I’m scrolling down my blogroll in search of posts for my link encyclopedia and finding a plethora of posts on Cuba, all of them mind-bogglingly stupid.
People, the US embargo has caused 0% of Cuba’s problems. Zero per cent. Cuba’s problems are so not about the embargo. The US is not the center of the universe. Sometimes things happen that are not about you. Cubans created this mess on their own. It would all have been just as bad without the embargo.
The great tragedy of the Cuban people is that they handed themselves over to the Soviets. In return for a crooked dime or two, they agreed to dismantle their entire great civilization. And now they are nothing but a degraded province of Russia. Travel to Cuba (it is going to start being possible soon) and then travel to the DR right after that. The shocking and absolutely heart-wrenching difference you will see in the people is not about the economy. Let’s drop this cheap form of Marxism. The difference you will see is one between people who have been mangled by the Soviets and those who haven’t.
This is the real tragedy of the Cuban people, and no embargo or absence thereof can touch it.
Clarissa's Blog 
One thing to consider is that the average citizen of Cuba had a better live after Castro than they did in the Batista era. While Cuba’s Socialism didn’t work well, it did offer equal opportunity. Cuba was in a very different geographic area than those countries that came under the Russian Soviet rule. As far as Russia was concerned, Cuba was a “poke in the eye” to America. After the missile crisis, Russia “babysat” Cuba.
Cuba is one of the most beautiful islands in the Caribbean. American business has been waiting for decades to “make up” with Cuba and to start “doing business”. It will be interesting to see how Cuba’s “socialist ideals” withstand the onslaught of America’s business money. Americans will flock to Cuban resorts.
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Equal opportunity? ?? Have you even been to Cuba? Have you noticed that everybody who has money and power is white and everybody else is black? Have you seen any of the official broadcasts of the Cuban leadership? Have you not noticed how everybody on stage is white and everybody in the audience is black?
Also, businesses have been coming to Cuba for decades. The entire coastline belongs to big corporations. I’m getting a feeling you have never even been to Cuba.
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Have you been to Cuba? I’m going there in February and will report back. Booked this before the current thaw and hope to get in and have a good look around before the greedmeisters show up.
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I have been to Cuba several times. “Greedmeisters” have been there for decades, so you are late. Today, Cuba is a country of luxurious, expensive resorts for the whites and excruciating poverty for the blacks who serve them.
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Of course, Cuba is also a horrifyingly racist society. And a country where pedophiles flock to buy children for sexual slavery.
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Are you sure that the myth of almighty (albeit with a negative sign) communists is any better than the myth of almighty US?
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Of course, the Cubans chose this, so they are ultimately to blame. Far be it from me to remove responsibility from the Cubans. The USSR hasn’t been around for decades, yet the people of Cuba choose to live like shit every day since 1991.
Latin Americans in general tend to make bizarrely stupid choices. But nobody messes up as bad as the Cubans.
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Most of the original exile generation has passed, which is why the opening of relations could happen now. The Cuba vote was coveted by both parties (think of how the presidential election in 2000 was decided — by a few controversial votes in Florida).
Younger generations want to see the families left behind.
That said, how would history have been different if the NY Yankees had hired Fidel Castro when he tried out for the team?
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