Remind me again about how lifting travel restrictions to Cuba is going to somehow bring sweetness and light in its wake. We all know about the trade group from New York State that went to Havana a week or so ago. Well, this is how it was reported back home:
Life in Cuba looked pretty good, a couple of Chenango County men said after returning from a state-sponsored visit to Havana recently.
But wait, it gets better. Follow the link, and you get a longer article with this doozy, as Scott Clippinger describes his travels-
During his excursions down city streets, he was often accompanied by a police officer, he noted.
“He never bothered me, though,” Clippinger said. “If I talked to someone, he’d talk to them afterward, probably to make sure we weren’t arranging anything illegal.”
But the residents didn’t seem to mind the low-key police officer, he said, seeming to know he was only doing his job.
“The people in Cuba are very relaxed and happy,” he said. “They get their health care for free, their education for free, everyone has a place to live and there is no unemployment.”
6 thoughts on “Clueless in Smyrna”
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Wow, don’t you have a stooge of the week award or something?
Three days in Cuba and they’ve become experts on Cuban politics, health care, education, housing and urban development and employment rate. I wonder what they were smoking?
My God!! I really have no comment about this. I can’t find the words. This is why I do not want American hands involved in the reconstruction of Cuba. The culture changed from being all about freedom and liberty to being about me, myself and I and what can I get for me and how much money I can get out of that. It is really sad. I grew up loving this country and the past few years have been a really disapointing. All I have to say is VIVA CUBA LIBRE and I guess I’ll be one of the few to actually move there and help in the reconstruction once the regime dies.
Joaquin,
To be fair…
The Spaniards, Canadians, French (including Monaco), British, Germans, Italians, Israelis, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, all of Latin America and the Caribbean have been cannibalizing Cuba for a long, long, long, long… time.
The ONLY country that has not is the United States.
George Fitzhugh wrote something similar in 1857 entitled “Cannibals All! or, Slaves Without Masters” to justify slavery. “According to Fitzhugh, under the humane code of southern paternalism in which masters labor on behalf of their enslaved workers, African American slaves—unlike those miserable participants in free labor’s “White Slave Trade”—are happy and free. They enjoy those comforts and necessities granted them under a mutually beneficial, supportive system and community.”
Firefly,
The only reason that the US corporations have not been able to cannibalize Cuba is because of our political power in Florida. That’s it. All those countries you mentioned above have no significant Cuban population. And either way none of them have ever claimed to be champions of freedom. The US has always mantained a higher moral standing above the rest of the world. That unfortunatly is changing since now apparently it is acceptable to look the other way as long as you make money.