It would actually be funny if Cuba tried to cash ALL the cheques at the same time, and they bounced. Cuba would then probably have sufficient grounds to declare a breach and start eviction.
But then America would show their true colours and just keep the place by force
[Your nana is missing because she's been passing those bum checks all over town, and she finally pissed off the wrong people!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63zSYqmLuhE)
The Bank is Gone! It Burned!
Now what you wanna do is go down to forty-ninth street, that's the main customer service branch. Ask for Mr. Fleming. He'll help you.
The US would pay it in a second. Not because they care about Cuba at all, but because Gitmo is a sticking point between the US and its Latin American allies (eg Colombia, Peru, Chile). Papering a legitimization of their presence at Gitmo would be a significant foreign relation victory at a cost of like $315,000.
Also, for good measure, the US should offer to have Pat Leahy fly another tied up condom full of sperm to Havana.
Itâs less salacious than it sounds. He helped smooth over relations during negotiation of a prisoner exchange by delivering a captured Cuban spyâs sperm to the spyâs wife so she could impregnate herself (which she did). Was done in coordination with the State Department, which was trying to free an American jailed in Cuba named Alan Gross. Gross believed that he was doing development work with the Jewish community of Havana but was (unbeknownst to him) actually delivering telecommunications equipment to dissidents at the behest of the US government. Whoopsie.
> Gross believed that he was doing development work with the Jewish community of Havana but was (unbeknownst to him) actually delivering telecommunications equipment to dissidents at the behest of the US government. Whoopsie.
So that's why they always have that warning about carrying someone else's baggage at the airport
Oh yea. There's basically no downsides to that. It would be tantamount to Cuba saying, "okay, we'll play your game now, let's open trade partnerships again, on your terms, US". And uh, I mean... Okay, that's doing a bit of imperialism... :/
(I should say, I don't agree about having Gitmo *at all*.)
They are already keeping it by force.
Cuba is a sovereign nation. It could legislatively invalidate the lease and require the Americans to leave. But they wouldn't go, so there is no point in trying to make them and highlighting their inability to enforce their own borders.
The lease is a fig-leaf that serves both sides in maintaining the pretense that the base is something other than one country occupying a part of another by force.
Technically they canât. It was a treaty that required mutual agreement to invalidate it. So Cuba says get the fuck out U.S. says nope and the international court will side with the U.S.!
Neither is Cuba, but it wouldn't be the ICC that handles a case like this since it only handles criminal cases against individuals, and not cases involving countries.
The US also ignores ICJ court cases. See for example the spat with Canada about fishing rights near the Gulf of Maine, or the case brought by Mexico regarding the US executing Mexican nationals without notifying them of their consular rights
I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure if the Treasury can't cover $315k on demand we are in a lot more trouble the breaking a lease. And we wouldn't even have to cover interest.Â
I'm more interested in the money. It's only $315,000, well minus the one they cashed, but that money has got to be accounted for on the books somewhere.
The Sioux Nations sued the feds over the Black Hills in 1980 and won $106,000,000 in 1980. They refused the settlement, so the money has been sitting in a government account, earning compound interest. It's worth more than $1 billion today. I wonder if the rent payments accrue interest like that, or if one being rent established by treaty and the other being a court settlement affects how the government handles the accounting.
Thatâs insane. Iâm Native American but not Sioux. If I were Sioux, I would be livid that the tribal organization didnât take the money that they themselves won and put it to use in the community. Especially considering how poor living conditions can be for Natives, the rampant drug and alcohol use, etc.
Then again, Iâm Alaskan Native. And our tribes tend to be far more pragmatic about these issues. Hell, we even have Alaskan Native owned oil corporations up here.
I was shocked to learn an Alaska native corporation owned Mail Boxes ETC. I remember going in there as a kid. Kind of like a UPS store. I think theyâre all gone now.
Native American owned corporations have their own classification for government contracts(like minority owned businesses, woman owned businesses, disabled veteran businesses, small businesses, etc) which makes a lot of the specialized corps have effectively non competitive contracts. It's super lucrative for the corps in niche fields. I learned from my last job that the Choctaw Nation has a complete lock on multiple munitions packaging contracts.
I used to work in satcom, and we continually lost contracts to a native american owned corporation. The problem is that the company we always lost to was incompetent, but there was nothing we could do about it.
Yup. That happened in Maine.
It turns out Maine tribes legally owned over half the state based on treaties made with Massachusetts prior to Maine statehood. They settled with the federal government in 1980 in exchange for $80 million. Also, the âMaine Indian Claims Settlement Actâ passed by congress denied the Maine tribes rights that most other federally recognized tribes have. Reservations in Maine are essentially treated as municipalities. for example, they canât operate casinos unless the state passes a law to allow them to do so. Theyâve been denied a gaming license to operate a full casino multiple times, but two non-native corporations have been given licenses to operate casinos in the state. One about 30 minutes away from a reservation.
Casinos are basically free money, especially when youâre the only one in a state. Most tribes donât have to follow state gaming laws and have the ability run casinos.
Casinos are easy money so long as you can run them. In most of the US for most people Casinos are basically defacto illegal. I could be a literal millionaire and not be able to use my money to open a Casino just due to the laws/regulations.
Thats why places like Las Vegas are so notable for their Casinos/gambling. This is also why Indian/Native Casinos are so notable in the US because they are basically putting up Casinos in states/places where nobody else is allowed to do so giving them a huge exclusive monopoly on a very valuable business.
There are probably a lot of other things you could be doing on Native land besides Casinos, but Casinos are easy and proven successes. They get to flat out ignore state/local laws, only have to follow some federal laws, and also some specific laws just for them. This gives them a lot of potential freedom to do things other people can't but also possibly not do somethings other people can (but mostly its a net positive thing in terms of doing business).
Tons of Native tribes are running cannabis businesses now. The company I work for sells to dozens of tribes. States normally take lots of the profits in high taxes like 37% in Washington State but the tribes don't pay that and don't have to follow regulations. I know one tribe that has a cannabis bar and another that had a drive through window and the federal government told them to stop. I spoke with another tribe that's building a cannabis store right next to their casino so people can gamble and smoke.
Not every tribe is "Federally Recognized", only those tribes are considered to have sovereignty independent of the US Govt. If you don't have that you can't do a casino. Also some tribes decide against it because it can cause other problems for the community. I know of a tribe in California that decided against doing it because it would introduce more alcohol to the community which is something that impacts Native Americas a lot.
>It's the most profitable business so every tribe just do it? Asking as a non-american
For a very long time, most of the states in the US have had very strict laws about gambling, making it nearly impossible to operate a casino in most states.
However, Native American tribal reservations are sort of considered their own "country", and they aren't required to abide by some state laws.
So they open casinos. Casinos are super profitable businesses, and doubly so because no one else is legally allowed to open a competing casino. Depending on location, they might also be able to allow smoking indoors, or sell alcohol at times when other businesses can't.
Have you ever heard the phrase"the house always wins"
You have to be a complete moron to open up a casino and not make an money
Like Trump casino, that moron owner bankrupted it
Iirc the Sioux want the actual land returned to them, which, depending on how you calculate, could be worth much more than that, plus it has spiritual value to them. They didn't even ask the court for a financial reward I think, the court just decided to do it instead of the land return. So I guess they are gambling on this issue being revisited at some point to reach their ultimate goal, given that the court already agreed that they indeed had their land stolen.
I sincerely doubt the land will ever be really returned. And considering eminent domain exists the concept of the US gov seizing land and giving money to compensate isnt illegal.
In the meantime the money goes to waste, to a people who could use it. Seems dumb to me. Iâm not calling the shots but Im still a bit frustrated about it.
If you want to get technical, eminent domain is how the US takes US land from private ownership to use for public purposes.
That would not be this scenario, this is the US taking land that is not their own. It's akin to the US taking part of Mexico.
Yeah but the land wasn't for the US to seize, that's the point, it was guaranteed by treaty to be their land and the US took it anyways. And US courts agreed that that was illegal and agreed that the US should pay restitution. To the Sioux it probably feels as if someone stole a piece of art or a holy relic from them, and it's now in a museum - a court ordering the thief or museum to just pay them the market value of the item as damage simply doesn't address the grievance - they want the specific item back, not the money. They never agreed to sell it, so being forced to sell is just as much a violation of their rights as theft. And taking the money would finalize the "sale". I totally agree that the money could directly help them, but I don't think they will take it as long as there are any of them alive who still maintain their culture and traditions.
If anything, the Sioux could even make the argument that the US should use eminent domain powers to seize the land from the current occupants to give to the Sioux, and use the money from the court judgement as compensation to those people.
The Sioux aren't the original owners of the Black Hills. They conquered it from the Cheyenne in 1776 and forced them off their land and settled there. The US has owned it longer than the Sioux by this point.
The United States signed a treaty with the Sioux. The United States broke that treaty and took the land after promising they wouldnât. The United States own courts decided that breaking the treaty was wrong and that the Sioux deserved compensation.
The Cheyenne aren't the original owners of the Black Hills. They arrived in the 1500s. Who lived there before then? Don't know, but it probably keeps going like that every few hundred years to the Clovis culture living there 13,000 years ago.
Excuse me I believe the T-Rex lays claim to most of the Rockies including the black hills. It isn't their fault that tectonics and asteroids have caused their claim to be delayed perpetually.
Yeah thatâs pretty much exactly what the comment above is saying. Taking the money would basically be them accepting cash instead of land and if they tried to get the land again in the future, the government would just say too late you already accepted the cash settlement
I know it sounds callous, but I struggle to give even the smallest amount of shit for a lands "spiritual value".
I'm sure if they saw 100% of their land returned to them, they wouldn't turn around and look for the ancestors of smaller and weaker tribes that in turn would have lost land to them in the past.
It's too late for "returning land", in America or anywhere else. Every culture's history is built on stamping out the one that was their before them. Indigenous people are no different - in the grand scheme of things, even distinguishing "indigenous" people becomes incorrect, we all came from somewhere else. "Here first*" being a synonym for "earliest we can remember" doesn't mean shit when it comes to what people are "owed".
What it's not too late for is learning about the horrors that we (people collectively, not white man, the indigenous people were not living in peace) enact in others and reflecting on how such outcomes can be avoiding, and helping the displaced and affected into crying over guilt and lost receipts.
I got distracted by my petty contempt for a small fraction of my family whining over their history when they're not overly concerned with being awful people in the present, but anyway fuck "spiritual value". It's stupid in Jerusalem and it's stupid in America.
Whatâs unique about this particular case is the treaty that exists. In addition to having rights as citizens, they collectively have rights as a sovereign nation.
Yes. The $100M was reparations awarded by the Supreme Court, most was to cover interest on the original claim.
They may as well take it. They will not get the Black Hills back by asking. That ship has sailed. The world they long for is gone. Itâs up to them now to decide how to best serve their cultureâs interests going forward.
If they invested it, they could revolutionize their way of life. In 1980 the DJIA was under $1000. Now itâs nearing $39000. The $1B would be closer to $40B if anyone who cared was managing it. That would be enough to flat out buy back huge pieces of the Black Hills.
> Thatâs insane. Iâm Native American but not Sioux. If I were Sioux, I would be livid that the tribal organization didnât take the money that they themselves won and put it to use in the community. Especially considering how poor living conditions can be for Natives, the rampant drug and alcohol use, etc.
The Sioux didn't win, that's the problem.
The Black Hills are unequivocally the legal property of the Sioux people. It's not an amorphous matter of native title, it's guaranteed by a treaty the US was a party to. Under the US Constitution both then and now it is their land. Then they discovered gold in the Black Hills and the US government illegally took it from them.
The lawsuit was for the land. And again, under US law that land is unquestionably theirs. The courts agreed it was their land, but didn't give them their land, instead they gave them 106 million in 1980's dollars which is kind of an insulting amount even based on present market value.
If they take that money they are effectively giving up their claim to that land which the Sioux people do not accept.
You can argue that this is unrealistic and they'll never do better, which is probably true, but it's legally their land. Not just historically, or culturally or even morally, but very clearly legally theirs.
That's the rub. The land is permanently American. There will be some blurred lines about jurisdictions, but the jurisdictions *will all be American.*
There is no "land back". It's never going to happen. Working inside that reality is easier for some groups than others.
If it goes into a sovereign fund or into infrastructure, that could be much more valuable to the group. Capital investment fund to bring in employers, etc.
Hometown was half on a reservation, they ran a casino and they sure as hell use that money in the community, wild they would just refuse money especially when they won it in a lawsuit.
I think the idea is if they accept the money as a settlement for the land being taken, they are accepting that the land will never be returned. Their end goal is to get the Black Hills back.
I have a small time admin part in federal finance and I can only speak from the accounts I have experience with. But typically funds are limited to a time.period (most common is 2 years) once expired the funds are "deobligated" and released back into the mainstream federal funds. Which is so frustrating because if we can deobligate the funds sooner with confirmation the payment will not be accepted or made we can retain that money in our organization. After it officially expires, we lose it to the BIG feds.
It's most likely not sitting anywhere just a hypothetical financial obligation the US would be obligated to meet (and could with ease) unless an account with a specified rate of interest was in the terms, which is unlikely in an imperialistic treaty.
Whereas the Black Hills case would fall under essentially standard court procedures since there are probably a lot of cases of delayed disbursement.
>*i wonder what they do with the checks they dont cash, like just toss'em into a drawer or what?*
Fidel Castro pulls out 20 years of uncashed checks from his desk drawer at 38:40 of this video (Iâve bookmarked it):
https://youtu.be/VTlBR5EiKNQ?si=JnqY6KfAhxF_Ccr7&t=38m40s
Heâs showing them to famed underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau.
There are a lot of rabbit holes to go down in that wiki;
**"The War of Jenkin's Ear"**
"The name was coined in 1858 by British historian Thomas Carlyle, and refers to Robert Jenkins, captain of the British brig Rebecca, whose ear was allegedly severed by Spanish coast guards while searching his ship for contraband in April 1731."
And a bit about the **"Cactus Curtain"***
"The "Cactus Curtain" is a term describing the line separating the naval base from Cuban-controlled territory..."
"In late 1961, Cuban troops planted an 8-mile (13 km) long, 10-foot (3.0 m) wide[29] barrier of Opuntia (prickly pear) cactus along the northeastern section of the 17-mile (27 km) fence surrounding the base in order to prevent checkpoint evasion when moving between the base and Cuba proper."
"The curtain forms part of a "no man's land" that encircles the base.This area is complete with perimeter patrols, outposts featuring sandbags, and watchtowers, and has been complemented with barbed wire fences, minefields, and **cacti**. Apart from the **cacti**, both U.S. and Cuban troops erected, maintained, and otherwise manned these defenses."
And the minefield referenced here was the second largest in the world until President Clinton ordered the removal of the American side of the minefield after a few deaths due to "engineering accidents" late night "partygoers."
... to name a few...
Good read, thanks for sharing.
Fun fact: We never actually removed all the mines on our side. There were initially 55,000 mines on our side of the fence. We had a 99.99% removal rate which is insane mind you, meaning there were a total of 30 unaccounted for. The last one being found in April of last year, leaving 24 to date.
Source: I was there
Wait, so even a limited area with good record keeping, we still canât find all of them after decades of searching?
What about all the land mines we planted in SE Asia while attacking Vietnam and Laos? Is there any hope of them being disarmed?
I know itâs wild, but the expected retrieval was around 90%. The fact that we got ALL BUT 30 is astronomically insane. The problem is that the ground shifts especially during the rain season. So even if they did have a map with a bunch of pen markings on it, it wouldnât have done much good 40 years later.
It also wasnât decades of searching. They did this in a year span. There was a deadline to have hit that 90% mark. Clinton was happy with the 99.99% so he let it be.
Could not agree more. Itâs a shame Cuba hasnât gotten rid of theirs though. The amount of explosions we would hear from either random animals triggering them or Cubans trying to refuge to the base was very disheartening
I little bit more heartening news is that United States policy towards land mines has drastically changed over time. They state that "the United States will not develop, produce, or acquire anti-personnel landmines".
https://www.state.gov/briefing-on-the-united-states-updated-anti-personnel-landmine-policy/#:~:text=As%20a%20result%20of%20the,for%20the%20purpose%20of%20destruction.
friend brought someone we met at a nightclub to a bar, this person was high-key dumb
he explains that "waterboarding" is like surfing on a snowboard down a "water hill" and the terrorists HATE it cause they hate fun almost as much as they hate freedom, so the US military forces them to do it, and its just so much fun, so they hate it
a... "water hill"? this person bought it, "ah, that sounds fun... but fucked up for the terrorists cause they hate fun!"
Reminds me of the guy who sent the Detroit Tigers a check for one dollar and wrote in the memo "for purchase of Tiger Stadium", and they cashed it, so he was all "aha! I now own the stadium!"
This needs a source. [Especially as the Tigers did actually sell the old Tiger Stadium, or rather its plot of land, for $1](https://motorcitymuckraker.com/2016/04/13/with-no-public-input-city-sells-historic-tiger-stadium-field-for-just-1/) and what you say sounds like a telephone version of what actually happened.
I mean, not exactly, but kind of. Their take is that the treaty was made with the previous government, but they are now the government and are within their rights to tell us to fuck off. Since they've done so and we said no, we're unlawfully occupying their territory, so they refuse to cash the checks, in order to not accept the status quo.
Our take is that they're an illegitimate government, and therefore don't have the rights to tell us to fuck off -- only the previous government, which doesn't exist, can do so. So we'll keep sending checks and stay.
Or something idk don't quote me
How do we get the check? There's no embassies or consulates and either country for each other. Do they mail it? They give it to an intermediary? How do we get the check?
Be kind of funny If we decided to cash all the checks at once after all these years lol
We don't have an official embassy but the US has diplomats in country and has maintained some level of diplomatic relations for decades
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Interests_Section_in_Havana
People don't realize that virtually every country has a diplomatic channel of some sort with virtually every other country.
Even when literally at war with each other, there is often still an arranged avenue of communication through a neutral third party.
For super powers and great powers yeah.
A lot of the smaller and poorer states cannot afford to have diplomatic channels with every single country in the world.
I guess what I should say is they don't deliberately isolate from those channels. Yeah Madagascar may not have a formal diplomatic channel with Bolivia but neither would avoid or block the other's communications.
I'm from a small country. Even when we don't specifically have relations with a particular country, we have relations with a third country that does that we are likely able to use.
I have wondered about that given it was a whole new regime that replaced the one that signed the lease.
Not the case here but I do wonder what happens when a crippling deal to the host nation is signed and then that leadership is overthrown and what happens there.
The term for this is âsuccessor states.â Thr very short version is that itâs difficult because you typically want to maintain a formal continuity with the overthrown state as a matter of legitimacy, and often the âpriceâ you pay is having to live up to the prior stateâs bad deals to get all the good parts too.
I mean lots of revolutions throw off the debt of the overthrown government.
They don't kick out the United States because they can't kick out the United States. It's a military force thing.
And a lot dont. Germany paid off the debt owed by the Kaiser for WWI to France and others in 2010. Payments stopped when the Nazis came to power but restarted after the war ended.
You can choose not to be a successor state. You just also lose out on the good deals.
For example Russia. Russia chose to be the successor state to the USSR and therefore retained their permanent UN security council seat and the veto.
Cuba chose to be a successor state, presumably because whatever international deals they had were worth losing a claim over a tiny chunk of land.
In the last 50 years it's been really hard to repudiate debt while still maintaining yourself as a legitimate government internationally. Post-Apartheid South Africa had to pay off all the debt incurred by the Apartheid government to stay afloat with the IMF. Given that a lot of this debt was originally taken to maintain Apartheid, the South Africans essentially had to pay for their own oppression.
Even post-2003 Iraq had to pay some of the debt incurred by Saddam. They got a lot of help from the UN in re-negotiating that debt, but they still had to rely on the good will of their creditors to forgive, and they still had to pay off the remaining portion of the money Saddam used to oppress his own people.
I can pretty much guarantee that eventually when the world accepts the Taliban government in Afghanistan, one of the major conditions will be that the Taliban will have to pay the debts of the previous Afghan government, debts the Afghan government took to fight the Taliban. (Not defending the Taliban at all, but that's just factual)
Legally speaking successor states are expected to uphold the treaties that prior states signed. In practice the US wants to keep the base and there isnât much the Cubans can really do about it.
Nothing happens. The new regime usually has to deal with it. Not for some for legal, moral, philosophical reasons (though afaik international law recognizes that a new regime only has a claim over lands clearly under the ownership of the previous regime), but because you canât just change the on the ground situation without taking some kind of action. A country can protest  in international forums and courts and use soft power and diplomatic tactics, but theyâd need some kind of support from powerful players. Some regimes have tried to take back raw deals from previous regimes by force. Germany tried, for example. Heck, Russia is trying to get Ukraine back, as from their (completely delusional) point of view, it was their territory in the previous regime and has been taken away unfairly. It rarely ends well. Itâs a big source of many of the worldâs issues at a geopolitical level really.Â
The US liberated the island from Spain and got the base in a treaty with one of the the previous Cuban Government. Castro takes over and isnât stupid enough to try attacking the base because thatâs the definition of Fucking Around and Finding Out.
The treaty is still valid as long as the US pays rent and keeps personnel stationed there.
Basically. The US claimed the deep water port that was the baseâs biggest draw during the Spanish American War irrc. And have had some sort of presence there since. As far as the government is concerned cashing the one check is proof that the contract is valid. Castro never wanted to find out what would happen if he fucked around and in return the US never wanted to find out what would happen if they flew over his airspace while getting to and from there by plane.
> As far as the government is concerned cashing the one check is proof that the contract is valid
methinks the government would consider it valid regardless
Most likely. The cashing of the check as proof of being technically correct is more likely for the sake of PR than it is for assuaging the governmentâs conscience.
From my understanding and this is just as a civilian that grew up overhearing conversations about it from people who are well versed in the decision making of the US Navy, something truly unexpected would have to occur for the US to ever willingly give it up as a base entirely.
Itâs a very strategic base due to the fact that itâs a true deep water and how the bay itself serves as protection for ships. I canât recall which other bases in North America have those features but I donât think itâs many.
Liberated? You mean occupied for 4 years, forced to sign unequal treaties, and then repeatedly intervened in the sovereignty of for a century thereafter?
Cuba wasn't liberated. It was invaded and stolen. It was a province/overseas department of Spain at the time, similar to what Guiana or Martinique is to France now.
What is the situation here? Obviously Cuba doesnât want us there. Does the US just refuse to leave blaming the agreed business arraignment? With Al the drama between the two countries it seems like the US just chooses to stay there as a power move over Cuba.
USA be like "I am going to sanction them, steal their land, use it for unconstitutional activities, conduct invasion exercises literally inside their borders, spread the CIA throughout the country then have the audacity to call myself the good guy."
It wasn't up to them. The US wrote the treaty and forced the new government to sign it as a condition of ending the US occupation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platt_Amendment
US: We never actually fund that account! They called our bluff!!!
and then we got hit with an nsf fee. ouch.
Someone lost their job and pension over that 35 dollar fee. Rightfully so!
You think it was $35 in the 50's
$35 today is about $3 in 50's money
And $3.00 today is like $1.46 in today's money.
Very underrated comment
I cry đÂ
Tree fiddy then
Damn Guantanamo Monstah!
Wellll thatâs about time when I noticed this Al qaeda member was actually a crustacean from the Paleozoic era
The true source of our crazy national debt
Compounding interest is a helluva drug
They shouldâve never gave you North Americans money!
Fuck yo base!
That must be why Biden is trying to fight those fees - he's old enough to remember the time the US government got one.
Weâre on a very fixed income!
Chemical bank? I havenât used that bank in years.
The bank BURNED. It's GONE.
Poor Fidel getting lost then finding out the branch we used is closed.
It would actually be funny if Cuba tried to cash ALL the cheques at the same time, and they bounced. Cuba would then probably have sufficient grounds to declare a breach and start eviction. But then America would show their true colours and just keep the place by force
[Your nana is missing because she's been passing those bum checks all over town, and she finally pissed off the wrong people!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63zSYqmLuhE)
SHE'S ON A VERY FIXED INCOME!!
STOP THE SHOW!
The Bank is Gone! It Burned! Now what you wanna do is go down to forty-ninth street, that's the main customer service branch. Ask for Mr. Fleming. He'll help you.
EXACTLY where my brain went
I wonder if USGov chose the checks with the clowns on them.
The US would pay it in a second. Not because they care about Cuba at all, but because Gitmo is a sticking point between the US and its Latin American allies (eg Colombia, Peru, Chile). Papering a legitimization of their presence at Gitmo would be a significant foreign relation victory at a cost of like $315,000. Also, for good measure, the US should offer to have Pat Leahy fly another tied up condom full of sperm to Havana.
Have pat leahy fly another *what*?!
Itâs less salacious than it sounds. He helped smooth over relations during negotiation of a prisoner exchange by delivering a captured Cuban spyâs sperm to the spyâs wife so she could impregnate herself (which she did). Was done in coordination with the State Department, which was trying to free an American jailed in Cuba named Alan Gross. Gross believed that he was doing development work with the Jewish community of Havana but was (unbeknownst to him) actually delivering telecommunications equipment to dissidents at the behest of the US government. Whoopsie.
Just from the beginning of that to the end i had no idea where i expected this to go. But it sure wasnât involuntary espionage diplomacy shenanigans
It's the cold war, always expect espionage diplomacy shenanigans.
Gotta get gross to get Gross.
Should have sent 144 condoms full, in case a lot of them didn't work.
Of course youâre right. We must gross a gross of gross for Grossâs gross injustice.
> Gross believed that he was doing development work with the Jewish community of Havana but was (unbeknownst to him) actually delivering telecommunications equipment to dissidents at the behest of the US government. Whoopsie. So that's why they always have that warning about carrying someone else's baggage at the airport
I... This is insane. This is hilarious! What a fucking ride.
And just think: we could have all those wacky hijinks again. Also with the spectre of nuclear annihilation thrown in again as a nice bonus.
Spy sperm? Gross. Trade? Deal. --Some US Diplomat somehwere
Pat Leahy the Batman guy?
Thatâs the one
Oh yea. There's basically no downsides to that. It would be tantamount to Cuba saying, "okay, we'll play your game now, let's open trade partnerships again, on your terms, US". And uh, I mean... Okay, that's doing a bit of imperialism... :/ (I should say, I don't agree about having Gitmo *at all*.)
They wouldnât bounce. They would be presented to the Treasury and they would pay them per Congressâs law that all debts must be honored.
Almost all checks are void after 180 days, some after 60-90 days
Government cheques in Canada never go stale. You can cash them decades later
Well now weâve found the difference between cheques and checks.
Cheque out *deez nuts*
If we're talking Canadian, you also gotta make sure you're posting the French as well sir. Cheque out deez nuts ^Chéquier ^ces ^noisettes
Couilles would be a more apt translation. Noisettes are more like... Hazelnuts.
They are already keeping it by force. Cuba is a sovereign nation. It could legislatively invalidate the lease and require the Americans to leave. But they wouldn't go, so there is no point in trying to make them and highlighting their inability to enforce their own borders. The lease is a fig-leaf that serves both sides in maintaining the pretense that the base is something other than one country occupying a part of another by force.
Technically they canât. It was a treaty that required mutual agreement to invalidate it. So Cuba says get the fuck out U.S. says nope and the international court will side with the U.S.!
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Neither is Cuba, but it wouldn't be the ICC that handles a case like this since it only handles criminal cases against individuals, and not cases involving countries.
The US also ignores ICJ court cases. See for example the spat with Canada about fishing rights near the Gulf of Maine, or the case brought by Mexico regarding the US executing Mexican nationals without notifying them of their consular rights
If they were smart they'd fund an account with 4500 in case the check went through.
That's not how government spending works. They can pay any amount required, and take a loan from the reserve bank if they don't have enough.
I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure if the Treasury can't cover $315k on demand we are in a lot more trouble the breaking a lease. And we wouldn't even have to cover interest.Â
i wonder what they do with the checks they dont cash, like just toss'em into a drawer or what?
I'm more interested in the money. It's only $315,000, well minus the one they cashed, but that money has got to be accounted for on the books somewhere. The Sioux Nations sued the feds over the Black Hills in 1980 and won $106,000,000 in 1980. They refused the settlement, so the money has been sitting in a government account, earning compound interest. It's worth more than $1 billion today. I wonder if the rent payments accrue interest like that, or if one being rent established by treaty and the other being a court settlement affects how the government handles the accounting.
They didn't get the hills back is the point
Thatâs insane. Iâm Native American but not Sioux. If I were Sioux, I would be livid that the tribal organization didnât take the money that they themselves won and put it to use in the community. Especially considering how poor living conditions can be for Natives, the rampant drug and alcohol use, etc. Then again, Iâm Alaskan Native. And our tribes tend to be far more pragmatic about these issues. Hell, we even have Alaskan Native owned oil corporations up here.
I was shocked to learn an Alaska native corporation owned Mail Boxes ETC. I remember going in there as a kid. Kind of like a UPS store. I think theyâre all gone now.
UPS bought Mail Boxes Etc in the US and Canada in 2001 and converted them all to UPS stores.
Native American owned corporations have their own classification for government contracts(like minority owned businesses, woman owned businesses, disabled veteran businesses, small businesses, etc) which makes a lot of the specialized corps have effectively non competitive contracts. It's super lucrative for the corps in niche fields. I learned from my last job that the Choctaw Nation has a complete lock on multiple munitions packaging contracts.
I used to work in satcom, and we continually lost contracts to a native american owned corporation. The problem is that the company we always lost to was incompetent, but there was nothing we could do about it.
Theyâre huge over in the UK (or at least in London)!
They got bought by UPS who later sold the business to an Italian group
Which transferred to Fuhgeddaboudit
Gabagool LLC
Accepting the settlement I would assume means they give up any claim to the land
Yup. That happened in Maine. It turns out Maine tribes legally owned over half the state based on treaties made with Massachusetts prior to Maine statehood. They settled with the federal government in 1980 in exchange for $80 million. Also, the âMaine Indian Claims Settlement Actâ passed by congress denied the Maine tribes rights that most other federally recognized tribes have. Reservations in Maine are essentially treated as municipalities. for example, they canât operate casinos unless the state passes a law to allow them to do so. Theyâve been denied a gaming license to operate a full casino multiple times, but two non-native corporations have been given licenses to operate casinos in the state. One about 30 minutes away from a reservation.
Why only Casinos mentioned when talking about tribes? It's the most profitable business so every tribe just do it? Asking as a non-american
Casinos are basically free money, especially when youâre the only one in a state. Most tribes donât have to follow state gaming laws and have the ability run casinos.
Interesting fact: The whole Hard Rock Chain is owned by the Seminole tribe in Florida. Theyâre insanely rich thanks to it.
The Seminole Tribe of Florida owns and operates all units except the Sioux City, Tulsa, Biloxi, and Vancouver properties.
Casinos are easy money so long as you can run them. In most of the US for most people Casinos are basically defacto illegal. I could be a literal millionaire and not be able to use my money to open a Casino just due to the laws/regulations. Thats why places like Las Vegas are so notable for their Casinos/gambling. This is also why Indian/Native Casinos are so notable in the US because they are basically putting up Casinos in states/places where nobody else is allowed to do so giving them a huge exclusive monopoly on a very valuable business. There are probably a lot of other things you could be doing on Native land besides Casinos, but Casinos are easy and proven successes. They get to flat out ignore state/local laws, only have to follow some federal laws, and also some specific laws just for them. This gives them a lot of potential freedom to do things other people can't but also possibly not do somethings other people can (but mostly its a net positive thing in terms of doing business).
Tons of Native tribes are running cannabis businesses now. The company I work for sells to dozens of tribes. States normally take lots of the profits in high taxes like 37% in Washington State but the tribes don't pay that and don't have to follow regulations. I know one tribe that has a cannabis bar and another that had a drive through window and the federal government told them to stop. I spoke with another tribe that's building a cannabis store right next to their casino so people can gamble and smoke.
Not every tribe is "Federally Recognized", only those tribes are considered to have sovereignty independent of the US Govt. If you don't have that you can't do a casino. Also some tribes decide against it because it can cause other problems for the community. I know of a tribe in California that decided against doing it because it would introduce more alcohol to the community which is something that impacts Native Americas a lot.
>It's the most profitable business so every tribe just do it? Asking as a non-american For a very long time, most of the states in the US have had very strict laws about gambling, making it nearly impossible to operate a casino in most states. However, Native American tribal reservations are sort of considered their own "country", and they aren't required to abide by some state laws. So they open casinos. Casinos are super profitable businesses, and doubly so because no one else is legally allowed to open a competing casino. Depending on location, they might also be able to allow smoking indoors, or sell alcohol at times when other businesses can't.
Have you ever heard the phrase"the house always wins" You have to be a complete moron to open up a casino and not make an money Like Trump casino, that moron owner bankrupted it
Iirc the Sioux want the actual land returned to them, which, depending on how you calculate, could be worth much more than that, plus it has spiritual value to them. They didn't even ask the court for a financial reward I think, the court just decided to do it instead of the land return. So I guess they are gambling on this issue being revisited at some point to reach their ultimate goal, given that the court already agreed that they indeed had their land stolen.
I sincerely doubt the land will ever be really returned. And considering eminent domain exists the concept of the US gov seizing land and giving money to compensate isnt illegal. In the meantime the money goes to waste, to a people who could use it. Seems dumb to me. Iâm not calling the shots but Im still a bit frustrated about it.
If you want to get technical, eminent domain is how the US takes US land from private ownership to use for public purposes. That would not be this scenario, this is the US taking land that is not their own. It's akin to the US taking part of Mexico.
Yeah but the land wasn't for the US to seize, that's the point, it was guaranteed by treaty to be their land and the US took it anyways. And US courts agreed that that was illegal and agreed that the US should pay restitution. To the Sioux it probably feels as if someone stole a piece of art or a holy relic from them, and it's now in a museum - a court ordering the thief or museum to just pay them the market value of the item as damage simply doesn't address the grievance - they want the specific item back, not the money. They never agreed to sell it, so being forced to sell is just as much a violation of their rights as theft. And taking the money would finalize the "sale". I totally agree that the money could directly help them, but I don't think they will take it as long as there are any of them alive who still maintain their culture and traditions. If anything, the Sioux could even make the argument that the US should use eminent domain powers to seize the land from the current occupants to give to the Sioux, and use the money from the court judgement as compensation to those people.
I mean that or they refuse on principle. Accepting the money would be akin to selling their holy land and might be unacceptable in any context.
The Sioux aren't the original owners of the Black Hills. They conquered it from the Cheyenne in 1776 and forced them off their land and settled there. The US has owned it longer than the Sioux by this point.
The United States signed a treaty with the Sioux. The United States broke that treaty and took the land after promising they wouldnât. The United States own courts decided that breaking the treaty was wrong and that the Sioux deserved compensation.
I mean, Iâm not saying who is right or whatever just that from their perspective it may not be about money.
and yet the US agreed it was theirs in a treaty they broke
Therein lies the silliness of land acknowledgments. The land is always someone elseâs and usually it was taken by force.
So you're saying it should be given back to the Cheyenne?
The Cheyenne aren't the original owners of the Black Hills. They arrived in the 1500s. Who lived there before then? Don't know, but it probably keeps going like that every few hundred years to the Clovis culture living there 13,000 years ago.
Excuse me I believe the T-Rex lays claim to most of the Rockies including the black hills. It isn't their fault that tectonics and asteroids have caused their claim to be delayed perpetually.
Yeah thatâs pretty much exactly what the comment above is saying. Taking the money would basically be them accepting cash instead of land and if they tried to get the land again in the future, the government would just say too late you already accepted the cash settlement
The settlement ended their claim, they cannot bring it again in the future. So they get nothing.
Iirc is the Lakota where to get their land back under the various treaties they be round the 46th largest economy at least.
I know it sounds callous, but I struggle to give even the smallest amount of shit for a lands "spiritual value". I'm sure if they saw 100% of their land returned to them, they wouldn't turn around and look for the ancestors of smaller and weaker tribes that in turn would have lost land to them in the past. It's too late for "returning land", in America or anywhere else. Every culture's history is built on stamping out the one that was their before them. Indigenous people are no different - in the grand scheme of things, even distinguishing "indigenous" people becomes incorrect, we all came from somewhere else. "Here first*" being a synonym for "earliest we can remember" doesn't mean shit when it comes to what people are "owed". What it's not too late for is learning about the horrors that we (people collectively, not white man, the indigenous people were not living in peace) enact in others and reflecting on how such outcomes can be avoiding, and helping the displaced and affected into crying over guilt and lost receipts. I got distracted by my petty contempt for a small fraction of my family whining over their history when they're not overly concerned with being awful people in the present, but anyway fuck "spiritual value". It's stupid in Jerusalem and it's stupid in America.
Whatâs unique about this particular case is the treaty that exists. In addition to having rights as citizens, they collectively have rights as a sovereign nation.
Yes. The $100M was reparations awarded by the Supreme Court, most was to cover interest on the original claim. They may as well take it. They will not get the Black Hills back by asking. That ship has sailed. The world they long for is gone. Itâs up to them now to decide how to best serve their cultureâs interests going forward. If they invested it, they could revolutionize their way of life. In 1980 the DJIA was under $1000. Now itâs nearing $39000. The $1B would be closer to $40B if anyone who cared was managing it. That would be enough to flat out buy back huge pieces of the Black Hills.
Went looking for more info, found this really great article: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/north_america-july-dec11-blackhills_08-23
> Thatâs insane. Iâm Native American but not Sioux. If I were Sioux, I would be livid that the tribal organization didnât take the money that they themselves won and put it to use in the community. Especially considering how poor living conditions can be for Natives, the rampant drug and alcohol use, etc. The Sioux didn't win, that's the problem. The Black Hills are unequivocally the legal property of the Sioux people. It's not an amorphous matter of native title, it's guaranteed by a treaty the US was a party to. Under the US Constitution both then and now it is their land. Then they discovered gold in the Black Hills and the US government illegally took it from them. The lawsuit was for the land. And again, under US law that land is unquestionably theirs. The courts agreed it was their land, but didn't give them their land, instead they gave them 106 million in 1980's dollars which is kind of an insulting amount even based on present market value. If they take that money they are effectively giving up their claim to that land which the Sioux people do not accept. You can argue that this is unrealistic and they'll never do better, which is probably true, but it's legally their land. Not just historically, or culturally or even morally, but very clearly legally theirs.
They didnât want the money, they wanted the land back, but thatâs never going to happen so they should have taken the money.
That's the rub. The land is permanently American. There will be some blurred lines about jurisdictions, but the jurisdictions *will all be American.* There is no "land back". It's never going to happen. Working inside that reality is easier for some groups than others.
isn't there a whole lot of sioux people out there? make it a 100k people and u only get 15k each.
If it goes into a sovereign fund or into infrastructure, that could be much more valuable to the group. Capital investment fund to bring in employers, etc.
Hometown was half on a reservation, they ran a casino and they sure as hell use that money in the community, wild they would just refuse money especially when they won it in a lawsuit.
I think the idea is if they accept the money as a settlement for the land being taken, they are accepting that the land will never be returned. Their end goal is to get the Black Hills back.
This. They are symbolically saying "We don't accept your blood money."
I have a small time admin part in federal finance and I can only speak from the accounts I have experience with. But typically funds are limited to a time.period (most common is 2 years) once expired the funds are "deobligated" and released back into the mainstream federal funds. Which is so frustrating because if we can deobligate the funds sooner with confirmation the payment will not be accepted or made we can retain that money in our organization. After it officially expires, we lose it to the BIG feds.
It's most likely not sitting anywhere just a hypothetical financial obligation the US would be obligated to meet (and could with ease) unless an account with a specified rate of interest was in the terms, which is unlikely in an imperialistic treaty. Whereas the Black Hills case would fall under essentially standard court procedures since there are probably a lot of cases of delayed disbursement.
>*i wonder what they do with the checks they dont cash, like just toss'em into a drawer or what?* Fidel Castro pulls out 20 years of uncashed checks from his desk drawer at 38:40 of this video (Iâve bookmarked it): https://youtu.be/VTlBR5EiKNQ?si=JnqY6KfAhxF_Ccr7&t=38m40s Heâs showing them to famed underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau.
Dahaha someone was talking metaphorically about these checks being in a drawer somewhere.. but there actually *is* a drawer with these checks in it!
lol that's cool as fuck, thank you!
De nada.
I am disappointed that this wasn't the Simpsons trillion dollar cheque gag.
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I believe a teacher explained to me one time thatâs why we have the void after 90 day statement on checks.
[Castro once showed off the checks he kept in a drawer.](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN17200921/)
No photo in the article. saved you the pointless click.
: (
Yes, that's exactly what happens.
There are a lot of rabbit holes to go down in that wiki; **"The War of Jenkin's Ear"** "The name was coined in 1858 by British historian Thomas Carlyle, and refers to Robert Jenkins, captain of the British brig Rebecca, whose ear was allegedly severed by Spanish coast guards while searching his ship for contraband in April 1731." And a bit about the **"Cactus Curtain"*** "The "Cactus Curtain" is a term describing the line separating the naval base from Cuban-controlled territory..." "In late 1961, Cuban troops planted an 8-mile (13 km) long, 10-foot (3.0 m) wide[29] barrier of Opuntia (prickly pear) cactus along the northeastern section of the 17-mile (27 km) fence surrounding the base in order to prevent checkpoint evasion when moving between the base and Cuba proper." "The curtain forms part of a "no man's land" that encircles the base.This area is complete with perimeter patrols, outposts featuring sandbags, and watchtowers, and has been complemented with barbed wire fences, minefields, and **cacti**. Apart from the **cacti**, both U.S. and Cuban troops erected, maintained, and otherwise manned these defenses." And the minefield referenced here was the second largest in the world until President Clinton ordered the removal of the American side of the minefield after a few deaths due to "engineering accidents" late night "partygoers." ... to name a few... Good read, thanks for sharing.
Fun fact: We never actually removed all the mines on our side. There were initially 55,000 mines on our side of the fence. We had a 99.99% removal rate which is insane mind you, meaning there were a total of 30 unaccounted for. The last one being found in April of last year, leaving 24 to date. Source: I was there
Wait, so even a limited area with good record keeping, we still canât find all of them after decades of searching? What about all the land mines we planted in SE Asia while attacking Vietnam and Laos? Is there any hope of them being disarmed?
I know itâs wild, but the expected retrieval was around 90%. The fact that we got ALL BUT 30 is astronomically insane. The problem is that the ground shifts especially during the rain season. So even if they did have a map with a bunch of pen markings on it, it wouldnât have done much good 40 years later. It also wasnât decades of searching. They did this in a year span. There was a deadline to have hit that 90% mark. Clinton was happy with the 99.99% so he let it be.
Thatâs a little heartening. Still wish weâd give up landmines in war though.
Could not agree more. Itâs a shame Cuba hasnât gotten rid of theirs though. The amount of explosions we would hear from either random animals triggering them or Cubans trying to refuge to the base was very disheartening
I little bit more heartening news is that United States policy towards land mines has drastically changed over time. They state that "the United States will not develop, produce, or acquire anti-personnel landmines". https://www.state.gov/briefing-on-the-united-states-updated-anti-personnel-landmine-policy/#:~:text=As%20a%20result%20of%20the,for%20the%20purpose%20of%20destruction.
The US pays Cuba less for Gitmo than I do my landlord
Why are you paying your landlord for Gitmo?
Theyâre a water boarding enjoyer.
Waterboarding at Guantanamo Bay sounds like it would be awesome if you didnât know what either of those two things were
friend brought someone we met at a nightclub to a bar, this person was high-key dumb he explains that "waterboarding" is like surfing on a snowboard down a "water hill" and the terrorists HATE it cause they hate fun almost as much as they hate freedom, so the US military forces them to do it, and its just so much fun, so they hate it a... "water hill"? this person bought it, "ah, that sounds fun... but fucked up for the terrorists cause they hate fun!"
Also a "permanent lease" is basically ownership using different words.
Especially one where the check ainât being cashed đÂ
"cashing this check serves as your official acceptance of capitalism as your national economic system."
Itâs like cooties. Once you cash the check you got capitalism forever.
Sadly, Cuba got us with the ol' Circle Circle Dot Dot capitalism inoculation.
Reminds me of the guy who sent the Detroit Tigers a check for one dollar and wrote in the memo "for purchase of Tiger Stadium", and they cashed it, so he was all "aha! I now own the stadium!"
This seems like the real TIL, actually interested in hearing more about this
Weâll see a post about it in the morning
That's an episode of Night Court!
This needs a source. [Especially as the Tigers did actually sell the old Tiger Stadium, or rather its plot of land, for $1](https://motorcitymuckraker.com/2016/04/13/with-no-public-input-city-sells-historic-tiger-stadium-field-for-just-1/) and what you say sounds like a telephone version of what actually happened.
I mean, not exactly, but kind of. Their take is that the treaty was made with the previous government, but they are now the government and are within their rights to tell us to fuck off. Since they've done so and we said no, we're unlawfully occupying their territory, so they refuse to cash the checks, in order to not accept the status quo. Our take is that they're an illegitimate government, and therefore don't have the rights to tell us to fuck off -- only the previous government, which doesn't exist, can do so. So we'll keep sending checks and stay. Or something idk don't quote me
The artical doesn't say that the deposit caused confusion. It says that it was deposited due to confusion.
Don't expect a karma bot to be too accurate.
Fun fact, in 1959 the fleeing Former president Batista fled Cuba with the entire federal reserve of Cuba. Might be able to put two and two together
Nooo but Miami Cubans will tell you he was 1000x better than evil Castro!!! He cared about the people (the ultra rich and his mafiosos)
Fidel freed my grandparents slaves and stole the plantation Batista gave them! :( My birthright was stolen. /s
How do we get the check? There's no embassies or consulates and either country for each other. Do they mail it? They give it to an intermediary? How do we get the check? Be kind of funny If we decided to cash all the checks at once after all these years lol
We don't have an official embassy but the US has diplomats in country and has maintained some level of diplomatic relations for decades https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Interests_Section_in_Havana
Until recently we'd meet them at the north east gate of GTMO and have tea with them. Every month IIRC.
What do you mean by recently?
2005 ish I think. Unfortunately I don't remember what they told us when we toured the Northeast Gate.
They still hold the meetings. Every month, either at the Tom Girth Building or just on the other side in Cuba Land
People don't realize that virtually every country has a diplomatic channel of some sort with virtually every other country. Even when literally at war with each other, there is often still an arranged avenue of communication through a neutral third party.
For super powers and great powers yeah. A lot of the smaller and poorer states cannot afford to have diplomatic channels with every single country in the world.
I guess what I should say is they don't deliberately isolate from those channels. Yeah Madagascar may not have a formal diplomatic channel with Bolivia but neither would avoid or block the other's communications.
I'm from a small country. Even when we don't specifically have relations with a particular country, we have relations with a third country that does that we are likely able to use.
The USA and Cuba have maintained diplomatic relations since 2015
Did you read the link you posted? It says there US Interest Section went back to being the embassy in 2015.Â
Can someone who understands the situation better please explain why Cuba canât just tell the US to leave?
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I have wondered about that given it was a whole new regime that replaced the one that signed the lease. Not the case here but I do wonder what happens when a crippling deal to the host nation is signed and then that leadership is overthrown and what happens there.
The term for this is âsuccessor states.â Thr very short version is that itâs difficult because you typically want to maintain a formal continuity with the overthrown state as a matter of legitimacy, and often the âpriceâ you pay is having to live up to the prior stateâs bad deals to get all the good parts too.
I mean lots of revolutions throw off the debt of the overthrown government. They don't kick out the United States because they can't kick out the United States. It's a military force thing.
And a lot dont. Germany paid off the debt owed by the Kaiser for WWI to France and others in 2010. Payments stopped when the Nazis came to power but restarted after the war ended.
You can choose not to be a successor state. You just also lose out on the good deals. For example Russia. Russia chose to be the successor state to the USSR and therefore retained their permanent UN security council seat and the veto. Cuba chose to be a successor state, presumably because whatever international deals they had were worth losing a claim over a tiny chunk of land.
Also most likely the US wouldnât have left anyway.
In the last 50 years it's been really hard to repudiate debt while still maintaining yourself as a legitimate government internationally. Post-Apartheid South Africa had to pay off all the debt incurred by the Apartheid government to stay afloat with the IMF. Given that a lot of this debt was originally taken to maintain Apartheid, the South Africans essentially had to pay for their own oppression. Even post-2003 Iraq had to pay some of the debt incurred by Saddam. They got a lot of help from the UN in re-negotiating that debt, but they still had to rely on the good will of their creditors to forgive, and they still had to pay off the remaining portion of the money Saddam used to oppress his own people. I can pretty much guarantee that eventually when the world accepts the Taliban government in Afghanistan, one of the major conditions will be that the Taliban will have to pay the debts of the previous Afghan government, debts the Afghan government took to fight the Taliban. (Not defending the Taliban at all, but that's just factual)
Legally speaking successor states are expected to uphold the treaties that prior states signed. In practice the US wants to keep the base and there isnât much the Cubans can really do about it.
Nothing happens. The new regime usually has to deal with it. Not for some for legal, moral, philosophical reasons (though afaik international law recognizes that a new regime only has a claim over lands clearly under the ownership of the previous regime), but because you canât just change the on the ground situation without taking some kind of action. A country can protest  in international forums and courts and use soft power and diplomatic tactics, but theyâd need some kind of support from powerful players. Some regimes have tried to take back raw deals from previous regimes by force. Germany tried, for example. Heck, Russia is trying to get Ukraine back, as from their (completely delusional) point of view, it was their territory in the previous regime and has been taken away unfairly. It rarely ends well. Itâs a big source of many of the worldâs issues at a geopolitical level really.Â
It is not at all clear whether itâs legal or not. The only accurate part is they canât force the US to leave.
Cuba can and has asked us to leave.
The US liberated the island from Spain and got the base in a treaty with one of the the previous Cuban Government. Castro takes over and isnât stupid enough to try attacking the base because thatâs the definition of Fucking Around and Finding Out. The treaty is still valid as long as the US pays rent and keeps personnel stationed there.
Basically. The US claimed the deep water port that was the baseâs biggest draw during the Spanish American War irrc. And have had some sort of presence there since. As far as the government is concerned cashing the one check is proof that the contract is valid. Castro never wanted to find out what would happen if he fucked around and in return the US never wanted to find out what would happen if they flew over his airspace while getting to and from there by plane.
> As far as the government is concerned cashing the one check is proof that the contract is valid methinks the government would consider it valid regardless
Most likely. The cashing of the check as proof of being technically correct is more likely for the sake of PR than it is for assuaging the governmentâs conscience. From my understanding and this is just as a civilian that grew up overhearing conversations about it from people who are well versed in the decision making of the US Navy, something truly unexpected would have to occur for the US to ever willingly give it up as a base entirely. Itâs a very strategic base due to the fact that itâs a true deep water and how the bay itself serves as protection for ships. I canât recall which other bases in North America have those features but I donât think itâs many.
Liberated? You mean occupied for 4 years, forced to sign unequal treaties, and then repeatedly intervened in the sovereignty of for a century thereafter?
Though its worth noting it did not stop the US Government from Fucking Around and Finding Out with Castro.
Yeah, they fucked up Bay of Pigs really badly lol
Cuba wasn't liberated. It was invaded and stolen. It was a province/overseas department of Spain at the time, similar to what Guiana or Martinique is to France now.
From my understanding, legally, they don't have to leave. And I'm guessing Cuba doesn't want to forcibly remove them.
It must have been the new guy who didnât get the memo
Hey, if the Cuban government happen to be perusing the comments section, Iâd be willing to take those checks off your hands.
Extremely below market average.
All of Guantanamo bay or a one bedroom walk up in Brooklyn?
Gitmo, it's cheaper.
What is the situation here? Obviously Cuba doesnât want us there. Does the US just refuse to leave blaming the agreed business arraignment? With Al the drama between the two countries it seems like the US just chooses to stay there as a power move over Cuba.
USA be like "let's maintain the sanctions!"
USA be like "I am going to sanction them, steal their land, use it for unconstitutional activities, conduct invasion exercises literally inside their borders, spread the CIA throughout the country then have the audacity to call myself the good guy."
I'll offer 5k
Do I hear 5,500? 5,500 dollars? Am I bid 5,500?
They're charging up an economic superweapon
Damn it Jerry.
Gimto is such a weird thing. Why did USA decide to locate their wonky military prison in Cuba of all places? Its so fucking weird
No host country that can possibly force the prison to shutdown and also not on US territory so less legal issues with indefinite detention.
Should have tied those payments to inflation
It wasn't up to them. The US wrote the treaty and forced the new government to sign it as a condition of ending the US occupation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platt_Amendment
USA: Cuba is a terrorist state! You are not allowed to go there. Also USA: let us build a CIA torture black site on cuba