(Here is a Washington Post op-ed in response, this one by Georgetown Law prof Ilya Somin).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/05/13/life-under-cuban-communism/

No, semck.

Of course it's not that bad.

WHY must you assume that Cuba's bad...just because you've been told things are bad, and see evidence things are bad, and it's popular to say America's better than Cuba since, well, people escape from there to here on whatever can float?

Russia, Assad's Syria, China North Korea, Cuba...

These are ALL countries that you're told have human rights violations and have about a dozen other problems, but really, they're all just grossly, grossly misunderstood...they're all really worker's paradises that make my Left of Center liberalism look like Sean Hannity by comparison.

But then, I support Israel despite acknowledging it has vast human rights violations...

So, who am *I* to say that these above nations are despotic, corrupt, and egregiously so?

You might think that--you might very well think that.

I couldn't *possibly* comment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhLN0L5JdD4

(I'm sorry, I wish I could be Francis Urquhart awesome...oh well--people will still address me with "F U!") ;)

"Some critics panned the film for pushing a socialist message. Elysium’s dystopian world, however, is a near-perfect metaphor for an actually existing socialist nation just 90 miles from Florida."

I'll say this for the article...

I took issue not with Elysium's socialist message (as it were) but with its execution. I read the plot synopsis, didn't care to go...so, in fairness, maybe it's done better. But from the synopsis, it sounded very hit-you-over-the-head direct.

Again, didn't see it, so for all I know I'm wrong, but that's what I read that a lot of people took issue with, and the plot synopsis seemed to back that up...

I mention this not so much to crap on a summer blockbuster (because apparently it's wrong to dislike popular things, unless, of course, that thing I'm disliking which is popular is in fact a Western nation, THEN it's perfectly fine to cast stones, because the West is pure capitalist evil, ladies and gentlemen) but to make a point about socialism itself here--

Namely, that it isn't socialism or even communism itself I take issue with, so much as the actual, well, you know, execution.

It's lovely to say how wonderful it can work out--it DOESN'T work out in Cuba and North Korea.

/inb4 Putin's rant on how these are the greatest places ever.

I'm not saying those systems can't work, or even that there aren't governments now that embrace those ideals and work well--there are, I'm sure, around 200 countries, it's bound to work somewhere for someone--but in those SPECIFIC cases...nope.

If the illustrious Mr. Putin himself does go ahead and defend Cuba here, or North Korea for that matter, let me ask him--

If they're so spectacular, why do people flee from those places to other shores, particularly from Cuba to here?

If either of you two were remotely interested in these questions, you'd consult the actual objective data, instead of relying on Cold Warriors who have long had an axe to grind against any model of development that isn't the utopia of free markets, from a country who harbors anti-Cuban terrorists and assassins. And I notice neither of these hit pieces mentions the economic blockade which has existed on Cuba for decades. How convenient.

https://data.undp.org/dataset/Expenditure-on-health-public-of-GDP-/g8ue-u768

Cuba ranks 4th of all countries in the world (behind three micro-states I might add) in expenditure on health as a percentage of GDP.

http://www.projectcensored.org/12-cuba-provided-the-greatest-medical-aid-to-haiti-after-the-earthquake/

It's astounding that, if Cuba's healthcare system is so poor, that they were willing and able to provide the greatest amount of medical aid and support to Haitian earthquake victims. Greater than the rich powerful and morally upright United States.

http://thecairopost.com/news/28903/world/more-cuban-doctors-due-in-brazil-to-work-in-poor-areas

Also astounding that, if Cuba is so terrible, countries worldwide continue to demand Cuban doctors in droves.

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/09/09/Worldandnation/Can_we_learn_from_Cub.shtml

Also why is it that a country that is a hell on earth can manage to evacuate its citizens routinely from deadly hurricanes and storms, but the rich and powerful United States cannot manage to do this?

Also why did this horrid regime manage to increase literacy by 700,000+ people in the span of one year after coming to power? How come the rich Batista regime which was supposedly so much better had an illiteracy rate of 40%+?

http://people.hofstra.edu/alan_j_singer/CoursePacks/ADifferentKindofRevolutionCubasNationalLiteracyCampaign.pdf

http://jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/061101/new_6403500.html

Why do US medical students go to Cuba to get an education if their system is so poor?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/nov/18/cuban-transsexual-adela-hernandez-elected

How come trans gender people face less discrimination and provided free sex change operations under the Cuban system? How come America, that beacon of human rights, still has people who claim that gays should be stoned to death?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-duran/is-cuba-taking-the-lead-on-lgbt-equality-in-latin-america_b_2411729.html

Indeed why is this hellhole being touted as a place that is taking the lead on LGBTQ rights?

http://books.google.com/books?id=UwY1yvfHs_IC&pg=PA224&lpg=PA224&dq=life+expectancy+cuba+dominican+republic&source=bl&ots=dEX-lYTB_j&sig=-3A2ThooI9SIxEFaalIswX_2bz4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xoevU9uuEoSnyATlu4KQDQ&ved=0CHUQ6AEwDQ#v=onepage&q=life%20expectancy%20cuba%20dominican%20republic&f=false

Why is Cuba's life expectancy at the level of advanced industrial countries while countries with similar profiles to Cuba, like the DR, have considerably lower levels?
Especially if your horror stories about Cuba's healthcare system are true?

And all this despite the fact that Cuba is under an economic blockade, including a medical blockade, and had its principle ally collapse, while the Dominican Republic is a free market paradise.

"If they're so spectacular, why do people flee from those places to other shores, particularly from Cuba to here?"

Because the US refuses to grant visas but will grant automatic defector asylum (and cash payments) to people who make the dangerous journey by boat. Amazingly enough, many of them return to go on vacation in Cuba every year. (Why would they vacation in a hellhole?) Furthermore a large number of people came because their children were literally kidnapped in Operation Peter Pan.

But no no! That can't be! America is the home of the free and the brave. Cuba is a Satanic hell on earth.

http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=86459

Seriously what do you two do with your spare time when you're not villifying countries that don't share your most holy neoliberal social systems? Does it make your brain hurt that countries might actually do just fine without worshipping at the altar of greed and corporate power?

Obiwan what do you say about the UN "North Korea apologists" who claimed that North Korea's healthcare system was the envy of the developing world? Does it give you a heart attack to read anything that doesn't conform to your propaganda?

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2010/20100430_chan_press_transcript.pdf

Sorry not UN, WHO.

"Putin, I'll keep the same-but-reverse thing in mind for your responses, which doesn't mean I won't find them interesting, as I do the article)."

I don't really care. It's not as if it should be expected that you'll do anything but confirm your preconceptions while dismissing any information to the contrary.

"It's lovely to say how wonderful it can work out--it DOESN'T work out in Cuba and North Korea."

And you base this on what criteria? Certainly not social indicators, because it's clear the system has worked tremendously well considering all the stresses it is put under by suffocating sanctions, terrorism, and threats of war and invasion.

There are dozens upon dozens of failed states that have neoliberal economic systems without such pressures, but naturally you won't claim capitalism doesn't work.

You probably only base this on whether the citizens have the ability to "choose" between two multi-millionaire candidates with multi-billionaire backers, the real criteria of a "working" system.

The US is to blaim for *much* of Cuba's issues. Our physical blockade hurt the people without hurting Castro in the least. Our current ban on trade and such continues to hurt the people, but not Castro. It's time we accept that the country has a right to govern itself and that our embargo of Cuba is hypocritical in the face of our trade deficit with China. It's a global economy and long term embargos just because we don't like another country's policies and politics is not the way to do business.

Cuba is awesome. The people are lovely.

"And you base this on what criteria?"

In North Korea?

...The fact that it's turned out to be...um...North Korea...which just about everyone besides you would agree to be a pretty spectacular failure, period.

In Cuba?

The fact people float her on home-made rafts across treacherous waters...

I don't see people fleeing England for France via the Channel that way, or vice versa...people don't tend to do that sort of thing when a system's working spectacularly well.

"Obiwan what do you say about the UN "North Korea apologists" who claimed that North Korea's healthcare system was the envy of the developing world?"

That they themselves clearly need to take advantage of that healthcare, and fast, because they're clearly critically ill or have suffered a recent blow to the head?

"Seriously what do you two do with your spare time when you're not villifying countries that don't share your most holy neoliberal social systems? Does it make your brain hurt that countries might actually do just fine without worshipping at the altar of greed and corporate power?"

1. I read...work...enjoy football, hockey, baseball (well, as much as the Mets allow me to enjoy it), enjoy some wine at night every now and again, watch a lot of literary miniseries and documentaries about art and literature, listen to classical and opera (I like plenty of modern artists fine too, I just find classical easier to read with), talk with friends, and just generally, you know...enjoy life?

If that's not too hard a concept to comprehend in your land of constant finger-waving (your lecturing me about vilifying nations or ideas is like Newt Gingrich or John Edwards lecturing us on marital fidelity.)

2. Sure, some countries do get along fine, both without the US and without capitalism.

I happen to think that North Korea, home to the Kim dynasty and contender for most nightmarish modern state, and Cuba, home to Fidel Castro and decades of poverty, aren't countries that fall into that category.

3. Who brought up corporate greed? For all your talk of me being overly-simplistic in my approach, you take quite a simplistic tract yourself...it's either a communist paradise or embracing a "Greed is Good" policy a la the 1980s and The Wolf of Wall Street? Please.

"Cuba, home to Fidel Castro and decades of poverty"

That poverty started in 1962 with the blockade followed by the embargo. We have *ourselves* to blame.

"Because the US refuses to grant visas but will grant automatic defector asylum (and cash payments) to people who make the dangerous journey by boat."

And while the US does have some Cold War-era culpability there, you don't think part of that blame has to go on the shoulders of the Castro regime that's created a situation of poverty in the first place?

Again--

Even if, this second, England and France decided to go back to their Battle of Agincourt-style days and hate one another, deny visas and do all we do to Cuba...

How many Brits are going to try and sail for economic opportunity in France?

How many Frenchmen are going to cross the Channel because they desperately want to leave France for England?

THOSE countries are 1. Both well off enough that that wouldn't happen and 2. Hey, what do you know, arguably more Leftist than the USA...

So a Left-leaning policy CAN work, 100%.

That doesn't mean it always does, and it hasn't worked in Cuba, or North Korea.

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/12/19/C0044096-Korea_at_night,_satellite_image-SPL.jpg

^Because when I think of a prosperous 21st century nation, I think of one with scarcely enough electricity by night to register on that map while its neighbor is one of the growing, vibrant economies of the world.

"That poverty started in 1962 with the blockade followed by the embargo. We have *ourselves* to blame."

I'm not arguing that point--I'm arguing that in the 50+ years SINCE, Fidel hasn't exactly helped things.

50 years...heck, I have to imagine that if the US has economic problems in 50 years, even the Republicans wouldn't blame Obama over it (well, the Tea Partyers would, but then, these are people that think he's a secret terrorist communist Islamist Kenyan...in short, these are people getting fitted for a tin-foil tri-corner hat.)

And the US wasn't blockaded and isn't embargoed by the single most powerful country in the world. There is only so much Castro can do in a country that is smaller than most US states when the single most powerful political entity in the world has a hard on for trying to hurt him.

Lift the embargo and see just what he can do. Castro is not evil. He is no Saddam Hussein or Somalian Warlord.

"Castro is not evil. He is no Saddam Hussein or Somalian Warlord."

"Military Units to Aid Production or UMAPs (Unidades Militares para la Ayuda de Producción) – in effect, forced labor concentration camps – were established in 1965 as a way to eliminate alleged "bourgeois" and "counter-revolutionary" values in the Cuban population. In July 1968, the name "UMAP" was erased and paperwork associated with the UMAP was destroyed. The camps continued as "Military Units".[116]

By the 1970s the standard of living in Cuba was "extremely spartan" and discontent was rife.[117] Castro changed economic policies in the first half of the 1970s.[117] In the 1970s unemployment reappeared as problem. The solution was to criminalize unemployment with 1971 Anti-Loafing Law; the unemployed would be put into jail.[88]:194 One alternative was to go fight Soviet-supported wars in Africa.[88]:194

In any given year, there were about 20,000 dissidents held and tortured under inhuman prison conditions.[88]:194 Homosexuals were imprisoned in internment camps in the 1960s, where they were subject to medical-political "reeducation".[118] The Black Book of Communism estimates that 15–17,000 people were executed.[119] Estimates for the total number political executions range from 4,000 to 33,000.[120][121]"

^And those concentration, labor and reeducation camps were just really day camps then, I guess?

See, good people, they usually don't do that...

I like FDR, but even I'd be the first to say that his internment camps were not only the most disgusting single act of his presidency, but easily one of the Top 10 biggest crimes committed in American history (and given the others that would be on that list, that's saying something.)

Castro isn't benign, and isn't benevolent.

Doesn't mean the US is good or absolved of responsibility in this, just putting forward the radical claim that, you know, these kind of actions...pretty bad...

@obiwanobiwan: "If they're so spectacular, why do people flee from those places to other shores, particularly from Cuba to here?"

There are all kinds of problems with this loaded question.

First of all, as Putin has pointed out, the only reason Cubans wishing to move to America have to make such a dangerous journey is that the USA won't let them come in via the normal routes, but once they arrive, it lets them stay. This, in turn, attracts huge, distorted media attention because of the dangerous nature of their journey.

The USA attracts immigrants from all over the world. Despite the proximity of the two countries, Cubans make up less than 1% of all immigrants coming to the USA, according to the Department of Homeland Security (2009 figures). There are many more Koreans, many more Brazilians, many more Chinese illegals attempting to enter the USA than Cubans.

Let me ask you a question. Thousands of people try to get into the USA from Mexico each year, most of them without a visa. From this, do you conclude that Mexico is a hellish regime, and that the US government should be working to overthrow the Mexian government?

According to the Urban Institute (a Washington D.C. based NGO) there are 75,000 Canadian illegal immigrants currently living in the USA. Do you agree this demonstrates that Canada is a third world hell hole?


A second point, which Draugner makes very well, is the US blockade. The USA has been blockading Cuba for decades, throttling Cuba's economy, restricting Cuba's ability to sell the goods it produces, and restricting access to a wide range of goods (including those needed as inputs for Cuban producers). How much better off would Cubans be if the blockade wasn't there? We can't say for sure, but we can be certain that the blockade directly hurts the living standards of ordinary Cubans, while also damaging Cuba's industrial output.

(By the way kudos to Draugnar for putting this across so clearly. It's nice to see an American who understands the injustice of the Cuban blockade)

I'll tell you a little story which I think illustrates how awful the USA's policy towards Cuba is. A number of years ago (during the Bush administration) I wrote to the US Embassy in London, politely complaining in my British way, about the injustice of the blockade. I received a reply . To quote the US Embassy's reply:

"The United States is committed to maintaining the current blockade until Cuba establishes a free and open economy."

There was no mention of democracy. There was no mention of human rights. The official US position, as per their Embassy's letter to me, was that the USA has the right to tell another country how to run its economy, and to use its military to blockade that country if they don't run their economy in accordance with US demands.

Does that seem just, fair and good to you?

"See, good people, they usually don't do that..."

Abu Ghraib anyone?

Good point, Draugnar.

And hey, doesn't the USA have a prison camp, where people are held without charge and allegedly tortured in violation of their human rights? I think people refer to it as "Gitmo" but I seem to recall it being officially named after some kind of bay... I think it's located on some unimportant island just off the coast of Florida...

OH WAIT THAT AMERICAN PRISON CAMP IS ACTUALLY ON CUBA!

OH, THE IRONY.

"Abu Ghraib anyone?"

...I wouldn't consider that a good action either...nor was it maintained by good people.

"And hey, doesn't the USA have a prison camp, where people are held without charge and allegedly tortured in violation of their human rights?"

Yes--see the above.

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