jimmysnyder said:
Yes, any business large or small. Let the customers decide who will prosper. When the government decides who is allowed to do business, you end up with Cuban freedom.
You think the government in the U.S. doesn't decide who does business? I've got two words for you: farm subsidies.
And have you run into any Cuban cigar importers lately?
jimmysnyder said:
Everyone large or small must have access to the legal system or you end up with Cuban freedom.
You're saying that some Cubans don't have access to the Cuban legal system? Can you cite anything that shows what you're talking about, or just be more specific even?
And does this mean that you think Monsanto ruining those farmers represents freedom?
jimmysnyder said:
Smoking in the ICU is outlawed as well. Under the current system, you can smoke and I can refrain. What's wrong with that? You can even smoke Cubans, you just have to step outside that's all.
Uh, in the ICU? Like, in hospitals? What does that have to do with freedom?
jimmysnyder said:
The regime behind Bay of Pigs is no longer in power and the regime behind the Iraq occupation is going away soon. The alternative is Cuban freedom.
You're saying that unless we do things like preemptively invade Iraq the world will become communist? Are you serious?
You sure swallowed the Cold War rhetoric hook, line, and sinker. You realize that the CIA spin doctors who made that stuff up have probably been dead for decades, right?
jimmysnyder said:
You are right, this is not freedom. Neither is it a reason to head south. Under Cuban freedom they take your land too.
Most of the people who live in Cuba today have probably never owned land. And many of them are probably now living and farming land that was originally part of a plantation owned by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company" or some other American company.
jimmysnyder said:
Yes, we should. We should build all kinds of businesses and watch 80% of them fail. We should preserve our precious freedoms and those of our neighbors. We should do things that other people don't want us to do. The Cubans, and the world can see what a noisy thing freedom is, and may their tongues hang out.
May their tongues hang out… and may they get the chance to emigrate to a capitalist wonderland like Haiti? Because if the entente between the U.S. and Cuba were to end by Cuba disavowing communism, we would of course slam the immigration door in their faces faster than we'd start importing their cigars and sugar.
Give it up, man - the U.S. kidnaps or overthrows elected leaders whenever we feel like it¹, we gladly sell weapons and give money to Saddam Hussein and people like him, we fight on the side of multinational corporations who squeeze blood from the peasants in third-world countries better than any European prince ever did, we bloody up places like Vietnam or Afghanistan if we need that kind of tool in a political war. Did you know that we trained the Mujahideen in Afghanistan to make car bombs?² Seriously? And we
torture people in secret prisons.
We are
not some kind of experts on freedom. We are willfully and intentionally the
enemies of freedom whenever it suits our purposes.
The Cold War ended almost twenty years ago. There's no need whatsoever to pretend that Cuba is the minion of an Evil Empire that is the enemy of everything good and pure.
¹
Like Aristide in Haiti in 2004 or the attempt against Chavez in Venezuela in 2001 - ever wonder why he hates us so much? Or Mohammad Mosaddeq, the elected prime minister of Iran, who we overthrew in 1953 with the help of the Brits and replaced with the Shah. We basically handed Iran over to the fundamentalist Islamists.
²That would be while the Soviets were there, not during the recent war.
P.S. The Atom symbol is hex 269B I think. If anyone has Windows Vista I'd be curious to know if it shows up properly, Vista is supposed to have better Unicode support.⚛