Joe Biden's reaction to Cuban protests has been a disgrace - "As Cubans took to the streets defying the Communist regime’s totalitarian police, a senior State Department official tweeted that the administration viewed the protests as merely a result of unhappiness “about rising COVID cases/deaths” in the island country. That’s pure bunk. The slogans shouted by thousands who risked imprisonment or worse were about an end to the Communist dictatorship installed in the 1950s. “Freedom!” “Enough!” they cried. The starvation and shortages that have outraged demonstrators are a direct result of the regime’s policies and repression. Some blame the lack of tourism because of the pandemic. But that money was largely funneled to an unaccountable and brutal government, not its long-suffering citizens. That State Department reaction is in line with the Biden foreign policy team’s embrace of every bad policy produced by the Obama administration and its revulsion for anything that happened under President Donald Trump. As was the case with the dangerous nuclear deal with Iran, Obama’s ending of the US embargo on Cuba was based on the foolish belief that doing so would produce more liberalization. It didn’t, and Trump was right to re-impose the sanctions."
The Socialist Party on Twitter - "Protests in Cuba have been falsely portrayed as being against socialism. In reality, socialists are being arrested for opposing “dictatorship”. Cuba has state capitalism — a political elite owning the means of production and a profit-driven economy. THAT is the cause of protests."
Replies: "Isn’t it SO WEIRD how every country that has a communist revolution eventually turns into brutally oppressive state capitalism even worse than normal capitalism It’s like there’s a pattern here or something"
"The pattern is simple, and it was what led to Max Stirner abandoning socialism. To have wealth redistribution, you need a central government controlling the economy through coercion. Otherwise people will accumulate wealth since no one can stop them."
""It's not real communism cause if I admit that it is, it makes my ideology look bad.""
Exterminate Racism on Twitter - "'Nuanced' takes on Cuba are basically white supremacy. It's literally not your business what they do with their country. It's your business what your country is doing to them. I don't care about your opinion on Cuba, it's police, its electoral system, or Castro. #Handsoffcuba"
Sargon of Akkad - Posts | Facebook - "Free trade exploits poor countries"
"Cuba is only poor because of the embargo"
Cuban protests risk exacerbating COVID-19 spike - PAHO
They should just call it a BLM protest
Danny 🇨🇺🇵🇸 on Twitter - "If you’re a “leftist” who can’t even support Cuba then literally what is the point in you. Support for Cuba is one of the most uncontroversial positions you can hold on what you would call the “left”"
The left is only against dictators if they're on the right
Meme - "Ask your democratic socialist friend, "If Cuban socialism is so great then why do Cubans risk their lives to escape it?""
They'll just blame the embargo
Meme - "Taiwan. Has the world's strongest embargo, has China a few miles away that threatens to invade them and penalizes any country that trades with them or recognizes it as a state. Yet everything doubles in per capita income to China and exports 50 % of its GDP. That's called Capitalism."
Embargos are only fatal to communist and socialist countries like Cuba and Venezuela
Facebook - "And here we see Black Lives Matter siding with an oppressive dictator whose police state is currently engaging in police brutality against mostly peaceful protesters. This checks out, as they backed Biden, one of the architects of the US police state, for president."
Black Lives Matter blames 'cruel and inhumane' US embargo for Cuban unrest - "Black Lives Matter blamed the "cruel and inhumane" U.S. embargo on Cuba for the country's crisis as its citizens protest President Miguel Diaz-Canel's authoritarian regime. The organization accused the United States of causing instability through historic economic embargoes that led to "pain and suffering" for Cubans for nearly 60 years. The group also praised the Cuban government for granting black revolutionaries asylum in the past... Diaz-Canel admitted Wednesday in a televised address that his government's failures played a role in the protests. "The extortionist ring known as the Black Lives Matter organization took a break today from shaking down corporations for millions & buying themselves mansions to share their support for the Communist regime in #Cuba," said Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio... Hillel Neuer, a Canadian-born international lawyer and director of a United Nations watchdog group, said Black Lives Matter "just sided with the oppressor."... The U.S. embargo is "undermining Cubans' right to choose their own government," Black Lives Matter said, but the organization did not underscore that Cuba is a communist one-party state. While the country does have elections, Cuba's government has faced condemnation from human rights groups and Western governments for being undemocratic."
Of course, if the US lifted the embargo, leftists would just blame everything that ails Cuba on the Bay of Pigs
Facebook - "BLM has released its statement on Cuba. Imagine thinking the trade embargo is responsible for the plight of Cubans. Why, you mean a system without access to capitalist markets cannot provide/allocate resources on its own? Every headline should read: “BLM in favor of state oppression & police brutalization of PoC” I think its time everybody realizes that BLM is really CLM - Comrades’ Lives Matter"
Facebook - "Cuban people under Communism wave the American flag demanding liberty. Hong Kong people wave the American flag fighting against the Communists’ taking over. American youth under Liberty wave the Soviet flag demanding Communism. So sad to see the sharp contrast. Something is terribly wrong in America that needs to be fixed. People who never lived without freedom take their current freedom for granted. #Cuba #hongkong #communism #lily4liberty"
Lance Gooden on Twitter - "Cubans wanting freedom wave the American flag. American liberals with freedom call it a symbol of hate. That is all you need to know."
Facebook - "There is ZERO evidence that protestors in Cuba are being paid by the US Government. ZERO. Facebook why not label that as fake news? Why the fact checkers are silent? Doesn't fit the narrative? This narrative can actually get people killed, treason is punishable sometimes by death in many countries and many protestors living under authoritarian regimes constantly get punished for the claim they "work for a foreign entity" even though they are protesting on their own and receive no funding from any government in the west."
Comment: "The Cuban government could address the issue of their legitimacy very easily.
(1) Declare opposition parties legal.
(2) Allow free media and general freedom of speech.
(3) Establish an independent judiciary.
(4) Conduct regular (4 yearly?) free and fair elections for President and Parliament.
Can't be too hard - after all they've had over 60 years in government."
Facebook - "🏼♂️ “Is this supporting people of color in their fight and protest against state violence?” 🦋 Cuba trades with literally almost every other nation on the planet. The embargo should be lifted, but this idea that it is singularly responsible for what’s happening is ridiculous. I went to Cuba two decades ago. The young people were very open with us about how much they hated the Castros. They had literally nothing bad to say about America or Americans. Strangely there was no bragging or gratitude about literacy programs. As usual, people living in these far left Utopias tell us what they are really like, and fat privileged American leftists, awash in freedom, telling them they are wrong."
Camilo Montoya-Galvez on Twitter - "DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Haitian and Cuban migrants and asylum-seekers who try to come to the U.S. by boat will not be allowed to enter the country. Even if asylum-seekers establish fear of persecution, they will be resettled in third countries, Mayorkas said."
Meme - "Anna Paulina Luna @realannapaulina The Biden admin welcomes illegals at the southern border but tells Cubans fleeing communism (who may have legit asylum claims) not to come. They must know Hispanics fleeing communism will never vote Democrat."
Comment: "If this was under trump you'd see headlines run all day for weeks about how inhumane he is and how compassion needs to be returned to the white House."
Are unauthorized immigrants overwhelmingly Democrats? - "In 2012, the Pew Research Center’s National Survey of Latinos found that among Latino immigrants who are not U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents (and therefore likely unauthorized immigrants), some 31% identify as Democrats and just 4% as Republicans. An additional 33% say they are political independents, 16% mention some other political party and 15% say they “don’t know” or refuse to answer the question"
Meme - "College students explaining how Cuba's perfect communist system is failing due to embargo's cutting it off from evil American capitalism"
Opinion | Ending Systemic Racism Is the Revolution Cuba Needs - The New York Times - "The dominance of the white political leader and the disenfranchisement of black Cubans have always been a part of the island’s history. However, with Raúl Castro ceding power, the nascent post-Castro era has an opportunity to finally integrate black people into Cuban society and address the deep racial and economic inequality that persists today. Afro-Cubans are more and more removed from the social progress that is slowly being made — expanded access to digital technologies, an economy opening to foreign currency, a shift to more private enterprise — and intended for white Cubans... After Fidel Castro rose to power, it did not take long for him to crush any hopes for the reappearance of black Cubans on the political stage by doing away with the Central Directory of Societies of Color, an organization that comprised more than 500 collectives. He also made sure to ban social clubs, cultural centers and other public forums that black people might use to bring attention to racial injustice. For the Castro brothers, revolutionary policies would be enough to reduce inequality and improve access to health care and education for black Cubans, many of whom were impoverished. While the revolution did create several organizations with popular support, it ultimately failed to address or grapple with racial inequality in any meaningful way. The government sticks to its official line that systemic racism has been eradicated by the revolution. Whatever issues remain are said to be rooted in people’s individual prejudices."
BLM hates the US more than it loves blacks
Black Lives Matter Celebrated Cuban Communist Dictator Fidel Castro: 'Fidel Vive!' - "Castro's communist revolution included the imprisonment of political opponents and mass executions."
Proof that BLM is not a Marxist organisation
Special Report: How Cuba taught Venezuela to quash military dissent - "Castro’s advice: Ensure absolute control of the military. Easier said than done. Venezuela’s military had a history of uprisings, sometimes leading to coups of the sort that Chavez, when a lieutenant colonel in the army, had staged in 1992. A decade later, rivals waged a short-lived putsch against Chavez himself. But if Chavez took the right steps, the Cuban instructed, he could hang on as long as Castro himself had, the advisors recalled. Cuba’s military, with Castro’s brother at the helm, controlled everything from security to key sectors of the economy. Within months, the countries drew up two agreements, recently reviewed by Reuters, that gave Cuba deep access to Venezuela’s military - and wide latitude to spy on it and revamp it... Under Cuban military advisors, Venezuela refashioned the intelligence unit into a service that spies on its own armed forces, instilling fear and paranoia and quashing dissent. Now known for its repressive tactics, the DGCIM is accused by soldiers, opposition lawmakers, human rights groups and many foreign governments of abuses including torture and the recent death of a detained Navy captain... neither country has ever acknowledged details of the agreements or the extent of Cuba’s involvement. In March, after U.S. Vice President Mike Pence denounced Havana’s “malign influence” on Caracas, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez downplayed the relationship. “I strongly reject repeated and false accusations,” he tweeted, “of Cuban military ‘training,’ ‘controlling’ or ‘intimidating’ in Venezuela.”... “The most important mission for the intelligence service once was to neutralize any threat to democracy,” said Raul Salazar, a former defense minister under Chavez who opposes Maduro. “Now, with Cuba in charge, the government uses it to stay in power.” Once Cuba began training DGCIM personnel, the intelligence service embedded agents, often dressed in black fatigues, within barracks. There, they would compile dossiers on perceived troublemakers and report any signs of disloyalty, according to more than 20 former Venezuelan military and intelligence officials. The DGCIM also began tapping the phones of officers, including senior military commanders, to listen for conspiracies... A recent United Nations report accused the DGCIM of torture – including electric shocks, suffocation, waterboarding, sexual violence, and water and food deprivation. Under Maduro, DGCIM officers have been promoted to senior positions, including the command of his personal security detail... On the top floor of its headquarters, some 40 agents in its Operational Communications Division used a platform called Genesi, according to a former member of the team. The system, designed by Italian telecommunications firm IPS SpA, allows users to “intercept, monitor and analyze every kind of information source”"
Damn US sanctions, forcing Cuba and Venezuela to unleash the military on their people!
Black Lives Matter Misses the Point About Cuba - The Atlantic - "the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, the leading organization in the Black Lives Matter movement, issued a statement saying that the unrest resulted from the “U.S. federal government’s inhumane treatments of Cubans.” BLM called for lifting the American embargo, which, it says, undermines “Cubans’ right to choose their own government,” and is punishment for Cuba’s “commitment to sovereignty and self-determination.”... BLM is actually repeating Communist officials when it blames the uprising on the United States. And that misses the point of the protests. To the surprise of the Black community in Cuba and those in exile, the organization is overlooking what has triggered the events—Cuba’s systemic denial of rights to its people, poor material conditions, lack of social mobility, and the inequality that plagues all Cubans but disproportionately Afro-Cubans, who are at the forefront of the widespread demonstrations. Cuba is not an empty canvas onto which Americans can project their political ideas and not a utopian vehicle to advance some fantasy of socialist equality; neither is it a pawn for opportunistic political debates. In the Cuba where I grew up and that I had to abandon in 2013 in search of freedom, the suffering is not rhetorical... It was possible in the early 1980s to turn a blind eye, as many did, to the authoritarianism of the Castro regime. After all, subsidized by the Soviet Union, Cubans were living in relatively equal material conditions. They had free access to a quality public-school education and excellent health care. Now the idealized Cuban regime that BLM praises is long gone, if it ever really existed. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cuban economy crumbled... the main obstacle to Cuban development and prosperity is the government’s model of a state-controlled economy, a system in which Cubans cannot materialize their entrepreneurial energy, in which a policing regime frequently stops Black Cubans, and in which everyday items are hard to find. Not surprisingly, Havana’s primarily Black neighborhoods, the most neglected in the city, are the epicenters of the largest recent demonstrations... BLM certainly has a role to play in Cuba. But its purpose in issuing the statement has nothing to do with Cuba itself. The organization is using the Cuban movement to criticize the U.S. government and its foreign policy. It praised former President Barack Obama for lifting sanctions against Cuba, which his successor later reversed, and which the Biden administration has been slow to amend. Cubans—and particularly Black Cubans—are suffering. The Cuban judicial system is prosecuting the protesters with sentences of up to 20 years. BLM, of all organizations, should be aware that Cubans can’t breathe either. Black Cuban lives also matter; the freedom of all Cubans should matter. To echo the organization’s stated reason for existing, no one is free until we are all free."
Maybe some apologists will claim the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation doesn't represent BLM
The leftists are going to dismiss the writer - an assistant professor of history - as a counter-revolutionary traitor since he fled
Rex Murphy: Cubans deserve our support, but the left would rather embrace murderous dictators - "The willingness of left-wing Western intellectuals to turn a blind eye to the evils of communism has never been more vividly displayed than in the infamous declaration of journalist Lincoln Steffens. He was the man who, after a visit to Russia in 1919, gave the world the clarion cry, “I have seen the future and it works.” And he was not alone. Countless journalists and academics since then have either minimized or denied the true nature of communist rule. During the nightmare days of Stalin’s purges and the “harvest of sorrow” we know as the forced Ukrainian famine, New York Times reporter Walter Duranty disgraced himself and his paper by denying the horror and reporting jubilantly on the progress of “the revolution.” He got a Pulitzer Prize for his falsehoods. The principal truths about communism have long been visible. Wherever it has been established, its first and pre-eminent characteristic is dictatorship, the absolute rule of a clique at the top. Those rulers demand the full, enforced submission of the entire population. It inevitably calls into being a secret police, utter suspension of all liberties and the ruthless enactment of the (very often mad) policies of the esteemed leader. And in every case, it entails the propagandized elevation of the leader to the status of a god, or near god, with the ascription to him of powers and abilities only a deity could possess... it should remind many that we who live in democratic countries, while we do have our flaws, are immensely more fortunate than we often seem to acknowledge. Comfort and security, it would appear, can work as a screen against what we do not wish to see."
John Robson: While Cubans are seeking liberty, Canadians are eroding theirs - "if some Cuban were to ask what freedom is and how to make it work, or some Afghan, we would surely agree that for starters you aren’t killed by the government for voicing your opinion, on everything from economics to religion and politics. Although when I was in university, I was often told Cuba was freer than Canada or the United States because of its health and educational systems, and Cubans had “chosen” its Communist revolution in 1959 so there was no need for bourgeois elections... First, liberty is not licence. It does not mean you can do anything you want and shun any unwanted consequences from opprobrium to illness to a sense of futility. No state can give you such a thing because the universe cannot. Second, related, liberty must be under law. Anarchy is not freedom, nor is collectivist social engineering. We seek order that protects the dignity of the individual. Third, therefore, it means genuine freedom of speech, association, contract and property. Not freedom to use them for approved purposes. Freedom to work out our own salvation in fear and trembling, in this world as in the next"
Cuba protests: Three key issues that explain the rare unrest - BBC News - "Thousands took to the streets in towns and cities across the island shouting "freedom" and "down with the dictatorship" on Sunday...
1) The coronavirus crisis
2) The economic situation
3) Internet access"
Apparently in Cuba "freedom" means economic freedom
Cuba killed my communism - " picket lines chanting slogans, but I did have an answer to every question. As Arthur Koestler wrote in The God That Failed, with an ideology like communism, “the whole universe falls into pattern like the stray pieces of a jigsaw puzzle assembled by magic at one stroke”. Put another way, I no longer needed to think hard about anything complicated. ‘Dialectical Materialism’ provided all the answers... It was an eye-opening experience. Material poverty was a feature of everyday life, but the intellectual landscape was equally bleak and the system was repressive and punitive. There was only one newspaper. Official permission had to be given if you wanted to move to a different part of the country or travel overseas — and it was often denied to those who criticised the system. Independent trade unions were banned and the state acted brutally against those deemed politically suspect: according to Fidel Castro, there were around 15,000 political prisoners in Cuba in the 1970s. Not that such grimness put off the regime’s foreign admirers. Gabriel García Márquez, a personal friend of Castro and a supporter of Cuba’s communist government, demonstrated the hypocrisy of those who praise despotic regimes from a distance when he told the New York Times that he personally could never live under the Cuban system:
“I would miss too many things. I couldn’t live with the lack of information. I am a voracious reader of newspapers and magazines from around the world.”
I hated this attitude and still do. It stinks. Under this schema, Cubans were not people but props that allowed others — who usually lived in great comfort — to retain their mental model of the world. It was revulsion at this hypocrisy, which I saw everywhere in western leftist circles, that prompted me to question my own worldview... Arenas eventually escaped from Cuba. But when he did, he began to encounter a type of person he came to refer to as a “Communist Deluxe”. These were western academics who would relativise away Cuban suffering as either an acceptable price to pay for the triumph of socialism, or a consequence of United States aggression. Arenas recounts one such encounter in his autobiography:
“I remember that at a Harvard University banquet a German professor said to me: ‘In a way I can understand that you may have suffered in Cuba, but I am a great admirer of Fidel Castro and I am very happy with what he has done in Cuba.’ While saying this, the man had a huge, full plate of food in front of him, and I told him: ‘I think it’s fine for you to admire Fidel Castro, but in that case, you should not continue eating that food on your plate; no one in Cuba can eat food like that, with the exception of Cuban officials.’ I took his plate and threw it against the wall.”
I gained very little from my brief phase as a teenage communist. But I did glean insight into the psychology of changing one’s mind. A denial phase is common in cases where a person loses their faith. Paradoxically, the more doubts I had about socialism, the more vociferously I would defend the Cuban Revolution."
WATCH: Cuban Immigrant Warns Americans About ‘Communists’ Trying To Take Over U.S. - "Maximo Alvarez, a Cuban immigrant who came to America over 60 years ago after escaping communist Cuba, issued a powerful warning to Americans during a round table with President Donald Trump last week, saying that the political Left in America today are “communists,” and that they are trying to destroy the nation... Alvarez said that he remember murderous dictator Fidel Castro’s promises “that we hear today about free education and free health care and free land.” “My God, no freedom,” Alvarez continued. “But he never said that until after he was in power, got rid of all the police, got rid of all the military – been there for the last 60 years and counting. And he destroyed each and every one who helped him.”"
Bernie Sanders on Castro’s Cuba: ‘It’s unfair to say everything is bad.' - "Sanders counted healthcare and education among the reasons that the Cuban people didn’t rise up and overthrow Castro after his 1959 revolution... “There are a lot of dissidents imprisoned in Cuba,” Cooper said to Sanders. “That’s right. And we condemn that,” Sanders responded, before contrasting his views on authoritarianism with Trump’s. “Unlike Donald Trump — let’s be clear — I do not think that [North Korean dictator] Kim Jung Un is a good friend. I don’t trade love letters with a murdering dictator. [Russian President] Vladimir Putin: not a good friend of mine.” Sanders has a long history of praising left-leaning authoritarian leaders in Latin America. In 1985, Sanders met Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega and called him a “very impressive guy.” Ortega recently banned Nicaragua’s largest newspaper from buying ink and newsprint."
At debate, Sanders hit hard for 1985 video Clinton says praises Castro - ""everybody was totally convinced that Castro was the worst guy in the world. All the Cuban people were going to rise up in rebellion against Fidel Castro. They forgot that he educated their kids, gave their kids health care, totally transformed society.”... “I do think Sanders made a very big mistake in his defense of Fidel Castro,” said U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, D-West Palm Beach, a Clinton supporter. “That was probably the most shocking part of the debate for me,” Frankel said. “I think he hammered himself on it.” Sanders “seemed to double down on his views in 1985,” said Hillary campaign chief, and former White House chief of staff, John Podesta. “Sen. Sanders has a lot of explaining to do,” said Julian Castro, head of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and a Clinton supporter."
