Prisoners 'killed' at US Base

Speaking of fiction, and Cuba; I remember seeing a one year, syndicated series on Al Capone. In it, Batista was depicted as idealistic rebel, champion of the common man when he came to power. Considering the nature of man and the power/corruptability factor, I believe this was probably true. In a recent bio of Castro, he was the same way and they showed him starting to change after assuming power, in a quite natural way. I fervently believe this. All this sorta' makes me admire the restraint of George Washington, in regards to power.

Booman -- I remember the guys coming out of the Oriente province and the whole revolution, wish I could remember the detail better. It was romantic, a fitting conclusion to a very corrupt Batista regime. Castro came to Harvard to speak -- I remember meeting him -- everyone did because he was eager and accessible. He was well regarded, educated, idealistic. In my view, the US treated him badly -- really stupidly -- handed him over to the Soviets, embargoed him, demonized Cuba.

Perhaps the major difference between he and Batista, is that he didn't let U.S. money get to him. What if the Russian alternative had been available to Batista, or not available to Castro? I know they're only screen products, but it's eerie that an observation made in the Godfather, (Castro Era) was also made in Capone, (Batista reference) "these people are outnumbered, and out gunned, but they can win, because they are willing to die."

I'd have to go back and read history to be clear about it. But I'd probably try to avoid a Cuban history written by mainstream America!!

Fulgencio Batista is what made Fidel Castro possible.

Yes, corrupt regimes often trigger establishment of anti-democratic regimes that are being considered by the population as an antidote to the vices of their predecessors.

Yeah like morphine was once an antidote for alcohol, then heroin for morphine, then metha done for heroin,; catch my drift?

Absolutely. All these stuffs are sh*t. So are Batista's and Castro's regimes.

In the film "Who the hell is Juliette?", the director darkly jokes that of all the men in the plane to Cuba, he was the only one not planning to have sex with a Cuban. The girl he portrays suggests how normal it is for Cuban girls to get the extra bit to get by on in Cuba in this way.

My father, who was in Cuba for some meeting or conference last year, confirmed it. Girls had offered their services to him many times, in different places and parts of town ... and he's 64, and not particularly handsome (sorry, dad) or rich (to western standards, i mean) either.

(It was one of the disillusionments there for him, actually, as - in all realistic awareness of current corruption and oppression - he still had some abstract sentimental loyalty to the idea of (socialist) Cuba.)

There may perhaps not be explicit or open or street prostitution, but apparently there's a lot of 'indirect' prostitution instead - trying to get a tourist to pick you up, in exchange - is the hope - for presents, a luxurious life for a few days, and perhaps a financial reward.

This goes for young men, too, by the way. I read a report about that just a while ago. In that sense Cuba also seems to be going the way of Gambia (to women what Thailand is to men - with treats and expectations of financial help replacing explicit money transactions), a bit.

And all over America women are looking for a well off man to marry. Jaquelyn Kennedy even had a contract with Onassis depicting how much money she would get for her companionship.

Mindboggling ... from murder to torture to revolution to sexcapades to Jackie K/O's companionship ... this thread is a wild ride

True

I never understood the romanticisation of Cuba, myself. It's all back in vogue, especially the last few years, and for some reason especially in Germany (or Berlin, in any case), it seems. And of course the Buena Vista Social Club seems to have more to do with it than anything overtly political, or it should be the fashion value of the Che image, at the moment - but somewhere this 'socialism in the sun' notion still always plays into the background.

But this is a country without any free press, with political prisoners who are routinely tortured, with numbing underemployment ("we pretend to work as long as you pretend to pay us"), with persecution of homosexuals, with a ban on any demonstration of dissent, enforced with state violence - and all that with the escape-routes locked off in true eastern-bloc style.

On the other side of the coin, purportedly, always again the free healthcare and education - the very same two things always used to deflect allegations of oppression in the soviet union with. Reason to be sceptical. We should now know that the health care system in the soviet union was low-quality (hence the special cliniques for the party cadres), riddled with corruption (smuggle food in to your sick family) and involved a systemic disregard for the individual interest. Take the simple example of abortion - considering that producing and promoting the pill (or condoms) was never a priority in the five-year plans to build industry and expand production, the average russian woman will have had many abortions, used routinely as a kind of after-the-fact birth control. Not to mention the question of that wonderful free education and what it entailed, especially in gamma subjects like, say, history ...

I'm sure Cuba is a better land to live in than, say, Colombia. But is it any better than it would have been, without the Castroites? Or than Mexico, Trinidad, Costa Rica?

<shrugs>

apples and pears. we are talking about women offering to have sex with you, in exchange for either money, on the table, or what your money can buy them tonight - and about great groups of men travelling to a country to exploit this poverty-driven opportunity.

that's not right, duh, but also, dependent on the numbers involved, a reflection about the state a country is in - thats how its taken about thailand.

bit unsincere to trivialise such things with a belittling comparison about what is a qualitatively different situation.

hehhehheh ...

i only dropped into this thread on, like, page 22 or so, so it was the state-of-cuba thing i responded to ...

hey, you should check out this thread some time - strings one topic to another, from originally press comments on france and belgium to the value of international law, UN and the war crimes tribunals, to gypsies and their self-designation as roma, to the fate of the native minorities in siberia, to ... ;-)

LOL ... yeah, nimh, there are lots of threads like that. I'm glad I miss some of them



timber

I like 'em!

And probably annoy the hell outta some others doing so ...

Nimh
...I love to needle, to make people think, to put things in proper perspective. Many times I can actually be on the same page with a person and play Devil's advvocate, to stir things up, or make sure we don't get caught up in generaliztions, and absolutes. I'm a sh*t-stirrer with honorable, tought provoking, intentions. this is not an apology, but an explanation, of why I bring up things that might rub people the wrong way. ...No malice, just stimulation. And I'm quite sincere about this.

BTW, the difference between a street-walking whore, and a woman looking to marry well, is that the STREET-WALKING whore, has an honest assesment of herself. That's why I respect them.

Okay, nimh, what to do. Remove sanctions on Cuba? Somewhere, there is an old discussion on that.