CUBA

[wembley8]

You see... this is what I don't like. This whole "obviously this would be no good for us, but it's great for the third world proles

I think you know that's not what I mean. (It's also an alarming echo of the 'if-they-like communism-they-should-go-and-live-in-Russia' refrain of Daily Mail readers a few decades ago).

FWIW, we can't go there on holiday again - my wife says that if we go back, she wants to live there.

 

[Kondoru]

My friend believed he would be better off in the US.

He wasnt, but that doesnt change his initial belief.

And as for democracy, the ancient greeks did not believe it was the be all and end all, they believed more in experimentation.

(and of course in massive regimes like Persia and Rome it wasnt possible anyway.)

 

[wembley8]

You need to distinguish between the letter of the law and how it actually works.

My own experience over the decades is that if there is something about you or your lifestyle that is officially illegal, that law is sooner or later going to coil around you and and bite you.

...but the anti-Gay laws in some parts of the US are worse than Cuba. Where does that leave you?
(Whether they are now enforcable is another matter, but they're on the books).

 

[wembley8]

no matter where you're from if you're so desperate to leave the place then one would have to assume that's a significant comment on it.

Fair point, but Cuba is hardly unique in this regard. There is a steady flow from poorer countries to richer ones of people who believe they can do better there (of course, many can); on the other hand, half a million Brits now live abroad.

I don't think this says much about Cuba per se - any more than I'd criticise Poland over the 600,000 Poles estimated to be in Britain.

 

[Kondoru]

People leave this country for all sorts of reasons.

Several of my friends went to the US for cheaper petrol

Others leave for warmer climes

A lot go because they hate all the moaning we love to do...

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

no matter where you're from if you're so desperate to leave the place then one would have to assume that's a significant comment on it.

Fair point, but Cuba is hardly unique in this regard. There is a steady flow from poorer countries to richer ones of people who believe they can do better there (of course, many can); on the other hand, half a million Brits now live abroad.

I don't think this says much about Cuba per se - any more than I'd criticise Poland over the 600,000 Poles estimated to be in Britain.

I do believe that a lot of the Cuban refugees, that wash up on the coast of the US, are in similar circumstances to what many Daily Mail readers would usually despise as 'economic migrants', if they made their way to the UK, hidden under a truck and what many similarly disposed US residents often despise as, 'wetbacks', when they make their way across the treacherous wastelands of the US/Mexican border.

Of course some Cuban refugees are genuine 'asylum seekers'.

 

[Kondoru]

Thats the point Im making

 

[ted_bloody_maul]

no matter where you're from if you're so desperate to leave the place then one would have to assume that's a significant comment on it.

Fair point, but Cuba is hardly unique in this regard. There is a steady flow from poorer countries to richer ones of people who believe they can do better there (of course, many can); on the other hand, half a million Brits now live abroad.

I don't think this says much about Cuba per se - any more than I'd criticise Poland over the 600,000 Poles estimated to be in Britain.

i'm not saying it's unique to cuba. however, until we see a raft of british ex-pats risking their lives washing up on the shores of the costa del sol then i don't think any comparison can be made between cuban and british emigration.

 

[ted_bloody_maul]

Thats the point Im making

well economic migration on that scale would suggest that there was something wrong with the way the state's working surely (although one could make relevant points about the US blockade)?

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

... (although one could make relevant points about the US blockade)?

Quite.

 

[Kondoru]

That was the reason for my friend leaving the UK

Part of his problem was he couldnt get a work permit immediatley.

(Do Cuban refugess get one fast?)

 

[Quake42]

FWIW, we can't go there on holiday again - my wife says that if we go back, she wants to live there.

Mmm, but does she really want to live the life of a typical Cuban on a few dollars a day and be carted off to jail if she opposes the government? Or does she just want to live somewhere hot, cheap and picturesque?

I'm with ramon on this. You can oppose the US blockade of Cuba with all of your energies -it's wrong, nasty and bullying - but that doesn't detract from the fact that the Castro administration is a nasty dictatorship with all the negativities that this entails. I agree that the human rights abuses committed under Castro are certainly less than those committed by the right wingers running the various US client states in Latin America over the decades... but I don't think that means that we should pretend that this very poor, oppressive, one party state is some sort of socialist paradise.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

(It's also an alarming echo of the 'if-they-like communism-they-should-go-and-live-in-Russia' refrain of Daily Mail readers a few decades ago)

It's worth noting the number of American Left Wingers who hightailed it to Russia in the 1920s and early 1930s to participate in the "Great Soviet Exoperiment" and after a few weeks or months fled back here to become firm anti-Communists. That number included Ben Gitlow, the first Secretary General of the American Communist Party (CPUSA).

An elderly gentleman I met a few years ago informed me that his parents, both graduate engineers, migrated to Russia in 1932, full of high idealistic hopes, taking their two young children along with them. They realized within weeks that the vaunted workers' democracy was a dictatorial hell-hole and tried unsuccessfully to return to the United States. They were forbidden to do so, but did manage to smuggle their son out. The parents themselves remained to starve to death in the seige of Stalingrad.

The daughter survived and became a teacher of English.

At the fall of the Soviet state my friend made contact with his sister for the first time in more than 40 years.

Her first request: "Help me get back to the United States!"

She's living here in Cincinnati now.

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

...

Strangely enough, My father has felt much the same way about the USA, when forced to travel there on family visits with his partner.

And the longest he's had to stay there is a month.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

And the longest he's had to stay there is a month.

Fine. So compare that with more than 700 months.

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

And the longest he's had to stay there is a month.

Fine. So compare that with more than 700 months.

Quite.

 

[Quake42]

For heaven's sake.

I would hate to live in the US as well but trying to compare it to Stalin's Russia is ludicrous.

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

For heaven's sake.

I would hate to live in the US as well but trying to compare it to Stalin's Russia is ludicrous.

well, DUH!

 

[ted_bloody_maul]

...

Strangely enough, My father has felt much the same way about the USA, when forced to travel there on family visits with his partner.

And the longest he's had to stay there is a month.

presumably your father was allowed to leave and wasn't held there against his will?

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

...

Strangely enough, My father has felt much the same way about the USA, when forced to travel there on family visits with his partner.

And the longest he's had to stay there is a month.

presumably your father was allowed to leave and wasn't held there against his will?

You might say that, I couldn't possibly comment.

 

[ramonmercado]

...

Strangely enough, My father has felt much the same way about the USA, when forced to travel there on family visits with his partner.

And the longest he's had to stay there is a month.

presumably your father was allowed to leave and wasn't held there against his will?

You might say that, I couldn't possibly comment.

Come now, if hes being held in the US for insulting the President or for starting an illegal website then I will campaign for his release.

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

...

Strangely enough, My father has felt much the same way about the USA, when forced to travel there on family visits with his partner.

And the longest he's had to stay there is a month.

presumably your father was allowed to leave and wasn't held there against his will?

You might say that, I couldn't possibly comment.

Come now, if hes being held in the US for insulting the President or for starting an illegal website then I will campaign for his release.

Or, for driving the wrong sort of taxi in Afghanistan?

 

[ramonmercado]

Pietro

What has Afghanistan got to do with it?

Now, in Cuba, its a crime to insult the President and its illegal to set up a website without the states permission.

Do you think that should be the case in the Us?

Should it be a crime in the UK to insult Blair?

Should websites be licensed in the UK?

 

[ted_bloody_maul]

You might say that, I couldn't possibly comment.

FU used that phrase to answer in the affirmitave. i'll assume you've misunderstood that nuance on this occassion.

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

presumably your father was allowed to leave and wasn't held there against his will?

You might say that, I couldn't possibly comment.

FU used that phrase to answer in the affirmitave. i'll assume you've misunderstood that nuance on this occassion.

I like its ambiguity.

 

[ted_bloody_maul]

presumably your father was allowed to leave and wasn't held there against his will?

You might say that, I couldn't possibly comment.

FU used that phrase to answer in the affirmitave. i'll assume you've misunderstood that nuance on this occassion.

I like its ambiguity.

the amiguity, though, is whether or not you mean "no but i want to appear mysterious" or "no and it rather makes my initial point seem a little irrelevant". i must say i rather enjoy it too.

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

You might say that, I couldn't possibly comment.

FU used that phrase to answer in the affirmitave. i'll assume you've misunderstood that nuance on this occassion.

And, I take lessons on nuance only from those who can actually spell words like, 'occasion'.

 

[ted_bloody_maul]

You might say that, I couldn't possibly comment.

FU used that phrase to answer in the affirmitave. i'll assume you've misunderstood that nuance on this occassion.

And, I take lessons on nuance only from those who can actually spell words like, 'occasion'.

i'll take that as a "no" on both counts then with an added count of "no but it explains my condition".

 

[Quake42]

well, DUH!

Well, DUH! It was you who was making the comparison...

 

[crunchy5]

It's really strange that folk are trying to compare the mighty USA with little tiny embargoed Cuba, a nation that if it hadn't adopted police state lite would almost certainly fallen to the machinations of the cia and now be comparable to Jamaica or the Dominican republic. The bottom line for me is that I can't think of a third world country I would rather be born in if I was black or indigenous.

The US manages to maintain it's saintly aura, in the eyes of some, by fighting its wars and doing its oppression elsewhere, anyone fancy being poor in south or central America where market forces and the cia do their worst. Lets not forget the dirty wars in Chile, Argentina or Peru, or the damage done to the economies of the Caribbean as recently as the 90s when Clinton forced Europe to stop our favourable subsidised banana trade, one of the 2 big banana companies of the US had given a few hundred thousand $ to lubricate the lobbying.