This isn't going to change much...maybe less people tortured, imprisoned and killed under Raul but that's about it.
The biggest news that came from this is that Justin Trudeau doesn't have any speechwriters checking over what he writes before it goes to the press, and that being buds with his dad gets you every free pass in the book.
Also got confirmation that a local activist/budding politician is a full-blown communist sympathizer.
iadr wrote: The hate on, straight out of US propaganda, in this thread would show otherwise. You embargo a country; they get poor. You point to the poverty as a demonstration of something? Surely you can do better.
Apparently you missed the part where other counties did not heed the embargo. Cuba did OK as long as the Soviet union was propping them up. The worst thing about the embargo for Cuba was we didn't buy their cheap sugar, but that's whole nuther story.
spitfirebill wrote: The worst thing about the embargo for Cuba was we didn't buy their cheap sugar, but that's whole nuther story.
Meh there's not much profit in sugar anyway. Takes up a massive chunk of the land here and represents a razor-thin sliver of the economy.
Cuba was a significant part of my childhood. Remember, this was in the thick of the cold war. My family had moved to Puerto Rico 1n 1963 when I was 4 years old. Puerto Rico had a significant number of Cuban exiles and some of my friends were Cubans.
There was a lot of stories about what the exit was like. Wedding rings confiscated and families drowning on rafts as they tried to escape. And I read Readers Digest that always had some kind of story about "How I escaped the iron curtain of communism in a hot air balloon made of condoms". (or some variation of) I tell ya, as a kid, I did not understand why the USA did not just Nuke the island! It was obvious that Castro was Satan incarnate.
Then when I was 14, Dad came home and said we were all moving to Canada!
You guys might not get this, but to someone raised during the cold war on a self inflicted diet of USA propaganda, when Dad says we are moving to a "Socialist" country, I figured we were going to be living like behind the iron curtain. I mean I "Knew" first hand from my Cuban buddies what socialism was like. I seriously thought I needed to not go.
As it turned out, Canada was much worse than I imagined. Imagine being 14 years old and having beaches full of near naked nubile women wandering all over the place, only to be replaced by Mukluk wearing Inuit chicks slathered in Caribou pelts.
Regardless, as time wore on and I never had to deal with any KGB style interrogations in Ottawa, I chilled on the commy thing. I also read about Cuba from non-US sources and got around to visiting some of the more salacious parts of the planet.At first I had fun, but then kinda repulsed at it all. Cuba was an interesting place in the 1950s. Not so much if you were a Cuban, but certainly if you were wealthy and had an appetite for certain things like gambling and young children. What happened in Cuba stayed in Cuba.
Castro wanted that to change. And he did something about it. Would his plan have worked out better if the US had not gone the way it did? Who knows? I know I did say a silent "Adios" when I heard the news. The man did make a statement with his life.
Sugar cane matters in the DR, but that's partly because they have plenty of Haitian slave labor.
In reply to GameboyRMH:
Trudeau eulogies on Twitter have been very amusing.
After thinking and rethinking my response, the best I can say is Godspeed and good luck the the Cuban people.
GameboyRMH wrote:spitfirebill wrote: The worst thing about the embargo for Cuba was we didn't buy their cheap sugar, but that's whole nuther story.Meh there's not much profit in sugar anyway. Takes up a massive chunk of the land here and represents a razor-thin sliver of the economy.
Maybe so, but the price might be higher without the price support we have here in the US.
In reply to iadr:
An interview with Cuban intelligence?? Bwah hahahah!
Yes, US tried and failed. 638 times? I seriously doubt it.
So, Castro murders 10's of thousands of his own citizens, and the CIA botches a few attempts, but we are the bad guys??
Again, keep flogging yourself.
SVreX wrote: Fidel Castro dies on Black Friday- the ultimate sign of Capitalism. Poetic.
He was trying to hold off a day to keep Cuban-Americans from adding one more thing to their list of items to be thankful for.
Perhaps the official US envoys to the funeral could be Enrique Santos and Joe Ferrero.
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