Cuba -- the times they are a-changin'

[charwin95]

Fidel and Raul don't have too many years left. But, they've created a privileged class that will hold onto their power at all costs.

Opening up Cuba the way Obozo has does not, in any way, do anything to help the average Cuban living far below poverty levels.

Cubans are sick with Castro. Times are changing.
However Obama just opened the door and Americans has not done any investment yet....... But you already came up with your own predictions.
What made you think this will not help average people in Cuba? How did you came out with this prediction?

Any American investments in Cuba will be directly related to the amount of mordida given to government officials. And, once those investments are made, the Cuban people will have to pay those same officials for any chance to invest or work.

And then, those who do get the jobs will face increased prices that benefit the same government officials.

They may be sick of Castro but the Establishment is firmly entrenched with a strong military backing it

In reality there is already a movement to get rid of communism in Cuba. By Obama opening the door reinforce these movements to move forward which they never had before. Communism is corrupted at massive scale. But times are changing.

Cuban dissident movement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Jarlaxle]

According to your posts, you should be shot for buying goods from China.

You're no better than anyone else in America. You financially support communists in China yet when a small island with some communists is opened up to America, you call for the overthrow of their government and say that Americans should only be there to wage war and invade them.

Do you see how ridiculous you are?

Why aren't you demanding that no one go to China? Why aren't you demanding that all imports from China stop and why do you buy those imports? Why aren't you demanding the overthrow of the government in China?

You really have a lot of nerve demanding to tell everyone else how to live their lives. So much for freedom.

You're nothing but a communist and you should leave America to join your communist buddies in China.

If getting shot personally would stop all US trade to Communist and Socialist nations, I'd do it in an instant. I dont believe any American should be traveling anyehere oitside the US, but at this,point thst is still legal to do.

I go out of my way to buy American products as much as possible, often going without or paying more for inferior products to do so. Unfortunately that's not always an option. I wish it was.

Yet you bought a car built in Mexico. HYPOCRITE!

 

[Blackrook]

Nothing is going to change until the Castro brothers are both dead.

 

[Slyhunter]

I travelled to Cuba a few year ago with a group of local farmers who wanted to observe how farming/agriculture is done there.
There were about twenty of us. We traveled around the country in a bus and visited two farms a day for about 9 days.
My takeaway was/is every farm we visited was supposedly being operated by the locals like sort of a communal farm. Those few who would speak candidly told us secretly that the local officials were stealing pretty much any profits. They were seizing any new equipment that was intended for the farm before it got to the farm then selling it.
Someone told of an incident where some farm equipment had arrived from some S.American country by ship. The 'authorities' seized the equipment before it was offloaded. They then sold the equipment back to the company who sold the equipment. The ship sailed back to S. America with the cargo never being offloaded. The 'authorities' apparently run this sort of scam all the time.
Until the Cubans themselves kick the corrupt communists out of power nothing good will happen. The Cuban 'authorities are salivating at the notion the US will start sending manufactured goods to Cuba. They all be millionaires in a couple of years. And the poor will remain poor.
Sort of like the millionaires in Communist Russia.

I know lots of Cubans here in Florida and they believe time will come they will kick communism in Cuba. Communist govt. is always corrupted in a massive scale. Putin is worth 40 billions as an example.

How are they going to do that when they aren't even there? They are here enjoying the good life. How in the **** can they get rid of communism if they aren't there to do so?

 

[whitehall]

I'm absolutely for getting the cop-killers back. I propose we trade them for the terrorists in Miami, starting with that piece of human garbage who put a bomb on a civilian airliner and murdered 73 people. Send him back to Cuba so he can get a fair trial and be shot.

I assume Anathema is a Lefty parodying his idea of a conservative, but the parody is so crude -- another Liberal Fail. However, let's play along. How did Communism collapse in Russia? By US military invasion? No. It collapsed when it became obvious to everyone there that the system did not work. And by the way, I played a tiny tiny tiny microscopic role in that, because I lived there for a few months in 1985 (my then-wife was a Fulbright Exchange Scholar), and took my BBC Micro plus a small monitor: I gave talks on микрокомпьютеры и образование ("Microcomputers in Education") in Kharkov, Akademgorodok, and Tallinn. My Soviet Computer Science colleagues were so envious! "How much did it cost?" they wanted to know. "Pretty expensive," I would reply, "about a month's wages." (I didn't have to say: you see, comrades, how much better a free market is? It was obvious. Not only could the system not produce its own micros, they couldn't even make a pair of blue jeans.)

And how did socialism, if not yet the rule of the Communist Party, die in China? I grew up with the idea that the 'Red Chinese' were Satan's spawn, and the idea of recognizing them or admitting them to the UN was treason. Then the amoral but intelligent Richard Nixon, who had been a ferocious anti-Communist, went to China, we recognized it, Mao died, and a few months later Deng Xiaoping told the peasants they could grow what they liked and sell it for what they liked, and ... 400 million people were lifted out of poverty in ten years and China has never looked back. (Maybe we should have kept it isolated and socialist and poor and backward, but what's done is done.) If you want to see thriving capitalism, go to China (despite recent setbacks). Young Chinese people travel around the world today, see how democracies work, go home and .... well, let's wait.

And how about Vietnam? Same story: socialism doesn't work, the free market does, the Communist Party doesn't want to rule a backward country so they do the obvious. (Well, there is one wrinkle to that story -- Americans carrying rifles did try to stop Communism there. How'd that work out?)

And where is the last hold-out of real, true unreconstructed Communism? North Korea, where the regime stays isolated as a matter of self-preservation.

Flood Cuba with Yankee tourists, bring Cuban young people to America on scholarships and cultural exchanges ... and see how long totalitarianism in Cuba lasts.

Some people just don't have faith in freedom.

Why do people think we need to freaking trade for fugitive Cop killers when we hold all the cards? That's the trouble with lefties. They are always ready yo kiss somebody's ass. All we need to do is sit down with the bearded thugs and lay it on the line. The embargo stays until the fugitives are in a jail cell waiting for extradition.

 

[charwin95]

I travelled to Cuba a few year ago with a group of local farmers who wanted to observe how farming/agriculture is done there.
There were about twenty of us. We traveled around the country in a bus and visited two farms a day for about 9 days.
My takeaway was/is every farm we visited was supposedly being operated by the locals like sort of a communal farm. Those few who would speak candidly told us secretly that the local officials were stealing pretty much any profits. They were seizing any new equipment that was intended for the farm before it got to the farm then selling it.
Someone told of an incident where some farm equipment had arrived from some S.American country by ship. The 'authorities' seized the equipment before it was offloaded. They then sold the equipment back to the company who sold the equipment. The ship sailed back to S. America with the cargo never being offloaded. The 'authorities' apparently run this sort of scam all the time.
Until the Cubans themselves kick the corrupt communists out of power nothing good will happen. The Cuban 'authorities are salivating at the notion the US will start sending manufactured goods to Cuba. They all be millionaires in a couple of years. And the poor will remain poor.
Sort of like the millionaires in Communist Russia.

I know lots of Cubans here in Florida and they believe time will come they will kick communism in Cuba. Communist govt. is always corrupted in a massive scale. Putin is worth 40 billions as an example.

How are they going to do that when they aren't even there? They are here enjoying the good life. How in the **** can they get rid of communism if they aren't there to do so?

Read post #61.

 

[longknife]

Showdown in Caracas: Cuba’s puppet dictator in Venezuela attempts to steal election from the Venezuelan people @ Babalú Blog



Reports from Cuba: Cuban TV highlights National Assembly attacks on self-employed @ Babalú Blog

http://translatingcuba.com/wp-conte...rero-Centro-Habana_CYMIMA20151230_0017_13.jpg



Monkey see monkey do: Iran imitates Castrogonia in dealing with U.S. @ Monkey see monkey do: Iran imitates Castrogonia in dealing with U.S.

http://babalublog.com/wpr/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/o-6.jpg



Cuba’s dictator has a new Sugar Daddy and his name is Barry @ Monkey see monkey do: Iran imitates Castrogonia in dealing with U.S.



The EU must not betray the people of Cuba and their right to choose their government @ Monkey see monkey do: Iran imitates Castrogonia in dealing with U.S.



They write letters: Former Cuban political prisoner says ‘NO’ to business with Cuba’s repressive dictatorship @ Monkey see monkey do: Iran imitates Castrogonia in dealing with U.S.



Why Obama allowed Cuba’s communist dictatorship to get away with illegal weapons smuggling @ Monkey see monkey do: Iran imitates Castrogonia in dealing with U.S.



Bother to follow the links to any of these stories and discover the truth about the Cuba Kings Barry “Opened up” to Americans

 

[longknife]

Pictures shout out the truth!

But the full story is @ Reports from Cuba: A glance at Cuba in 2015 | Babalú Blog and it isn't what Obama tells us

 

[Doug1943]

Anathema: Go to the Amazon.com 'Politics' forum and look for posts by someone called Love Thy.Enemy -- he's doing the same thing you are, but from the other side. (I think he lays it on a bit too thick, as I think you do too. But it's a temptation, I can see.)

On Cuba. Why it's good to go, not just for a great vacation but because you'll be help spreading democracy too.

1. When you go to Cuba, you increase contact with the Cuban people. This has to be good -- the more they meet Americans, the more they talk about what life is like elsewhere in the world, the better. The less isolated they feel, the better. Dictatorships try to keep their people isolated -- that's why they jam radio and TV stations. But American tourists in Cuba can't be jammed (scammed, yes: don't buy 'authentic' cigars on the street.)

However, perhaps you'd best not talk about American politics. Might put them off democracy.

2. You'll spend money there. Go the right way -- avoid the tours, the hotels, and stay in 'Casas Particulares' (private homes) -- the more money you put in the pockets of the growing middle class there. When everyone was an employee of the state, they were dependent on the state. When someone has their own business -- which has been legal in a lot of areas for five years now -- they are much more likely to think independently.

3. Dictatorships change from the inside, not from the outside. Everywhere communism has collapsed, or has radically changed to allow a free market, free travel, etc, it has been because the leaders themselves made the change. Sometimes this meant one faction of leaders ousting the top one, as in Rumania, and sometimes mass demonstrations helped, as in Rumania and East Germany -- but it has never been through a bloody uprising.

The same applies to right-wing dictatorships, as in Spain, Greece, Turkey, Argentina, Chile, Indonesia, etc etc etc. The change was from within, and involved a faction of the people in power deciding that they couldn't go on in the old way. Lots of travel to Cuba -- and, hopefully, in the other direction too -- will push this forward. (Someone mentioned how it won't change while the Castro brothers are alive. Maybe so -- although Raul has liberalized the economy a lot -- but, they're pretty old. I suspect they will go to Marxist Heaven in the not-too-distant future. And then we'll really see changes.

Cubans CAN travel abroad, it's just hard for them to get visas from the countries they want to go to, and to pay for transport. But travel to the US should be cheap. So ... invite a Cuban family to come visit your family in the US. If you're religious, see if your church has branches in Cuba and visit them.

And invite Cuban Communists too, if you meet any! Top leaders of the Communist Party defect to the US all the time. Don't think they're all hard-core. The Cuban Communist Party has a million members, one-tenth of the population, and the Young Communist League has another half million. Bring 'em on vacation to the USA!

Finally: read what's going on in Cuba. There are lots of dissident blogs written from inside Cuba: a whole collection can be found here: http:translatingcuba.com
and especially interesting is this newspaper published from inside Cuba: www.havanatimes.org -- it's well worth looking at.