Since the 1959 Cuban Revolution overthrew the US-backed Batista dictatorship and began a process that ended US economic exploitation of the Caribbean island, Cuban has been repeatedly attacked by its powerful neighbour. There have been many terrorist attacks organised or launched from US soil against Cuba.
The most infamous was the 1976 bombing of a Cuban plane organised by CIA operative Luis Posada Carilles that killed all 73 civilian passengers. Posada continues to live in the United States, with the authorities ignoring demands to extradite him for this crime without being arrested for this crime.
Since 1960, Cuba has been subjected to a crippling US economic blockade, estimated by the Cuban government as having caused US$92 billion worth of damage to its economy. The administration of ormer US president George W. Bush launched the Commission for Assistance to Free Cuba in 2003, a body to develop a detailed plan to overthrow the Cuban government and install one more favourable to US interests.
In Havana, Julie Webb Pullman asked Cuban National Assembly of People's Power President Ricardo Alarcon about whether the new Obama administration was moving to change US policy towards Cuba.
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Tom Crumpacker noted in a 2006 Upsidedownworld.org article that before George Bush's administration's Commission For Assistance To Free Cuba published its first report in 2004, the last time a plan for the subjugation of a sovereign nation was openly published was in 1924 with Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.
I asked Ricardo Alarcon, president of the Cuban National Assembly of Peoples' Power, whether the Obama administration has indicated any intention to toss this offensive policy onto the scrap-heap.
"He has not given any indication that he is changing the previous policy", Alarcon said. "What he promised during his campaign to the Cuban-American community was to allow them to freely visit their relatives in Cuba without any limitations, and also to send remittances."
Alarcon said the need for such a promise was due to changes in the profile of the Cuban-American community in Miami.
"Although there is still a powerful minority that controls the media, the local government and law enforcement, the majority of the Cuban population in Miami are not terrorists and they want a normal relationship with their country.
"That's why Obama won Miami — the first time a candidate in US politics has won Miami without a program of a tough hand towards Cuba", he explained.
However this softer, less rhetorical approach towards travel and remittances has not been matched in other areas.
"He has not said anything about the embargo or the so-called Commission for a Free Cuba. On the contrary, the embargo is still in place and the new administration has continued imposing fines, prosecuting people and threatening those who deal with Cuba.
"They continue to promote internal subversion inside Cuba, sending people to openly promote so-called regime change."