6 ms·

It seems that Cuba is slowly but surely liberalising. It will be interesting to see what happens in the future, apparently they're having a referendum in Februa

It seems that Cuba is slowly but surely liberalising. It will be interesting to see what happens in the future, apparently they're having a referendum in February for a new constitution that's somewhat more free-market friendly, as well as LGBT friendly. The USA reimposing embargoes on Cuba seems like the worst thing it can do to try and force liberalisation. 50 years of sanctions has proven to be a complete failure.

qop 8y ago
Well, to ignore it would be to appear complacent on the issue, given our past record with Cuban relations. It's hard to fix a country when Communists run it and can just murder opposition without consequence. But something is better than nothing otherwise we'd just be ignoring it. Cuban people are the greatest hope for Cuba. The inhabitants of any Communist nation will inevitably reach a point of disenchantment with communism and decide that life would probably be better if they could vote and have a political say without being murdered. LGBT is a weird, rather irrelevant point but it does share the same analog that people will see it and realize that no matter how repulsive the behavior, freedom to engage in it must surely be preferable to a Communist prescription of their daily lives and inner lives. Cuba will fix itself. They just need more Cubans who want to help do so.
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't take HN into generic political or national flamewars. It just leads to the same fights over and over. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - lordlimecat 8y ago
    I'm a little bothered by the flagging of this comment. What guideline has he broken? He engaged with the parent comment, was not uncivil, and while the content of his post is surely contentious, the topic of this submission is inherently contentious. Are people not allowed to express the opinion that Communism is problematic on a discussion on the state of freedom in one of the few remaining communist countries? Should we just say "yay Cuba" and move on?
    - dang 8y ago
      You certainly don't have to yay Cuba or yay communism, but the discussions people get into when topic becomes this generic and this divisive usually end up in flames. That's what we're trying to avoid here. Notice how it went straight to Saudi Arabia? That's a flamewar move, not a substantive one. And then we get https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17763463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17763463, and so on and so on. We moderate HN this way because the site has a clear mandate: thoughtful conversation on topics of intellectual curiosity (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). At this point we have over 10 years' experience with where the community's limits are in terms of what can be discussed that way versus what spills over into flames. When the needle starts to go into the red, that's when we moderate. I assume that the users who flagged that comment were doing much the same.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- gautamdivgi 8y ago
  Saudi Arabia does all the above things but the US and most of the western world is fine with it. Your statement is hypocrisy at its best. The problem is Cuba doesn’t have enough money.
  - qop 8y ago
    Why would you make that point and imply that my opinion matches up just because other people think that way? Saudi politics are possibly more detestable than Cuba. Id have said as much if I figured some clueless HN user would pigeon hole my argument.
  - qop 8y ago
    This is almost a cliche of people who don't know shit shout cuba. They've had an Internet for years with no wifi. They have mechanics that can reliably work on cars from a half century ago. Cuba is a wealth of intelligent engineering minds, plagued by reprehensible Communist rule. Money has never stopped the cuban spirit. It's a disgrace to compare the Cuban spirit to Saudi Arabia.
    - gautamdivgi 8y ago
      That was exactly my point. Why single out Cuba for sanctions when the US has normal relations with countries that have sketchier track records.
      - sremani 8y ago
        Cuba is treated different because Cuba is close to HOME. The only time US was close to a nuclear war and main-land invasion was when Cuba gave their enemy a foot hold. I would be mad, if US civilian and military did not treat Cuba or any other Caribbean Island differently from the countries on Eurasian land mass.
        amaccuish 8y ago
        And Japan did Pearl Harbour, so what? The idea that you apply sanctions for historical reasons is absurd. Further, the US actually tried to invade Cuba (but of course Cuba has no right to feel threatened by the US...)
- toomanybeersies 8y ago
  At the same time the USA was imposing its embargo on Cuba, it was propping up right-wing dictatorships in Latin America. They funded rebels and coups to overthrow democratically elected governments on the whims of fruit companies. They supported Pinochet in Chile while he was throwing people out of helicopters. In practically every Latin American country the USA was systematically involved in brutal repression of the leftists and anything vaguely pro-Soviet [1], without any regard to human rights or democracy. The USA also did almost nothing in response to the atrocities of the Duvaliers in Haiti, despite being orders of magnitude worse than Castro. To say that the USA embargoes Cuba due to human rights concerns is completely and utterly laughable. The USA didn't give a toss about human rights in Cuba under Batista, who was incidentally another brutal dictator propped up by the USA. The USA has never cared about human rights and freedoms in its neighbours. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor
ant6n 8y ago
I was there a couple of years ago, and it seemed the country was already in the late-communism early-capitalism phase that Eastern European countries went through around 1990. This was especially visible in the tourism industry, i.e. with 'casas', apartments/rooms rented to foreigners. In this market, people were already getting separated into economic winners and losers, as often happens in this quick transition to capitalism. It seemed that people had a feeling what was happening, everybody seemed in a rush to get as much of the tourist currency that's pegged to the dollar, rather than the locals' currency.

qop 8y ago

Well, to ignore it would be to appear complacent on the issue, given our past record with Cuban relations. It's hard to fix a country when Communists run it and can just murder opposition without consequence. But something is better than nothing otherwise we'd just be ignoring it. Cuban people are the greatest hope for Cuba. The inhabitants of any Communist nation will inevitably reach a point of disenchantment with communism and decide that life would probably be better if they could vote and have a political say without being murdered. LGBT is a weird, rather irrelevant point but it does share the same analog that people will see it and realize that no matter how repulsive the behavior, freedom to engage in it must surely be preferable to a Communist prescription of their daily lives and inner lives. Cuba will fix itself. They just need more Cubans who want to help do so.

dang 8y ago
Please don't take HN into generic political or national flamewars. It just leads to the same fights over and over. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- lordlimecat 8y ago
  I'm a little bothered by the flagging of this comment. What guideline has he broken? He engaged with the parent comment, was not uncivil, and while the content of his post is surely contentious, the topic of this submission is inherently contentious. Are people not allowed to express the opinion that Communism is problematic on a discussion on the state of freedom in one of the few remaining communist countries? Should we just say "yay Cuba" and move on?
  - dang 8y ago
    You certainly don't have to yay Cuba or yay communism, but the discussions people get into when topic becomes this generic and this divisive usually end up in flames. That's what we're trying to avoid here. Notice how it went straight to Saudi Arabia? That's a flamewar move, not a substantive one. And then we get https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17763463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17763463, and so on and so on. We moderate HN this way because the site has a clear mandate: thoughtful conversation on topics of intellectual curiosity (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). At this point we have over 10 years' experience with where the community's limits are in terms of what can be discussed that way versus what spills over into flames. When the needle starts to go into the red, that's when we moderate. I assume that the users who flagged that comment were doing much the same.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
gautamdivgi 8y ago
Saudi Arabia does all the above things but the US and most of the western world is fine with it. Your statement is hypocrisy at its best. The problem is Cuba doesn’t have enough money.
- qop 8y ago
  Why would you make that point and imply that my opinion matches up just because other people think that way? Saudi politics are possibly more detestable than Cuba. Id have said as much if I figured some clueless HN user would pigeon hole my argument.
- qop 8y ago
  This is almost a cliche of people who don't know shit shout cuba. They've had an Internet for years with no wifi. They have mechanics that can reliably work on cars from a half century ago. Cuba is a wealth of intelligent engineering minds, plagued by reprehensible Communist rule. Money has never stopped the cuban spirit. It's a disgrace to compare the Cuban spirit to Saudi Arabia.
  - gautamdivgi 8y ago
    That was exactly my point. Why single out Cuba for sanctions when the US has normal relations with countries that have sketchier track records.
    - sremani 8y ago
      Cuba is treated different because Cuba is close to HOME. The only time US was close to a nuclear war and main-land invasion was when Cuba gave their enemy a foot hold. I would be mad, if US civilian and military did not treat Cuba or any other Caribbean Island differently from the countries on Eurasian land mass.
      - amaccuish 8y ago
        And Japan did Pearl Harbour, so what? The idea that you apply sanctions for historical reasons is absurd. Further, the US actually tried to invade Cuba (but of course Cuba has no right to feel threatened by the US...)
toomanybeersies 8y ago
At the same time the USA was imposing its embargo on Cuba, it was propping up right-wing dictatorships in Latin America. They funded rebels and coups to overthrow democratically elected governments on the whims of fruit companies. They supported Pinochet in Chile while he was throwing people out of helicopters. In practically every Latin American country the USA was systematically involved in brutal repression of the leftists and anything vaguely pro-Soviet [1], without any regard to human rights or democracy. The USA also did almost nothing in response to the atrocities of the Duvaliers in Haiti, despite being orders of magnitude worse than Castro. To say that the USA embargoes Cuba due to human rights concerns is completely and utterly laughable. The USA didn't give a toss about human rights in Cuba under Batista, who was incidentally another brutal dictator propped up by the USA. The USA has never cared about human rights and freedoms in its neighbours. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor

ant6n 8y ago

I was there a couple of years ago, and it seemed the country was already in the late-communism early-capitalism phase that Eastern European countries went through around 1990. This was especially visible in the tourism industry, i.e. with 'casas', apartments/rooms rented to foreigners. In this market, people were already getting separated into economic winners and losers, as often happens in this quick transition to capitalism. It seemed that people had a feeling what was happening, everybody seemed in a rush to get as much of the tourist currency that's pegged to the dollar, rather than the locals' currency.