Sanctions on Cuba: when will the United States grow up?

Seanchai

When it comes to Cuba, is there no end to the sheer pettiness of the United States of America? It's incredible that a place with many educated and fair-minded people can be so utterly morally bankrupt and bitter about a (self-inflicted) public humiliation it received 50 years ago.

I'm off to Cuba and I'm looking for accommodation. I'm checking Booking.com (here), Hotels.com (here) and a rake of other websites. Cuba, as in the country, does not exist on those websites. These same websites can provide you with accommodation in the arsehole of nowhere - I tested by putting in 'Siberia' - but what arrant childishness, what fear, what insecurity and what abject bitterness that they will not allow people to find accommodation in Cuba on their websites.

It's the same story with a search for flights or boats from Cuba to the US-owned Turks and Caicos islands. If you want to travel from Cuba around the Caribbean the United States insists you travel to places you don't want to in order to get there because in the mind of the 'Manifest Destiny' crowd they cannot have direct travel to or from Cuba. The size of the USA, and the size of Cuba. Risible excuses for humanity. We are dealing with a mob, with the local bully, with the local tyrant who persists in picking on the weak because they can, simply because they can. That's the moral direction in operation in these sanctions.

The United States of America has lost. Ever since the first sanction in 1958, the US has bullied the Cuban people and tried to alienate the world from them. But the overwhelming majority of the world rejected the United States and the bullying by the largest power in the world of a tiny, almost insignificant, country beside it. Even the most challenged member of the United States Congress could acknowledge that these sanctions are a symbol of US failure and moral bankruptcy. Israel, that most aberrant of nations, being the sole supporter of the United States when resolutions are passed condemning the sanctions.

People throughout the decades, like David Hickey, have highlighted far more serious consequences of these US sanctions, but the extent of the pettiness into mere accommodation websites sums up how contemptible the United States is being. The. greatest. bully. of. them. all.

/rant over

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Given that this place has a disproportionate number of rightwing libertarians, do any of you even defend these sanctions nowadays?

who the fug

Never defended them in the first place, because for the last 55 years they have helped Castro, Coke Levis and McDonals would have toppled him years ago

Seanchai

who the fug wrote: »

Coke Levis and McDonals would have toppled him years ago

You're probably correct there. What do you think is keeping them in place still?

Mjollnir

Seanchai wrote: »

You're probably correct there. What do you think is keeping them in place still?

Pressure from the (ahem) 'Cuban Americans' in South Florida, who pathologically still hate Castro and would shrug off US citizenship in a second should his regime ever fall and it become capitalist again.

I know a few. They miss their near-royalty status under Batista.

Their influence on US political policy, combined with hard right republicans, is a pox on this country.

Chuck Stone

It's the idea that can't be tolerated. Too much of a risk that the world will be turned upside down (right way up?) and people will realise they don't have to be hostage to the masters of mankind.

You just can't have the peasants toppling the elite and getting away with it - it's the danger of a good example.

This is about Guatemala but it's what made me think about 'the danger of a good example'.

The Inter-American Affairs Bureau officer Charles R. Burrows, of the U.S. State Department, explained the perceived threat to U.S. interests: “Guatemala has become an increasing threat to the stability of Honduras and El Salvador. Its agrarian reform is a powerful propaganda weapon; its broad social program, of aiding the workers and peasants in a victorious struggle against the upper classes and large foreign enterprises, has a strong appeal to the populations of Central American neighbors, where similar conditions prevail.

Shattered Hope: the Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944–1954 (1992) p. 365

CIA Director Dulles and his brother, John Foster Dulles, the US Secretary of State each owned capital stock in the United Fruit Company; their conflation of personal conflict of interest with the Cold War geopolitics of the Western Hemisphere made feasible the secret invasion to change the government of Guatemala by force of arms

Source

The state Mafia is the only thing that can describe these despicable creatures.

The Guatemalan threat was crushed because the US corporate/state nexus protected itself from the impoverished pesky peasants.

Black Swan

The position of the US government towards Cuba is complex, and sometimes inconsistent.

Florida is a presidential election swing state. The few swing states out of the 50 often determine a close presidential election due to the Electoral College (e.g., Florida in 2000 decided the election in favour of GW Bush with only about 500 votes, when Gore had a half-million more national/popular votes than GW Bush). Gore only got 25% of the Florida Cuban-American vote (see "Cuban Americans Move Left," Wall Street Journal, 8 November 2012), and had he gotten what Obama did in 2012 (48%), Gore would have easily won Florida and the presidency in 2000.

Cuban born Americans, who fled Cuba when Castro seized power, favoured a get tough policy on Cuba, with heavy economic sanctions. If you wanted their vote, which may be key in a close election in a swing state like Florida, then you supported such policies. Oddly both the Democrats and Republicans favoured such policies when JF Kennedy was president in the early 1960's (e.g., JFK invaded Cuba with a CIA sponsored proxy military force, but failed in the Bay of Pigs).

Cuban born Americans tended to be conservative and favoured the Republican party, as well as their get tough policy towards Castro's Cuba. But as these voters died off, they have been gradually replaced by their American born children that increasingly vote with other Hispanic Americans, generally favouring the less conservative policies of the Democrats, so a voter shift has been in the making.

In an attempt to attract Cuban American voters that had relatives in Cuba, the Obama 1st term administration reduced travel restrictions to Cuba, provided that they were for "academic or religious" purposes, which for all practical purposes opened travel to Cuba for Americans.

Although reported in major news media, I doubt you would have heard much about this from politicians when campaigning in Florida about Cuban travel that had been approved for "sports purposes" over the years, which shows the inconsistency in US policies and practices towards Cuba.

Odds are that US policies towards Cuba will continue to relax during the next few years as the Cuban born voting segment of the population continues to decline.

clairefontaine

It's historical memory. They aimed missiles directly at the US.

Sports purposes? What the hell is that?

Cuban Americans can't go back home for funerals but they can for a game of baseball?

What?

CollardGreens

Why doesn't everybody just stay home in the first place? Americans don't swim over to Cuba, why do thy have to bother America and swim over here?

A Primal Nut

People are complaining about the fact that USA doesn't allow its citizens visit Cuba (a policy I disagree with) but why not also criticise the fact that Cuba never allowed its citizens to visit the USA or any other country until very recently.

G Power

when will the american government grow up?? when will the american government fcuk right off ya mean?? they have the world tured upside down with their foreign policies and blatant bullying!!

if i behaved like they do i'd be arrested immediately and if they couldn't find a law to do me with i'm sure they'd write one up quick smart

Amerika

Yes, we should change our official position on Cuba so Seanchaj’s travel arrangements would be less arduous.

CollardGreens

if i behaved like they do i'd be arrested immediately and if they couldn't find a law to do me with i'm sure they'd write one up quick smart

G_Power as an American I agree with you wholeheartedly! If you can get that message across to our government I'd be much obliged


(btw, please do not group every citizen in America as having the thoughts as our government. I personally don't like any of them right now - with the exception of a few like Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul.)

G Power

CollardGreens wrote: »

G_Power as an American I agree with you wholeheartedly! If you can get that message across to our government I'd be much obliged


(btw, please do not group every citizen in America as having the thoughts as our government. I personally don't like any of them right now - with the exception of a few like Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul.)

eh up collardgreens

I never meant Americans and was actually implying the american government take a running jump off the cliffs of moher!!

CollardGreens

eh up

Not sure what that means? Never heard it in the States?

cliffs of moher!!

Never heard of those cliffs but I sure hope they are high with rocks and an angry ocean below!

G Power

CollardGreens wrote: »

Not sure what that means? Never heard it in the States?

it translates to an hello basically

asherbassad

Amerika wrote: »

Yes, we should change our official position on Cuba so Seanchaj’s travel arrangements would be less arduous.

Thanks for that gem of rationale. Didn't expect anything less from you.

asherbassad

America is just a petty asshole country. They slapped the same sanctions on North Korea and now everyone thinks that NK's leaders are the cause that people there are starving. The US lost in Vietnam. Wrecked a once beautiful country but refuse to this day to pay war reparations. Just goes to show what sneaky, underhanded immature little toerags they are.