[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.

[m000]

> You're trying to shift the attention away from Cuba's track record on human rights abuses

The irony of complaining about human right abuses in Cuba and at the same time operating Guantanamo on Cuban land...

[thriftwy]

I just don't see how any amount of human right abuses excuses trying to exclude a sub-population of Earth from world economy.

That's trying to answer abuses with more and harsher abuses.