If Fidel passes, whither Cuba?

Great Debates
41

It’s true that Cubans are very proud of their island and culture. But I wouldn’t say that people only want to leave because they can’t. They want to leave because they want economic opportunity, which is severely limited on the island.

The saying goes that the greatest achievements of the Revolution have been health, education, and sports…and the greatest failures have been breakfast, lunch, and dinner.:slight_smile:

I think Cubans in Cuba are very ambivalent about the system. On the one hand there are the accomplishments in health and education, and the fact that Cuba remains prominent on the world stage (though not as much so as during the Cold War) because of their defiance of Uncle Sam. On the other they are enormously frustrated by shortages of food and consumer goods and the lack of economic opportunity.

42

I was responding to your post.

That said, I have not interest in continuing this discussion with you and you’ve given me little interest to believe that any further arguments from you would be original, thought-provoking, or would give me any further reason to keep up the discussion.

So, unless you wish to take this to the pit, I recommend dropping it.

43

You weren’t responding to my post, you were responding to Der Trihs

I’d consider Pitting you, but

  1. As a moderator, I’m not allowed to.

  2. I really don’t want to deal with any more walls of text.

44

I apologize. I was responding while watching a movie and for some reason thought it was Der Trihs responding.

I certainly wouldn’t have been so hostile to you since you’ve never said you thought most women were untrustworthy manhaters and haven’t argued that all men should secretly videotape all their sexual encounters because women are so untrustworthy.

Sorry for the confusion and apologies for my grossly inappropriate reaction.

45

This whole line of argument is absurd. I’ve forgotten more more about Cuba than you claim to know about Iran.

Seriously, on the particulars, try to learn something from Colibiri’s* description if not mine – which you happened to ignore.

*Not big with mods or the other way around – but when a poster is right, he is right.

As to the OP…just hope Cuba doesn’t end-up with the same ‘democracy’ that 90% of Spanish-speaking countries in the Caribbean & Central America have.

46

Not sure your point.

I’ve said repeatedly that in this thread, on threads regarding George Zimmerman, and on friends regarding Eva Longoria that it’s asinine to automatically classify Latinos as non-whites.

I thought you remembered since you’ve participated in some of those threads regarding George Zimmerman.

Nevertheless, many Cuban-Americans and most Americans insist that Cuban-Americans are “brown” or “people of color” rather than being “blancos” or “blancas”.

Similarly, since you claim that you live in Europe, I’m sure you’re familiar with how most people in Europe believe that Turks and Arabs aren’t “white” even though most(excluding North African Arabs and even then only some) are “Mediterranean whites”(to use one scholar’s description).

For that matter, Germans in the 1970s regularly referred to Turks, Algerians, and Moroccans as “Schwarzes”(blacks).

It may seem foolish to you to classify Cuban-Americans like Rick Sanchez and Jose Canseco as “people of color” or “non-whites” but that is how they are regarded by Americans.

Who is “white” and “non-white” is not objective or scientific, but is in the eye of the beholder.

My point was that using Der Trihs insistence that people like this woman are “brown-skinned”

http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/1193/zallaschtsadat3.jpg

Then people like this

http://cdn.inquisitr.com/wp-content/2011/07/Jose-Canseco.jpg

are also brown-skinned, if one wants to keep up the pretense that who is “white” and who is “brown” is easy to determine.

I really hope you’re not accusing me of lying here. I know you have an exceptionally simplistic view of the Middle East, have displayed extreme ignorance of the region, and have shown little concern for the actual plight or cause of either the Palestinians or the Iranians, but I do give you the benefit of the doubt and like to believe you’re motivated by more than hatred and jealousy of the Jews.

47

Great. Now drop it, it’s irrelevant.

48

Fidel appears in public . . . so, not yet.

49

The photo looks like something out of Weekend at Bernie’s, though.:wink:

50

I was responding to Red, not you, so please don’t try and be so presumptuous as to tell me what to do.

There may come a time when I give shit what you think, respect your opinions, or think your beliefs are based on research or knowledge as opposed to asinine assumptions and a quick skimming of wikipedia, but today is not the day.

Beyond that, please stop the junior modding and read up on the subjects you pretend you give a shit about.

51

Still, when I learned that the news of the death or stroke of Castro came from a “Venezuelan doctor in Miami” I wondered if it was the same doctor that declared that Hugo Chavez had just months to live early in the year.

Some news outfits never learn or people just ignore the past burns. :slight_smile: I still think that one big part why Chavez won was that most of the right wing media was demonstrated to be unreliable when Chavez did not curl up and die as promised.

As for Castro, I had him on my death pool but I dropped him as there are very little points to be gained now. :smiley: I do agree that more changes in Cuba will take place when he dies.

52

I’ve been reading this thread and am pretty struck by your lone mission to turn a question about Cuba into a question about race, which is…weird.

I have been to Cuba, and know that Cubans come in all colours, from Scandinavian blonde to sub-Saharan dark, so trying to twist a Cuba discussion into a race issue is just a little bizarre.

53

That will be my exact Moderator instructions to you on the entire topic of race or racial perception in this thread.

If you think that it is a topic worth discussing, open a new thread and leave this one alone.
If you think that it is worth attacking other posters, then do it in The BBQ Pit.

= = =

That goes for everyone else who may feel that they need to respond to “racial” or ethnic comments, as well.

[ /Moderating ]

54

The small group now extant who are called the ‘exile community’ hardly have enough clout to control a national embargo. They are old, and few. The rest of the US has their own opinions, and the votes are reflected in US policy. The magical powers of the Miami crew are greatly overestimated.
Castro make Kennedy/US eat a little poo, then became a nuclear threat for a while, siding with our archenemies during the Cold War. Right or wrong, the nation, as a whole, blames Castro, and has never forgiven him.
Once Fidel goes, the whole mess will straighten up.

55

Not too few to have enough clout to prevent the embargo from being lifted. Their clout is enormously magnified because Florida is such a crucial swing state. The Elian Gonzales case arguably cost Gore the 2000 election. It’s just not worth it for the national political parties to risk pissing them off too much.