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’.

  • amide@lemmy.ml
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    1 minute ago

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

    • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml
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      22 minutes ago

      I would say resisting 66 years of unceasing hybrid warfare from the biggest superpower in the world right next door is pretty good sign of resilient and working system.

  • neonghost@lemmy.ca
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    32 minutes ago

    I’ve been to Cuba. Communism rots people’s drive. The US hasn’t helped but their dictatorship and failed political regime is the root of Cuba’s misery

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      24 minutes ago

      Agreed, after communism- no one wanted to work at my grandfather’s sugar plantation anymore.

      He had to flee to Florida to make a living while raising the most annoying ingrates anyone’s ever had to interact with.

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    4 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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      2 hours ago

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

    • ToastedRavioli@midwest.social
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      6 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

    • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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      6 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.

          • LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            4 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)

            • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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              4 hours ago

              I don’t know what youre talking about I’ve been calling for the end of the Cuban Embargo since the end of the Soviet Union.

              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.

              But that threat is gone, and the embargo has just become casual cruelty, which is the MAGA hobby. Of course they can’t help but crank it up to 11. That’s MAGA for you. If they see chance to hurt someone, they can’t resist.

              Now the embargo just drives the Cubans deeper into the arms of Mother Russia. Lifting the embargo, and flooding them with American products, tourists, and lower prices would do far more to break their connection than anything else.

              • KimBongUn420@lemmy.ml
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                3 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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                  2 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.

              • LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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                4 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

  • altphoto@lemmy.today
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    3 hours ago

    If we got to vote for it sure. But we have no voice. This is just assholes doing asshole things.

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    5 hours ago

    The sanctions really should have ended when Castro died at the latest, but I still won’t call Cuba a socialist country. It’s a communist one. It’s under a high amount of control. You’ll get thrown in prison for criticism, internet access is limited, and not everyone is on an equal footing there. Communist or not, the sanctions are still completely bullshit.

    • Lunar@lemmy.ml
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      5 hours ago

      good grief please learn what the words you’re throwing around actually mean before you use them

      your comment means literally nothing because you don’t know what socialism and communism even are

    • woodenghost [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      5 hours ago

      Yes, I agree, that the sanctions are bullshit. You’re just a little confused about the terms socialism and communism, no wonder, since they are often used wrongly. So communism is defined as a classless, stateless society. No country ever claimed to be communist. Those you probably think of all claimed to be socialist (Soviet Union, China, Cuba,…). Socialist countries by definition want to become communist, but haven’t reached that end goal yet. Communism wouldn’t need to use force or control or prisons or police, because there wouldn’t be class conflict. It would be a completely free society.

      Socialist countries like Cuba are not only attacked from the outside, but also from the inside, by people who want to hold on to the unjust privilege of being able to exploit other human beings. That’s why they still need a state to defend their freedom from those who would destroy it.

      That’s the marxist definition of a state btw, the institutionalized weapons of class warfare which one class uses to suppress another. In a capitalist society, the opressor class uses the bourgeois state to suppress the majority. In a revolutionary society, the liberated people use a socialist state to suppress capitalist forces, who try to regain power by all means necessary and usually with infinite resources and support from other capitalist states.

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    9 hours ago

    I don’t understand why I have to see this posted multiple times when I’ve blocked the poster over and over.