Yup, now the mafia are in the House of Representatives and Senate, they are lawyers and legitimate business men, businesses they bought with illegal money. They run your country now. That is why you don't see them in the news.
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Massive Cuban Layoffs
- Thread starter EagleSmack
- Start date
That was a typo. I meant "cold war" rhetoric.
What are they going to do? Be cheep prostitutes for depressed middle-aged mid-westerners who can't find happiness in their own country?
You've never seen a Cuban people's rally. What they never would show on American media was how on their rally days, there were factions in the crowd representing issues, and whether or not you want to believe this, Castro would take note, would talk to them, and if they had a legitimate complaint, Castro's government would try to figure out a way to deal with it, and *not* by jack-boot suppression as I bet your knee-jerk reaction would be.
Why? We run elbows with you guys all the time. All it means to us is that now we're going to have to start wearing maple-leaf pins in order to evade the embarrassment of being confused with yanks. It used to be so nice... we could take a vacation in Cuba, and we never got prejudiced against and never had to take extra steps to show we weren't American.
Ever read the Patriot Act?
Unlike life life in a corporation?
Which part? The government subsidization to keep the cost of high fructose liquid sugar artificially low so that people who grow sugar naturally cannot compete?
Part of it is because they were never a burden on anyone. Ever noticed how Cuba never came hat-in-hand asking for a bailout?
How many times has the US written off the national debt of Mexico?
Yet Mexicans still continue to leave their capitalist nation in droves, finding it preferable to working under-the-table as virtual indentured slaves for cheep US employers.
:scratch: Hmm... interesting how Americans fought a war resulting in the abolition of slavery, yet still found a way to have virtual-slavery.
In any case, why don't you just offer to accept those 500,000 now-unemployed former government workers as refugees from a totalitarian state?
Come to think of it... did you know you could solve the problem of "illegal aliens" - the sub-minimum-wage semi-slave labour that what little is left of actual production in the American economy depends on - from being classified as "illegal"? Just declare Mexico to be an oppressive regime, and then all the illegal aliens from Mexico can be granted refuge status.
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Exactly those same two groups are doing exactly the same thing to their own communities up here too.
Please, you makes some valid points then this. Are you honestly trying to tell me that Cuban's have unrestricted freedom of speech or that there are no political prisoners there? Fidel has ran the country with an iron fist and favourable geography, he's hardly the caring, statesmen you make him out to be.
If you'd even been there, you'd be amazed by the things they were willing to discuss, on political levels that would chill the bones of most Americans.
The only thing they weren't allowed to do was actively propagate an overthrow of their government. They didn't care if you didn't like it, nor even if you'd gripe about it to your friends over cervesa at the end of the day, but if you ever started pushing pamphlets calling for an over-throw, they'd first tell you stop because it's not going to happen, and if you kept it up, they'd lock you up.
That was declared as being unduly harsh by Americans, but in fact, in the US, if anyone propagates overthrow of the US system of government with its Constitution etc., they get pretty-much the same treatment, which was underscored in a formal way with production of the Patriot Act.
Otherwise, *most* of the people in Cuban prisoners were common thieves and thugs, of the sort that would be called hoodlums and gangsters here. It's just that if a youth street-gang is busted in the US they're called what they are and get tossed in jail, whereas if the same sort were to act up in Cuba and get tossed in a Cuban prison, Uncle Sam would call them freedom fighters.
In fact, Castro's Cuba had a process for groups to take complaints to a commissionaire, and if they had a legitimate issue, they would try to deal with it in a civilized manner.
He was one heck of a lot easier to deal with than many of the leaders of the other Caribbean and Central American nations, which were by no means democratic, but which Uncle Sam would let be because they were at least "capitalistic".
The US might have said that their issue was his style of government, but really it was his economic policies they didn't like. If he'd been running an all-out capitalistic economy, they wouldn't have cared if he'd had horns and a pointy tail.
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Interesting little revision of history, but you're wrong. Sorry to interrupt the herring but any oppression in Vietnam prior to Soviet and Red Chinese recognition of Ho Chi Minh's government was of French origin. It may interest you to learn that up until 1949, The US, through their Office of Strategic Services (now CIA) supported Uncle Ho in his effort to oust the French from Indochina. This, however, is off topic.
So what happened? The US was secretly working against the French in Indochina, but when Ho was officially recognized by the Soviets and (newly minted if it was 1949) communist Chinese government, the US felt obligated to switch its support to France?
I believe it had more to do with supporting their own corporate (capitalist) interests in Vietnam. The US has and always will put their own corporate interests before anybody or any government. Their sole purpose is to expand and exploit any and all resources it feels necessary to its own prurient interests. What most Americans fail to or refuse to see is that in order to maintain their (and our) life style, the oppression and exploitation of third world countries is a necessity. It cannot be any other way.
Yes of course, it's just easier to ask if somebody's there who already knows the answer.
As a total aside... there's this common black-and-yellow garden spider who built a web in a corner of my balcony whom I've been keeping as a sort-of pet because she wasn't in the way and because her web looks pretty the way it catches the light, and I just saw a male find the web and do his half-hour long ever-so-slow mating dance to get close to her, and when he's finally about one millimeter away, with her rolled over abdomen exposed and he's tickling her and he's *just* about to make his grab, a fly hits the web and she breaks it off to rush over and pounce on the fly.
Nature is so cruel.
Anyway... back to the thread.
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Chill the bones? Embellishing a little I'd say.
In order to save space I quoted only a small portion. The rest of your post gives me the impression that the latest news from Cuba simply has made you too upset.
Cuba will have better days to come.
How about you return to my original response to your original comment....
What is so weak and feeble minded about the Cuban people that the assumption is that they will be exploited?
In the days before Castro it was the Italian mob that set up the casinos etc. in Cuba. I doubt that Cubans would let that happen again. I doubt the Italian Mob has the influence any longer.
Got you. That makes more sense.
Is that what they do for Canadians now down there?
Oh brother. Stop. You're embarrassing yourself.
LMAO. As opposed to wearing them to show pride in who you are, you'll wear them just to show who you're not.
They'll know the difference... Yanks tip better.
Oh well. For years I've heard on this forum the evilness of the embargo and now that it is possible that the embargo may soon be lifted folks like you are going to be bent out of shape.
Be careful what you wish for!
Relevence?
Perhaps you've forgotten about the Soviets. The Soviet Union propped up the Cubans until they went teets up.
More embellishing eh?
I've no doubt that this is going to touch off another wave of boats heading to Florida.
So since you are Cuba's best buddies... why don't you take them in. We still have an embargo against them and the "Feet wet, Feet Dry" Policy. Lead the way and take in 500,000 into Canada.
Yeah..that will work.
Geez.
Maybe we'll build a Dorito plant in Cuba.
Wrong again!
Apparently not enough.
What arrogance. Do you think the Cubans are going to give up their land to Canada because you say you are nicer?
No Casinos up in Canada eh?
Actually, no. They just offer vacation retreats, and shows in their hotels that look like stuff you'd have seen in Vegas in the 50's.
Frankly, yeah, that is exactly why Canadians will stitch a maple leaf to their backpacks when traveling.
The deal between the Soviets and Cuba was that they traded sugar for oil, but they set the price at how many hours of human labour it took to produce each.
Consequently, Cubans were getting oil cheaper than people in north America and Europe and Japan, while Soviets were paying more for sugar that folk in the west.
They had a limited mutual defense treaty, but it wasn't like what the Soviets had with places like Bulgaria and East Germany, because Cuba wasn't part of the Eastern Bloc.
Well, it wouldn't be impossible. Because they're government workers, it means they probably have skills and education, so they'd be easier to absorb than boatloads of Tamils.
Well, if they are forced to sell land to foreigners, then yeah, I think they would preferentially sell to Canadians for exactly that reason. We never embargoed them.
Yes there are - Canada was loosing too much money from people flying south to gamble in Vegas, so provinces started opening them here - which is why there'd be nothing to gain by developing Casinos in Cuba, such that development would tend towards taking advantage of the one thing Cuba has that Canada does not (we grow enough sugar beets to not need their cane sugar), which is nice weather in the winter, which means things like retirement communities, which means they'd build a service sector based upon taking care of old people, and would end up having an economic sector fueled with Canadian pensions.
Actually... hmm... if someone were to pick up the phone and call the Cuban embassy and tell them that Canadians would be interested in retiring there if Cuba can offer the retirement infrastructure and service in both English and French, I bet the Cubans themselves would jump on it and develop some very nice retirement communities without having to sell land, and they can almost certainly offer it cheaper than retiring in Florida.
Given that Canadian baby-boomers are hitting retirement age, and given how a lot of them are in that grey-zone of having money, but not quite enough to retire comfortably, if some place with infrastructure, including health care and a relatively low crime rate, were to offer a cheaper alternative, I bet lots of Canadians would jump on it.
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Oh then why did you bring up prostitutes?
LOL.
Yes, the Soviets were always concerned at the amount of human labor it took to do anything. Just read the history of the Soviet Union. A true worker's paradise.
C'mon man... are you really trying to float that?
And we get it cheaper than you. And the people in the Middle East get it cheaper than us.
Oh gosh.
Do you know anything about the Soviet-Cuban Military History?
Well then get on the horn and start. I am sure Canada would love to absorb 500,000 Cubans.
They won't be forced to sell land.
Canadians still flock to Vegas.
It was a hyperbolic alliteration to make a point.
If you want to get into it, it might be a good idea to start a new thread, but as in-a-nutshell as I can put it (which means I'm telling you before you tell me that it's overly simplistic that it's overly simplistic) it basically went like this:
Life under Stalin was incomprehensible hell.
Khrushchev came along, and swung things way in a liberalizing direction... too much so for that small cabal of survivors of Stalin's tyranny. The guess is, they survived under Stalin because they were comfortable with his way, and so were made nervous by Khrushchev who was amazingly progressive for the situation.
Internal dissent happened, and Brezhnev got into power, and he pulled things more towards what Soviets would call a "middle-ground" (and yes, I know how weird that can sound, but as it was...)
Under Brezhnev, workers were still going to have things like quotas, but worker's rights that were supposed to be guaranteed in their constitution were going to start to be honored, and it was a mixed blessing.
As long as you met your quota, and as long as you weren't threatening to overthrow the state, life became tolerable to workers, and became a big giant headache to farm and factory managers, because at the end of the day, as long as the workers had complied with the strict wording of the law and how it defined their rights as workers, then there was no way you could ask them to work harder, or to stay late, or bribe them with overtime... and that completed the destruction of farming started by Stalin, because you couldn't get the farmers to work long hours during planting and harvesting season (curiously, Lenin never thought the farms should be collectivized... I know some ex-Soviets who think Stalin did it simply because he was from Georgia, and they have a historical grudge against Ukrainians, and that Ukrainians were the *target* of collectivization, and not just the victims, because the real bread-basket is not Russia, it's the Ukraine).
Anyway, the point is, everyone in the Soviet Union, from the workers on up to the highest levels of management knew darn good and well that the west was more productive, and Soviet leaders and factory managers would tell workers, "You know, if you were willing to work a bit harder, we could be that productive", and the workers would say, "NO! This is a worker's state. It's Friday 5:00 PM and I'm going to drink vodka with Vladimir."
All they, the workers, cared about was that life was "good enough". They had guaranteed health care, a guaranteed job, and a guaranteed place to live. Yes they could strive for better food and accommodations, but frankly, for plenty of them, they were content enough with what they had as long as there was vodka.
It was a headache to be a non-military researcher. A researcher would be told to invent and build a prototype of a new toaster. Being the super-well educated in math-and-engineering Russian that he was, he'd come up with a design that was centuries ahead of anything.
He'd ask for materials, and his boss would respond with something like, "Okay, here's three tonnes of the finest titanium steel and 120 barrels of raw crude", which he'd take and parlay through the gray-market with other people who had piles of copper wire or warehouses full of plastic ingots, and would eventually get all the parts and materials.
He'd start assembling the prototype for a presentation due on Monday, and it's late Friday, so he asks his worker-class engineering assistants to stay late, and they'd say, "You know, you're starting to sound like a bourgeois pig. This is a workers state. Goodnight."
So he'd slave away himself all weekend, killing the pain of the tedium and fatigue with vodka, and he'd have the prototype ready for the presentation.
He goes in and makes his presentation. It's centuries ahead of anything found in Japan, Germany or America, and his boss would *then* say, "Are the Americans doing it?"
He'd say no. The whole point was to come up with something better than what the Americans were doing... was it not?
Whereupon his boss would say, "Then why should we do it? Throw it away. I have another project for you."
Yes I know that sounds silly... just like it sounds silly to imagine General Motors being managed by MBAs with majors in finance and no experience nor training in engineering, and who'd never seen an assembly line nor been on a shop floor. Imagine what a mess *that* would make of an automobile manufacturing corporation.
Anyway... in terms of the deal of oil for sugar between the Soviets and Cuba, the terms of the deal were the terms of *that* deal, negotiated with Castro sitting on the other side of the table.
Which is weird given that you get 60% of your petroleum imports from Canada.
Yup... including the part where the US quietly withdrew missiles from Turkey when the Soviets withdrew theirs from Cuba. The point was, the Soviets could not and would not guarantee Cuba the same kind of massive land-based defense with a gazillion tanks like they did for the East Bloc.
Yeah I know... what Vegas has that Canadian casinos don't have are the peripheral benefits, like state regulated brothels.
Yeah, well, with 500,000 now out of work, they'll have to find something to do. What would you suggest?
To do what?
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I'm glad anti-American sentiments are not welcomed here on CC. Maybe some day it will be the same with other countries.
Anyone that has traveled in Cuba has had an opportunity to take one of their outrageously priced tours. The Havana tour is a complete slam of the colonialism imposed on the Cubans by the Americans. The tour guide goes on endlessly for hours about the terrible Americans, to the extent that I had to somewhat mitigate the info for my impressionable son. I also did not want him to believe that colonialism was all bad.
I think it will take a generation before Cubans believe that North Americans are okay ... and until then we will represent nothing more than the buckets of dollars.
I did the Havana tour with a similar experience, including the drive-by of
the American Embassy and the billboards and such. Sounds like we
might have had the same Tour Guide even. That sentiment when it
did come up (with folks other than the Havana Tour Guide), a very
clear distinction was made between the American People, and
American Government with their policies.
It was definitely an "other side of the coin" perspective.
The Yanks are already there. They just don't fly directly there, is all. The
Americans I met in Cuba got along just fine there, and I didn't mind them
either...as they didn't wear those gross speedos like the European guys
or go topless like the European grandmothers.
We even nick-named the one "Grandma Boobies"...as those things sort'a
trailed along behind her in the pool. Glass 1/2 full & silver lining though,
those things would sort'a squeegee the bar clean whenever she got another
drink.
(P.S. I'm not sold on that 'Yanks tip better' thing....but then EagleSmack wasn't
there to prove me wrong. Our group tipped better than anyone it seemed. My
perspective would be somewhat biased though, I guess).
One of the most surprising impressions I have of Cuba (a lack of homework
on my part before I went) was of the Cuban people themselves. Almost every
adult I met not only had some Military experience (both Men & Women), but
also had a higher level of education than myself.
Education in Cuba - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
From what I understand, one of their more important exports for Cuba would
be Medical Doctors, heading out to many Central & South American countries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_medical_internationalism
the American Embassy and the billboards and such. Sounds like we
might have had the same Tour Guide even. That sentiment when it
did come up (with folks other than the Havana Tour Guide), a very
clear distinction was made between the American People, and
American Government with their policies.
It was definitely an "other side of the coin" perspective.
The Yanks are already there. They just don't fly directly there, is all. The
Americans I met in Cuba got along just fine there, and I didn't mind them
either...as they didn't wear those gross speedos like the European guys
or go topless like the European grandmothers.
We even nick-named the one "Grandma Boobies"...as those things sort'a
trailed along behind her in the pool. Glass 1/2 full & silver lining though,
those things would sort'a squeegee the bar clean whenever she got another
drink.
(P.S. I'm not sold on that 'Yanks tip better' thing....but then EagleSmack wasn't
there to prove me wrong. Our group tipped better than anyone it seemed. My
perspective would be somewhat biased though, I guess).
One of the most surprising impressions I have of Cuba (a lack of homework
on my part before I went) was of the Cuban people themselves. Almost every
adult I met not only had some Military experience (both Men & Women), but
also had a higher level of education than myself.
Education in Cuba - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
From what I understand, one of their more important exports for Cuba would
be Medical Doctors, heading out to many Central & South American countries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_medical_internationalism