Where I piss a bunch of people off
Hooo boy. Seems that everyone is in a frenzy with respect to the lifting of the travel and remittance restrictions as well as the embargo lately. The MSM has gone ape shit over this "issue." Cuba "experts" like Phil Peters are orgasmic and Cuba web portal owners and businessmen like Rob Sequin of Havana Journal are frothing at the mouth. Article after article, editorial after editorial, blog post after blog post, ad nauseum, ad infinitum, all "exposing" the "failure" of US Cuba policy and so on and so forth and providing some fairy tale-ish view of just how simple it all is and just how easy and quick and perfect change in Cuba will be forthcoming if that evil, unjust embargo and restrictions were just lifted right away. Right now and POOF!
Making matters worse, of course, are all the sycophantic commentators that blame it all on the evil exiles in Miami. The two brothers and their political machinery in Cuba are just misunderstood and blameless pawns you see.
Personally, I find it hard to give a shit anymore.
Lift the travel restrictions!
Fine. Go ahead and lift them. But to the first one to complain about how the poor natives are treated I'll say, "Well, you're partially to blame, asshole. The Cuban government isn't treating its citizens any different now than before and you had more than enough evidence of said treatment before the restrictions were lifted. So, you know what, go fuck yourself."
Lift the remittance restrictions!
Rock and roll. Go ahead and lift them. Now, to the first person to complain how the Cuban government takes a huge cut and then said government raises prices on everything and anything so that it's still impossible to buy much needed goods I'll say "Well, you're partially to blame, asshole. The Cuban government isn't doing anything different and they still control every aspect of the Cuban economy exactly as before and you had more than enough evidence of same before the restrictions were lifted. What did you think was gonna happen? So, you know what, go fuck yourself."
We need dialogue, change will not come to Cuba without it.
Dale, metele mano. Start the dialogue right now. Now, to the first person that states that discussing anything with the Cuban government is difficult at best, like getting raped at worst, I'll say "Well, you're partially to blame, asshole. The Cuban government has never been interested in dialogue, much less your opinions or needs or anything else, and you have known that all along as there was fifty years of evidence smacking you across the face when you were wailing about opening up this most precious "dialogue." Did you think raul and company were going to hold a tertulia or town hall meeting with you and listen to what you had to say and make its very first concession ever in its history? So, you know what, go fuck yourself."
We need people to people contact! More people-to-people contact with foster change in Cuba!
Start the people-to-people contact engines! Let 's get going on that right away. Now, to the first person that tells me that it's difficult to get the truth out of Cubans because they're all afraid of speaking their minds and thus it's impossible to have any worthwhile conversation whatsoever I'll say "Well, you're partially to blame, asshole. The Cuban people have always been terrified of speaking their minds in Cuba - and even outside of Cuba - and you have known that all along and now you're troubled because they may listen but wont say squat about the truth regardless? What, did you think you'd be able to go to Cuba like a Sigmund Freud or a freedom ambassador and have people whose lives and every aspect thereof are controlled by the repressive state open up to you and the world like they were on a shrink's couch? So, you know what, go fuck yourself."
Let's lift the failed, evil US embargo on Cuba and watch the change come in like a tornado!
P'alante! Let's lift that nasty old evil embargo STAT! Now, to the first person that tells me that the Cuban government is still exploiting the Cuban people by supplying slave workers to American companies or that the Cuban government is welching on its debts I'll say "Well, you're partially to blame, asshole. The Cuban government isn't doing anything different and they still control every aspect of the Cuban economy exactly as before and you had more than enough evidence of same before the embargo was lifted. Moreover, you had plenty of evidence proving that Cuba never paid, pays or intends to pay its debts and you still went ahead and contracted with them. What part of reality did you not understand? So, you know what, go fuck yourself."
Also, to the first person that tells me Cuba has become a big island brothel where American tourists are basically exploiting the island population and Cuba is now nothing but a rich - and poor - American playground I'll say "Well, you're partially to blame, asshole. You yourself gave the OK for all to travel to Cuba freely and you yourself have given the Cuban government the hard cash that it needed to keep its people oppressed and thus remain in power indefinitely. What, you never heard of three card monte? So, you know what, go fuck yourself."
Seriously, though. I've just about had it. After six years of dealing with the Cuba "issues" I have come to the conclusion that there is absolutely no such thing as common sense, historical understanding or truthful representation of the facts from the anti-embargo side.
But, unfortunately, with the moral ambiguity of this present US administration and the throw caution to the wind attitude of this Democrat led Congress, I think it's safe to say that - despite the grim realities of and within the island - the US and Cuba will soon kiss and make up, let bygones be bygones and become - AHEM - "good neighbors" once again. They dont know it yet, but the real losers will be the Cuban people. But hey, at least they'll still have that crisp c-note from Hialeah every week to spend at fidel's stores.
The rest, those who died seeking freedom in one way or another, those killed and executed by the castro regime, the families destroyed by fidel and company, those who lost it all and those wallowing away in prison for their thoughts and opinions and beliefs, will just be the collateral damage.
Change is definitely coming to US/Cuba policy, except it's only gonna be on the "US" side. I'll just sit here and wait and practice my "go fuck yourselves."
Well, whatever happens I won't be sending money or traveling to Cuba until is free, period.
Val,
I admire your passion but I don't agree with you often.
You say I am frothing at the mouth. Let's be fair here. We post all kinds of Cuba related news and the House Bill and the Senate Bill are two very worthy news articles since a freedom to travel to Cuba bill has not gotten very far in Congress recently.
I will admit I am very happy that I (and you) may soon have our freedom to travel to any country in the world. I honestly don't like being punished for what Fidel et al did fifty years ago.
If you do read my site I think you will find that we agree on a few things.
We openly support Yoani Sanchez and Oswaldo Paya and are aggressively criticizing Circles Robinson's Cuban government approved (or at least acknowledged) HavanaTimes.org
So, if my support for our freedom to travel trumps these other my support of Sanchez and Paya in your eyes then there is nothing I can do to change that.
Thank you for giving me the space to comment.
Well, all I can say is: Val, you just spoke for a lot of people. When you read and hear--day after DAY! week after WEEK!--the incessant avalanche of utterly ahistorical imbecilities in the MSM--(all of them oblivious, or deliberately camoflauging decades of empirical evidence) regarding Cuba/embargo, etc....Well, as I've said Alice found more logic when she tumbled down that rabbit hole.
So you can't help but feel as you write above.
.....On the other hand, the fish oughta be 'bitin this week-end.
Unreal.
Don't sugar coat it, Val. Tell us how you REALLY feel. =D
Val,
Nail on the head, etc etc.
I'm worried that we're going to do with Cuba what we're now doing with Iran. We're no longer looking for a regime change in Iran (Obama recognized its Islamic Republic); we're now looking for a substantive relationship. From a human rights perspective, this is horrible. From the perspective of benefiting the United States, it is great. There's no reason we need to care about Iranian domestic issues. Hell, if human rights was our number one concern, we'd pull out of trading with China.
So this brings me to my question to you, and I direct it humbly and recognizing it might seem offensive: do you think we can justify the embargo in terms of benefiting the United States, disregarding humans rights issues?
I agree we cannot possibly justify lifting the embargo if our number one priority is human rights. In the realm of international affairs, however, the United States is looking out for numero uno. If Cuba serves our interests, we don't care who is being exploited.
Once again, I'm not advocating this stance. I'm just curious as to how you would respond.
The only thing these jerks will talk about after they visit Cuba is how lousy the hotels are, how every Cuban tried to hustle them and how bad the food was.
There's plenty of blame to go around, tons of it, to all sorts of players in this sad, tragic farce that's been running for half a century and counting. Considering everything, it's astonishing there's any significant number of Cubans left who didn't go "Fuck this shit; I've got better things to do" long ago. Hell, we've been screwed--up, down and sideways--by just about everybody, in one form or another, and I'm not even talking about those who are openly and unabashedly our enemies. I'm talking about our "mother," "brothers" and "friends." I'm talking about people who are holier-than-thou and act like they're more righteous than Jesus. So why are we still at it? Why don't we just "get over it" and move on? Maybe this will help explain:
Hay hombres que viven contentos aunque vivan sin decoro. Hay otros que padecen en agonía cuando ven que los hombres viven sin decoro a su alrededor. En el mundo ha de haber cierta cantidad de decoro, como ha de haber cierta cantidad de luz. Cuando hay muchos hombres sin decoro, hay siempre otros que tienen en sí el decoro de muchos hombres. Esos son los que se rebelan con fuerza terrible contra los que les roban a los pueblos su libertad, que es robarles a los hombres su decoro. En esos hombres van miles de hombres, va un pueblo entero, va la dignidad humana. Esos hombres son sagrados.
My translation:
There are men who live content although they live without honor. There are others who suffer in agony when they see that men around them live without honor. The world should have a certain amount of honor, just as it should have a certain amount of light. When there are many men without honor, there are always others who have in themselves the honor of many men. Those are the ones that rebel with awful force against the ones who rob people of their freedom, which is the same as robbing them of their honor. Within those men there are thousands of men, there is a whole nation, there is the dignity of humanity. Those men are sacred.
That was written by Jose Marti in 1889, when a lot of good people may well have felt the way Val does now.
Rob, in this battle you have to choose sides. None of that happy horseshit about nuance matters. Nobody in the anti-embargo camp cares about nuance. They care about:
1. Lining their pockets
2. Aiding the regime
I'm not buying what you're selling, though I don't rightfully even know what the hell it is. In the end it doesn't matter because your site is a useful TOOL for the regime.
Whatever.
Henry,
I think that's a bit much but this is your house and I'm just a guest but when you say "your site is a useful TOOL for the regime" I have to tell you that HavanaJournal.com is banned in Havana for several reasons...
We support Yoani and Oswaldo, we have criticized Raul and Fidel, we have a casas particulares page to promote home based businesses (which we were asked to remove and didn't) and probably a few other reasons that I don't even know about. Probably because we post the truth.
It's funny that the Havana Journal is not liked by the right or left and for me, I think we are nicely in the middle and that is just fine with me.
So, if that is lining my pockets and aiding the regime then I guess we have to disagree.
Why is none of these stalwart defenders of Human Rights and Freedom demanding that the Cuban government lift THEIR travel restrictions as well?
Let my people come.
How about all the Cuban Americans go to Cuba and have a rally for Yoani or Oswaldo or Marta or Oscar? Do you think that would have a positive effect on human rights in Cuba? I do.
What's Raul going to do, lock everybody up? Then he's got an international incident on his hands.
Maybe we can help spread our freedom if our own government would let us travel.
God forbid we try a Plan B after the 47 year old failed Plan A isn't working.
God forbid we try a Plan B after the 47 year old failed Plan A isn't working.
Cuba has not stuck us for any money.
Cuba's economy is in a shambles - Fidel blamed the US for being the root of all of Cuba's problems for doing business with Cuba BEFORE the "revolution", and has blamed the US for being the root of all of Cuba's problems for NOT doing business with Cuba SINCE the revolution.
US dollars are not subsidizing quasi-slavery and de facto apartheid in Cuba, like Spain, Italy, and other European countries are.
Could the issue here be not so much that the 47 year-old plan has failed, but that you have the wrong plan in mind?
"How about all the Cuban Americans go to Cuba and have a rally for Yoani or Oswaldo or Marta or Oscar? Do you think that would have a positive effect on human rights in Cuba? I do."
Yeah, because the Cuban government won't screen rabble-rousers and keep the tourists and Cubans segregated like they already do. Give me a break. If we lift the travel embargo, Castro wins, the Cuban regime will remain in power for decades to come. You are naive to think otherwise.
Val...you want to REALLY piss some people off?
I do it all the time... being HERE demanding that change happen THERE is easy, and fruitless.
Rob,
2 points, whether you intend for it to be a tool or not doesn't matter. You help spread anti-embargo points of view and that's what they care about. The fact that your site might be banned in Cuba doesn't matter. You're still performing a useful service for them.
Secondly, you know that everyone that left Cuba after 1980 must travel to Cuba with a Cuban passport, right? Even if you're an American citizen you travel to Cuba as a Cuban and thus any rally of the sort that you suggest endangers those travelers. Why should Cuban-Americans risk there necks to do what Cubans on the island won't do?
And also I'm sure you know that the vast majority of people who are anti-castro activists in the U.S. would not be allowed to enter the country. You'll be able to take your tour groups down there or whatever the hell your business is (again because it's useful to the regime) but people like yours truly are surely barred.
Rob,
Your simplistic "plan A" argument has been dismantled here countless times. How the FUCK is plan B supposed to work?
Shower the regime with cash and love and they will turn their dark hearts to the light?
Please.
I guess I'm (meaning an American) am just tired being used as a pawn by pro-Embargo Cuban Americans.
I want my freedom to travel.
I guess somehow that makes me a Fidel loving Communist?
Good. Have fun live it up, asshole. Make sure to flaunt your right to travel in the face of those 11 million Cubans who don't have a right to travel.
And I want you to tell me that the restrictions actually ever prevented you from visiting Cuba. How many times have you been to Cuba Rob? Seriously can you tell us?
I think you're full of shit. I think you go all the time. I think the policies have been a minor inconvenience to you, an extra stop in Cancun or Nassau.
Get over your self-righteous indignation. Go visit North Korea.
You know what Rob, I apologize. I was out of line.
Your right to enjoy a mojito at la bodeguita del medio certainly supersedes any aid and comfort that you are extending to the repressors of my countrymen in the process. How could I be so selfish?
Make sure to toast me when you get there.
I'm waiting for an answer Rob. How many times have you been to Cuba?
Frank Calzon said it best yesterday in his rebuttal to Dodd's people to people argument:
Touche!
"Have fun live it up, asshole."
"I think you're full of shit."
I can see I am not wanted here.
Would Val like to weigh in? He started this post and I was replying to him.
If you want to eat me up like a coyote eating a young puppy then why should I even bother posting here?
At least I have never crossed the line with personal attacks.
Well at least you have that.
Let me ask you something. You're going to win this war. You'll have fulfilled your mission. Why the hell do you expect us to congratulate you? You helped destroy the last remaining pressure on the regime to change. Why should we be magnanimous? Please Rob, don't go away mad. Just go away.
Rob,
I dont have much left on my laptop battery right now so I will respond accordingly as soon as Im able later. One thing about "personal attacks" that you mention. Have you ever considered that your actions, based on your premise - one that we find morally reprehensible - are, at least for me, personal attacks?
One thing is painfuly clear from your comments. We have a starkly differing set of morals and values. For the life of me, I could not, in good conscience, travel to a place where by doing so, I would be a de facto accomplice to human rights abuses and violations. Id gladly give up my right to travel freely to Cuba if it meant freedom for just one Oscar Biscet.
And I still want to know how many times you have visited Cuba in your life. I bet you can't count them. You're right as an American was infringed. Pfft.
As for my trips to Cuba. I will say that I have been to Cuba once and it was a legal trip out of Miami. I have no reason to offer more details or why I have chosen to Cuba only once.
You can believe me or insult me or hate me or beat me up but I am always honest with you guys and never call anyone an "asshole".
Not to pitch my site but if you read HavanaJournal.com, I think you might see it's a little more balanced than you give me credit for.
I look forward to having a drink with you guys in a post-Embargo post-Castro Cuba. How's that? Can we leave it at that?
Val,
I see your point and respect it but I have different glasses on.
"Please Rob, don't go away mad. Just go away."
Thanks for having me.
If I'm to believe you, you've been to Cuba once more than I have. I don't believe you though. And I don't hate you. I don't know you. I hate what you and others have done. You've advocated for a policy change that the regime desires. It desires it not because it's going to bring about its downfall. It desires it because just the opposite, it will breath life into it.
You advocate for that policy against all objective evidence that it won't help Cubans and will only help the oppressors.
I believe there's right and wrong and you are advocating for a wrong. I believe in Karma. The wrong you have advocated for will catch up with you some day. Maybe some jinetera will stick a knife in your back for your wallet, who knows.
So, this is what I take away from our conversation.
I'm an asshole.
I'm a liar.
I have no morals.
You wish me bad Karma and hope that I am killed.
Thanks Henry. Real nice.
I won't forget you.
I think you're a liar or at least hiding something. I think you're an asshole because you expect me to be magnanimous in the face of something that I think is disastrous for the dream of a democratic Cuba.
I think you have no morals because you are making money off the tragedy of Cuba and you advocate for policies that will help the regime under the guise of a quest for your rights.
I didn't wish you bad karma. I simply said I believe in it and since I believe you have done evil, I believe evil will eventually catch up with you.
I don't care what you think of me. Obviously.
I'll be trying to forget you.
Raul_Torres, Fuck off.
Val,
Henry posted here the other day that sometimes you wonder why even bother with this website. I really hope you get your redemption. It will come for you and everyone here that has wants that freedom for Cuba.
I honestly don't like being punished for what Fidel et al did fifty years ago.
Havana Journal-It's not what Fidel did 50 years ago, it's what the SOB has done to the Cubans for the last 50 years.
raul,
here's your last comment, which I think were removed by mistake:
I suppose if someone has never actually been in Cuba (meaning real Cuba and not the tourist haunts), then it would be rather easy to let one's imagination cloud out facts. FWIW, I've been in Cuba twice (in Havana and in a small rural village).
That's not to say that there are no political prisoners and no abuses going on in Cuba. Of course there are. But so there are in many other countries we're all happy to trade with. America would be sunk except for her dependence on China these past few years, and China is 100x worse than Cuba.
I dont need to touch the bottom of the ocean to know it's deep, just like I dont need to stand inside Dr. Oscar Biscet's jail cell to know he's actually incarcerated. As I keep saying, there is ample empirical evidence to know, absolutely, the conditions in Cuba. All you need to do is approach it with honesty and common sense.
With regards to China, let me put it to you in pre-school terms: two wrongs do not make a right. Just because the US trades with China - and other countries of dubious leadership - does not make it right. Moreover, China, at least, pays its debts, as opposed to fidel and company.
I met with a Chinese human rights activist when I went to the White House and met with President Bush. yes, there are human rights violations in China, just like in Cuba. However, China is vastly different from Cuba in many ways, the most important being the population. China has 1.3 Billion citizens as opposed to Cuba's 12 million. The sheer numbers of Chinese makes it incredibly difficult for the Chinese government to monitor and control every aspect of the average Chinese citizens life.
Moreover, new technologies are readily available and accessible to a higher percentage of the Chinese population, thus,making it highly unlikely that the government could maintain control of the information made available to its citizens through said new technologies, given the sheer numbers. Where as in Cuba, "new technologies" are restricted and controlled and available to less than one percent of the population.
Think about it in terms of cell phones alone. There are currently over 300 million active cellphones in China (2007 stats). that's almost thirty times the entire population of Cuba. Of cuba's 12 million, if only one percent of the population has cellular phones, that's about 120000 cellphones. It's easy to have an infrastructure in place to control and monitor 120000 cellphones. 300 million, not so much.
To get back to the main issue, WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THE AMERICAN BUSINESS COMMUNITY CARES ABOUT THE CUBAN PEOPLE? Also, the travel embargo is separate from the trade embargo, i.e. having the Cuban government pay CASH UP FRONT, and they are specifically saying that it will remain in place.
Raul has been a pain in my ass for a while. I dumped his comment because it minimizes the Cuban tragedy. That is unacceptable in my mind. Raul, you idiot, do you know that if China jailed independent journalists at the same rate as Cuba that they would have more than 3,000 journalists in prison? But the truth is that they only have a handful more than Cuba.
Go spread your misinformation somewhere else.