Every single time the island of Cuba and fidel castro’s revolution are covered anywhere in the media one of the points always mentioned is Cuba’s free healthcare. You can practically time it. If it’s in print, you get the lead issue in the first and second paragraph, a mention of fidel castro or one of his cronies in the third paragraph and then the plug for the lauded free healthcare available to Cubans in the fourth. I dont think Ive ever read an article about castro or Cuba where the “healthcare” isnt mentioned.
Every single castro supporter clings to this healthcare thing like it is some kind of holy grail. In a debate, the fact that Cuba has the most political prisoners in the world is ignored. The fact that Cubans on the island lack even the most basic of necessities is ignored. Tourism apartheid is ignored. Everything is ignored save for the free healthcare and 100% literacy.
Of course, none of these Free healthcare! cheerleaders have ever been to a Cuban hospital. They’ve never been to a Cuban clinic. Hospitals and clinics serving the average Cuban, that is.
Take a look at this picture:
Cockroaches. Twenty-seven of them to be exact. All swept together after having been squashed by patients and patrons of “El Hospital Clinico Quirurgico de la Habana.”
And imagine having to take a loved one to the hospital and when you get there, this is what the common area looks like:
You could just imagine what awaits for you once you step inside the actual treatment areas.
Here’s a closeup shot of the floors where patients are actually tended to:
Quite unsanitary, no?
Well, this is just a small reality of castro’s lauded healthcare in Cuba. This is a hopsital in Havana, the nation’s capital and the most populated city in the country. Imagine the conditions of hospitals in smaller cities or rural areas.
castro once called this hospital “one of the most modern and best ones in the country.”
This is not a hospital that caters to foreigners, mind you. This is a hospital strictly for the Cuban people. Foreigners are treated quite differently and their facilities are state of the art and, at least, sanitary. But thats the dichotomy of Cuba. fidel castro’s revoution was for the people, the very same people that are now substandard in the eyes of their government.
My family is from a very small town in Oriente province. We were not rich. We were not middle class. Ours was a blue collar family in Cuba and whenever someone needed medical attention, they got it. Babies were born, broken arms were set, appendixes were removed, surgeries were performed. In other words, they had access to pretty darn good medical attention before castro fixed the healthcare system.
Yeah, fidel castro and his revolution built clinics and hospitals and all of his people have access to “medical care.” Yet these photos are an example of it. The revolution’s healthcare may be free, but it surely isn’t proper.
The above photos were taken by two journalists, Mar?a Elena Morej?n
and Carlos Wotzkow and are posted along with an accompanying article at Gentuino.
The same photos can be viewed along with an English interpretation at The Real Cuba.
I urge each and every one of you to check the remaining photographs out so that next time, when some fidel loving apologist mentions Cuba’s free healthcare, you remember what they’re really talking about: the myth of Cuba’s vaunted healthcare system.
UPDATE: There’s never an egg timer around when you need one. Paxety Pages has a link to an editorial item titled “Cuba’s Remarkable Commitment to Healthcare.”
Here are a couple of other Cuban healthcare related posts:
– Doctor shortage at AIDS facility.
– Doctor shortage at El Cerro.
– Shipment of Doctors to Venezuela causes doctor shortage.
– Maternity ward close because of nurse shortage.
– Pneumonia outbreak.
– Car headlights used to light polyclinic during medical procedure.
– High infant mortality rate, yes, but 6 out of 10 babies aborted.
– Doctor fired after complaining about lack of sterilized equipment.
Update II: Welcome Instapundit readers. Today is the second anniversary of the crackdown on the 75 dissidents presently still rotting away in castro’s gulags. I urge you all to read this post and offer your solidarity with their cause and your support in seeing to their release. Gracias.
Free Health Care the Castro Way
If you’ve got a strong stomach, head on over to Babalu Blog and see the joys of the Cuban health care system. Remember, hard core (cough*communists*cough) leftists are always telling us what a paradise Castro’s Cuba is, how the citizens
don’t worry Val our parents had those hospitals clean before they left in the sixties (1961 for me …que viejo) , when the bitch fidel dies, we will be back to make them sparkle like they use to…
I worked as a military instructor in Turkey for a while. This is another country with universal free medical care. Don’t get me wrong, Turkey isn’t any more communistical than most other Euro countries, but they do have socialized medicine. Once I was asked to help a young Turk officer get a rating he didn’t technically deserve. My boss explained that he had a daughter in need of complicated surgery, and if he was rated he could get a posting in the US. Then his daughter might have a chance, because the ‘free medicine’ in Turkey would have let her die. Communist thinking never made any common folks wealthy or healthy.
How do we know this pictures aren’t from your home in calle ocho, eh?
Coment removed by admin because if he wanted communist propaganda, he would still be in Cuba.
Val, now that i saw all the pics, give credit where its due! one of the toilet stalls had what i believe was toilet paper!Val thats a giant leap from using “un trapito”… I would say that these conditions are suitable for gorillas & chimpanzees, lets be fair!Cuba has come a long way. and by the way who needs soap in these bathrooms , water is sufficient for hygienics in Cuba, i believe the water itself is anti-germ. I believe that amoebas and protozoans can’t multiply in Cuba’s tap water. so there lets be positive! About Cuba’s sewer system…In the USA we put all our waste sewer water into underground pipes,What are we trying to hide. Why do we hide our shit here..
In Cuba the sewer runs everywhere ,. it flows in what I call open-air aqua-ducts.. there is no shame for such a natural bi-product.
Besides i hear Cuba has these top of the line “rice cookers” that only go for sixty dollars. In Cuba if you save your wages for 1 year you can buy two of these rice cookers. So sweet! Let give credit where it’s due from now on PLEASE.
Sorry Val you have to be open the positive not just the negatives in Cuba
thanks …
BOTE
I don’t know why I was making fun of your before, Val. You write with intelligence and great power.
One point, though: Cuba is a very poor country because of the embargo. If Miami Cubans like you let our government lift the embargo you would not find 27 cockroaches on the floors of Havana hospitals.
You people in Miami are responsible for this, not Castro. Connect the dots and we come to no another conclusion. You have laid seige to Havana for 45 years, made conditions so bad there people are starving, and then you point to Castro and say, “He is the one!” “He is the one responsible for all the poverty!”
No, Val. YOU are the one.
Vaya con Dios,
Eric Lloyd
Val, did you see the new Forbes Magazine with the list of the World’s Richest people?
Castro is worth $550 MILLION DOLLARS!
It has a list of all his businesses.
http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/
this message is for the comments put in by “barbudo & ric landers. You dumb ass sons of bitches…
(barbudo)i grew up in Little Havana, the homes may have been old , however every home i entered in the hood was immaculate, you could eat off any bathroom floor, (mucho pinesol)…
(ric landers) the embargo has nothing to do with a broom , little soap and water. Embargos and cleanliness have coorelation. i name ric lander and barbudo my bitches of the day!
bote
Val;
You may not know this, as most Cubans don’t, but my mom prepared the payroll for several thousand people in a big agro-“business” in Cuba. Bottom line is, there’s no free healthcare at all. Out of every paycheck, the Cuban government takes 12% out for the “free” healthcare. (And another 12% out for retirement, and another 9.09% for the “free” vacation, but that is repaid when the vacation is taken.) So, come to think of it, Cuba has a 24% percent flat tax, they just don’t tell the people.
Ric:
One point, though: Cuba is a very poor country because of the embargo. If Miami Cubans like you let our government lift the embargo you would not find 27 cockroaches on the floors of Havana hospitals.
Dumbass. Cuba can trade with many, many other countries, so feebly attempting to blame the US, the embargo, and/or Val is one of the STUPIDEST things I’ve seen in quite a while.
In any case, are you saying that it’s somehow the fault of the embargo that Castro’s government can’t scrub their frikkin’ hopspitals? That it’s the fault of people like Val that there are dozens of dead roaches on the floor? Help me out here; I want to understand if that’s what you are saying, because it certainly seems like it. Me, I’d propose that Castro take some of the MILLIONS he’s worth and buy some damned brooms and bleach. Both are very cheap to make.
F*cking Castro cultists. All Val has to do is post anything criticizing Fidel’s glorious socialist paradise and they come out of the woodwork (not unlike the roaches on the hospital floor) to blame the situation on anything, anyone other than the man who’s been in charge of Cuba for the last four decades.
Ric/Eric/Erica,
Thanks for reminding us once again how Miami Cubans are ruining the world. Man, we’re such scum!
Hopefully one day when Miami Cubans are exterminated, Cuba will finally be able to move forward and buy some brooms, mops, soap, and water to clean up their medical facilities.
Ric/Eric/Erica: care to take the first shipment of cleaning products over as a gesture of good will?
Sure, Fidel’s a dictator
… but at least they’ve got free health care! As ever, Val, thank you for that post….
Hey Ric, one thing has always amazed me: Why are so many American Blacks like Harry Belafonte, Maxine Waters, Charles Rangel, Lucious Walker and yourself, so much in love with a white racist like Fidel Castro? Why are you defending Castro instead of defending people like Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, a Black Cuban who Castro sent to jail FOR 27 YEARS, for teaching his fellow Cubans about Dr. Martin Luther King’s practices of peaceful civil disobidience? Can you name one single Black Cuban who is in a position of power in Cuba? Castro and his brother: White; Perez Roque: White; Alarcon: White; Lage: White; Pedro Alvarez of Alimport: White; Arnaldo Ochoa: Black, but Castro sent him to the firing squad so he doesn’t count anymore. The only Black Cuban who is still close to Castro is Comandante Juan Almeinda, and Castro has him playing the guitar at La Bodeguita del Medio to entertain the tourists.
Wake up,man. You are supporting a multi-millionaire racist who is more fascist than Pinochet, Batista, Trujillo, Somoza and Mussolini COMBINED!
Ric or Eric or REica or whatever your nom du jour is today,
The embargo does not limit nor forbid the export of medical supplies to the island of Cuba. Never has.
Do your homework before spewing the rhetoric, else you look like the idiot that you are.
You have to admit, the pictures sure do make it seem…quaint.
You want to know what the bastard fidels Cuba is like. Check this out.
http://www.geocities.com/policraticus/juan_clark_exodus.html
My girlfriend still has stories about medical care she got as a child that she won’t tell. And that was before the “Special Period” started and the Soviets were still helpful “comrades.”
Her family, a bunch of evil Miami Cubans, send anesthetic, anti-biotics, and even fucking disinfectant to clean the operating room when family members in that paradise of free healthcare need medical or dental work done.
But, of course, anecdotal evidence and photographs are no match for che shirts and valuable information gleaned from Granma.
$550 million. Fucking hell.
Bravo Evil Otto! The poster is a dumbass indeed.
But I think you hit the nail on the head when you called him a “cultist.” That is very, very true. The “worship” of castro, and the ideation inherent in it, can come very close to the definition of a a “cult” as found in Webster’s:
It has been obvious to me for many years that people who exhibit the kind of devotion on the scale that castro apologists display borders on mental illness. Even when shown evidence that their belief is wrong, they continue to mouth the party line.
There is a very fine line between insanity and stupidity. Some of the posts on this blog praising fidel are clear evidence of that.
And, before some of you start — and you know who you are — I know there will be some libs/lefties who will say that conservatives or Republicans exhibit this “cultish” trait. But here is the one crucial difference: we are willing to publicly disagree with those we admire or revere when we see or hear something that goes against our principles and, more importantly, against readily available evidence.
Ah, the joys of free healthcare
The next time Eva Bj?rklund falls ill, let’s ship her here:
[Via Babalu Blog]
Que no entiendo, and what I seldom hear people talk about is this: If castro’s “free” health care is so great, then why are there “Mission Trips” to Cuba to supply medicine?
People like “Pastors for Peace” and Med schools like “U of C” send trips down to give medical supplies to it’s citizens.
The fact of the matter is that the Health Care in Cuba no sirve. And blaiming the Embargo makes less sense now than it ever did, because the Euro is worth more than the Dollar. And last I checked, Europe doesn’t have an embargo. (Oh, and on the side, the embargo doesn’t cover medicine… If you didn’t know, the US does sell Cuba medicine.)
These pictures simply point to the truth: communism has failed Cuba, and will continue to fail Cuba so long as castro, or any other commie, remains in power.
Catching my eye: morning A through Z
Here’s what’s caught my eye this morning: Joseph Marshall of A Straight Shot of Politics has a great post titled In Lieu of Evidence in which he contemplates the limitations of journalism and blogging. My favorite line: As political blogging…
Cuba is dirty now a days because castro is dirty and he wants everyone to be like him. My dad when he was alive told me that his nickname at the university of La Habana was “bola de churre” ball of grime. A person like this is very offensive to most Cubans. Most islanders, like the Japanese, the Hawaiians, Islenos de la canarias tend to have better hygiene than average. He has forced the Cubans in that hellhole to come down to his own scummy level. Even when we arrived in this country con una mano alante y la otra atras, we always had soap, clean clothes, and a clean bed. My mom made sure of that. Mothers in Cuba do not have anything with which to make sure of that.
A year ago I went on a medical mission to Belize. While there, I assisted a dentist at the prison clinic for a couple of days. The full-time physician at the clinic was a doctor from Cuba, one of the many sent by Fidel to Central and South American countries. She was a decent doctor (and a decent human being) and as a result of her being there full time, the prisoners got better medical care than most of the rest of the people in that dirt poor country. I spent some time talking to her and found she was married. I asked if her husband and child had come to Belize with her. She said no, they weren’t permitted to travel. She could go back to visit them any time but they couldn’t visit her. She also said that, for the most part, clinics in Cuba lacked everything but the most basic supplies and medicines. I asked her how this was possible when Cuba has a thriving pharmaceutical industry; her answer was “The government says that it is because of the boycott.” I was clear that she didn’t believe a word of that explanation.
Val
Articles about Venezuela are also mentioning more and more Barrio Adentro, just as the Cuban “miracle” health care is mentioned. And some of the pictures taken in Cuba health facilities coudl be taken inside Venezuelan public health facilities. Without the excuse of the embargo.
None so blind, as those who will not see. Keep the truth out there, Val, for those who wish to avail themselves of it.
No health care is free-socieities pay for health care in one way or another. Rich countries can (or in the U.S choose not to) spend their resources to give people health care. Poor countries can also spend money to provide people health care-it will obviously not be up to first world standards. The problem is lack of wealth, not the way the health care is run.
Now why Cuba has chosen to run its economy into the ground is another matter…
Two – points
1) I HAVE seen THAT god damn hospital and it is EXACTLY as the pictures depict, one thing missing, the HORRIBLE stench of piss and “mierda”, the overflowing toilets and the blatant incompetence of the ?doctors?. Remember you can BUY an MD degree in Cuba for $200 USD.
2 ? A childhood friend of mine is an internationally known economist (still in Cuba so I will withhold his name) and in his calculations, a Cuban worker gets taxed 70% of his salary to subsidized the ?FREE? health care, Education, Defense and now the ever popular ?Rice cookers?.
e.g: Veterans of the Angola war MUST pay 1 peso a month to maintain their ?Internacionalista? status !
I bought (on Ebay) two cancelled checks dating back to Jan 20 1956 (I will scan and send to whoever wants a copy, Val let me know) One of the checks read :
Compa?ia Ron Bacardi, Santiago de Cuba
The amount is for $20,594.75 (which was equivalent to the same amount in USD)
The notes reads: (translated from Spanish)
?Funds for 547 checks to cover the week of January 18 1956. To pay the 3rd week of the year)
So, a quick calculation tells you that the mean average salary of a Cuban worker at Bacardi S.A in Jan 1956 was $37.00 USD A WEEK!!!!
So 37.00 X 52 weeks a year = $ 1924.00 a year
$1024.00 into 12 months a year = 160.00 USD a MONTH!
So, in 1956 an average Cuban worker at Bacardi in Santiago de Cuba made 13 times more money than they do in 2005!
Notice there were VERY few high level Bacardi executives in Santiago de Cuba !
So all you commie bastards! WHERE IS THE FUCKING *FREE* ANYTHING IN CUBA?
Are there no snipers in the country? This guy could be taken out. What’s the total population? What is the total population in his army, who would actually fight to ‘keep him alive’? If you are willing to lose 10% of the pop to win and overthrow this #$$hat, would you do it?
He’s a tropical Saddam. Overthrown the piece of crap once and for all, and let Cuba become (again) the tropical haven it once was.
How Do You Say, “Mmmmm. Tasty” In Spanish
Not. Hmmmm. I wonder if Fidel was treated at this hospital when he had his little misstep last fall. /sarcasm….
radtec
The way the USA goverment put a price on Osama’s head I think Cubans could do with Castro. Every Cuban who can afford contributes what they can. I think we could raise about 15 Million bucks.
An ad in “Soldier of Fortune” magazine and whoever shows up with Castro’s head gets the bounty. There may be some “legal” issues doing this in the USA but hell, the USA goverment HAS set precedent so we have a legal footing.
As far as a sniper in Cuba…. Might as well ask for a talking Giraffe in Antartica. Cubans can not own a god damn slingshot much less a rifle !
and a SNIPER rifle ?????? Make that a Talking Giraffe in Antartica that could play 2nd base for the NY yankees and sing opera .. in latin.
The Mythology Of Cuban Medical Care
For those who support or sympathize with Fidel Castro and his dictatorship of Cuba, no argument comes up more frequently than the supposedly marvelous health-care system that Castro has created for the Cubans. They routinely credit him with managing to…
My best friend here in Costa Rica is of Cuban extraction. Her family got out before Castro took over. She doesn’t get angry about many things, but seeing some doofus in a Ché Guevara t-shirt will set her off. ‘Free’ healthcare in Cuba is worth every peso.
I’ve long thought it would be incredibly cool if the US could infiltrate a sniper team and take the top off Tio Fidel’s head from a thousand meters out. But that’s a fantasy. I guess we’ll have to wait until the old monster croaks, and then hope that his subordinados take to infighting.
BABALU BLOG: The Myth of Cuban Healthcare
Every single time the island of Cuba and fidel castro’s revolution are covered anywhere in the media one of the points always mentioned is Cuba’s free healthcare. You can practically time it….
“One point, though: Cuba is a very poor country because of the embargo.”
I’ve heard this bleat many times before. My reply, which has yet to receive an answer is this-
What is it that the US could trade to Cuba that the rest of the world, which DOES NOT embargo Cuba, cannot? Further, if the US is truly so vital to the Cuban economy, where’s the wisdom in biting the hand that would feed you?
The fact is that Cuba doesn’t want TRADE, it wants AID. One reason their ALLOWED trade with the US never maxes out is that the US requires that they pay cash up front. Cuba has regressed a thousand years and has to fall back to a ‘barter’ economy, just as the once mighty USSR did. If one doesn’t want tobacco or suger, Cuba has nothing to offer. Well, unless you’re a European tourist. Than you can buy just about everything in the special ‘tourist only’ stores.
I can’t imagine how I’d feel watching tourists enter shops that are forbidden to me. Then again, I can’t imagine how great a fool one must be to swallow the party line in the 21st century.
Question: How many failures does it take to convince a western communist that he’s been an idiot? Answer: Just one, if he actually has to live in it. The proof is called Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine, well, any former Warsaw Pact country…..
Regards,
Cuba: Model In Health Care
Havana (VNA) – Jack Chi-con Chow, Deputy Director of the World Health Organisation (WHO), after returning from a visit to Cuba, praised the country’s primary healthcare services as a model for other countries to employ. The WHO official highlighted…
Wow, that’s the sort of medical care members of the US military would be used to, perhaps even appreciate – assuming they they were POWs.
Poverty is responsible for the roaches? Nonsense. Maybe for a few here and there, but anybody with a foot and/or a rolled up newspaper could keep it from getting that bad.
It’s such a damn shame, Cuba could be an very prosperous country if it wasn’t for that one little problem they have.
I really don’t think castro is stupid – he can’t be, nobody could possibly make that many honest mistakes. It’s got to be deliberate, a matter of old fashioned evil.
PS: Ref the embargo/trade thing, that Cuba has nothing to seriously export I think isn’t as much a basic problem as a symptom.
Because of the state, Cubans are born as failures – they can’t possibly accomplish anything so why try? As it is now, no, they don’t have much of anything to trade but I think the problem is they haven’t been given the opportunity to try.
A country with limits on individuals never produces exceptional individuals.
No Photos This Time
Our friend Captain Ed Morissey linked to this post on Babalu Blog about the myth of Cuba’s wonderful Communist health…
If those conditions existed in United States prisons, the inmates would sue (and win). The real horror is, if those are the Hospital conditions, what are the political prisoners facing in the jails?
The embargo has certainly hurt the Cuban economy. But for years and years the economy was propped up by the USSR. Free weapons, sugar bought at inflated prices, oil sold at discount. And now european tourist euros. Fidel once outlawed prostitution but he has turned out Cuba’s working class women to save his pipe dream. He is a pimp who has sold his proles to slimy Eurotrash pervs. Besides, before the USSR collapsed he certainly wouldn’t have allowed trade with the US whether we wanted it or not.
you people do not get it. The only reason the hospitals in Cuba are the way they are is b/c all the doctors and staff are working in my country. Yes castro has finaly exported his revolution and the lucky recipiant is none other than Venezuela. So all Venezuelans want to thank thank you for all the MDs and sorry but your piece of s… leader had to pay chavez with something!!!
The otherday i got in an argument over the excellent library system in Cuba with one of the academic types and I told him go publish over there. end of discussion.
Not all the Cuban doctors are working in Valenzula.
There’s some pretty fine ones here in the States — like the neurosurgeon who did emergency cervical disc surgery on me two days ago (Sunday afternoon).
I was immediately pain free, out of the hospital yesterday, and back to work today.
And I’m also a surgeon, and I was doing procedures today — all day long.
The Cuban people deserve pity for enduring life under someone like Castro.
The fellow travelers here in the US who so enthusiastically embrace Castro deserve nothing but scorn and ridicule.
Re: Miama Cubans.
Hmmm.
If Cuba is such a wonderful place, why do so many Cubans flee to Florida, rather than reside in their communal paradise? I hear many deride the horrible “oppression” of America. It’s on the news, all the time. We’re told the world has a terrible opinion of us. Yet Mexicans beat down our door to work here, illegally or otherwise. Cubans flock to florida and fight the idea of going back to Cuba tooth and nail. Alanis Morisett, a year after calling America a horrible, imperialistic place filled with censorship and racism, etc, she gained American citizenship. Despite their claims, liberals disgruntled by the past few elections have not fled “the Bush regime,” but remain to criticize it (without being shot, censored, or the like. Mr. Moore got rich by weaving tales of criticism about the Bush administration… I can hardly call that censorship).
If Cuba is such a wonderful place, “Miama Cubans” would want to live there. The fact that they so desperatly do not, and would rather live in an “imperialistic, racist land” says something to me about the reality of the situation.
GROSS
In case you missed it on Powerline, check out the photos of Cuba’s free health care….
Incredible News
A fatwa has been issued against Bin Laden, calling him an apostate… maybe there’s some hope for the Muslim world, after all. The New York Times inadvertantly debunks its own “Bush lied” talking points by pointing out that Saddam really…
Getting what they pay for
It’s not a pretty sight. Yet how often do we hear about the superiority of the Cuban system? Almost as often as we hear about the superior Canadian system.
Just curious-have basic Cuban health stats (infant mortality and life expectancy) declined under Castro?
Mark,
It’s impossible to gauge the validity of statistics coming from Cuba regarding anything. It’s true they have a high infant mortality rate, but they also have one of the highest abortion rates per capita in the world. That in itself skews the numbers somewhat.
As for the longevity issue, of my grandfathers 15 siblings, a couple died young, while the rest lived to be at least 90. All of them as exiles here in the states.
Free Healthcare!
You get what you pay for. In reading what after three pages seems to be the worst and most outrageous kind of apologist-for-tyranny book, I encountered a similar reference to “free” healthcare as a benefit of living under brutal repression…
Regarding infant mortality statistics coming out of Cuba, Captain’s Quarters had a couple of good posts earlier this year: http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/003528.php
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/3632
(I hope those work right.)
I can appreciate someone trying to find the silver lining, but in all things related to castro, you can’t polish a turd.
Those pictures would be appalling if they were taken of the medical facilities in a Cuban PRISON. The fact that they represent the “best” of Cuba’s health care system is horrifying. I once (when I was younger and in college) wondered why Cuban emigre`s were so rabidly anti-Castro. These pictures make plain that the Castro regime has no redeeming values at all. And apologists who look the other way at this kind of thing and seek to blame it on the US embargo are the kind of people who looked the other way when the brownshirts came for the Steins in 1936.
The sad thing is that we’d be MORE justified going in and removing Castro by military force than we were in removing Saddam (not that removing him was unjustified in any way), and yet the outcry would be a hundred times more from the pinkos and whack-jobs here on the left who support this kind of thug.
For those who think that the U.S. embargo is the cause of all of Cuba’s problems, think again. The U.S. is just about the ONLY country in the world that does not trade with Cuba. Just about every country in the world has no compunction about trading with a Communist dictator (this includes those of the EU). With all the trade partners it has, Cuba should be rolling in the dough, but it seems that the only ones who are, are Castro himself and his favorite cronies.
Again TWO comments ( I always seem to have TWO comments !)
1st:
“Just curious-have basic Cuban health stats (infant mortality and life expectancy) declined under Castro?”
As Val pointed out, it is IMPOSSIBLE to prove or disprove Castro?s claims , for the simple reason that he will not allow any World organization to check HIS claims.
Deaths by AIDS are usually attributed to a related disease and NOT to AIDS. Case in point; A friend of my families (20 years old girl ) recently died of AIDS , the ?official? cause was Kidney failure . Yes it probably was but it was AIDS that caused a 20 year old to have renal failure. Last time I saw her you could SEE AIDS written all over her, thin as a stick, sores all over. Her dad IS a doctor and HE diagnosed her as an AIDS victim. Being a doctor he was able to pull strings to let her die at home. She was (to everyone?s profound sadness ) a ?Jinetera? , this with a mother & father who ARE doctors! . the whole neighborhood knew she was dying of AIDS yet the death will never show her as an AIDS victim in Cuba.
Another case, I have a cousin who is dying of diabetes in Cuba . I have contacted the International Red Cross to see if there was ANYTHING I could do. The reply was ?Cuba is the ONLY country in the world were the RED CROSS can NOT intervene directly in individual health issues? In other words ALL Red Cross aid MUST pass through Castro?s officials. The person I spoke to at the Red Cross, was VERY much interested in the Cuban situation and told me that a recent surgical airplane (seems this is a Health Aid plane that travels worldwide) that landed in the Jose Marti Airport had taken 4 years of negotiations to be allowed to perform cataract operations on Cuban children. The American doctors were never allowed to leave the plane. And the cases that were brought to the airport were EXCLUSIVELY selected by the Castronites.
Of course THIS American health aid was NEVER published in any official Cuban newspaper. The plane remained in Cuba 4 days and performed over 200 operations.
So, there is YOUR Cuban health system at work!
The other point is this ?embargo?. As someone points out ?If the USA is SUCH an integral part of the well being of Cubans WHY oh WHY does Castro keep spitting at them?. What father insults and belittles the ONE hand that can feed his children.
As far as trading, that is NOT what Castro wants. He wants CREDIT (or FREE would even be better) . His moaning about the ?embargo? is NOT about receiving goods from the USA but the fact that he ACTUALLY has to pay for these goods, and receives no USA subsidies as any other country in the world does (INDIA for example receives 500 million a year in subsidized goods!)
Being the USSRS WHORE, the European investors BITCH and now the Chinese CONCUBINE, suits him FINE. PAYING for that which his nation needs to survive is just something he can NOT do, because he has destroyed ALL that Cuba produced and represented any significant source of national revenue.
Twelve year old kids cutting sugar cane was just a BAD idea!. Political Prisoners planting Coffee in labor camps was just a BAD idea! The debacle with the ?microJet? irrigation project was STUPIDITY to the extreme! The ?UBRE BLANCA? charade was just laughable (a fucking statue to a COW, fer Christ?s sake!)
And NO ONE to blame but ?El SUMO HIJO DE PUTA?, who of course has NEVER admitted to making a mistake in 46 years of tyranny. Or so the cultists will like to believe.
Communism is a stupid, evil, terrible idea that has enslaved and impoverished the citizens wherever it has been imposed. You’d think the dumbass Castro apologists would have the picture by now: Communism, as a political system, SUCKS.
And it sucks the initiative out of the people, the money out of the economy, and the brains out of liberal American idiots and Euroweenies.
Aarrgghhhh!
Chavez has “imported” cuban doctors to Venezuela! I cannot explain to you, in all justice, how advanced Venezuelan medicine was before Chavez. I believe it is the one thing I would argue was better than the American couterpart (other than Beaches and the white cheese!)
We had state of the art clinics, and doctors were trained internationally and domestically. A Venezuelan discovered the Leprosy vaccine! And now Chavez wants the cuban doctors there!
I have cousins who are doctors and the stories they tell of the Cubans are horrendous! They tell of interns being made to share a rural commissary with a Cuban doctor and seeing with horror how they prescribed aspirin to children and to people with clear signs of apendicitis. They have seen how the cubans have no concern for dosages or for reactions to other medicines taken by the patients.
A renowned eye doctor traveled to Cuba some years ago and found an endemic blindness caused by malnutrition and taught the Cuban doctors how to treat it. He performed operations in front of his cuban “students” who were extremely happy and eager to receive this bit of education from the outside world. He traveled and worked there for some weeks or months thanks to the charitable efforts of the Venezuelan Medical Society. This same doctor has been vilified by none other than the Cuban Ambassador in Venezuela! He went to teach. And chavez claims we need the cubans to teach us medicine?!
Don’t fool yourself, however. These people were sent in the same capacity as the “athletic trainers” we also received from Cuba with love: they are indoctrinators and informers. Nothing else. And yet, these doctors get paid higher salaries than the Venezuelan DOCTORS!
Whenever you read about the Cuban medicine being so great, do not just send them these pictures. Have me contact them, please!
About Cuban Healthcare
People advocating socialized medicine tend to cite Cuba as an example, and in particular their low infant mortality rate. ‘Course, it’s hard to trust health statistics from a Communist dictatorship where librarians and journalists are routinely impriso…
Free Health Care in Cuba
Cuba may have problems, they say, and Fidel Castro may be a dictator, but at least Cuba has excellent, free health care available to everybody. Or so they say. Here is a sample of these claims.
From “The Cuban Experience”:
The Cuban health ca…
I went to Cuba with great relunctance in 2000. My then boyfriend’s beloved uncle was dying, and we brought him — and his family and neighbours — much needed Cipro, Keflex, and invaluable supplies.
I say great reluctance because I am aware that every dollar which goes to Cuba goes to prop up a dictator like Castro. The man who sends all children aged 10 to the fields to cut sugar cane, as he did my boyfriend and his sister, because the child at that age becomes a ward of the State. How despicable.
Whenever I read pro-Castro, pro-Communist Cuba stories, I am often left wondering what on earth they could be talking about, because the depravity, filth and decay didn’t happen because of any embargo. It happened due to 40 plus years of neglect — the peeling paint, the highways full of ancient potholes, the rack and ruin you see everywhere, everywhere not for tourists of course. The tourist-dollar places like the new boulangerie I frequented in Havana, those places sparkle like a shiny dollar.
Because I am a medical student, I paid special attention to the hospital we went to see my boyfriend’s uncle before he died: it’s very memory sends chills down my spine. It’s not that it was filthy, it wasn’t so much as neglected. No one cared to do anything more than the bare minimum, since why should they? They have guaranteed jobs, and malpractise suits like in the evil capitalist West are madman’s dreams.
I am a British expat. I live in South Florida. When the Cuban emigr?s came here, they brought their small “clinica” style of health care, for Cubans by Cubans, just like it used to be back home, pre-1960’s. My boyfriend’s family were poor but decent, and they mentioned to me that everyone in their small village had adequate, affordable health care. Doctors were seen as deities in old Cuba, men (and women) who took in exchange for their medical treatment, chickens, eggs, even pastelitos. When the Cuban-centric clinics like CAC-Ramsay were founded in Miami, those practises remain, even though they are more for courtesy than actual co-payment.
For more than 45 years, this poor island country has been held hostage by a dictator twice as bad as any Pinochet, but certain people trumpet his merits citing health care and educational advances. Things which, given the modern culture, and drive of most Cubans of any colour in Cuba pre-1959 would’ve redressed any imbalance by simple, natural progress.
This is a topic that is very close to my heart, and I genuinely find insulting people who laud Castro’s Cuba without having been there, or knowing the least bit of history behind it.
I hope when Castro falls and is exiled in Switzerland with the billions he stole from Cubans in almost 50 years, that some Spanish court or judge will have the decency to bring a lawsuit against him.
Cheers,
Victoria
Since my previous post was long and emotional, I’ll try to lighten the atmosphere by copy-pasting part of an amusing email that ex-boyfriend I mentioned sent me recently (he and I are still friends). It’s on-topic to boot.
Maybe the English-speakers won’t get it, but I know the blog owner and the Cubanos here will die laughing reading it. Enjoy. 😉
CLINICA JAPONESA DE MEDICINA CUBANA
Director de la Clinica: Dr. SIGURO T. CURA
Urgencias: Dr. TAKURADO RAPIDITO
Cardiologia: Dr. TESUENA TICTAC
Dermatologia: Dr. TUKUERO TADURO
Endoscopia: Dr. TEMETO TUBITO
Ginecologia: Dra. TEZANO LAKOZA Y Dr. YOSITOKO TUKUKU
Medicina Preventiva: Dra. TAVIZO CONTEMPO
Oncologia: Dra. TAKAGAO TUKAZO
Fisioterapia: Dra. TESUDA TODITO
Gastroenterologia: Dr. TESOBO TUPANZA
Hematologia: Dra. TEFLUYE PLAKETA
Inmunologia: Dra. NOSAWANTA TOITO
Laboratorio: Dra. TEMIRA TUKAKA
Urologia: Dr.TUNABO TADURO
Mastologia: Dra. MANOSIAMO TETITA Y Dr. TESOBO TUTETA
Neumologia: Dra. TUTOSE MADURO
Neurologia: Dr. SUTURO TUKOKO Y Dra. TAROTA LAJETA
Obstetricia: Dra. TUPANSA TEPALPA
Odontologia: Dr. TEKITO LAKARIE
Psiquiatria: Dr. TARAYADO TUKOKO
Oftalmologia: Dr. TEMIRO LOZOJO
Otorrinolaringologia: Dr. YOSI TESAKO MOKITO
Patologia: Dr. REVISAO ENCHIKITO
Pediatria: Dr. TEKURO CHAMAKITO Y Dra. TATEKLA LOKRIO
Proctologia: Dr. TEMIRO TUCHIKITO, Dr. Tetoko Tukulo y Dr. Tukul
Itoskayama
Radiologia: Dra. TEMIRA TUADENTRO
Reumatologia: Dr. TATEKLO TUWESO
Traumatologia: Dr. SAKAO CHOCHOKA
Cheers,
Victoria
“100% literacy” is the other myth you actually mentioned. Hm, 100%… That number sounds familiar, I wonder if it stems from the same statisticians who count the votes in cuban “elections”.
And even more important – being able to read is somewhat useless when most books are forbidden…
The pics you sand are irrelevant and don’t proof anything about Cuba healthcare system. We can just see cockroaches, but pics don’t say us if that place is or not an hospital. It could be everything and refer to any place, from pics we can’t say if the place is Cuba, it could be also USA, who knows. We can’t consider that pics like an evidence. I’m not communist, but I think yours is just propaganda.
i don’t see hospital in the fotos……
may be that that is your home…..
jack and fabio,
I suggest before you criticize the pictures and dismiss them as “propaganda” that you take your little socialist asses over to the links where you can read the ORIGINAL article from the ORIGINAL reporters. I merely posted what Pictures I felt would get the message across, there are plenty more at the Gentiuno link.
I would tell you to go and see the hospital in person, but Cuba has it enough problems. the last thing it needs is a couple more morally abject Europeans walking around with their dicks in one hand and a fistful of Euros in the other.
Hey men but where, do you live???? This photos don’t demostrate nothing!!! In all poor country, capitalist, comminist, or fascist.. the hospital are dirty, much more dirty than in Cuba. To judge the country’s healthcare system you have to look others datas, others survey (Ex:the average age, ecc..) and all this data says that the situation in Cuba is much better than in other America Latin countries….Open your eyes!!! Don’t trust anybody…and don’t believe American Goverment!!!
“The Left Wing” Slanders Americans Born in Cuba
LC & IB Val made the mistake of watching an episode of that sad puffpiece of liberal daydreaming and, needless to say, he didn’t like it much. His Majesty wholeheartedly agrees. If ever there was a reason to write a…
Aren’t coackroaches our visible or invisible companions in life?why should we be so terrified from this reality?we know they are somewhere wherever we live,especially if we are in warm places,the warmer is the place the easier cockraches can survive.
But the question is: do we really help patients who are staying in that hospital with this kind
of reports?
For sure we don’t!Actually we just sort of ” wow!look,that’s horrible!We’re so lucky not to be Cuban….” and other stuff like that.
4 twenty years and more CASTRO was such a strong leader 4 million foreign people…what’s the matter NOW?
luca by your reasoning, why should I belive YOU? I would sooner belive the numbers of people FLEEING cuba than that of some euroweenie who wants to keep their primo sex vacationland in its current state.
Mary, don’t be a dip. If it wasn’t for reports like this we wouldn’t even KNOW that cuba had such horrible conditions, we would only know that which castro’s lapdogs tell us.
Both of you grow up and get some brains before you start shooting your mouths off.
Mark: “No health care is free-socieities pay for health care in one way or another. Rich countries can (or in the U.S choose not to) spend their resources to give people health care. Poor countries can also spend money to provide people health care-it will obviously not be up to first world standards. The problem is lack of wealth, not the way the health care is run.”
The problem in Cuba isn’t wealth. As someone else pointed out, chlorine bleach (one of the very best disinfectants) is dirt cheap to make. And people volunteer in communities all over the world to help out in hospitals. There is no practical reason for the structure to be so dirty.
The problem in Cuba looks far more serious to me. Only people whose pride is gone, who have no self-esteem, allow property to become run down like that. The condition of Cuba’s hospitals looks to me like it is a symptom of a national malaise that goes much deeper than just money.
I know the real CUBA, because my brother married a cuban woman and for some ways it’s so as shown NOT REALLY THESE PHOTOS but i’ve been looking into a PUBLIC HOSPITAL where it was even impossible to believe that it was a HOSPITAL in a dominant NATION. It was: QUEENS-NEW YORK-USA…………………..
Cuban Sanity: the better in Carabic States. Without U.S.A embargo can be better.
U.S.A: the nation with the 30% of world resources, the 4% of population, but without a public sanity sistem.
Photo Tour of Healthcare in Socialist Paradise
A favorite myth of the willfully deluded fools who dominate the Left is that you can improve healthcare by removing the guiding hand of the free market and letting it be regulated instead through coercion, like Amtrak and the Post…
Reminds me of the UK NHS. Like castro’s Cuba it kills thousands each year….
Can anyone recommend books about Cuba? I’m really interested in Cuba before the revolution.
Cuba’s Free Health Care
Hey Nathalie Hrizi, you want your free Cuban health care? Here is your free Cuban health care. Go there and enjoy it with the rest of your liberal buddies….
About Ric Landers’ post above:
Do these folks ever wonder how things can be blamed on the US at both ends? They have always argued that Castro needed to take over Cuba to stop the imperialist exploitation of the island at the hands of the US. Presumably, therefore, not having commercial ties with the “capitalist pigs” should be a good thing.
But, no! Now, the argument turned around and ran the other way: Cuba is poor, oppressed and deprived –not to mention roach infested– because the US does not want to trade with el barbudo. Nothing to do with the communist economy, does it? By the point above, should Castro, Landers and the like not be delighted that there is a US embargo?
And…, and, Cuba has not always been embargoed by most other countries, including Europistan and Canuckstan.
So, which one is it? Is Cuba how it is now because of the US, or was the way it was because the US? Can’t be both! Either than in the minds of leftists, the argument does not stand up to planetary logic.
VAUNTED CUBAN HEALTHCARE
Castro apologists – in the media, in Hollywood, in education, in every corrupted institution of America is forever bleating about the ‘virtues’ of ‘free’ Cuban health care. Sure, Cuba may be an odious tyranny whose citizens would walk across a bed of l…
Abbaglio a Cuba
Riprendiamo per intero l’editoriale de “Il Foglio” di sabato dedicato all’ennesimo abbaglio che colpisce gli intellettuali in visita a Cuba. “Un grande direttore d’orchestra, Claudio Abbado, ha visto la Cuba che il regime castrista presenta agli inte…
More Cuban Ugliness
Over at Babalu Blog, there’s been a lot of activity in the last week or two. The author of the blog is a Cuban American who’s putting out a lot of good commentary on Castro’s craziness and the dire condition of the island for Cubans. …
I am an italian girl.Last summer I spent my holidays in Cuba.I can’t understand how so many people in Europe can say that Cuba is a paradise and that castro’s government is not so bad!Cubans are treated like “slaves of the state”, they are not free.They live in very bads conditions..and the responsibile is not the embargo!I love Cuba and I hope the situation could change very soon…
Val:
A BOOK ABOUT CUBA. SOME PICTURES
Your Blog is getting better all the time. Those pictures are better than 100,000 words! I’ve seen others that make one think of the atrocities in the Concentration Camps in Germany and the Gulag in Siberia.
Use more pictures. Again, Cubans need a few small books with such stories and pictures to distribute. Let’s kick in some money and get one out! It is not difficult to do with today’s computers, then send one to each Library in the country. I’ll kick in $20 to get the fund off the ground. What title? The Truth About Cuba, or something.
Cuba’s Free Healthcare Utopia?
Whenever Fidel Castro’s name comes up leftists like Katie Couric or Peter Jennings will slip in some praise about the literacy rate in Cuba or the free (a.k.a. socialized) health care system. If you ever wondered what socialized health care
While there may have been wrongs in Cuba before castro, they were little more than wrongs in other countries. There is no perfect system.
However, there is so much wrong in Cuba today that compared to pre-castro days Cubans have little or no opportunity, and most likely live on less than 20% of what they did before this human cockroach and leech took over.
Ten year old children are enslaved in forced labor gangs, something which obviously does not concern pro-castro Hollywood nor other communist sympathizers.
Folks, Cuba, a tiny nation of less than 10 million, received more foreign aid from the Soviet Union, China, the warsaw pact, Western Europe, Canada and Latin America than any other nation on the face of the earth from 1962 until 1989. Keep in mind, the media and the left routinely refer to Cuba’s public health system as “world class” or “leading edge”. Where has Dan Rather and that watchdog media been for 40 years?
Cuba, some informative reading
Here is something from Babalu. Current conditions in Cuba….
For those who are so anti-American and myopic, ask yourself this: How many people do you see risking their lives to get into Cuba…hmmm? Elian Gonzales lost his mother, who literally gave her life so her son could live life as a free boy and man (before Clinton and Reno cruelly returned him to Cuba, thus rendering Elian’s mother’s ultimate sacrifice for naught).
Cubans risk life and limb to leave Cuba en masse. So if it was such a paradise, why do they want to leave? My guess is that liberals, who already think that everyone else is dumber than they are, think that Cubans are just too stupid to know how good they have it ober there! Sure, Cubans may have pestilence, famine, poverty, and nada rights…but hey! At least the unsanitary health care is FREE!
“Livin’ In a Workers’ Paradise”
Since we’ve already pointed you all to a nice photo essay about Cuban “Health” Care, we’re pleased to be able to point you to even more pictures from everyday Cuba, that wonderful workers’ paradise that 99.9% of multi-millionaire Hollyweirdos just…
Go See The Real Cuba. Now.
The Real Cuba Oh, and if you should feel a tad under the weather while you’re visiting, just stop in at a universal, ubiquitous, 100% totally free, Cuban health clinic. That Che shirt you’re wearing? Nothing communicates your ignorance more…
Is Chavez sucking life from the bearded one?
I have noticed that fidel grows pale and wan lately, while Chavez is plumper and more sanguine than ever.
Sure, Fidel’s a dictator
… but at least they’ve got free health care! Val, as always, debunks the stupid-ass mythology. Thanks, Val….
Omnipotent Tourist Syndrome
Glenn Reynolds links to a great post by Matt Welch on the blindness of tourists to death, decay and starvation in Cuba:this common sentiment has always irritated the hell out of me. Oh, the crumbling, no-longer-beautiful houses! Ah, the lovely…
What’s wrong with OUR unruined ruins?
I’ve been reading about all these Americans (mostly suffering from an unmedicated condition called “Omnipotent Tourist Syndrome (aka “OTS”) who go to other countries and marvel over stuff like crumbling buildings. (Via InstaPundit.) I’m a morbid person…
Photo Tour of Healthcare in Socialist Paradise
A favorite myth of the willfully deluded fools who dominate the Left is that you can improve healthcare by removing the guiding hand of the free market and letting it be regulated instead through coercion, like Amtrak and the Post…
Omnipotent Tourist Syndrome
Glenn Reynolds links to a great post by Matt Welch on the blindness of tourists to death, decay and starvation in Cuba:this common sentiment has always irritated the hell out of me. Oh, the crumbling, no-longer-beautiful houses! Ah, the lovely…
Peter Jennings May Not Belong on Fast Track for Sainthood
It’s sad when people die, but I’m still grateful to Israpundit for interrupting the hagiographies of Peter Jennings long enough to point out that the man was hardly a paragon of journalistic objectivity. In fact, he was a moonbat. While…
Do Your Duty, Doctor
oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, doctor (oh, doctor) won’t you kindly hear my plea? (oh, doctor) i know, you know, doctor (oh, doctor) exactly what is best for me (oh, doctor) irving berlin Edmonton Journal: Rahim Jaffer (Edmonton-Strathcona) is also…
Stewart Konigsberg
To join songs, try the old DOS command COPY, like this: copy /b song1.mp3 + song2.mp3 + song3.mpg mysongs.mp3. That should work great.