I asked ChatGPT: Why do people wear Che Guevara t-shirts?
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
February 26, 2023
I recently had the following conversation with ChatGPT:
Me: Why do people wear Che Guevara t-shirts?
ChatGPT: People wear Che Guevara t-shirts for various reasons. Some wear them as a symbol of rebellion or as a way to express their political views. Che Guevara was an important figure in the Cuban Revolution and is viewed as a hero by many left-wing and anti-capitalist activists. The image of Guevara, often depicted wearing a beret and with a determined expression, has become a symbol of revolution and resistance for some people. However, it is worth noting that Che Guevara’s legacy is a controversial one, with some critics pointing to his violent methods and authoritarian tendencies.
Me: A hero? He personally executed many people without a trial. He was a serial killer.
ChatGPT: Che Guevara is a controversial figure and opinions about him vary widely. Some people view him as a revolutionary hero who fought for social justice and against imperialism, while others see him as a brutal oppressor who committed atrocities in the name of ideology.
It is true that Guevara played a role in executing individuals without trial during his time as a revolutionary in Cuba. These executions were part of a wider campaign to consolidate power and suppress opposition, and are often cited as evidence of Guevara’s brutal tactics.
Despite this, many people continue to wear Che Guevara t-shirts and other merchandise as a symbol of resistance against oppression and imperialism. To these individuals, Guevara represents a spirit of defiance and rebellion against unjust systems of power.
Me: What does killing innocent people have to do with “social justice”?
ChatGPT: Killing innocent people does not have anything to do with “social justice.” “Social justice” refers to the fair distribution of resources and opportunities in society, and the recognition and protection of the rights of all individuals, regardless of their background or social status. Engaging in acts of violence or terrorism, regardless of one’s ideology or beliefs, can never be justified as a means of achieving social justice. It is important to work towards social justice through peaceful and constructive means, such as advocacy, education, and community engagement.
Me: It was you, not me, who used that phrase. I was just quoting what you had already said.
ChatGPT: I apologize for any confusion. To clarify, my previous statement was in reference to the importance of treating all individuals with inherent worth and dignity, regardless of their actions or behavior. It was not meant to justify or condone the actions of individuals who engage in violence or harm others.
Chickens are self replicating. A hen lays approximately 5 eggs per week. Therefore, the communists who control Cuba would have to be especially incompetent to create a shortage of chickens.
This CNN video is from 2019. It was filmed in Cuba. It shows a large number of people waiting in line, for many hours, all based on the hope that there might, maybe, possibly be one chicken available for them when they finally get to the front of the line. Maybe they’ll get a chicken that day. Maybe not.
Even if they do manage to get a chicken after waiting in line for many hours, the opportunity cost of waiting in line for such a long amount of time is enormous. Imagine all of the things that all of those people could be doing with all of that time if they were living in a country that wasn’t Cuba.
Chickens are self replicating. A hen lays approximately 5 eggs per week.
Therefore, the communists who control Cuba would have to be especially incompetent to create a shortage of chickens.
Skip to 3:09
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1OETmSugh8
Cuban Goes to Home Depot for FIRST TIME – DREAM CAME TRUE!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLsscvpsH8E
Cuba lashes out after young baseball players defect in Mexico
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/03/americas/cuban-baseball-players-defect-intl/index.html
Cuba lashes out after young baseball players defect in Mexico
By Patrick Oppmann
October 3, 2021
Havana (CNN) Cuba’s state media on Sunday lashed out after nearly a dozen Cuban baseball players defected in Mexico — believed to be one of the country’s largest and most embarrassing known incidents of mass defection in years.
Eleven young baseball players defected from the national team during a tournament for players under the age of 23, which began last month. The remaining Cuban players on the team are due to return to the communist-run island on Monday.
A statement from Cuba’s National Institute of Sports, Physical Education and Recreation (INDER) slammed the missing players for “weak morals and ethics.”
Cuban officials also blamed the US for restrictions that force Cuban players to defect in order to play in the Major Leagues.
Typically only the players who are seen as most loyal to the government are selected to play abroad and are accompanied by government chaperones to prevent them from defecting.
Cuba has been hard hit economically during the pandemic with few tourists visiting and restrictions on international flights which has prevented many Cubans from leaving the island.
Voting With Their Feet Against Socialism
Voting With Their Feet Against Socialism
By Humberto Fontova
May 29, 2021
“2 Dead, 10 Missing after boat carrying Cuban migrants overturns near key West.” (CBS Miami, 5/27)
“Three Cubans survived for 33 days on deserted island eating coconuts and rats. … US Coast Guard officials said the trio from Cuba told them their boat had capsized in rough waters and they were able to swim to Anguilla Cay, where they spent 33 days before they were spotted and rescued.” (Daily Telegraph 2/21.)
“Cuban baseball star César Prieto defects to U.S.– Cuban baseball player César Prieto, a highly touted 22-year-old infielder, ditched the Cuban national team Wednesday and defected to the United States…The player hopped in a car outside the team hotel almost immediately after their bus arrived. (Yahoo Sports, 5/27.)
Any cursory review of recent news will turn up numerous headlines like the ones above. And yet:
“People enjoy life in Cuba like in few other places. They’re safe, literate and healthy!” (Time magazine in their World’s Greatest Places Issue, March, 2015.)
And back in 2011 Newsweek magazine hailed Cuba among “The Best Countries in the World,” in terms of quality of life. “Cuba outdoes its fellow middle-income countries in quality of life,” explained the 1993 “National Magazine Award for General Excellence” winner.
“Fidel Castro first and foremost is and always has been a committed egalitarian. He wanted a system that provided the basic needs to all Cuba has superb systems of health care and universal education…We greeted each other as old friends.” (Former President of the United States and official “Elder Statesman” of the Democrat Party.)
“A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in… And how many want out,” famously quipped Tony Blair. Well, prior to the Castro brothers’ and Che Guevara’s Stalinist coup in 1959, Cuba took in more immigrants (primarily from Europe) as a percentage of population than did the U.S., including the Ellis Island years. In the 1950s, when Cubans were perfectly free to emigrate with all their property and U.S. visas were issued to them for the asking, fewer Cubans lived in the U.S. than Americans lived in Cuba.
You’d never guess this from the Fake News media, Hollywood, or your professors, but in 1953 more Cubans vacationed in the U.S. (and voluntarily returned to Cuba) than Americans in Cuba. Yes, for pre-Castro Cubans the U.S. was a “tourist playground.”
“What?” you say. But you’ve always heard that it was the other way around? That Cuba was a tourist playground for Americans? Indeed it was—but the tourist traffic went both ways, as befit a nation described by a 1957 UNESCO report thusly: “One feature of the Cuban social structure is a large middle class. So check it out here–and please click links for thorough documentation.
Point is, during the 1950s and based in Florida, Sheriff Joe Arpaio would have been lonelier than the Maytag repairman.
Given their record, a few such statements are probably out there, but I never heard a liberal crowing about the superb quality of life in East Germany, with “its free healthcare, education…blah, blah.” And yet over ten times as many people (and counting) have died attempting to flee Communist Cuba (which liberals routinely praise) than died trying to flee Communist East Germany.
In fact, when liberals hail the Castros and Che Guevara’s communism as somehow “different” from typical Iron Curtain communism they have a point:
It’s WORSE!
Between two and three hundred people died trying to breach the Berlin Wall. Between twenty five and forty thousand people (men, women, and children, entire families at a time) have died trying to escape Castro and Che Guevara’s Cuba, a nation that prior to Castroism was inundated with more immigrants (mostly from Europe) per-capita than was the U.S., including the Ellis Island years.
In 1992 former East German dictator Erich Honecker was tried (to no avail) for the deaths of 192 Germans killed while attempting to cross the Berlin wall. Some human rights groups estimate that actually three hundred people (out of an average East German population over the decades of 18 million) died trying to breach the Berlin Wall or otherwise escape East Germany.
After the thousands of many machine-gun blasts from their Frontier “Guards,” (the Berlin Wall itself was officially titled the “Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart”) kept disturbing Castro and Che’s coastal subjects, the Castro brothers hit upon the scheme of having the Soviet helicopters flown by their “Guards” hover over the escaping freedom-seekers, often consisting of entire families—but to hold-off on shooting.
Instead of machine-gunning the families to death as years of tradition called for, they switched to dropping sandbags onto the rickety rafts and tiny boats to demolish and sink them. Then the Tiger Sharks and Hammerheads could do the Castroites’ deputy-work. Screams, groans and gurgles, after all, don’t carry nearly as far as machine-gun blasts.
“The best revolutionary German man I’ve ever known was Erich Honecker,” tweeted Fidel Castro on June 1th 2012 commemorating the 18th anniversary of the East German Stalinist’s death. “I maintain feelings of profound solidarity with Honecker.”
“What a chump!” Castro was probably thinking. “A measly 192?”
“In one week during 1962 we counted over 400 firing squad blasts from the execution yard below our cells,” recalled former Cuban political prisoner and freedom-fighter Roberto Martin Perez to this writer.
“This is the most savage kind of behavior I’ve ever heard of,” said Robert Gelbard, deputy assistant secretary of state for Latin America during the Clinton administration. “This is even worse than what happened at the Berlin Wall!” Gelbard had watched desperate Cubans trying to swim to our Guantanamo Base when machine-guns opened up and the water around them frothed in white, then red.
The corpses were retrieved by gallant Cuban Frontier “Guards” in a boat using the same type of gaffing hooks the lucky contestants in the Castro-regime-sponsored “Hemingway Fishing Festival” were using in nearby waters to yank thrashing Tuna and Marlin aboard their Cuba-registered yachts.
In September 2011 Spanish medical examiners found that an airline stowaway from Cuba named Adonis G.B. had his throat crushed. He probably died upon takeoff, meaning he probably died more quickly and painlessly than the tens of thousands of others who perished escaping Cuba’s free and fabulous healthcare.
It was a different story for the tens of thousands of dead Cuban rafters. Most of these desperate rafters probably died like captives of the Apaches, staked in the sun and dying slowly of sunburn and thirst. Others perished gasping and choking after their arms and legs finally gave out and they gulped that last lungful of seawater, much like the crew in The Perfect Storm. Still others were eaten alive — drawn and quartered by the serrated teeth of Hammerheads and Tiger sharks much like Captain Quint in Jaws. Perhaps these last perished the most mercifully. As we’ve all seen on the Discovery Channel, sharks don’t dally at a meal.
“In space no one can hear you scream,” says the ad for the original Alien. Same for the middle of the Florida straits — except, of course, for your raft-mates. While clinging to the disintegrating raft, while watching the fins rushing in and water frothing in white — then red — they hear the screams all too clearly.
All during the decades coinciding with Castro’s rule, the Coast Guard has documented hundreds of such stories. Were the cause of these horrors more politically-correct we’d have no end of books, movies, documentaries, TV interviews, Survival-Story specials, etc.. We’d never hear the end of it. Alas, the agents of this Caribbean holocaust consist of the Left’s premier pin-up boys.
Cuba opens up its economy to private businesses
https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-latin-america-55967709
Cuba opens up its economy to private businesses
February 7, 2021
Cuba has announced it will allow private businesses to operate in most sectors, in what is a major reform to its state-controlled economy.
Labour Minister Marta Elena Feito said the list of authorised activities had expanded from 127 to more than 2,000.
Only a minority of sectors would be reserved for the state, she said.
The communist country’s economy has been hit hard by the pandemic and US sanctions introduced by the Trump administration.
Last year its economy shrank by 11% – its worst decline in almost three decades – and Cubans have been facing shortages of basic goods.
Ms Feito said just 124 economic activities would be exempt from private involvement although she did not mention which ones.
“That private work continues to develop, is the objective of this reform,” Ms Feito was quoted by AFP as saying. She said the move would “help free the productive forces” of the private sector.
Experts on Cuba’s tangled and complicated economy say the step essentially opens up almost all economic activity on the island to some form of private enterprise, the BBC’s Will Grant in Havana says.
This will be a significant shot in the arm for those families and individuals who harbour hopes of moving beyond just the very small businesses into medium-sized ventures, he notes.
Apart from hundreds of thousands of small farms, Cuba’s non-state sector is composed mainly of small private businesses run by artisans, taxi drivers and tradesmen. Around 600,000 people, around 13% of the workforce, joined the private sector when the opportunity arose.
However a large number of private businesses are involved in the island’s tourist industry, which has been hard hit by the pandemic and sanctions.
Given how slowly reforms tend to move in Cuba, it may still be some time before the change is noticeable in daily economic life, our correspondent says.
Some 60 years of hostility between the US and Cuba were eased in 2015 when then US President Obama and Cuban leader Raul Castro agreed to normalise relations , allowing US citizens to visit the island and empowering local businesses.
But Obama’s efforts were rolled back by his successor, President Donald Trump , with the support of hawkish Cuban-Americans who saw Mr Obama’s historic opening as an appeasement of Castro’s communist regime.
New US President Joe Biden – who was Barack Obama’s vice-president – has previously signalled that he wants to improve US-Cuban relations but observers say it is not clear how high it might be on his priority list.
I believe that black lives matter. But here are 50 reasons why I do not support the organization that calls itself “Black Lives Matter.”
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
September 12, 2020
I believe that black lives matter. But here are 50 reasons why I do not support the organization that calls itself “Black Lives Matter.”
1) In this video, Black Lives Matter founder Patrisse Cullors says, “We are trained Marxists”
Black Lives Matter was founded by three people: Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi.
In this video, Cullors says, “We are trained Marxists.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EvOyW5vIdg
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels says:
“In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”
Marxism is such a horrible system that even the people who claim to be in favor of Marxism never actually move to Marxist countries.
On the contrary, all immigration related to Marxist countries is away from Marxist countries, and never into them.
Every year, thousands of Cubans risk their lives on homemade rafts to leave the country.
Meanwhile, none of the U.S. college professors, celebrities, or social justice warriors who praise Cuba ever actually moves there.
When the Berlin Wall came down, all of the immigration was from east to west, not the other way around.
In the U.S., none of the college professors, celebrities, social justice warriors, or other people who claim to be in favor of communism, ever actually moves to a communist country.
No one who was born in South Korea ever moves to North Korea. But people who were born in North Korea risk getting shot and killed by armed border guards while trying to escape to South Korea.
Marxists are so evil that they have actually murdered far, far more innocent civilians than the Nazis did.
Marxism is an absolutely despicable and evil ideology.
2) Here’s a video from Oakland, California, from August 2020, of Black Lives Matter protestors saying “Death To America”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2ACQm06xlM
3) Here’s a video from Seattle, from August 2020, where Black Lives Matter protestors demand that homeowners give up ownership of their homes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFrZJyggwgE
Maximo Alvarez is a Cuban refugee. Here is his full speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJnShBMG3uY
BLM eulogized Fidel Castro and feels ‘indebted to him’ for ‘his guidance’ and ‘integrity’
BLM Eulogized Fidel Castro and Feels ‘Indebted to Him’ for ‘His Guidance’ and ‘Integrity’
By Humberto Fontova
June 13, 2020
“We are feeling many things as we awaken to a world without Fidel Castro,” reads an official Black Lives Matter eulogy for Fidel Castro upon his death. “There is an overwhelming sense of loss…we are particularly grateful to Fidel for holding Mama Assata Shakur, who continues to inspire us…As Fidel ascends to the realm of the ancestors, we summon his guidance, strength, and power as we recommit ourselves to the struggle for universal freedom. Fidel Vive!”
“War with the U.S. is my true destiny!” Fidel Castro wrote to a fellow KGB-handled Cuban comrade in April 1958. This was at a time when our crackerjack CIA and State Department were head over heels in love with Castro and his Soviet-backed July 26 Movement, and were helping him both materially and morally.
“You Americans just don’t understand it. The depths of my brother Fidel’s hatred for your country cannot be imagined by you Americans. His intention—his OBSESSION!—is to destroy the U.S.!” (Juanita Castro testifying before the House Committee on Un-American activities on June 1965, shortly after defecting from Cuba.)
What?!” Khrushchev gasped on Oct. 28th 1962, as recalled by his son Sergei. “Is he (Fidel Castro) proposing that we start a nuclear war?! That we launch missiles from Cuba?!”
“Apparently.”
“Yesterday the Cubans shot down a plane (U-2 with) without (Soviet) permission. Today they’re preparing a nuclear attack!….But that is INSANE!..Remove them (our missiles) as soon as possible! Before it’s too late. Before something terrible happens!” commanded the Soviet premier. (So much for the Fake News Media/Democrat/History Channel fable of how JFK “stood up to the Russians!” during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In fact, as documented by Khrushchev’s own son, what got the missiles out of Cuba was the Butcher of Budapest’s alarm that Fidel or Che might get their fingers too close to the buttons.)
“Of course I knew the missiles were nuclear-armed,” responded Fidel Castro to Robert McNamara during a meeting in 1992. “That’s precisely why I urged Khrushchev to launch them. And of course Cuba would have been utterly destroyed in the exchange.”
And speaking of “taking a knee,” Fidel Castro was forcing white Americans to take a knee for him well before the Johny-come-lately BLM found it “cool.” In fact it seemed a historic fetish of his. It wasn’t often that BLM’s murderous idol managed to get his hands on an American. But when he did, he really indulged this fetish:
“Kneel and beg for your life!” Castro’s executioners taunted the bound and helpless William Morgan, as he glowered at Castro’s firing squad in April 1961. Morgan was an AWOL GI with creditors and ex-wives on his tail in the U.S., who fled to Cuba and wound up a comandante in Castro’s Rebel army in 1959. He soured on the revolution when the unmistakably Soviet pattern (actually there from the beginning) became unmistakable even to morons. Castro heard about Morgan’s change of heart through his ever-efficient and ever-present spies/snitches and promptly arrested him. Within weeks, Morgan was in front of a firing squad.
“I kneel for no man!” Morgan snarled back.
“Very well, Meester Weel-yam Morgan,” replied his executioner, while the firing squad aimed low, on purpose – “FUEGO!”
The first volley shattered Morgan’s knees. He collapsed snarling and writhing. “See, Meester Morgan?” giggled a voice from above. “We made you kneel, didn’t we?” Over the next few minutes, as he lie writhing, four more bullets slammed into Morgan, all very carefully aimed to miss vitals. Finally, an executioner walked up and blasted Morgan’s skull to pieces with a .45.
“Death to the American!” screamed a Castroite “prosecutor” at U.S. citizen Howard Anderson’s s farce of a trial on April 17, 1961. “The prosecutor was a madman!” says a Swiss diplomat who witnessed the trial, “leaping on tables, shrieking, pointing, and Mr Anderson simply glared back.”
You’d never guess this from the Cuba “reporting” by the Fake News Media/Democrat complex but the reason for the Cuba “embargo” in the first place was Castro’s mass theft, at Soviet gunpoint, of almost 6,000 businesses in Cuba worth $9 billion (in current dollars) from U.S. citizens. A few American business owners who resisted were tortured and murdered.
One of these American burglary victims was Howard Anderson, a successful businessman who owned a chain of service stations and a Jeep dealership (not a casino or brothel, which were relatively rare in pre-Castro Cuba, by the way.) Mr. Anderson was a happy family man with four children and president of the American Legion’s Havana Chapter. I’ll quote from Anderson v. Republic of Cuba, No. 01-28628 (Miami-Dade Circuit Court, April 13, 2003).
“In one final session of torture, Castro’s agents drained Howard Anderson’s body of blood before sending him to his death at the firing squad.”
Two days after his “trial,” Howard Anderson refused a blindfold, to glare at his executioners. Medically he was probably in shock at the time from the blood-draining. “Fuego!” The bullets shattered Howard Anderson’s body at dawn on April 19, 1961.
“Kneel!–KNEEL DOWN!” the Cuban torturer screamed at the bound and bloodied but unbowed U.S. POW in front of him, Lieutenant Colonel Earl Cobeil, an Air Force F-105 pilot shot down over North Vietnam. “You son of a beech! I will show you!” continued screeching the Castroite torturer.
You see, amigos: In 1967 BLM’s idol–unable to get his hands on any defenseless Americans to torture and murder at home– sent several of his top torturers to North Vietnam, where defenseless Americans were abundantly available. Testimony during Congressional hearings titled, “The Cuban Torture Program; Torture of American Prisoners by Cuban Agents” held on November 1999 provide some of the harrowing details.
“Earl Cobeil was a complete physical disaster when we saw him,” testified another fellow POW, Col. Jack Bomar. “He had been tortured for days and days and days. His hands were almost severed from the manacles. He had bamboo in his shins. All kinds of welts up and down all over; his face was bloody. Then the Cuban torturer again began to beat him with a fan belt. The Cubans unmercifully beat a mentally defenseless, sick American naval pilot to death.”
According to the book Honor Bound: “the tortures of U.S. POWs by Castro’s agents were the worst sieges of torture any American withstood in Hanoi.
And I repeat: Black Lives Matter “summons Fidel Castro’s integrity and guidance.”
Bernie Sanders does not want you to see these photographs of the health care that regular Cubans get
Commentary by Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
February 28, 2020
In Cuba, if you’re a tourist with U.S. dollars, you get great health care.
And if you’re a high ranking government official, you also get great health.
But if you’re just an average Cuban citizen, you get the kind of health care that’s in these photographs.
All of these photographs are from the internet archive of the website therealcuba.com. The reason I’m using the internet archive is because the account at the original website “has been suspended.” I don’t know the reason for the suspension.
Source for all photos: https://web.archive.org/web/20100404025459/http://therealcuba.com/Page10.htm
The caption for the above photo says, “Floors full of excrements, bare mattresses, terrible food and even worse medical attention.”
Comment from Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill): The above photo shows one of Cuba’s environmentally friendly green ambulances, which does not burn any fossil fuel.
The caption for the above photo says, “Gentiuno reporters counted 27 dead roaches on the floor.”
The caption for the next four photographs below states:
These photos were taken at Havana’s psychiatric hospital, known as Mazorra, in early January of this year and taken out of the island by people who risked their lives to show the world what really is happening in Castro’s Cuba.
These are several of the more than 40 patients who died of hypothermia at the hospital, when temperatures near freezing hit the area where Mazorra is located.
These patients died because of the negligence of those in charge of this hospital, and after they died, hospital officials threw them on a table, one on top of the other, like bags of garbage at the local dumpster.
This is the fantastic healthcare that Cubans receive, according to Michael Moore and other useful idiots.
Patients are treated worse than animals. It is the cruelty of that brutal regime that has been oppressing the Cuban people for more than 51 years, while the dictator murdering and oppressing Cubans is referred to as “president,” and embraced by Latin American leaders who were democratically elected.
Many show marks that indicate that patients were beaten before they died.
The caption for the above photo says, “Yes, those black marks are flies.”
A Firsthand Account Of Child Abuse, Castro Style
https://www.capitalismmagazine.com/2000/05/a-firsthand-account-of-child-abuse-castro-style/
A Firsthand Account Of Child Abuse, Castro Style
By Armando Valladares
May 16, 2000
I was in solitary confinement in Fidel Castro’s tropical gulag — where I spent 22 years for refusing to pledge allegiance to the Communist regime — when I heard a child’s voice whimpering. “Get me out of here! Get me out of here! I want to see my mommy!” I thought my senses were failing me. I could not believe that they had imprisoned a child in those dungeons. Later on, I learned the story of Robertico.
He was 12 years old when they arrested him. A captain in the political police had left his gun in his open car. When he returned to the car he saw the child playing with it. He slapped Robertico and took him into custody. The child was sent to an adult prison in Havana, where he was condemned to spend the rest of his youth. He would not be released until he reached the age of 18.
Robertico was sent to a galley with common criminals. Within a few days, those soulless prisoners raped him. He spent several days in the hospital for treatment of rents and hemorrhages as a result. By the time he was released, his file had been stamped “homosexual” and he was taken to the prison area reserved for this classification. Robertico was so slender that his body fit through the bars of the cells. One night he slipped out to watch cartoons on the guard’s television. When he was discovered, he was sent to the punishment cells. He was taken out of those cells three times a week for injections because he was suffering from a venereal disease. A guard told me he was so young he did not even have pubic hair.
When I think of Elian Gonzalez, Robertico always comes to mind. This is the Cuban society to which Elian may return: a society where all rights are violated in the interest of subordinating all individuals to the will of the supreme leader.
Sadly, some in America still believe that the Cuban revolution was a triumph of good. It is worth remembering that many also refused to believe the horrors of the Nazi extermination camps. Then, the world had to wait for eyewitness accounts from journalists and photographic evidence from their camera crews before finally accepting the horrible reality of what had happened.
Many other Americans seem to believe that even if savage things once happened under Fidel Castro, the situation has now changed. Yet the same dictatorship, which sanctioned the abuse of Robertico and has tortured thousands of political prisoners, is still wielding absolute power over the Cuban people. Fidel Castro has never recanted or apologized for the atrocities that have been reported by those who have escaped his grasp. And there is a stream of evidence that the brutality and repression continues. Last month the United Nations Human Rights Commission condemned Cuba, for the eighth time, for its systematic violation of human rights. Amnesty International and the U.S. State Department have done the same.
It is standard practice around the world to transfer the custody of children to the surviving parent when the other dies. That is what is normal. But Cuba is not a normal place. If Elian is returned to Cuba, he will be sent back to a place where most people dream every day of escape. It is an island prison where a cruel tyranny has now lasted almost half a century. A fifth of the country’s population — around two million people — have fled, and more than half-a-million have been courageous enough to apply for visas to leave. Outside of Cuba, Elian will grow up as a free person with a free conscience. But if he returns, he will be “reprogrammed,” as Castro himself has made clear. The Cuban government has already shown the world the residence where psychiatrists and psychologists will instruct Elian on how to despise and hate anyone who is against communism — including his own mother, who gave her life to bring him to freedom. In a few years she’ll be nothing but a traitor to the Revolution. If Elian returns to Cuba his father will have no authority whatsoever to make decisions related to his education. Cuban “law” gives that authority to the Communist government.
Children are indoctrinated in Cuba from the moment they start to read. They are taught that the Communist party is owed loyalty above everything else. And they are taught that they must denounce their parents if they criticize or do anything against the Revolution or its leaders.
For Elian, absolute control by the Communist party will begin in elementary school with the so-called “Cumulative School File.” This is a little like a report card, but it is not limited to academic achievements. It measures “revolutionary integration,” not only of the student but also of his family. This file documents whether or not the child and family participate in mass demonstrations, or whether they belong to a church or religious group. The file accompanies the child for life, and is continually updated. His university options will depend on what that file says. If he does not profess a truly Marxist life, he will be denied many career possibilities.
From his elementary school days on, he will hear that God does not exist, and that religion is “the opium of the masses.” If any student speaks about God, his parents will be called to the school, warned that they are “confusing” the child and threatened. The Code for Children, Youth and Family provides for a three-year prison sentence for any parent who teaches a child ideas contrary to communism. The code is very clear: No Cuban parent has the right to “deform” the ideology of his children, and the state is the true “Father.”
Article 8 of that same code reads, “Society and the state work for the efficient protection of youth against all influences contrary to their Communist formation.” It is mandatory for all Cuban children over the age of 12 to do time in a Communist work camp in the countryside. Away from all parental supervision for nine months at a time, children there suffer from venereal disease, as well as teenage pregnancy, which inevitably ends in forced abortion.
When the reprogramming plan for Elian is complete, we will see him repeating the slogans of the Revolution. He will have lost his liberty, his ability to dream, his youthful innocence, and perhaps even hope. And should he ever do anything that angers the regime, we must hope he will not end like Robertico, cornered in a cell, calling for his mother. This time, she will not be able to save him.
Bernie Sanders Misleading Narrative on Communist Cuba
https://townhall.com/columnists/johnrlottjr/2020/02/25/bernie-sanders-on-communist-cuba-n2561825
Bernie Sanders Misleading Narrative on Communist Cuba
February 25, 2020
With Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) becoming the odds on favorite to win the Democrat nomination, the media rehabilitation efforts have begun. First up on Sunday evening was CBS’s 60 Minutes, which moved to protect Sanders against attacks that he is a communist.
Host Anderson Cooper didn’t ask Sanders about his decision to honeymoon in the former Soviet Union or about past proposals for “public ownership of utilities, banks, and major industries,” proposals that Sanders has never disavowed. However, Cooper did ask Sanders about some positive statements that he has made about Communist Cuba.
In explaining why Cubans didn’t help the U.S. overthrow Fidel Castro, 60 Minutes first played an old interview of Sanders explaining it failed because people liked Castro. He “educated the kids, gave them health care, totally transformed the society.” No mention is made of the police state and Castro killing or throwing his political opponents in prison.
“You know it is unfair to simply say that everything is bad,” Sanders told Cooper. “When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?”
Sanders can’t acknowledge it, but the push in communist countries to make sure that everyone could read had a dark side — the literacy programs were a massive indoctrination effort. The communist governments used the education system the same way that they take over at the same time and use television, radio, and newspapers. Controlling information is the reason that communist governments would regularly jam radio Voice of America’s broadcasts in their countries during the Cold War.
That is the same pattern that we have seen in other noncommunist totalitarian countries such as Nazi Germany. But undoubtedly Sanders wouldn’t be as effusive in his praise of the Nazi education system. In both the Nazi and communist systems, even simple math problems contained indoctrination lessons for students.
Education was just another part of the police state to control people. If you could teach people from a young age how wonderful the government is and how horrible the lives are for people in freer countries, you didn’t have to spend as much money on the secret police.
Cuba, other communist countries, and other totalitarian countries spent a lot more on education than freer countries with the same per capita income. Totalitarian countries also start public schooling at younger ages than freer countries, and they did so because they wanted to weaken the connection between children and their parents and replace the parent’s values with those of the government.
Sometimes these governments went much further than simply starting school at younger ages. For example, during the 1920s and 1950s, the Soviet Union experimented with raising children in communal children’s houses and dining halls that almost completely removed children from the influence of their parents. While fighting in Afghanistan during the 1980s, the Soviet government forcibly took tens of thousands of 3-and 4-year-old Afghanis to the USSR and raised them away from the influences of their families. The hope was that when later returned to Afghanistan, they would form the core of a loyal government administration.
In 1989, immediately before the fall of the Soviet Union, former President Ronald Reagan pointed out, “the biggest of Big Brothers is helpless against the technology of the Information Age.” Unlike Sanders, Reagan understood that part of winning the Cold War was breaking the control that communist governments had over the information that their citizens received.
Sanders is not alone in praising Cuba’s health care system. Of course, when Fidel Castro got very ill, he went to Spain for medical treatment. Their most significant bragging right was their improvements in infant mortality rates. But while infant mortality rates were improving dramatically between 1960 and 1971 in all the rest of North, Central, and South America, Cuba alone saw things get worse. Cuba’s big improvements occurred long after the attempted overthrow of Castro. To lower the infant mortality rate, the government forced abortions for high-risk babies. The government also took many pregnant women away from their families and ordered that they stay in special maternity homes. By 2000, the Cuban government was ordering 40 percent of mothers to stay in these homes for at least a portion of their pregnancy.
Cuba was able to eventually get an infant mortality rate slightly below that in the United States, but Anderson Cooper didn’t ask Sanders any follow-up questions about how the Cubans accomplished this “transformation.”
Communist countries from Cuba to Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union impoverished their citizens, though their leaders lived lives of luxury. The general citizens had miserable lives. Bernie Sanders might not want to acknowledge it, but their supposedly fabulous accomplishments had a real dark side.
The Moral Failing of Bernie Sanders
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/bernie-sanders-support-communism-moral-failing/#slide-1
The Moral Failing of Bernie Sanders
February 26, 2020
Sanders was not a liberal during the Cold War. He was an outright Communist sympathizer.
According to CNN, Bernie Sanders “has been consistent for 40 years.” Some find this reassuring. Bernie is not a finger-in-the-wind politician who tacks this way or that depending upon what’s popular. On the other hand, if someone has never changed his mind throughout 78 years of life, it suggests ideological rigidity and imperviousness to evidence, not high principle.
Why make a fuss about Bernie’s past praise of Communist dictatorships? After all, the Cold War ended three decades ago, and a would-be President Sanders cannot exactly surrender to the Soviet Union.
It’s a moral issue. Sanders was not a liberal during the Cold War, i.e. someone who favored arms control, peace talks, and opposed support for anti-Communist movements. He was an outright Communist sympathizer, meaning he was always willing to overlook or excuse the crimes of regimes like Cuba and Nicaragua; always ready to suggest that only American hostility forced them to, among other things, arrest their opposition, expel priests, and dispense with elections.
Good ol’ consistent Bernie reprised one of the greatest hits of the pro-Castro Left last week on 60 Minutes. When Anderson Cooper pressed the senator by noting that Castro imprisoned a lot of dissidents, Sanders said he condemned such things. But even that grudging acknowledgment rankled the old socialist, who then rushed to add, “When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing?”
Actually, the first thing Castro did upon seizing power (note Sanders’s whitewashing term “came into office”) was to march 600 of Fulgencio Batista’s supporters into two of the island’s largest prisons, La Cabana and Santa Clara. Over the next five months, after rigged trials, they were shot. Some “trials” amounted to public spectacles. A crowd of 18,000 gathered in the Palace of Sports to give a thumbs-down gesture for Jesus Sosa Blanco. Before he was shot, Sosa Blanco noted that ancient Rome couldn’t have done it better.
Batista was a bad guy, one must say. But summary executions are frowned upon by true liberals.
Next, Castro announced that scheduled elections would be postponed indefinitely. The island is still waiting. Within months, he began to close independent newspapers, even some that had supported him during the insurgency. All religious colleges were shuttered in May 1961, their property confiscated by the state. N.B., Senator Sanders: Castro also found time to knee-cap the labor unions. David Salvador, the elected leader of the sugar-workers union had been a vocal Batista opponent. He was arrested in 1962 and would spend twelve years in Cuba’s gulag.
The Black Book of Communism recounts that between 1959 and 1999, more than 100,000 Cubans were imprisoned for political reasons, and between 15,000 and 17,000 people were shot. Neighbors were encouraged to inform on one another and children on their parents. During the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, Cuba imprisoned gay people in concentration camps. Like other Communist paradises, Cuba’s greatest export was boat people. About two million of the island’s 11 million inhabitants escaped. Countless others died in the attempt. Did Sanders ever wonder why a country that had done such great work on literacy and health care had to shoot people to prevent them from fleeing?
Bernie Sanders has credulously repeated the other great propaganda talking point about Cuba: its supposedly wonderful “universal” health-care system. It’s not wonderful. Even those wishing to give Cuba the benefit of the doubt note the lack of basic necessities. Many hospitals in the country lack even reliable electricity and clean running water. A 2016 visitor found that patients in one Havana hospital had to bring everything with them — medicine, sheets, towels, etc.
The only working bathroom in the entire hospital had only one toilet. The door didn’t close, so you had to go with people outside watching. Toilet paper was nowhere to be found, and the floor was far from clean.
Yes, Cuba has high rates of literacy, but the state wanted readers in order to propagandize them. Granma tells people what to believe and forbids access to other sources of information. To this day, the regime controls what people can know. There are two Internets on the island. One for tourists and those approved by the government and the other, with restricted access, for the people.
Bernie Sanders has access to all the information he can absorb, and yet he remains an apologist for regimes that violate every standard of decency. Unlike the Cuban people, he is responsible for his own ignorance and pig-headedness. He claims to be a “democratic socialist,” but as his Cuba remarks suggest, the modifier may be just for show.
Cuban Americans Tell What Life Under Castro Was Really Like
https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/02/24/cuban-americans-tell-what-life-under-castro-was-really-like/
Cuban Americans Tell What Life Under Castro Was Really Like
February 24, 2020
When Sebastian Arcos and family members tried to travel from Cuba to the United States, authorities stopped them in what turned out to be a sting operation to arrest one of his uncles, who had advocated and fought for Fidel Castro’s revolution more than 20 years earlier.
That was Dec. 31, 1981, and for trying to leave the island nation, Arcos was jailed for a year.
His uncle spent seven years in jail. His father, also a political supporter of the communist revolution and like many other citizens soured on the broken promises of democracy, was imprisoned for six years.
“For the sake of argument, let’s say both the [Cuban] health care system and education system are perfect, which they are not. There have been thousands of political executions, tens of thousands of political prisoners, and 3 million Cuban exiles,” said Arcos, 58, today associate director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University.
“So, the question to ask when we are told to consider the good things is: What is the price for the good?” Arcos told The Daily Signal.
Arcos said that he is “surprised when talking heads in the United States will give Fidel Castro the benefit of the doubt.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a professed democratic socialist, has defended comments he made in the 1980s, when he said of Castro: “He educated their kids, gave them health care, totally transformed the society.”
In defending those remarks during an interview that aired Sunday on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Sanders said:
We’re very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba, but you know, it’s unfair to simply say everything is bad. You know? When Fidel Castro came into office [in 1959], you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?”
https://twitter.com/60Minutes/status/1231732950540132355
Castro handed control of the government to his brother, Raúl Castro, before his death at age 90 in November 2016.
Miguel Díaz-Canel was named president when the younger Castro stepped down at age 87 in February 2018, but is largely considered a figurehead. Raúl Castro, head of Cuba’s Communist Party, is said to make major government decisions.
Sanders noted that President Donald Trump has had kind things to say about authoritarian rulers such as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Arcos joined the Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1987, providing reports to the United Nations Human Rights Commission before coming to the United States in 1992.
He said people should know better than to concede gross human rights abuses in Cuba, and then point to health care and literacy.
“That’s been the regime’s argument for decades,” Arcos said. “Whoever makes that argument is just repeating their lines.”
Cuba’s military dictatorship controls 80% of the economy. Political prisoners are common, and courts face political interference.
The Heritage Foundation’s 2019 Index of Economic Freedom ranks Cuba at 178th among the world’s nations based on how free its economy is.
Cuba did adopt some free market policies about a decade ago, but the government hasn’t been a strong effort to implement the reforms. Private property is allowed, but is strictly regulated by the government.
According to Heritage’s index, low state-dictated wages increase poverty in Cuba. The state runs the means of production, property seizures without due process are common, and the top income tax rate is 50%.
Repression in Cuba is on the rise, said Janisset Rivero, 50, a human rights activist who lived in Cuba until age 14. Her family was wrongly accused of engaging in seditious speech against the Cuban government because they received a letter from family abroad.
“Health care and education are not as good as the propaganda claims,” Rivero said. “It’s indoctrination more than education. The Cuban system doesn’t tolerate critical thinking.”
The two former Cuban citizens interviewed for this story gave similar accounts of health care in Cuba
They said the health care system has two tiers: One is for tourists, elites, and the military, which is top rate and what people see. The other is for the general population. When Cubans go to those hospitals, they have to bring their own food, water, bed sheets, and pillows.
Of support inside the United States for Cuba’s communist system, Rivero said, “It’s ignorance. Some people are ignorant.”
However, she suspects that in some cases, it’s worse.
“Some people simply support socialism and communism with a big state that can take control of people’s lives,” Rivero said. “Some supporters know exactly what is going on in Cuba and believe it would be OK here because they believe they know best.”
Frank Calzon, who retired last year as executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, was born in 1944. His parents sent him to the United States after the Castro-led revolution. He became active in human rights causes and led the center for 22 years.
“A lot of claims the Cuban government makes should be suspect,” Calzon said. “Cuban students are not really more educated now. In 1951, the country had 75-80% of students [who] knew how to read and write.”
A strong spirit exists in Cuba for freedom, he said, pointing to the group Ladies in White as one example.
“The Ladies in White is a group of mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters of political prisoners,” Calzon said. “They try to march to Mass on Sundays, but Cuban police intercept them and take them to prisons. They release them that evening, but they take them several miles out of their city.”
Bernie Sanders: “I was very excited and impressed by the Cuban revolution”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8Lo8YcEcPY
Video shows Bernie Sanders staffer Kyle Jurek advocating for riots, gulags, shootings
Vid Shows Bernie Sanders Staffer Advocating for Riots, Gulags, Shootings
January 14, 2020
Update: The full video of the Bernie Sanders campaign staffer has dropped and it’s worse than imagined. Not only does Kyle Jurek, who has been paid $11,000 so far by the campaign, advocate for putting Americans in gulags, but he also talks about plans to shoot Americans who don’t fight for the “revolution.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsUAvh_PCWA
Original article:
James O’Keefe is about to drop another hidden-camera expose on the Bernie Sanders campaign and explosive doesn’t even begin to describe it. The teaser dropped on Twitter Tuesday shows Kyle Jurek, who identifies as a “Field Organizer” for the Sanders campaign, explaining a plan for riots if Trump is re-elected. “F**king cities burn,” he says. Jurek then goes on to discuss the benefits of government reeducation. “In Nazi Germany after the fall of the Nazi party there was a sh*t ton of the populace that was f**king Nazi-fied. Germany had to spend billions of dollars to reeducate their people to not be Nazis. We’re probably going to have to do the same f**king thing here.”
Then he dropped some serious truth about Bernie’s “education plan.” Jurek revealed, “that’s kind of what Bernie’s whole free education for everybody…because we’re going to have to teach you to not be a f**king Nazi.” Perhaps the scariest part was Jurek’s high regard for the benefits of Soviet gulags. “There’s a reason Josef Stalin had gulags,” he said. “And actually, gulags were a lot better than what the CIA has told us that they were. Like, people were actually paid a living wage in gulags, they had conjugal visits in gulags. Gulags were actually meant for, like, reeducation.”
As if that’s not stupid enough, Jurek continues, “Greatest way to break a f**king billionaire of their like, privilege and their idea that they’re superior, go out and break rocks for twelve hours a day. You’re a working-class person and you’re going to learn what that means.”
Jurek also goes into what sounds like a detailed plan for civil unrest that will start in Milwaukee and spread to all the major cities in America if Bernie Sanders doesn’t get the DNC nomination. “Be ready to be in Milwaukee for the DNC convention. We’re gonna make 1978 [he means 1968] look like a f**king Girl Scout f**king cookout.” Then he issues a threat to police. “The cops are gonna be the ones that are getting f**king beaten in Milwaukee.”
Just a reminder for folks what gulags were actually like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzxBDWkwKWg
MSNBC fake news reporter Brian Williams falsely says Cubans prefer using donkey carts instead of cars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uovc-JnsBwQ
Black Lives Matter praises Fidel Castro for protecting murderers, hijackers, and terrorists from U.S. authorities
Black Lives Matter Salutes Fidel Castro, is ‘Grateful’ He Harbored an FBI Most Wanted Terrorist
November 27, 2016
The Black Lives Matter movement has come out in support of Fidel Castro, following his death on Friday, saying they must “come to the defense of El Comandante” and thanking him for safeguarding Assata Shakur, who’s on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list.
The movement penned an article on Sunday titled “Lessons from Fidel: Black Lives Matter and the Transition of El Comandante” on the Medium platform where they eulogized the passing of the Cuban dictator. The article, which was not bylined, was Tweeted out by the closest thing there is to an official Black Lives Matter account and also posted on the movement’s semi-official Facebook page.
The article claims Castro’s death has caused “an overwhelming sense of loss, complicated by fear and anxiety.”
“Although no leader is without their flaws, we must push back against the rhetoric of the right and come to the defense of El Comandante,” it added.
The article continues by portraying Castro as a model freedom fighter, who Black Lives Matter should strive to follow and emulate. It said: “As Fidel ascends to the realm of the ancestors, we summon his guidance, strength, and power as we recommit ourselves to the struggle for universal freedom. Fidel Vive!”
The movement then thanked the Cuban dictator for hiding criminals and domestic terrorists from the U.S government, such as Michael Finney, Ralph Goodwin, and Charles Hill — who hijacked an airplane from Albuquerque while being sought for the 1972 murder of New Mexico State Trooper Robert Rosenbloom.
Hill told a Washington Post reporter in the 1990s that he had no regrets about killing the state trooper, a father of two young daughters.
The BLM movement is also also “particularly grateful” to Castro for harboring “Mama Assata Shakur, who continues to inspire us.” Shakur, whose real name is Joanne Chesimard, is currently on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list with a $1 million bounty on her head.
She was convicted in the U.S. of killing a New Jersey state trooper, assault and battery of a police officer. After she escaped from prison, Castro granted her asylum in Cuba in 1984.
.
Black Lives Matter
Lessons from Fidel: Black Lives Matter and the Transition of El Comandante
November 27, 2016
We are feeling many things as we awaken to a world without Fidel Castro. There is an overwhelming sense of loss, complicated by fear and anxiety. Although no leader is without their flaws, we must push back against the rhetoric of the right and come to the defense of El Comandante. And there are lessons that we must revisit and heed as we pick up the mantle in changing our world, as we aspire to build a world rooted in a vision of freedom and the peace that only comes with justice. It is the lessons that we take from Fidel.
From Fidel, we know that revolution is sparked by an idea, by radical imaginings, which sometimes take root first among just a few dozen people coming together in the mountains. It can be a tattered group of meager resources, like in Sierra Maestro in 1956 or St. Elmo Village in 2013.
Revolution is continuous and is won first in the hearts and minds of the people and is continually shaped and reshaped by the collective. No single revolutionary ever wins or even begins the revolution. The revolution begins only when the whole is fully bought in and committed to it. And it is never over.
Revolution transcends borders; the freedom of oppressed people and people of color is all bound up together wherever we are. In Cuba, South Africa, Palestine, Angola, Tanzania, Mozambique, Grenada, Venezuela, Haiti, African America, and North Dakota. We must not only root for each other but invest in each other’s struggles, lending our voices, bodies, and resources to liberation efforts which may seem distant from the immediacy of our daily existence.
Revolution is rooted in the recognition that there are certain fundamentals to which every being has a right, just by virtue of one’s birth: healthy food, clean water, decent housing, safe communities, quality healthcare, mental health services, free and quality education, community spaces, art, democratic engagement, regular vacations, sports, and places for spiritual expression are not questions of resources, but questions of political will and they are requirements of any humane society.
Revolution requires that the determination to create and preserve these things for our people takes precedent over individual drives for power, recognition, and enrichment.
A final lesson is that to be a revolutionary, you must strive to live in integrity. As a Black network committed to transformation, we are particularly grateful to Fidel for holding Mama Assata Shakur, who continues to inspire us. We are thankful that he provided a home for Brother Michael Finney Ralph Goodwin, and Charles Hill, asylum to Brother Huey P. Newton, and sanctuary for so many other Black revolutionaries who were being persecuted by the American government during the Black Power era. We are indebted to Fidel for sending resources to Haiti following the 2010 earthquake and attempting to support Black people in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina when our government left us to die on rooftops and in floodwaters. We are thankful that he provided a space where the traditional spiritual work of African people could flourish, regardless of his belief system.
With Fidel’s passing there is one more lesson that stands paramount: when we are rooted in collective vision when we bind ourselves together around quests for infinite freedom of the body and the soul, we will be victorious. As Fidel ascends to the realm of the ancestors, we summon his guidance, strength, and power as we recommit ourselves to the struggle for universal freedom. Fidel Vive!
We should send many large ships to Cuba every day and offer U.S. citizenship to every anti-Communuist in Cuba
We would have to offer bribes to the Cuban police and military guards, but by U.S. standards, it wouldn’t be expensive: a handful of U.S. currency, bottles of booze, toilet paper, chocolate bars, and pornographic magazines should be enough to get the job done. This would make the police and guards look forward to the arrival of these ships, instead of trying to stop them.
After a few months, Castro wouldn’t have anyone to rule over, because everyone would have left the country.
Marco Rubio explains that Venezuela is turning into a Cuban-style dictatorship
In this excellent 14 minute speech, Marco Rubio explains that Venezuela is turning into a Cuban-style dictatorship.
He asks what good is Cuba’s high literacy rate if the government prevents the people from reading the things that they want to read.
He asks what good is Cuba’s medical care if doctors can make more money from driving a taxi than from working as a doctor.
He asks why, if Cuba is as great as its supporters in the U.S. say it is, do so many refugees, doctors, and baseball players flee Cuba for the United States, instead of it being the other way around.
He says the reason Venezuela has a shortage of toiler paper is because communism doesn’t work.
He talks about the arrests and censorship of protestors in Venezuela.
He argues for a U.S. embargo against Venezuela, which is the only thing he says that I don’t see agree with. I think an embargo would hurt the people of Venezuela, and would make it easier for their government to censor and oppress them. I also oppose the U.S. embargo against Cuba. I think the U.S. should offer citizenship to every anti-communist citizen of Venezuela and Cuba. I think we should send lots of large ships to Cuba every day and bring back every Cuban citizen who wishes to live in the U.S. After a few months, Castro wouldn’t have anyone to rule over, because everyone would have left the country.
Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 