Cuba and the U.S. will begin to normalize relations

The country is surprisingly politically free for a tiny nation facing an existential threat from a hostile super power that has invaded, attempted to assassinate it's leader, and funded militants dead set on violent revolution for decades.

American leadership immediately resorted to torture and illegal domestic surveillance when faced with the loss of two skyscrapers and 3,000 lives from an enemy that is more like an annoying gnat than an existential threat.

Cuba is a success story for socialism, and that is why US policy has sought to punish it, and to make it fail. The US did not want a successful socialist nation in it's sphere of influence, it gives the other nations subject to the Monroe doctrine ideas.

Is it plausible that Cubans would really be driving oldsmobiles if they had access to European or Asian cars? That's the only evidence you really need to understand that the embargo is, in practice, global.

From the Bacardi wikipedia:

"Ospina describes how the Bacardi family and Company left Cuba after the Castro regime confiscated the Company’s Cuban assets on 15 October 1960; in particular, in nationalizing and banning all private property on the island as well as all bank accounts. However, due to concerns over the previous Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista the company had started foreign branches a few years prior to the revolution; the Company moved the ownership of the Company's trademarks, assets and proprietary formulas out of the country to the Bahamas prior to the revolution as well as constructing plants in Puerto Rico and Mexico after Prohibition to save import taxes for rum being imported to the US. This helped the company survive after the communist government confiscated without compensation all Bacardi assets in the country."

"More recently, Bacardi lawyers were influential in the drafting of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act which sought to extend the scope of the United States embargo against Cuba. In 1999, Otto Reich, a lobbyist in Washington on behalf of Bacardi, drafted section 211 of the Omnibus Consolidated and Emergency Appropriations Act, FY1999 (Pub.L. 105–277), a bill that became known as the Bacardi Act. Section 211 denied trademark protection to products of Cuban businesses expropriated after the Cuban revolution, a provision keenly sought by Bacardi. The act was aimed primarily at the Havana Club brand in the US. The brand was created by the José Arechabala company and confiscated without compensation in the Cuban revolution. The Havana Club trademark had been registered by the Cuban government in the United States without permission of the rightful owners. The new law invalidated the trademark registration. Section 211 has been challenged unsuccessfully by the Cuban government and the European Union in US courts; however, the act has been ruled illegal by the WTO (August 2001). The US Congress has yet to re-examine the matter."

Basically, Cuba stole some brands after the revolution, so the U.S. said "fuck you, you can't trademark a brand you stole from its rightful owners". The EU and WTO have a problem with that, but luckily the U.S. has never given a shit what the EU or WTO says.

It sounds like the restrictions on cars comes from the Cuban gov't, not the embargo.

Until a few weeks ago, there was no way to legally transfer ownership of a vehicle like this. The only cars that could be freely bought and sold were those built before 1959, when Fidel Castro came to power. That's why there are still nearly 60,000 classic cars on Cuba's streets, but few late-model Hondas. Bringing in a new car requires special government permission and a 100 percent import tax...[1]

[1]http://www.npr.org/2011/10/31/141858419/in-cuba-a-used-car-i...