Raul on July 26 last year after undergoing emergency intestinal surgery. His health is a state secret, but few Cubans expect him to return to office.
The Cuban leader, the last of the major Cold War figures still alive, is seen as a Stalinist tyrant by his enemies but is widely admired in the Third World for standing up to the United States, a David-versus-Goliath role he has relished.
If that is correct, to stop making the payments means we would be giving up the base. I think that some time in the future when Cuba is no longer under a communist dictatorship we will leave Guantanamo.
Maybe someone who knows a lot about Guantanamo Bay can answer me this... Are we actually leasing this naval base from Cuba? If so, how much longer is the lease?
SNORK!!! Bwahahahahaaha!!!!
Whoa * * *
I think I pissed my pants from laughing so hard!
From wikipedia (of course, not always the most reliable internet source):
By the war’s end, the U.S. government had obtained control of all of Cuba from Spain. A perpetual lease for the area around Guantánamo Bay was offered February 23, 1903, from Tomás Estrada Palma, an American citizen, who became the first President of Cuba. The Cuban-American Treaty gave, among other things, the Republic of Cuba ultimate sovereignty over Guantánamo Bay while granting the United States “complete jurisdiction and control” of the area for coaling and naval stations.
A 1934 treaty reaffirming the lease granted Cuba and her trading partners free access through the bay, modified the lease payment from $2,000 in U.S. gold coins per year, to the 1934 equivalent value of $4,085 in U.S. dollars, and made the lease permanent unless both governments agreed to break it or the U.S. abandoned the base property.
Thanks man. Castro is screwed... :)
“The Cuban leader, the last of the major Cold War figures still alive, is seen as a Stalinist tyrant by his enemies but is widely admired in the Third World for standing up to the United States, a David-versus-Goliath role he has relished.”
Margaret Thatcher? Mikhail Gorbachev? LOL.
What about Helmut Kohl?
He went into the slaw business. *rimshot*
We took the island entirely in the Spanish American War and decided the island had nothing we wanted in the way of natural resources. Sugarcane didn't count. Be glad we decided to give it back and that we never decided to invade after Fidel took control. Imagine the strain on our welfare system! One thing we wouldn't have to mess with is the educational system. They're already exactly alike. In fact where it concerns public education, I think we copied them.
Methinks pretty soon Fidel is going to be “cashing in” all right.
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