Today I received a small thank-you gift from abroad. The little unexpected prezzie was a "Thank You" for breaking the laws of these United States. I am a scofflaw. I regularly break the law of the land, specifically the one that reads: "Cuban Assets Control Regulations, 31 C.F.R. Part 515, (Revised September 30, 2004) are administered and enforced by the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Criminal penalties for violation of the Regulations can go as high as $1 million for corporations and $250,000 for individuals plus up to 10 years in prison. In addition, civil penalties of up to $65,000 per violation can be imposed by OFAC."
Since the State Department frowns on such behavior I make it a practice to burn the evidence. Burn, Baby, Burn!! To protect those that I perceive as innocent of anything but commerce, I am not going to name the company of the nice folks who sent me the nifty triple-torch cigar lighter but let's just say the company headquarters is offshore. Way offshore.
So, as I was burning evidence last night after a long stint as The Man In Red, I was ruminating on just what, exactly, the United States hopes it will accomplish by continuing the inane Cuban Embargo. Maybe the boys and girls at State think they can bring down the Castro Regime. Yeah, right. Serious bad-boys have been trying to kill Castro since Batista started making it a hobby in about 1958. That was the year I was born and I'm a geezer. Since then, El Comandante has outlived Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Ford, Nixon and Reagan. He has outlasted Carter, Bush1.0, Clinton and lower case bush. Yuppers, that embargo is working miracles, we got Fidel on the ropes.
While we are admiring the effectiveness of the State Department's efforts to overthrow the evil regime in Cuba, we ought to look at how we are stopping the Cubanos from all the harm they might do us if we traded with them. What do the guys in Habana, cruising around in 1950's era Buicks, Fords and Chevys want more than anything? Well, they certainly don't want to storm the beaches of Miami. They know that Miami is full of reactionary crack-pots from Cuba. No, what the my puro smoking Brothers want is Mopar, AC-Delco, Fomoco, and GM parts. They want points and rotors and distributor caps, crap we haven't needed in years except for a few old eccentric hot-rodders.
What is being accomplished for me, the average US citizen, by this insane embargo of a neighboring country? The only accomplishment I can see is giving Castro bragging rights, forcing the Cubano mechanics to be the best fabricators from nothing in the business and keeping me from being able to buy a Cuban Puro at my local tobacconist.
So, I propose an end to the madness. I think that we caring moto-head cigar fiends should round up all of the discerning cigar smokers in the United States and pitch the idea of a cultural exchange. We, the cigar smokers of the USA, should fill a few hundred shipping containers with all of the 1950's era car, truck and moto parts that we can find on E-bay. Once the containers are ready, we accompany those bad boys to Habana. Once arrived, we open the containers, distribute (ouch!) the bits and collect some puros in exchange.
Diplomacy of the people Baby! No bombs required, and only the smallest of burning.
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