The truth on the other hand, is the unshakable reality that has driven every sanction, every sabotage attempt, and every assassination plot since 1959: Cuba is a threat only to an idea. It is a threat to the imperial doctrine that a small, poor nation in America’s ‘backyard’ must not be allowed to choose socialism, to provide free healthcare and education, and homes to live without the permission of Washington.
For this sin of self-determination, the crime of building a society where capital is not god, Cuba has been punished with the most enduring economic siege in modern history. This is not an ‘embargo’, which I consider to be a sterile, political term. It is a total blockade, designed to constrict and cripple. It is enforced by a plethora of laws with names like the Helms-Burton Act, which terrorises foreign companies from trading with the Island and allows the US to seize ships in international waters. Its goal, as US politician Robert Torricelli once admitted, was to…
‘Wreak havoc’.
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“One of”. This is US history we’re talking about - the bar is in orbit.
And because all of this shit they have been throwing on the Cuba, they can claim socialism doesn’t work.
I would say resisting 66 years of unceasing hybrid warfare from the biggest superpower in the world right next door is pretty good sign of resilient and working system.
“People in socialist countries starve because we starve them”
The fact that there has not been a unified Latin American defence coalition against the US formed is crazy to me. Us in the USA want (and more desperately need) liberation from our leadership.
Isn’t that why usa/cia do so much to keep them disablized?
If I were a super perfect president of the United States, I would ask Cuba if they want to join the Union, with all rights and benefits that goes with being a State. This offer also would be extended to territories like Puerto Rico.
IMO, Cuba and other island States have a special potential - as places to try out UBI, universal healthcare, free education at all levels, and other reforms, that can’t be easily implemented in isolation* on the mainland.
*Specifically, I want to try different variations of implementation, to find the best ‘recipe’ for an improved democratic socialism. Islands are good for A/B/C testing, I wager.
I would ask Cuba if they want to join the Union
And you’d receive a universal and resounding “no”. Cuba is its own independent country, with its culture and its ideals, much better than the USA. If you were a “super perfect” US president you’d be better off remodeling the USA to be more akin to Cuba lmao
Where do you think remodeling gets started? Having the US being jealous of Cuba’s prosperity would do much to help convince the states to become better.
That should be done with internal propaganda, Cuba will never join the US.
I would ask Cuba if they want to join the Union, with all rights and benefits that goes with being a State.
And if they say no you’ll definitely leave them alone after that right?
Also, who do you think Cuba broke free from.
IMO, Cuba and other island States have a special potential - as places to try out UBI, universal healthcare, free education at all levels, and other reforms, that can’t be easily implemented in isolation* on the mainland.
*Specifically, I want to try different variations of implementation, to find the best ‘recipe’ for an improved democratic socialism. Islands are good for A/B/C testing, I wager.
“Latino island dwellers are the perfect guina pigs for me to test my half baked ideas to avoid inconveniencing white people when they fail spectacularly”
Cuba is already democratic socialist. And it’s working very well in spite of how much effort the richest country in the world puts into killing it.
Cuba is already democratic socialist. And it’s working very well in spite of how much effort the richest country in the world puts into killing it.
it’s impressive that they’ve lasted this long
My admiration for the grit, gumption and resilience is boundless.
and sacrifice; there’s no way i could sacrifice as much as they have.
100
*Specifically, I want to try different variations of implementation, to find the best ‘recipe’ for an improved democratic socialism. Islands are good for A/B/C testing, I wager.
Dr. Mengele joins the DSA.
Jesus fuck, read the room. NO COUNTRY WANTS THAT.
How does your position help Cuba?
I will concede that your option works only if you agree that Ukraine has to give up and become a part of Russia. Does that make sense?
“Your position?” Dude. My position is that suggesting annexation of Cuba is incredibly tone deaf and generally offensive. My position isn’t meant to directly help or harm Cuba, it’s meant to protect objectivity, which of course helps all good faith actors.
By not making it an imperialist conquest by a dying empire. It helps by not dragging Cuba down. It helps by letting Cuba dictate it’s own fate, and not by a bunch of feudalist technocrats. It helps by not having to have Cubans eat the psychic damage caused by become complicit with an evil regime that’s ok with committing genocide if it makes a rich asshole slightly richer. It helps by not having it be ruled by a narcissistic psychopathic pudding brained man-baby, who believes he is the smartest person in the world, but is so incompetent at everything, he could fuck up a cheese sandwich.
Jesus fuck… why would anyone want to join that shithole.
Even an Americans self fulfillment fantasy of being the bestest us president that ever was involves the annexation of Cuba. You guys got a problem.
I said “offer to join the union”. If rejected, then America should simply end embargoes and all of that crap. In any case, I suspect you have an issue, because you don’t want Cuba to have opportunities of any kind. People are being hurt on Cuba, because they have been denied prosperity by selfish dickheads who can’t think of a better future.
British and Soviets had their famines in India, Ireland and Ukraine. Americans need their own Holodomor
The “holodomor” is Nazi Banderite propaganda. There was a famine in an area that was prone to famine for centuries prior. It was not targeted at Ukraine, it also affected Kazakhstan and western Russia. It was also the last time they had a famine.
They had one more after WW2 but this one is never mentioned in western media because “nazis deliberately causing starvation by destroying half of USSR agriculture and murdering millions of Ukrainians, Belarussians and Russians” is going against western narrations.
Soviets didn’t have a “famine in Ukraine”, they had a famine in the Soviet Union caused by the need for extremely rapid industrialization started in 1929. If it hadn’t been for the rapid industrialization (which hinged on moving field laborers to factories in cities and was funded with the only product they could export: grain), the soviets would have lost WW2 and tens of millions more of people would have died.
The famine disproportionately affected Ukraine (and other agriculturally strong places in southern Russia and Kazakhstan), but the industrialization also disproportionately benefitted Ukrainians by liberating them from Nazism and saving tens of millions of their lives from Nazi extermination.
If you want some good insight on the soviet famine of the early thirties, I suggest you read Robert B. Allen’s “Farm to Factory”, it makes a very good economic analysis of it.
yeah they had a famine in the soviet union, but the ukranians starved to death in millions
Yes, due to the particularities of agriculture in Ukraine, not due to ethnic or imperialist reasons, so it’s not comparable to India or Ireland
yeah there was no way to deliver food there, especially not from foreign countries that offered aid. also not possible to let people leave
Food aid did arrive, though insufficient, but as I explained previously, the industrialization hinged on grain exports (the USSR being at the time a preindustrial society meant there was literally nothing else they could export) to import machinery and expertise to kickstart the industrialization. A delay in industrial development due to stopping the grain exports would have directly implied a Nazi victory.
There is absolutely no historical evidence of any intent of hunger against Ukrainians (unlike for example Israeli politicians explicitly discussing starving Palestinians to exterminate them), and the famine also killed millions of ethnic Russians and Central Asians. This is the consensus among contemporary historians.
The Bolsheviks correctly predicted that a delay in industrialization would lead to them being crushed by western imperialist invasion. There’s ample evidence for this even in the Western-edited Wikipedia article on Soviet industrialization:
From a foreign policy point of view, the country was in hostile conditions. According to the leadership of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), there was a high probability of a new war with capitalist states. It is significant that even at the 10th congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1921, Lev Kamenev, the author of the report “About the Soviet Republic Surrounded”, stated that preparations for the Second World War, which had begun in Europe
That was as far as 1921 but they couldn’t industrialize at the time due to the civil war, hence Lenin’s “New Economic Policy” which lasted roughly until 1929. Stalin famously predicted the start of WW2 down to the literal year in which it would happen. From a speech by Stalin in 1929:
We are 50–100 years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they crush us.
This is the reason why the agrarian collectivization was carried out in such a hurried fashion and a famine ensued. There was ample debate about this in the party, but ultimately, the international pressure and threat of invasion was too great, and fortunately the Bolsheviks reacted quickly enough to be able to industrialize.
Between 1929 and 1939 (the eve of WW2), the Soviet Union grew its output by 15% yearly, a miracle unseen in history ever before. Thanks to this industrialization, the Soviets could manufacture the tanks, planes, artillery and rifles necessary to defeat the Nazis, whose explicit purpose was to genocide the entirety of Slavic peoples between Berlin and the Urals. Had it not been for the heroic effort of the Soviet industrialization, sadly a lot of which was brunted by Ukrainians, the Nazis might have won WW2 and genocided the entirety of Ukraine. Glory to the Ukrainians and all different ethnicities of Soviet heroes of WW2 who contributed massively to the defeat of Nazism with their own work and blood.
so they decided the potential industrial progress was worth however many deaths in the ukranian region
not someone i would like to associate with
also, it is a useless thought exercise, but would they have been crushed by the nazis? in the end, it was the winter that they didn’t prepare adequately for, plus the usa sent a bunch of equipment over, maybe they’d have sent more, if neededSo they decided the potential industrial progress
Not potential, measurable and factual, sustained 15% growth in industrial output yearly, with it being the only defense possible against the upcoming imperialist invasion. You keep arguing as if the industrialization is something hypothetical, it’s an undeniable truth, and it’s the main factor in saving Europe from Nazism.
was worth however many deaths in the Ukranian region
How many Ukrainians would have been exterminated without the Soviet Union having the capability to manufacture 30.000 T-34 tanks against the Nazi war machine? Some 7 million Ukrainians perished due to the Nazi invasion in “just” 2-3 years, imagine how many would have been exterminated if the Nazis had had even just a few more years of occupation. Also, you continue with the fixation in the Ukrainian region, similar numbers of people died from starvation inside Ukraine as in the rest of the USSR.
also, it is a useless thought exercise, but would they have been crushed by the nazis?
Yes, there is absolutely no doubt about this and it’s consensus among economists. A feudal country cannot defeat an industrialized nation bordering its lands if the latter invades it. It was not “winter” winning the war, that’s Napoleon, it was the battle of Stalingrad that resulted in a turning point in the war. The Soviets were THIS close to losing the war, and even in victory, 27 million Soviet citizens died as a consequence of the war.
plus the usa sent a bunch of equipment over, maybe they’d have sent more, if needed
Your speculation is nonsense. The USA did in fact send more equipment to England than to the USSR, and it is the latter that defeated the Nazis (80% of dead Nazi soldiers were killed in the Eastern Front). There is absolutely no doubt possible that the USSR would have been crushed with Blitzkrieg as were Poland and France had it not been for their industrialization efforts in the previous decade, this is the historical consensus. Stop trying to bend reality in a topic in which you’re clearly not well educated.
so?
Want to blame the evil RuZZians for it like those Banderite nazis do bcs they got their ass kicked? LOLwho else was leading the soviet union? who exported the food out of ukraine? much like in the irish famine?
You have zero knowledge how the SU even worked.
Where do you think Chruchov came from? The clown who gave Russian Crimea to that temporary anomaly.
IDC what you and your nazi friends imagine happened, it’s BS.
Grasping at straws to justify their Russophobia and blatant fascism.
For everyone to see, even today.You have zero knowledge how the SU even worked.
not quite zero, but i’ll admit, i’m not super knowledgeable
Where do you think Chruchov came from? The clown who gave Russian Crimea to that temporary anomaly.
does it matter? did the ukranian people do it to themselves if that guy was from there originally?
did/does it help the georgians that stalin was from there?Grasping at straws to justify their Russophobia and blatant fascism.
russians keep serving pretty thick and sturdy straws
also, til, criticising the soviet union/russia is fascism
