*sigh* Déjà-vu, anyone? Apart from the fact that Castro's reign will probably outlive the terms of any of the next three US presidents, this is what? the fifth, sixth? country Bush wishes to make changes to in what little remains of his term. :rolleyes:

<h3>Bush announces initiatives for Cuban dissidents</h3>
Cuban-Americans significant voting bloc in Florida

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Declaring that "Cuba must change," President Bush Friday announced modest initiatives to "hasten the arrival of a new, free, democratic Cuba" and to prepare for the day when President Fidel Castro -- who seized power more than four decades ago -- is in charge no more.
"Cuba will soon be free," Bush said in Spanish in a Rose Garden address to a crowd that included a number of politicians from South Florida, a politically powerful haven for anti-Castro exiles.
Bush said Castro has responded to his diplomatic initiatives aimed at easing restrictions on trade and travel between the two countries "with defiance and contempt and a new round of brutal oppression that outraged the world's conscience."
Bush cited lengthy prison terms meted out to Cuban opposition members.
Friday was a national holiday in Cuba and no immediate response was available from Havana.
In addition, Bush said, elections in Cuba "are still a sham. Opposition groups still organize and meet at their own peril, private economic activity is still strangled. Non-government trade unions are still oppressed and suppressed. Property rights are still ignored and most goods and services produced in Cuba are still reserved for the political elite.
"Clearly, the Castro regime will not change by its own choice, but Cuba must change," Bush said.
Enforcement of travel restrictions already in place will be strengthened, he said. "We've instructed the Department of Homeland Security to increase inspections of travelers and shipments to and from Cuba."
The U.S. Treasury Department forbids Americans to spend money in Cuba on pleasure trips, but exceptions are made for people visiting relatives, offering humanitarian aid or conducting research.
"Those exceptions are too often used as cover for illegal business travel and tourism or to skirt the restrictions on carrying cash into Cuba," Bush said.
In addition, U.S. citizens who travel to Cuba through third countries or by boat in violation of the U.S. embargo will be targeted, he said.
Bush said U.S. travelers to the island enrich the Castro government simply by paying their hotel bills in dollars. "Foreign-owned resorts in Cuba must pay the wages of their Cuban workers to the government. The government, in turn, pays the workers a pittance in worthless pesos and keeps the hard currency to prop up the dictator and his cronies."
In Cuba, leading dissident Vladimiro Roca told CNN that he applauded the speech, but felt U.S. tourism has little impact on Castro's hold on power. "Our fight is with the Cuban government, not with the Americans," he said.
Bush also said he would work to "ensure that Cubans fleeing the dictator do not risk their lives at sea" by increasing the number of Cuban immigrants allowed to enter the United States each year and by informing Cubans "of the many routes of safe and legal entry into the United States."
In addition, the U.S. government will establish a committee to "hasten" the arrival of "the happy day when Castro's regime is no more and democracy comes to the island," Bush said.
It will be led by Secretary of State Colin Powell and Housing Secretary Mel Martinez, who was born on the island.
"We'll be prepared," said Bush, who has been criticized for what some have called his government's lack of planning prior to the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. Bush further promised to "continue to build a strong international coalition to advance the cause of freedom inside Cuba."
The president said he would increase the distribution of printed material on the island, increase the effectiveness of Radio and TV Marti, whose communications are regularly jammed by the Cuban government, and boost Internet-based information for Cubans, though few of the island's residents have access to the Internet.
"We're determined to bring the truth to the people who suffer under Fidel Castro," he said.
Cracking down on U.S. travel will also help limit the island's prostitution -- "a modern form of slavery which is encouraged by the Cuban government," Bush said.
The Castro regime has publicly opposed the sex trade. It has flourished on the island in the wake of economic pressures caused by the dissolution of its former trading ally, the Soviet Union, and the U.S. embargo, which was imposed in 1961.
Asked what evidence Bush had to support his contention that the Cuban government encourages the sex trade, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said he did not have that information with him, but would make it available to reporters later.
Administration officials said the new measures, while modest, were, as one put it, "real things" to strengthen the administration's Cuba policy.
Bush has steadfastly resisted calls by those who believe easing sanctions would do more to advance the cause of democracy in Cuba.
One of those, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, expressed disappointment in the speech.
"For more than four decades, the U.S. has pursued an absurd policy of embargo that has accomplished nothing but to increase the misery of the Cuban people and further isolate them from the American people," the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee said in a written statement. "The only beneficiary of the embargo is Castro himself, who is sheltered by the wall we have built around the island."
Baucus added, "I would hope that, at some point, we could move beyond a policy toward Cuba that is held hostage by the politics of the Electoral College. Today's announcement indicates that the administration isn't ready to put the needs of the Cuban people before politics."
It is no secret that Bush is courting anti-Castro Cuban-Americans in advance of next year's presidential election, believing their support is critical in presidential battleground states like Florida.
Bush is the 10th U.S. president since Castro took power in 1959.
A Cuba policy analyst at the Center for International Policy in Washington was also critical of the changes.
"If we're waiting for Fidel Castro to pass, we could be waiting for a couple more presidents," said Anya Landau. "These are simply rehashed, repackaged versions of a very tired and ineffective policy."
<h6>Source: CNN</h6>

While I don't agree with arresting or sanctioning travellers to Cuba, I certainly agree that the end of this dictator's reign is long overdue. He lied to the Cuban people about everything and then enslaved them. A lawyer, doctor, construction worker, or shop owner can't make a living, but the street sluts and cabies make a comparable fortune catering to foreign travellers -- often, a whore makes in one night what a doctor/lawyer makes in a week in Cuba.

As well, I am certain I know more Cuban exiles than any of IWF's other 13,000 members, and will say without a doubt that things need to change there. Cuba was a haven -- a wonderful tropical paradise with a good economy and a lot of natural beauty. Castro ruined that. There is still a lot of beautiful countryside and mountains there, but the communist government very quickly turned into a brutal one-man-serving dictatorship. I for one hope we reinitiate our attempts to assassinate him (which were given up after several CIA SNAFUS in the 60s and 70s.

We owe it to Cuba, and to the millions of Cubans in S. Florida, to finish what JFK started but balked on.

[edit]P.S. if your comeback to this has anything to do with the US embargo, let me be the first to preemptively tell you you are an idiot who is analyzing trees while missing the forest.

[ 10-11-2003, 11:29 PM: Message edited by: Timber Loftis ]

Please spell out for me what you are trying to say here very slowly and very carefully for me. I'm awful slow dear Pip old chap.

Please spell out for me what you are trying to say here very slowly and very carefully for me. I'm awful slow dear Pip old chap. </font>[/QUOTE]I'm rather puzzled myself... Did I just get flamed for posting a recent CNN-article (which is in any way a topic of which I've never written a single word about as long as I have been on IW, so the "comeback"-bit is extremely puzzling) or is this pointed towards an invisible entity only Timber is able to see? Or did someone respond, only to delete his/her post later? :confused:

G'day Timber! Long time no speak. I know that you're trying to make a point here, and I understand sarcasm perfectly, but could I also preemptively say that anyone who calls anyone else an idiot here for any reason, justified or not, will be preemptively sent from the forum a week to cool off and think about the error of their ways. In other words, yellow card. Cheers. :D

That has more to do with the economy than Castro - in order to pay doctors high salaries, the state has to earn hard cash. It's impossible for Cuba to earn large amounts of money when its nearest neighbour blocks all economically useful imports and exports and leans heavily on everyone else in the neighbourhood to do the same.

Yes, you're right - it was a haven: for the mafia
"Batista established lasting relationships with organized crime, and under his guardianship Havana became known as "the Latin Las Vegas." Meyer Lansky and other prominent gangsters were heavily invested in Havana, and politicians from Batista on down took their cut.

Through Lansky, the mafia knew they had a friend in Cuba. A summit at Havana's Hotel Nacional, with mobsters such as Frank Costello, Vito Genovese, Santo Trafficante Jr., Moe Dalitz and others, confirmed Luciano's authority over the U.S. mob, and coincided with Frank Sinatra's 1946 singing debut in Havana. It was here that Lansky gave permission to kill Bugsy Siegel.

Many of Batista's enemies faced the same fate as the ambitious Siegel. Nobody seemed to mention the many brutal human rights abuses that were a regular feature of Batista's private police force. Nobody, that is, except the many in Cuba who opposed the U.S.-friendly dictator."

And of course, the fact that literacy rates are now higher than the US and infant mortality is now lower than the US are not *facts* that we should forget. Should we Chastise Castro for:
Education and health care were made available to all, even those living in the remotest corners of the island. UNESCO statistics confirm that Cuba's rate of basic literacy is now among the highest in Latin America...

Few Cuban children live on the streets - unlike in many neighbouring countries. Infant mortality rates are the lowest in the region (and slightly lower that those in the United States), health care is excellent and all receive free milk until the age of six. Besides entertainment, Cuban television broadcasts college-level courses for the adult population.

The Cuban media often highlight the contrast between contented Cuban children and their counterparts in Bogotà, Los Angeles or Buenos Aires - dealing in drugs, dragged into prostitution or living in shanty towns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidel_Castro

Castro is certainly no angel - but he is in comparison to Batista. Cuba's democratic system may not be perfect - but it does garner enough support amongst the populace to refute the charge that it is a full blown dictatorship.

However, perhaps it is time for Cuba to amend its Constitution to limit the term of office of President to a fixed number of years, and to remove articles 5 and 6.

Castro is old and will die soon enough - change will come when he has gone - but a stable and peaceful society that is pro-American is unlikely to appear with US meddling of this nature...

Cuba's democratic process is not perfect? You're kidding right? their democratic process is non-existent. When was the last time someone opposed the butcher Castro? And lived or didn't spend the rest of his life in one of their hell hole prisons that is? And their health care system is really that great huh? Then why is it that when high ranking communists need medical attention they go outside the country?

So why has America not tried regime change in Cuba by force as was done in Iraq?

Mark

If you can't give examples, then this is merely rhetoric.

How's this for an example ?

Healthcare in Cuba is excellent..... IF you're not Cuban, and have a buck or two to spend. Cubans themselves have NOTHING, thanks to uncle Fidel.

Hell hole prison in Cuba - are we talking Camp X-ray in Guantanamo Bay here? ;)

But as for Cuba's 'democratic' system...... I didn't think they had one. One party states doesn't fit my definition of democracy. While the castro regime was the lesser of two evils compared to the Batista regime back in the 50'ies - it doesn't justify the continued oppresion of dissidents more than 40 years later. [img]graemlins/idontagreeatall.gif[/img]

<font color="#C4C1CA">All that article tells you is that the US economic embargo is killing and impoverishing Cubans - so the new raft of measures to further hurt the Cuban populace are just going to breed yet more Anti-Americanism. Way to go Bush!

As the Senator Baucaus so succinctly put it:
"For more than four decades, the U.S. has pursued an absurd policy of embargo that has accomplished nothing but to increase the misery of the Cuban people and further isolate them from the American people," the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee said in a written statement. "The only beneficiary of the embargo is Castro himself, who is sheltered by the wall we have built around the island."
The more the US hurts the Cuban people, the more they will rally behind their defender: Fidel Castro.

Speaking of Déjà-vu Grojlach, does anyone remember the *serious* threat that another small island once posed to the US?</font>


Regime change, the prequel
In 1983, the US 'pre-emptively' invaded Grenada. Sound familiar?
Jonathan Steele
Saturday October 11, 2003

Spare a thought for Grenada. If the tiny Caribbean "spice island" figures at all these days, it's as a last-minute holiday bargain in the travel supplements. Even then, many people think it is in southern Spain.
The story was different 20 years ago. Grenada was catapulted on to the front pages in October 1983 when troops from the world's most powerful country invaded the nutmeg-exporting island in order to effect "regime change". The White House sledgehammer was successful and US forces soon withdrew, but claims that a minuscule place with no army and a population of less than 100,000 could conceivably be a military threat prompted derision.

Two decades later the invasion looks less like an aberration than a harbinger of what happened in Iraq this year, a case of Caribbean farce being repeated as Middle Eastern tragedy. With George Bush senior in office as vice-president, the US assault on Grenada was a foretaste of the "pre-emptive military intervention" which his son enshrined as US national strategic doctrine last summer. Get them before they are even remotely in a position to get you.

Reporters who covered Grenada in that distant autumn of 1983 saw the same abuse of human rights, the same postwar incompetence, the same primitive failure to understand a foreign culture which the US "war on terror" was later to produce.

None of us was allowed into Point Salines, the airport which the US took over as its occupation headquarters. But looking across rows of barbed wire we caught glimpses of detainees being herded into wooden crates. The entrances to these boxes were less than three feet high and prisoners had to undergo the humiliation of having to crouch on all fours to get in. A single tiny window in each crate gave the luckless prisoners a view of armed guards in sandbagged watchtowers. It was the prototype of Guantanamo Bay's Camp X-Ray.

At the village of Grand Roy I found a stunned group of local women with the same blank looks of incomprehension that I was to see after US raids in Iraq this summer. No one was killed but six US soldiers had seized the Pope Paul Ecumenical Centre, a building used for community meetings and a children's summer camp. They hurled beds, tables and chairs into the street. "Our company HQ heard this was a centre for communist propaganda. We had an intelligence report that they had found a scrapbook with material which was communist in nature," said a staff sergeant. A copy of a very unglossy magazine called Soviet Woman lay incriminatingly on a desk. Asked whether this and a few other socialist pamphlets were enough to justify closing the place, the sergeant, a burly Puerto Rican, responded: "That's a question for senior officers. I've accomplished my mission."

Until the invasion, dirt-poor Grenada was run by a mildly leftwing government. The quaintly named New Jewel Movement had launched a revolution whose nickname - the "revo" - sounded like a motorbike. Maurice Bishop, its charismatic leader, was murdered by a sectarian rival and most Grenadans were still in shock and mourning when Ronald Reagan exploited the chaos to send in US troops.

Washington's case was that a new airport was being built by Cubans (true) as a launch-pad for future regional interventions by Fidel Castro (false). It was not explained how Grenada could give Castro extra muscle when the island is further from Florida or Central America - where leftwing insurgents were fighting military regimes - than Cuba is itself.

The true impulse - America's obsessive hatred of Cuba's independence and its desire to stop other countries in the region from following suit - was spelt out on the walls of the looted Cuban embassy. "Eat shit, Commie faggot," said newly written graffiti. The vandals had left their calling card, the initials AA for All American, which the 82nd Airborne Division likes to use. (They are the same outfit which recently killed three Iraqis near Falluja while shooting up a farmhouse and calling in airstrikes to destroy the building.)

Tawdry, vicious and ignorant, the invasion of Grenada differed from this year's war on Iraq in one important particular. A furious British prime minister did not hesitate to tell the US president he was wrong. In spite of her love-in with Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher saw through the threadbare threat assessments which the US put up to justify the war. "I am totally and utterly against communism and terrorism," she thundered in a BBC interview. "But if you are going to pronounce a new law that wherever communism reigns against the will of their people, the United States shall enter - then we are going to have really terrible wars in the world."

In her autobiography, she later described how Reagan rang to get her views a few hours before the invasion. It would be seen, she told him, "as intervention by a western country in the internal affairs of a small independent nation, however unattractive its regime". No self-delusions about liberation. Unlike Blair, Thatcher knew it would be occupation.

She explained that Grenada had not suddenly changed "from a democratic island paradise into a Soviet surrogate overnight in October 1983". Its socialist regime had taken over four years earlier. The Iraq analogy arises again. What made Saddam Hussein's Iraq more of a "threat" in March 2003 than it had been during the years of containment?

"The new 'hemispheric' strategy which President Reagan's administration was pursuing in our view led the US to exaggerate the threat which a Marxist Grenada posed," Thatcher wrote. Brave words, especially after Reagan had helped her during the Falklands war 18 months earlier. Reagan spurned the advice and ordered the invasion to go ahead. "I felt dismayed and let down. At best, the British government had been made to look impotent, at worst we looked deceitful," Thatcher commented.

The lesson for today is clear. When the US feels its vital interests are at stake abroad, whispers from a friend are unlikely to change things. Thatcher's colleague Christopher Soames put the point starkly in a House of Lords debate a few days after the invasion. "I hope her majesty's government will draw the conclusion from this sorry episode that perhaps the best way for the United Kingdom to bring influence to bear upon the decision-making process of the United States in the middle and latter parts of the 1980s will be off a European base. It is in strengthening that base and speaking with a European authority that we shall have much more influence over the US than through any special Anglo-Saxon influence that may or may not be left over from the mists of time," he declared.

Soames was a Europhile and Thatcher herself would never make the case in such strategic terms. But even with her narrow Atlanticist point of view, she knew when the Americans were going wrong and was not scared to tell them.

The contrast with Blair is sad.

[ 10-12-2003, 05:00 PM: Message edited by: Skunk ]

Skunk, i have a feeling that no matter WHAT i come up with, you'll only see it the way you WANT to see it. Always trying to put the US in a negative spotlight... bah.... i don't know why i even bothered to reply to this.

No, Groj, I was not flaming you. I, too, am against the embargo and always have been. If there are real liberty/dictatorship concerns in Cuba, which there are I argue, we should CHANGE Cuba (we can argue as to how -- I don't want to derail this by *that* much) not cut off trade with it.

However, one country's embargo is not determinative of the state of affairs in Cuba. Other countries do business with Cuba, despite the US's pressure. Having a bone to pick with the US over its reaction to the Castro dictatorship is a different (but related) topic than the topic of whether the dictatorship should be allowed to exist. If you took away the US Embargo, Castro wouldn't change much. Therefore, on the "Question of Cuba" you can't just say "Na-na, it's all the US's fault."

Skunk, on the statement "the state must have money to pay doctors." Well, Castro IS the state. And he has estates. Lots of 'em. Some nice, some not. Sleeps in a different place every night, from what I hear. Seems like your argument falls flat. And, in the capitalist alternative scenario to Castro's communism-dictatorship, the "state" doesn't pay people, so this statement would also not apply. The solution to Cuba's woes is not to give Castro more money.

Let's talk about literacy and happiness rates in Cuba. Then, let's talk about people who know there will be dire consequences if they don't fill the streets to cheer Castro when Castro tells them to. Let's talk about those who collect these numbers, and those who calculate them. In other words, :rolleyes:

[img]graemlins/1drinkspit.gif[/img] Thanks, I've had a busy day, and really needed that. You're top-notch!
<font size=6><font color=cyan>
[img]graemlins/shine.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/shine.gif[/img]
Hear ye, hear ye, Announcing
CASTRO THE DEFENDER!!!</font>
He's new, he's improved, his beard is longer! After 40 years Championing the Free Peoples of Cuba in the same Uniform and with the same AK, Castro is officially a Level 40 Dictator/Defender-God!</font>

You may now:
[a] Press A to see the credits, or
[b] Press B to reload a saved game, or
[c] Press C to return to the main menu.

[ 10-12-2003, 05:04 PM: Message edited by: Timber Loftis ]

Don't we all Johnny? ;)

Oh please. There is a very strong and moral voice of reason in the US, Sen. Max Baucus is one of them. Unfortunately, that 'strong moral voice of reason' isn't in government at the moment. Go back four years and you would have seen me praising the boots off of the US's foreign policies...

What estates? Give me evidence of his personal wealth...only you can't, can you? As for sleeping in a different place every night, the US has attempted to murder Castro on numerous occasions in the past - so the sleeping arrangements are quite natural given the threat.

The whole of the EU's healthcare provision is by the state - resulting in universal healthcare coverage. Does that make the EU a communist entity then?
Is Britain a communist state or a capitalist one?

Don't we all Johnny? ;) </font>[/QUOTE]I call it how I've *seen* it - not by what I saw on Fox...
Maybe that's the difference between us.

I don't watch FOX either, i too have my own view on matters, and they're a little less red than yours.

You mean you're views are more black, with a pirate and cross bones on them? Kind of like Bush's foreign policy then [img]graemlins/blueblink.gif[/img]

You mean you're views are more black, with a pirate and cross bones on them? Kind of like Bush's foreign policy then [img]graemlins/blueblink.gif[/img] </font>[/QUOTE]ARRRRRRR :D

<font color = lightgreen>When Castro dies, which should be within the next 10 years, there will be a brief power struggle. After this, no matter who winds up in power will decide that being so isolated has gone on long enough and will take steps towards normalizing relations with America. Any other decision would most likely be insane and result in another quick coup.
Our position should be to simply sit back and wait.</font>

Look here johnny

Note the presence of FACTS, look at the life expectancy rates. But most important - look at the last paragraph!

Cubans tell NHS the secret of £7 a head healthcare

Patient-centred and cost effective system could inspire NHS

Sarah Boseley, health correspondent, The Guardian
Monday October 2, 2000
The Guardian

The NHS is turning to Cuba for inspiration on how to improve its services. Officials from the Department of Heath and 100 GPs visited the Caribbean island which, despite being short of medicines and money after decades of a US-led economic embargo, manages to deliver excellent healthcare at a fraction of our cost.

Later this month a delegation of Cuban doctors, led by Cuba's deputy health minister, will arrive in Britain to share the secrets of their success.

The interest in Cuba comes at a time when the Labour government is intent on radical reforms of the NHS to make it patient-centred and more cost-effective. Cuba has a stunning record in both regards, with patient representation at every level, helping to organise the way the health service is run.

The health secretary, Alan Milburn, has repeatedly said he wants to see GPs take a leading role in the reform of the NHS, and it is the quality, dedication and large numbers of family doctors in Cuba that have contributed most to its impressive health record.

When Fidel Castro came to power, Cuba's mortality rates matched many other places in the developing world, with a life expectancy of 48 for men and 54 for women. Now it rivals anywhere in Europe or the US.

Male life expectancy is 74 - the same as in the UK. Women can expect to live to 76 years old (79 in the UK) and infant mortality is 7.1 per 100,000 births - not much higher than ours.

However, one major difference between Cuba's health statistics and ours has caught the attention of officials: here, healthcare costs £750 a head annually. In Cuba it costs £7.

Among those who went on the Cuban trip earlier this year were the principal medical officer of the Department of Health, Phillip Leach, the eminent academic Sir Brian Jarman and the president of the Royal College of GPs, Sir Dennis Pereira Gray.

Patrick Pietroni, a dean of postgraduate general practice at London University, who led the visit, said: "What we can learn is how they have managed to produce these healthcare statistics which are sometimes better than ours at 1% of the expenditure. They have more family doctors, who are better trained than our GPs.

"When we went to Cuba what was so impressive were the three-storey buildings called consultorio. The ground floor was the practice, the first floor was the doctor's flat and the second floor was the nurse's flat. No Cuban lives more than 20 minutes or so from one of these."

They also have fewer patients. Cuba has 30,000 GPs, the same number as Britain, but has only a fifth of the population. There is one family doctor per 500 to 700 people in Cuba, compared to one for 1,800 to 2,000 here.

Cuba has 21 medical schools, but Britain has only 12. Cuba has 37,000 practice nurses. The UK, which has a shortage of all nurses, has just 10,300.

Some of the good health of the Cuban nation is, paradoxically, the product of adversity. Food is rationed and meat is scarce, so much of the diet is fruit and vegetables. Because there is relatively little public or private transport, most people walk or cycle everywhere.

Immunisation is compulsory and thanks to the interest and investment the state is prepared to make in health, Cuba has a vaccine for meningitis B, which is now being investigated in the UK - although the prevalent strains in Cuba are not the same as here.

But despite the success insiders say many Cuban doctors use the opportunities they have in travelling to conferences to make contacts and leave Cuba for more money and better career prospects abroad.

All achieved despite the US trade embargo.

So Cuba has lots of doctors. Except when they're not visiting conferences abroad, they're looking for a permanent home abroad. What does that tell you about Cuba ?

I imagine that when this happens Cuba will become the new Mexico.

So Cuba has lots of doctors. Except when they're not visiting conferences abroad, they're looking for a permanent home abroad. What does that tell you about Cuba ? </font>[/QUOTE]It tells you that wealth is more equitably distributed! No vast extremes of wealth and abject poverty. I'm suprised you even have to ask that!

So Cuba has lots of doctors. Except when they're not visiting conferences abroad, they're looking for a permanent home abroad. What does that tell you about Cuba ? </font>[/QUOTE]Britain and the Netherlands are actively recruiting medical personnel from the third world - they have no trouble in attracting them. This tells me that the higher salaries available in rich nations have enormous pulling power.

India, for example has exported thousands of doctors and nurses to the UK. Does that mean that all doctors and nurses from India are fleeing 'democratic persecution'?

Similarly, many nurse from the UK have 'fled' to the United States - is that because they are fearful for their lives in the UK - or that the considerably higher salaries are an attractive proposition?

[ 10-13-2003, 06:28 AM: Message edited by: Skunk ]

So Cuba has lots of doctors. Except when they're not visiting conferences abroad, they're looking for a permanent home abroad. What does that tell you about Cuba ? </font>[/QUOTE]It tells you that wealth is more equitably distributed! No vast extremes of wealth and abject poverty. I'm suprised you even have to ask that! </font>[/QUOTE]That's called communisme. People all share a common thing, which basically is zip, nothing. Sure, they have probably food every day, enough to sustain, but that's about it. Glory hallelujah.

The Dutch pride themselves on the fact that the gap between rich and poor in this country is lower than most other EU states. Are all Dutch people 'mis-guided commies' then?

I don't know where you get your information, but as far as i know there's a huge difference between rich and poor here in the Netherlands, and the gap will only widen in the coming years if our economy doesn't show some improvement soon.

I don't know where you get your information, but as far as i know there's a huge difference between rich and poor here in the Netherlands, and the gap will only widen in the coming years if our economy doesn't show some improvement soon. </font>[/QUOTE]I'm afraid that poverty in 'the developed world' doesn't even come close to true poverty johnnie.

BTW - Cuba had that degree of poverty in 1958 when it was considered to be a developed country.

I'm afraid you are showing that you have little knowledge of the situation in Cuba johnnie. Do some research and come back to us. Show me where it says Cubans only get enough food to sustain them. They have less than us but that doesn't mean they have nothing.

There is far less scope for them to improve their lot but the vast majority have far more than they had under Batista.

Look at the life expectancy in 1958 and now. See that Cuba is comparable to the developed world now and draw a conclusion from that.

Look at the fact that in 1958 only 23% of male Cubans were literate. Adult literacy in Cuba now is 99%, higher than the UK or the USA. What does that tell you?

BTW - Cuba can thank the trade embargo for some of the improvement to their health. Most meat previously had to be imported. Now they eat far more fresh vegatables and fruit

Poverty is poverty Donut, no matter how you look at it. There's people here as well who can't afford a roof over their head. Or have just enough money to eat, but are in deep trouble if they should ever need a pair of new shoes.

It could be worse, i agree. It could be like in some African countries, but it's still poverty. Having just enough so you won't starve, that's poverty imo.

johnny - your post defies belief. 1.2 billion people on this planet have to survive on less than $1 a day! 840 million of the worlds population are malnourised. A roof over their head is way down on their list of priorities.

The definition of poverty is dependent on where you live not on your opinion.

Well, i'm no Cuba expert, i've never been there before, have you ?
What i said is based on whatever newsarticles i get to read about Cuba here, and from documentaries i see on TV. Surely it's not all made up, would it ?

People are still trying to flee from Cuba every single day, Cuban athletes who are competing abroad must be guarded continuously, or they'll sneak away. If they have such high life expectations, then why the hell are they all trying to flee ? Could it be that they are not all that happy with their situation ? Perhaps they're sick and tired of fruit every day, and wanna eat some porkchops for a change ?

So what are you saying ? Poor people here in Holland and in England shouldn't complain ? That their fate could be worse ? I'm sure they'll find that very helpful information. I've been in Chelsea once, i couldn't believe the amount of homeless people i whitnessed there, sleeping on the sidewalks. Are they really better off than someone in Africa who has no food or shelter ? I think they are both screwed. Having no money, food and shelter in England, is just as bad as in Africa imo.

Johnny people are fleeing countries every day, from the poor African or Asian counties to anywhere that can provide a better life, not just Cubans.

A point that as been missed in this interesting discussion so far is, how would Cuba have faired if the US had practiced a policy of engagement over the past 40 years? Would it have won the people over into possibly a mass revolt against Castro?

I don’t like the right wing polices of division and base Darwinism of Australians currant leader, but if we were subjected to the long campaign of petty obstruction or attempted political killing of my country’s leader than I would rather rail against the bully than be seduced by him.

Would it not be better to start to engage the innocent people of Cuba at all levels rather then persecute them for the admittedly evil actions of its leader?

[ 10-13-2003, 08:48 AM: Message edited by: wellard ]

The voice of reason. Castro is old and likely to die soon. Recently the US trade delegations and businessmen had been travelling to Cuba to set up ties. That was the way to go, winning hearts and minds now, for the time when Castro is gone. That is the long term view.

Allowing (rather than hindering) tourism would be a great step towards these preparations - it would allow the Cubans to have contact with ordinary Americans and allow them to profit from them. Take away the tourists and you take away both their jobs and the chance to learn about the positive aspects of American culture - leaving them with only one visible sign of how democracy works in the US: Camp X-ray.


Then you would have to look at why that is the case when the social security payments in the Netherlands are so generous - chances are that they 'borrowed' themselves into poverty. Walk into any 'poverty' stricken Neighbourhood in Amsterdam and count the satellite dishes - there are more of them than children.

We are, afterall, talking about a country where the unemployed recieve money to go on holiday!

A couple, without children, in the Netherlands is guaranteed a minimum monthly income of 1250 EUR under Dutch social security legislation - on top of this, they are eligible for a whole host of other benefits (like rent subsidy, reduced entry charges to museums, zoos, the theatre etc. etc.).

The unemployed in other countries (like the UK) would consider this a veritable paradise indeed!...

[ 10-13-2003, 08:57 AM: Message edited by: Skunk ]

And how far do you think they'll come with that holliday money ? I know people who are on welfare, and they use that little extra to buy new clothes, which they otherwise can't afford.

Don't make it sound if people in Holland who are on welfare are living in luxury, because it's far from that. I agree that the system is good, maybe a liitle TOO good, because it stimulates certain individuals to take advantage of it, but it's still a very low income. Especially when considering the prices of houses overhere, which are compared with the rest of Europe (except for Scandinavia) ridiculously high.

Well, i'm no Cuba expert, i've never been there before, have you ?
What i said is based on whatever newsarticles i get to read about Cuba here, and from documentaries i see on TV. Surely it's not all made up, would it ?

People are still trying to flee from Cuba every single day, Cuban athletes who are competing abroad must be guarded continuously, or they'll sneak away. If they have such high life expectations, then why the hell are they all trying to flee ? Could it be that they are not all that happy with their situation ? Perhaps they're sick and tired of fruit every day, and wanna eat some porkchops for a change ? [/QUOTE]
I've posted my sources and invited you to do the same. You haven't. You don't have to go to the moon to be an expert and you don't have to be an expert to know what you are talking about.

Cuba doesn't have to be the hellhole you say it is for people to want to go to the US. Whatever happens, whatever form of government they have there will always be more opportunities in the US than in Cuba. Perhaps the flood of Americans to Florida in the past 30 years means that other parts of America are far worse off than Florida.