Aging expatriates returning to Cuba

[TheOldSchool]

A few years ago, there was a rumor Fidel Castro had died. The Cuban ex-patriots around here lost their collective minds and all took off to Florida to prepare for jubilation.

Unfortunately, the rumor turned out to be false.

I sympathise with their pain. I was stationed in Gitmo for three years and saw first hand the desperation of that imprisoned nation.

It'll happen one day. That bastard can't live forever.

You sill have not specifically noted the "evils" committed by Castro! How long will I have to wait?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba
Here this is a pretty good rundown. But it's strange to me that the over 1 million refugees who to this day are fleeing Cuba aren't enough evidence of the problems down there for you.

 

[Desperado]

The embargo is over 40 years old and has not accomplished it goal.
Seriously the United States does not know when to give up on a failed project.
Cuba would be influenced by Democracy if the embargo was eliminated.
Think of the embargo the same as the Berlin Wall, once the wall came down democracy ruled.

 

[williepete]

But it's strange to me that the over 1 million refugees who to this day are fleeing Cuba aren't enough evidence of the problems down there for you.

I think what we're dealing with here is a modern day John Reed.

 

[Desperado]

I hope the embargo gets lifted, I want to go down to Cuba one day and smoke a cigar, have a drink and meet the love of my life lol, I hear Cuban women are amazing.

No need to wait for the embargo to get lifted just come on down to Miami and you can do all those things. and Yes, the Cuban women are amazing

 

[g5000]

I sympathise with their pain. I was stationed in Gitmo for three years and saw first hand the desperation of that imprisoned nation.

You were in GITMO, allegedly, but that doesn't mean you went into Castro's Cuba. And while you were listening to anecdotes from who knows where , did you happen to observe the shoddy treatment of the Muslim inmates right under your nose by American guards!

I observed Cubans being blown up by mines trying to escape Castro's Cuba and get to our side of the fence. I spoke with many Cubans who succeeded in making it to our side of the fence and listened to their stories of what life was like under Castro. I spoke with and commisserated with a young Marine in a watchtower just moments after he saw a Cuban soldier shot down for making a break toward freedom.

I also used to watch Cuban television broadcasts.

ETA: I was in Gitmo during the events on which A Few Good Men was based.


And there was no detainee camp when I was there. That was long after I left. And don't make assumptions about how I feel about our treatment of detainees. I have been a very strong critic of waterboarding and "enhanced interrogation" on this forum.

Dumbass.

 

[JQPublic1]

It'll happen one day. That bastard can't live forever.

You sill have not specifically noted the "evils" committed by Castro! How long will I have to wait?

Human rights in Cuba - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Here this is a pretty good rundown. But it's strange to me that the over 1 million refugees who to this day are fleeing Cuba aren't enough evidence of the problems down there for you.

Thanks. I read the Wiki article and it certainly portrays Castro as a villain. Still, I was left wondering if most of the news we hear about Castro is any thing more than propaganda.
Naturally his enemies are not going to say nice things about him so where can an unbiased opinion be had? What about Nelson Mandela?

Mandela had said that during his 27-year imprisonment, the writings of Che Guevara -- the Communist guerrilla leader and later Minister of Industry and head of Cuba's National Bank who died in battle in Bolivia -- served as inspiration to him. He also cited the Cuban army's war in Angola in the 1970s and 1980s, where they resisted invading South African forces, as having been a great help the anti-apartheid cause. Then there was the even more direct military support: in the early '60s, Castro supplied the militant wing of the African National Congress with arms.

Nelson Mandela And Cuba: Late South African President Was A Friend To Fidel Castro

In 1991, while on a turn around Latin America to urge other nations not to lift sanctions against South Africa's still-white-minority government after the United States acted to end them, Mandela made a visit to the Caribbean island nation. While noting that his African National Congress was "not a communist party," he called then-president Castro's Revolution "a source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people".
Nelson Mandela And Cuba: Late South African President Was A Friend To Fidel Castro

If my thinking is aligned with Mandela's, I am somewhat honored!.

 

[JQPublic1]

I sympathise with their pain. I was stationed in Gitmo for three years and saw first hand the desperation of that imprisoned nation.

You were in GITMO, allegedly, but that doesn't mean you went into Castro's Cuba. And while you were listening to anecdotes from who knows where , did you happen to observe the shoddy treatment of the Muslim inmates right under your nose by American guards!

I observed Cubans being blown up by mines trying to escape Castro's Cuba and get to our side of the fence. I spoke with many Cubans who succeeded in making it to our side of the fence and listened to their stories of what life was like under Castro. I spoke with and commisserated with a young Marine in a watchtower just moments after he saw a Cuban soldier shot down for making a break toward freedom.

I also used to watch Cuban television broadcasts.

ETA: I was in Gitmo during the events on which A Few Good Men was based.


And there was no detainee camp when I was there. That was long after I left. And don't make assumptions about how I feel about our treatment of detainees. I have been a very strong critic of waterboarding and "enhanced interrogation" on this forum.

Dumbass.

If everything you said is the truth, your POV is compelling. But it does raise the question about why Castro has so many friends around the world? Even Mandela was counted among them!

 

[TheOldSchool]

You were in GITMO, allegedly, but that doesn't mean you went into Castro's Cuba. And while you were listening to anecdotes from who knows where , did you happen to observe the shoddy treatment of the Muslim inmates right under your nose by American guards!

I observed Cubans being blown up by mines trying to escape Castro's Cuba and get to our side of the fence. I spoke with many Cubans who succeeded in making it to our side of the fence and listened to their stories of what life was like under Castro. I spoke with and commisserated with a young Marine in a watchtower just moments after he saw a Cuban soldier shot down for making a break toward freedom.

I also used to watch Cuban television broadcasts.

ETA: I was in Gitmo during the events on which A Few Good Men was based.


And there was no detainee camp when I was there. That was long after I left. And don't make assumptions about how I feel about our treatment of detainees. I have been a very strong critic of waterboarding and "enhanced interrogation" on this forum.

Dumbass.

If everything you said is the truth, your POV is compelling. But it does raise the question about why Castro has so many friends around the world? Even Mandela was counted among them!

Nelson Mandela may have had similar beginnings to Castro be he redeemed himself by realizing that his war was over and worked his hardest for the people. Castro spilled the blood of his oppressors, but then graduated to spilling the blood of his countrymen. And to this day not a single man in Cuba is free.

 

[JQPublic1]

Nelson Mandela may have had similar beginnings to Castro be he redeemed himself by realizing that his war was over and worked his hardest for the people. Castro spilled the blood of his oppressors, but then graduated to spilling the blood of his countrymen. And to this day not a single man in Cuba is free.

What has similar beginnings to do with a mutual long friendship? My point is that Mandela was Castro's friend 'til the end. I suppose it began when Castro helped to end apartheid in SA.

 

[Desperado]

My point is that Mandela was Castro's friend 'til the end. I suppose it began when Castro helped to end apartheid in SA.

Just proves that they were both communists and were no friends of liberty and freedom.

 

[JQPublic1]

My point is that Mandela was Castro's friend 'til the end. I suppose it began when Castro helped to end apartheid in SA.

Just proves that they were both communists and were no friends of liberty and freedom.

According to American sources, Castro is indeed a communist. Nelson Mandela was not.

In 1991, while on a turn around Latin America to urge other nations not to lift sanctions against South Africa's still-white-minority government after the United States acted to end them, Mandela made a visit to the Caribbean island nation. While noting that his African National Congress was "not a communist party," he called then-president Castro's Revolution "a source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people".

nelson-mandela-and-cuba-late-south-african-president-was-friend-fidel-castro-136644

Mandela could easily have steered his country towards communism but he did not. Nevertheless, I think even communism is better than apartheid; especially in Africa.

 

[percysunshine]

2005 rice cooker story;

Status of economy in Cuba - rice cookers, minimum wage and oil - Cuba Business News - Havana Journal

“Those of you who would like rice steamers, raise your hand,” said the 78-year-old president in front of an audience of hundreds of women, sounding a bit like Monty Hall. All the women left with one, and 3 million more are on their way to households across the island. Preliminary distribution of pressure cookers, which, like the rice steamers, come from China, has also begun.

The handouts are more than just populist politics. They’re a symbol of an economic uptick under way in Cuba. The communist country’s economy grew 3 percent last year, and is projected to grow more than 4 percent in each of the next two years, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, a research group based in London. This growth - driven by cheap Venezuelan oil..."

Oops....no more oil from Venezuela. Chavez destroyed the industry with communism.

I wonder what is going to happen now?

 

[JQPublic1]

]Oops....no more oil from Venezuela. Chavez destroyed the industry with communism.

Never under estimate Mr. Castro. The Cuban Pharmaceutical industry is one of a host of ventures Castro has developed and deployed worldwide. Economic liaisons with Europe, China, Canada, myriad South American countries and some African nations show that the Castro bros are not resting on their laurels. They are survivors!

 

[williepete]

Fidel Castro's Cuba: celebrating 50 years of progress, equality, poverty and murder

By Gerald Warner
The Telegraph, 17 February 2014

Here is a seductive invitation on which you may have missed out. "Celebrate five decades of resilience, progress, allegiance to peace and social equality with the people of Cuba. Witness the stellar achievements of the Revolution first hand," enthuses a Canadian-based advertisement for a 50th Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution Tour. Those who were drawn by its blandishments are at this moment visiting the Marxist island paradise.

"Today millions optimistically follow the course of the Cuban revolution," declaim the promoters, "which despite hardships resulting from sanctions and blockade, is as dynamic as ever." Optimistically is right. Since the revolution, Cuba has progressed from third place out of 11 Latin American countries for per capita daily calorific intake, according to the United Nations Statistical Yearbook, to 11th and last today.

Fidel Castro likes to boast of his country's 70,000 doctors, but admits "tens of thousands" of them have been sent abroad. The last pre-Castro census (1953) recorded one doctor for every 1,000 Cubans; today, outside the regime's showcase clinics for the nomenklatura and foreigners, patients have to bring their own bedding, thread for sutures and even light-bulbs into the country's vermin-infested hospitals.

The US embargo, cited by the tour advertisement as an alibi for economic failure, is virtually irrelevant, since Cuba can trade with almost anywhere else in the world while US-based exiles remit more than $1 billion home. Not everyone has lost out since the revolution: the Maximum Leader's personal fortune is an egalitarian $900 million, sufficient to gain him entry to Forbes magazine.

During his "five decades of resilience, progress, allegiance to peace and social equality", Castro has executed 16,000 people and imprisoned more than 100,000 in labour camps. The Western media are greatly exercised about Guantanamo; but few have heard of Kilo 5.5, Pinar del Rio, Kilo 7, the Capitiolo (for children up to age 10) and the other camps that compose Castro's gulag. Two million Cubans have by now rejected the resilience and progress of Castro's revolution and more than 30,000 have died trying to escape.

The Castro myth was fabricated by Herbert L Matthews in three articles for the New York Times in 1957. Since then, the liberal media and their army of useful idiots have enlarged the lie, along with the mendacious cult of Che Guevara. Those Western leftists who are currently proclaiming the death of capitalism should migrate to a society far advanced along that path and enjoy the lifestyle. How can the likes of Polly Toynbee bear to live in this oppressive capitalist state, instead of basking in the progress, allegiance to peace and social equality of Castro's Cuba?

 

[JQPublic1]

By Gerald Warner
The Telegraph, 17 February 2014

Here is a seductive invitation on which you may have missed out. "Celebrate five decades of resilience, progress, allegiance to peace and social equality with the people of Cuba. Witness the stellar achievements of the Revolution first hand," enthuses a Canadian-based advertisement for a 50th Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution Tour. Those who were drawn by its blandishments are at this moment visiting the Marxist island paradise.

I am puzzled as to why most of the civilized world seems to extol the virtues of Castro, even when Cuban expatriates excoriate him mercilessly everywhere they go. They, and the American Taliban ( right wing white males) seem to be Cuba’s most vociferous critics.

"

Today millions optimistically follow the course of the Cuban revolution," declaim the promoters, "which despite hardships resulting from sanctions and blockade, is as dynamic as ever." Optimistically is right. Since the revolution, Cuba has progressed from third place out of 11 Latin American countries for per capita daily calorific intake, according to the United Nations Statistical Yearbook, to 11th and last today.

The composers of that United Nations Statistical Yearbook certainly didn’t take notice of the fact that the Cuban lifespan is longer than that of the average American. If less caloric intake increases life span the Cubans are on the right track!

Fidel Castro likes to boast of his country's 70,000 doctors, but admits "tens of thousands" of them have been sent abroad. The last pre-Castro census (1953) recorded one doctor for every 1,000 Cubans; today, outside the regime's showcase clinics for the nomenklatura and foreigners, patients have to bring their own bedding, thread for sutures and even light-bulbs into the country's vermin-infested hospitals.

Again, if they are living longer than we do here they must be doing something right
American may not have to bring their own bedding, thread for sutures or light bulbs but due to medical errors and or incompetence 90,000 people die each year from preventable causes! Ostensibly, it appears that getting medical care in Cuba increases your chances of survival and is far easier on your pocketbook!

The US embargo, cited by the tour advertisement as an alibi for economic failure, is virtually irrelevant, since Cuba can trade with almost anywhere else in the world while US-based exiles remit more than $1 billion home. Not everyone has lost out since the revolution: the Maximum Leader's personal fortune is an egalitarian $900 million, sufficient to gain him entry to Forbes magazine.

Is Cuban really an economic failure? It depends on what country you are comparing it to. That aside, the embargo highlights Cuba’s survival as even more incredible.

I don’t believe Castro has profited from his role as Cuban leader. If there is a $900 million bankroll, it likely is controlled by Castro but is part of the national treasury. It takes money to send doctors to poor under developed nations. It takes money to send troops to places like Africa to support people like Mandela against the oppressive agents of Apartheid. Those undertakings are the visible elements of Castro’s worldview and have made him the darling of the developed East and West…except the USA!

During his "five decades of resilience, progress, allegiance to peace and social equality", Castro has executed 16,000 people and imprisoned more than 100,000 in labour camps. The Western media are greatly exercised about Guantanamo; but few have heard of Kilo 5.5, Pinar del Rio, Kilo 7, the Capitiolo (for children up to age 10) and the other camps that compose Castro's gulag. Two million Cubans have by now rejected the resilience and progress of Castro's revolution and more than 30,000 have died trying to escape.

I have explored the possibility that some justification for the above actions arises from numerous attempts to overthrow the regime. Many infiltrated traitors have been arrested and, possibly, executed. Under even remotely similar circumstances, any country would be on heightened alert and probably invoke martial law. Agents originating from the USA have tried to assassinate Castro dozens of times so his assigned “paranoia” may have some validity

The Castro myth was fabricated by Herbert L Matthews in three articles for the New York Times in 1957. Since then, the liberal media and their army of useful idiots have enlarged the lie, along with the mendacious cult of Che Guevara. Those Western leftists who are currently proclaiming the death of capitalism should migrate to a society far advanced along that path and enjoy the lifestyle. How can the likes of Polly Toynbee bear to live in this oppressive capitalist state, instead of basking in the progress, allegiance to peace and social equality of Castro's Cuba?

__________________

If there is a myth, it has been an incredible one that has fooled even the various intelligentsia of Europe, Canada and most of the “free” world! The vendetta against Castro is owned by the USA alone. The real myth is one of a boogey man? But what Boogey man is it who sends doctors to serve the poor nations of the world or who would send troops to fight against racism in Africa!

 

[williepete]

Cuba: The Holodomor Next Door
Cuba’s starvation policy is a crime against humanity.
By Robert Zubrin


I just got back from a business trip to Mexico. While there, I met with some Mexicans who had recently traveled to Cuba. What they told me was shocking. The Cuban people are being held on the edge of starvation.

According to my Mexican friends, ordinary Cubans are not allowed to eat beef. Instead, what beef there is in Cuba is reserved for the nation’s rulers and for tourists who can pay for it with foreign exchange while staying at the all-inclusive resort hotels. It is in fact illegal to sell beef to a Cuban — not that any of them outside the ruling class would be able to buy much, since the average wage in Cuba is about 50 cents per day, or one-tenth of the minimum legal wage in Mexico. With this pittance, Cubans must subsist on the subsidized rations made available to them by the government. These comprise 5 pounds of rice, 5 pounds of sugar, 1 pound of salt, 10 ounces of beans, 8 ounces of cooking oil, 0.15 ounces of coffee mixed with unknown stuff that isn’t coffee, 6 ounces of very-low-quality fish, and 1 pound of a disgusting product made from unsalable animal parts, per month. No fruits or vegetables are included. I repeat: These rations are not free, but must be paid for, with the total bill consuming most of a Cuban’s monthly salary. This leaves almost nothing to spend on additional food, which is available on the black market or in “dollar stores,” where reasonably good food, donated by Western aid agencies, is sold at (non-Cuban) supermarket prices to foreigners or government elites holding dollars or euros.

When Cubans found out my friends were Mexicans, they would frequently beg them for food.

I should add, by the way, that my Mexican informants are not right-wing Cuban émigrés looking to badmouth the Castro regime. On the contrary, they are individuals of generally left-leaning sentiments who voiced nothing but praise for the Cuban school system. Yet they saw what they saw, and they were willing to bear witness.

After hearing their report of North Korean–like enforced hunger in Cuba, I decided to search the Internet to see if I could find confirmations from others. I found several. Apparently this situation has been going on for some time. An excellent account reporting many of the same observations was published by the intrepid Canadian blogger-traveler Ruby Weldon in 2009. A study published by the U.S. National Institutes of Health in 2005 reported that 41 percent of patients encountered in Cuba’s hospitals suffered from malnutrition, and 11 percent were “severely undernourished.”

Yet such is not the dominant account given by the global media. Far from it. If you search the Internet for “malnutrition in Cuba,” you will see innumerable postings citing favorable reports from UNICEF and the World Health Organization that go so far as to claim that Cuba is leading the developing world in the complete elimination of malnutrition. “Cuba has no such problems,” trumpets Pravda.ru. “It is the only country in Latin America and the Caribbean that eliminated severe malnutrition due to the government’s efforts to improve people’s diet, especially those most vulnerable.” Such “big lie” blanket denials remind one of the international left-wing media’s willful blindness to the genocidal famine, or Holodomor, that the Stalin regime imposed on Ukraine in 1932–33.

While denying the existence of Cuba’s mass starvation, many regime apologists don’t hesitate to simultaneously blame it on the United States. This is nonsense. The U.S. trade embargo on Cuba is almost completely ineffective, as many other countries, including the European Union, do not honor it. The goods of the world market are available for Cuba to purchase, but all the foreign exchange is monopolized by the regime, which uses it for its own power and pleasure. This allows the government to enforce starvation wages on the enslaved populace — who have no choice but to work on such terms as the regime dictates, because the rulers ban private enterprise, and the country has no other employer.

Yet even more shocking, perhaps, than the deniers are certain current Western commentators who actually acknowledge the government-organized starvation but praise it. Some say that “the Cuban diet” is a great way to lose weight. Others see it as a key step forward in the fight to save the planet: “[T]hey have created what may be the world’s largest working model of a semi-sustainable agriculture, one that doesn’t rely nearly as heavily as the rest of the world does on oil, on chemicals, on shipping vast quantities of food back and forth,” wrote environmental ideologue Bill McKibben in his 2005 Harper’s article “The Cuban Diet: What you will be eating when the revolution comes”: “​They import some of their food from abroad — a certain amount of rice from Vietnam, even some apples and beef and such from the United States. But mostly they grow their own, and with less ecological disruption than in most places. In recent years, organic farmers have visited the island in increasing numbers and celebrated its accomplishment.”​

Indeed, organic farmers are not the only ones celebrating. In 2006, the international “Living Planet” report of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Global Footprint Network declared: “Cuba is the only nation to achieve sustainable development.”

However, such glorious strides can be accomplished only under socialism. As the Pulitzer Center’s Kassondra Cloos put it in her glowing April 2013 Huffington Post article:


[F]arming won’t significantly change for the better, until the world is forced to reckon with the diminishing supply of nonrenewable resources that power the engines that transport food across scores of time zones before it hits the dinner table. It’s cheaper to burn gas using machines to plow, plant, harvest, and haul food than it is to sit down and think about how to more efficiently manage resources.

Under a dictatorship like the one in Cuba, change can be forced or necessitated overnight. . . . In a democracy, there’s great freedom to choose the easy way out — but it has hidden costs for everyone along the way.

Such endorsements place their authors beneath contempt. The Cuban government’s brutal food-denial program is not a benevolent attempt to fight obesity, save the environment, or demonstrate the wonders of organic farming. It, like Stalin’s Holodomor, the Nazis’ “Hunger Plan” for the territories they occupied during the war, and the current North Korean regime’s enforced starvation policy, is an effort to destroy the will of a population to resist tyranny through denial of the most essential substances necessary to maintain life and strength. The use of hunger as a weapon of political control is a crime against humanity. The well-stuffed slave masters currently gorging themselves in Cuba’s halls of power need to be held accountable.

Cuba: The Holodomor Next Door | National Review Online

 

[JQPublic1]

Perhaps this YouTube documentary will be useful to those who are objective enough to weigh both sides of the Cuban experience. This is the untold side of Cuba from some of the Cuban people themselves!

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=xxFPZaurHZA"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=xxFPZaurHZA[/ame]​