The truth on the other hand, is the unshakable reality that has driven every sanction, every sabotage attempt, and every assassination plot since 1959: Cuba is a threat only to an idea. It is a threat to the imperial doctrine that a small, poor nation in America’s ‘backyard’ must not be allowed to choose socialism, to provide free healthcare and education, and homes to live without the permission of Washington.
For this sin of self-determination, the crime of building a society where capital is not god, Cuba has been punished with the most enduring economic siege in modern history. This is not an ‘embargo’, which I consider to be a sterile, political term. It is a total blockade, designed to constrict and cripple. It is enforced by a plethora of laws with names like the Helms-Burton Act, which terrorises foreign companies from trading with the Island and allows the US to seize ships in international waters. Its goal, as US politician Robert Torricelli once admitted, was to…
‘Wreak havoc’.

  • selokichtli@lemmy.ml
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    2 hours ago

    Ebough damage has been done in these last decades. This is dangerously becoming a full blown USA genocide of the Cuban people. It’s unacceptable.

  • SabinStargem@lemmy.today
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    3 hours ago

    If I were a super perfect president of the United States, I would ask Cuba if they want to join the Union, with all rights and benefits that goes with being a State. This offer also would be extended to territories like Puerto Rico.

    IMO, Cuba and other island States have a special potential - as places to try out UBI, universal healthcare, free education at all levels, and other reforms, that can’t be easily implemented in isolation* on the mainland.

    *Specifically, I want to try different variations of implementation, to find the best ‘recipe’ for an improved democratic socialism. Islands are good for A/B/C testing, I wager.

    • Riverside@reddthat.com
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      16 minutes ago

      I would ask Cuba if they want to join the Union

      And you’d receive a universal and resounding “no”. Cuba is its own independent country, with its culture and its ideals, much better than the USA. If you were a “super perfect” US president you’d be better off remodeling the USA to be more akin to Cuba lmao

    • Fleur_@aussie.zone
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      17 minutes ago

      Even an Americans self fulfillment fantasy of being the bestest us president that ever was involves the annexation of Cuba. You guys got a problem.

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    4 hours ago

    British and Soviets had their famines in India, Ireland and Ukraine. Americans need their own Holodomor

    • Riverside@reddthat.com
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      11 minutes ago

      Soviets didn’t have a “famine in Ukraine”, they had a famine in the Soviet Union caused by the need for extremely rapid industrialization started in 1929. If it hadn’t been for the rapid industrialization (which hinged on moving field laborers to factories in cities and was funded with the only product they could export: grain), the soviets would have lost WW2 and tens of millions more of people would have died.

      The famine disproportionately affected Ukraine (and other agriculturally strong places in southern Russia and Kazakhstan), but the industrialization also disproportionately benefitted Ukrainians by liberating them from Nazism and saving tens of millions of their lives from Nazi extermination.

      If you want some good insight on the soviet famine of the early thirties, I suggest you read Robert B. Allen’s “Farm to Factory”, it makes a very good economic analysis of it.

    • QinShiHuangsShlong@lemmy.ml
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      The “holodomor” is Nazi Banderite propaganda. There was a famine in an area that was prone to famine for centuries prior. It was not targeted at Ukraine, it also affected Kazakhstan and western Russia. It was also the last time they had a famine.

      • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml
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        1 hour ago

        They had one more after WW2 but this one is never mentioned in western media because “nazis deliberately causing starvation by destroying half of USSR agriculture and murdering millions of Ukrainians, Belarussians and Russians” is going against western narrations.

        • QinShiHuangsShlong@lemmy.ml
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          Yeah I probably should have specified last natural famine. Even then kulaks worsened it beyond what it should have been through burning crops and slaughtering livestock.

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    11 hours ago

    For those who say it’s a hoax, look up videos of any Cuban on YouTube and turn on the subtitles.

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    14 hours ago

    I hope and pray that the Cuban people stand together and persevere. May this be the final nail in the empire of evil.

  • Asfalttikyntaja@sopuli.xyz
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    16 hours ago

    And because all of this shit they have been throwing on the Cuba, they can claim socialism doesn’t work.

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    18 hours ago

    I think, based on conversations I have with people in real life and read online, that the people in the US haven’t challenged the 60 years of propaganda about Cuba, and believe it a totalitarian nightmare dictatorship.

    I have a close friend who went to Cuba for ecological research (did you know they still have intact reefs) a few years ago, and when they would tell people they were going to Cuba, the most common reaction was a fearful “that’s scary” and a confused, almost accusatory “why”.

    I don’t think they realize that everyone else can just go to Cuba, it’s only the blue US passport and a bunch of old white guys, and probably now more Cuban Americans, with their fear of communism and land reform stopping them from enjoying a very nice bottle of state owned rum and an experience of how other people live.

    I’m glad other countries have been stepping up to help the people there, the Cuban people deserve happy and comfortable lives, and we clearly don’t have the appetite to stop starving them of that right now. Until we shake that propagandized view, I don’t imagine that will change either.

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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      16 hours ago

      Obama I think floated an end to the shitbaggery during his second term. Like anything he proposed, it was stonewalled.

      • Maeve@kbin.earthOP
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        12 hours ago

        I think he actually lifted the travel embargo and aimed to normalize relations but the bazillionaires and still angry exbazillionaire diaspora faces started melting so 2016 was the end of that.

    • speckofrust@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      10 hours ago

      What what whaaaa??? I thought the US was a force for supreme goodness up until the millisecond that Trump became president.

      This was most definitely the turning point. And just who were George Dubya, and Clinton, and Reagan, and Nixon, and goddamn Kissinger, and Robert McNamara, and the Dulles Brothers, and all the slave owners who founded the country?

      A shining city upon a hill, manifest destiny, exceptionalism. Well-meaning promoters and protectors of democracy forever and always. Just what would the rest of the world do without you?

      /s in case anyone actually needs it.

    • selokichtli@lemmy.ml
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      2 hours ago

      I don’t agree on this, but I do think it’s shaping up rapidly to become one. We will see in a couple of months, but any tropical cyclone or natural phenomena has a huge destructive potential in Cuba right now.

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      21 hours ago

      I don’t know about that. Genocides don’t usually take 80 years, as the population grows. I don’t think that fits the description.

        • Prime@lemmy.sdf.org
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          3 hours ago

          This kind of ad hominem is not going to convince undecided people of your view

          • BanMeFromPosting [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            3 hours ago

            What you say you are doesn’t matter. It’s what you believe and do that decides what you are. And you are running defense for the US genocide using the same tired talking points that are used to deny every genocide.

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            18 hours ago

            Im not the one conflating decades of “embargo” (still fucking horrendous btw) largely dictated by the economic choices of shipping companies whether to serve cuba or the U.S. (hint: companies that make money will choose the profitable option) with the recent extreme escalations by the Trump admin which are attempting to tighten it into a full blockade (which I shouldn’t need to tell you since they’ve been really fucking overtly vocal about their actions and intentions)

              • KimBongUn420@lemmy.ml
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                17 hours ago

                The Cuban embargo made good political sense to pressure the Soviets when they were trying to use Cuba as a nuclear base to bomb us from, and any country would have done the same, in the face of the same threat.

                If you werent a lib you’d know that the US and NATO were the escalating/aggressing party, shitlib.

                • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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                  16 hours ago

                  I do know that, and I also know that the whole thing was over and all bombs removed from both Turkey and Cuba by 1963. The embargo continued to keep Russia from re-arming Cuba, and it worked. However, after the fall of the Soviet Union, it should have been lifted. Continuing it has been cruel, and dumb, and both Republican and Democrat presidents are guilty.

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                18 hours ago

                The Cuban embargo made good political sense to pressure the Soviets when they were trying to use Cuba as a nuclear base to bomb us from, and any country would have done the same, in the face of the same threat.

                i-cant

                1. yeah the evil Soviets just wanting to bomb us for no good reason. Hey, when did the U.S. try to put nukes in Italy and turkey again? Oh, huh

                2. Dawg there’s a memo from the office of the secretary for inter american affairs from 1960 detailing the specific plan for the embargo to cause hunger, desperation and consequent counter revolution. Translation: “we’re going to starve Cuba until they do what we command”

                The cuban missile crisis wasn’t until two years later. They intensified the embargo FEBRUARY 1962 and the missile crisis didn’t begin until the END of that year. But yeah sure uh the missiles after the fact totally justify an overtly stated goal of starving civilians for political change (hey what’s the definition of terrorism again btw)

                going off about MAGA nonsense as if Joe Biden did anything to end the embargo

                Oh my god, liberal. Liberal! Liiiiiiibeeeeerrrrraaaaaaallllll! As if your “actually putting missiles in cuba would have justified starving them” statement wasn’t enough confirmation on its own. Christ

      • Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 hour ago

        Attempted genocide

        Screw my previous comment.

        As FunkyStuff says, It is a genocide unquestionably. Millions of lives have been lost around the world due to US sabotage warfare (which the libs love to call “sanctions”) that uses the US hegemony power to strangle countries by any means necessary, all for the benefit of a fascist political agenda.

        Cuba has received some of the harshest of the hybrid warfare from America. The fact that you are equivocating about the warfare tactics of a fascist society reflects poorly on you, no different from “but actually”-ing the actions of nazi Germany in the middle of WW2 (while also being factually wrong about your points).

        The fact that Cuba can survive and thrive despite the genocide is a testament to their resilience. But a state, and a nation are not one entity. All the extra lives that could have been saved had Cuba been allowed to develop under normal external conditions do not come back to life because the population managed to grow.

        • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          2 hours ago

          That’s not how it works. If there’s an organized effort to exterminate a group of people because of their immutable characteristics (in this case nationality) it’s genocide. You can be guilty of the crime of genocide even if you don’t kill a single person. The US embargo absolutely meets the criteria and has already caused thousands of excess deaths (as well as underdevelopment) over the course of decades. It’s like Gaza, blocking off a group of millions of people from being able to get anything from the rest of the world and restricting the flow of basic necessities. They don’t have to kill any specific number of people for that to count as genocide, it just is.

          • Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml
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            Yeah I suppose it is better to have made an actual argument instead of just “owning” the commenter, and you are correct, it is not merely an attempted genocide, which would be something like a guy in the government trying to organise a genocide but failing to organise and accomplish anything.

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      20 hours ago

      The Hawaiian diaspora is the most severe in the entire world when viewed per capita. More Hawaiians have been forced out of Hawai’i than any other group of people have been forced out of anywhere else

      Plus the US quite literally holds massive amounts of Hawaiian lands that were seized when the US overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy, and could easily return that land to the Hawaiian people, it just chooses not to do it. Mostly by refusing to recognize any Hawaiian leadership and treating them on par with how other US native people are treated. If native Hawaiians had a recognized government the way indigenous peoples on the mainland do, the government would have to turn that land over. So they refuse to recognize

      • Maeve@kbin.earthOP
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        12 hours ago

        I think they meant in terms of behavior and attitude toward the homeland, but I can be wrong.