[lovellcw]

Cuba exports terrorism and misery across the region. The dictatorships in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua fly under the radar these days, but are no less noxious to humanity than the regimes in Russia, Iran, NK, etc.

You can argue whether or not sanctions are an effective way to promote regime change, or if they just hurt the regular citizens of rogue governments. I think they are often quite ineffective.

But there's no defending the Cuban regime.

[thiagoharry]

Yeah... They fought against apartheid in South Africa while US fought to keep apartheid... They fought for Africa independence while the west wanted to keep their colonies... It's Cuba exporting terrorism and misery... Not forgetting how US recently destroyed the country with highest HDI in Africa, how CIA is a terrorist organization that blows up people with impunity around the world...

[wefarrell]

The US supported and harbored an anti Castro terrorist who among other things blew up a civilian airliner:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Posada_Carriles

[curiousgal]

Imagine discussing South America only to come to the conclusion that Cuba is to blame LMAO

r/ShitAmericansSay

[imwillofficial]

“Cuba exports terrorism and misery across the region.”

::walks away whistling hoping you don’t notice Iraq and Afghanistan’s blown up weddings::

[arinlen]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes

Feel free to start a discussion on US aggression, if you honestly feel strongly about it.

Otherwise you're blatantly trying to whitewash decades of systematic oppression from totalitarian bloodthirsty regimes, and in the process support all the human rights violations they're continuously subjecting their population to.

[ClumsyPilot]

> systematic oppression from totalitarian bloodthirsty regimes

How do sanctions help an average Joe stuck living under such a regime?

Now they are even poorer, have worse nutrition and medicine.

[thriftwy]

That's a very nice link. It took around 40 years for the USA to even get to that level of self-awareness to have BLM.

Think about it, Soviet Union was not just knowing what you did last summer; it knew what you would be doing a summer 40 years from back then.

[thiagoharry]

Curious... Soviet union were completely right when criticizing US for lynching black people... But it is interesting how propaganda works... It's like nowadays when you point hypocrisy in the Internet, but people just yell "whataboutism" as a way to always ignore criticism and do not accept responsibility for double standards and hypocrisy in the propaganda that they spread. Of course, this happens only for criticism against US and the west, never against non-aligned countries. Nobody creates a wikipedia post about "And what about Stalin/Tiananmen Square/Whatever" trying to take away importance from criticism against communist countries calling it a "demagogical trick" like described in the above wikipedia page.

[arinlen]

> Curious... Soviet union were completely right when criticizing US for lynching black people...

...except they weren't criticizing. Much like in this case, their intention was to divert the attention on their cruel and inhumane practices by picking any distraction they could find out, with the goal of perpetuating their abuse without being subjected to criticism.

It's the same reason why nowadays you have Putin's regime posting bullshit about how the people of the UK and Germany are somehow suffering from hardship to deflect the attention from the impact that international sanctions is having in it's economy. The target and substance of their attacks is immaterial, and their goal is to divert attention.

[pksebben]

This wasn't the impression I got from op. It's perfectly valid to point out that the u.s. is also guilty of the things it imposes sanctions on other countries for - I don't believe that the argument is being made that Cuba is blameless, just that if you're going to hold someone to a standard of behavior, you should first hold yourself to that standard.

As a u.s. citizen, this resonates. I'm deeply troubled by the fact that we've been led by war criminals in my lifetime who got off scot-free.

Mind you, I'm not defending Cuba's human rights violations - I agree that things should be done to mitigate those. However, we should clean our own house first.

It's also been posted elsewhere in this thread, that sanctions haven't appeared to be effective. I think it's hard to argue otherwise, especially if you believe that the awful-dictator situation still persists, as we've had Cuba under sanctions for a while now.

[zarzavat]

Yes this is an incorrect use of “whataboutism”.

It is supposed to mean the rhetorical trick of using other’s faults to distract from and normalize one’s own wrongdoing.

It is not a general defense against accusations of hypocrisy leveled by a third party.

[icare_1er]

So Okta and the US in general should also enforce similar sanctions on pretty much half of the planet, starting with Saudi Arabia. :o)

[imwillofficial]

Since this post has blown up. Let me clarify my point.

The US has zero moral authority to impose sanctions based on violations of human rights while simultaneously violating human rights on a global scale.

Additionally, we have seen the effects of sanctions, the average people suffer even more, and the regime stays the same.

Arguably the people of Cuba are worse off after sanctions than before.

[Sebguer]

Cuba's biggest export is effectively doctors. But, sure, buy into decades old anti-communist propaganda!

[arinlen]

> Cuba's biggest export is effectively doctors.

I find it highly amusing how "exporting people" is suddenly portrayed as being an achievement, as if being exploited as an indentured servant is something praiseworthy in the 21st century.

In other contexts this is referred to as human trafficking and exploitation, but being Cuba this is suddenly something to brag about?

I lived in a country where the national health service resorted to hiring cuban "doctors" to fill in vacancies in deserted areas. The Cuban regime ripped them off out of a big chunk of their pay, they had no right to work beyond the job program, the national certification board had to bend over backwards to allow cuban doctors to practice as all they had was a mere 4 year degree whose scientific basis was questionable, and their role in the healthcare service was basically triaging patients to hand over cases to other doctors.

The "Cuba exports doctors" myth doesn't hold to scrutiny. I guess that even Dr Nick Riviera is a godsend in third world countries where people have to walk for hours to get basic medical care, but let's not pretend that Cuba does not coherce undereducated professionals to play a role whose value-added is highly dependent on the development status of the country that pays for this service.

[thriftwy]

> is suddenly portrayed as being an achievement

It's not an achievement.

It's a sign of how hard the USA-based bullying had come so that a country cannot export goods or services so it has to export people.

[arinlen]

> (...) so it has to export people.

It's indentured servitude. It's exploitation that treats the fellow man as nothing more than an exportable good whose role in life is to be abused to cater to the whims of despots.

You cannot deflect the blame of these subhuman practices onto foreign regimes just because you feel a specific oppressive regime that you support could use some extra cash.

[thriftwy]

I'm not defending Cuban regime, merely saying that USA had no problems dealing with other repressive regimes, and that Cuban regime would likely improve if it wasn't pressed in the corner by the USA.

[arinlen]

> I'm not defending Cuban regime (...)

Well, except you are. You're trying to shift the attention away from Cuba's track record on human rights abuses by arbitrarily picking distractions that frankly you care nothing about, as if pointing out these distractions justified Cuba's long history of oppression and abuse.

[WHATDOESIT]

These doctors need to be taught a lot and don't even care about proper hygiene (or as one of them told me "we care about hygiene, it just means something totally different in Cuba"), and don't know the first thing about modern medical procedures using modern technologies and tooling. It's nothing like US or European medical schools - it's like they went to a medical-oriented high school at best. In Europe we just send them to the school again, they can't even skip years or subjects.

[ceejayoz]

Cuban life expectancy is almost exactly equal to American life expectancy; likely better over the last two years, actually (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/...). They don't seem to be doing that badly at keeping folks alive.

[WHATDOESIT]

American life expectancy is absurdly bad. I live in the places in Europe/EU where it's much higher, so to me it really is very bad (and yes we are making fun of US because of it too).

[jeroenhd]

The life expectancy for an American man is only 73 years old? That's distressingly low for such a rich country!

[GekkePrutser]

Most of that is self-inflicted though. Lifestyle-related.

It's not a bad thing either, you can live your life like a saint and still die young of cancer. I think we're focused on physical instead of mental health too much sometimes.

If people like to live a certain lifestyle and know the risks, just let them.

[vhgyu75e6u]

Yes lets just swallow the Cuban propaganda that their medicine is somehow magical and more advanced that every other, and ignore the fact that their government have been surviving as a parasite from other countries, helping the dictators stay in power

[SaintSeiya]

Indeed, Cuba had more that 167000 covid deaths because they refuse to give its citizens foreign and proven vaccines. Trying to develop its own to profit selling it to another countries. of course they've failed. They refuse to provide scientific results that it's vaccines works. On top of that hospitals are empty of everything needed: no hygiene, no medicines, no even doctors because the government "exports" them for cash to other countries neglecting its own necessities and Doctors gladly agree to earn a bit more of the 50 USD dollars a moth they would earn working in cuba a MONTH

[codeadict]

The US is pretty evil and sanctions on Cuba just affect regular people on the island and keep Florida politicians alive, but Cuba is way eviler. They don't export doctors, they do human trafficking for the enrichment of the communists and their families. Many of my friends were sent to Brazil and Venezuela as doctors, of the 3000 a month dollars the governments of these countries paid them, they only got $200 a month and the gov kept the rest while they were risking their life's in bad neighborhoods and very isolated places in the Amazonas. Does this money go back to help the regular citizen? Nope, it goes to Castro's families and the other new commies that are in power now, there is more poverty, and there are very few hours of electricity in a day right now, there is hunger compared to or worse than Africa and Haiti, there is repression and incarceration of young people who are protesting regularly, including 16-year-old kids and young women. It's that the embargo fault, nope completely, there is no production of anything, communists steal everything for their own enrichment from the government companies. Their media brags about the doctor exports and being a medical potency, yet my mom spent 4 months in pain to see a doctor because all of them have been exported or young ones left the country. There are zero medicines and one person in my family almost died of COVID if they didn't move fast and bribe the hospital director with dollars and suddenly there was medicine. Did they help fight apartheid in Africa? Yep and that was nice but they sent people against their will there, people who were kids and were in the mandatory military service, if you refused to go they did acts of repudiation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_of_repudiation) with your neighbors and got a job was hard or impossible after you said no. I still know people traumatized from that war.

Source: I was born and raised there my entire life, and just came from there last weekend.