Cuba releases thousands of prisoners

That is not a reliable source

twisted... indeed... but on the other hand at least woman can abort if they choose to.

It wouldnt surprise me at all if the NRLC twisted the facts involving woman in high risk pregancies deciding to abort and depicted the situation as them being forced to.

edited 26th Dec '11 8:04:27 PM by Baff

I will always cherish the chance of a new beggining.

"I am hopeful that this might lead, if indirectly, to better Cuban-US relations and to a lift of the embargo, though."

that would be terrible. It's the only tropical destination without any Americans.

I'd take any statistics coming out of Cuba with a grain of salt; dictatorships aren't known for being truthful.

On my next visit I might sneak away from the touristy areas, see if I can get a better overall view of the situation.

edited 26th Dec '11 7:57:52 PM by thatguythere47

Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?

The statistics dont come from Cuba but from the UN.

If you choose to take them with a grain of salt... then you might as well go ahead and do the same with all the other countries that have dictatorships...

Which by the way dont usually score well with the UN anyways.

I will always cherish the chance of a new beggining.

This is not about whether women should be allowed to choose to have abortions or not. Do your own research, there are plenty of reports of Cuba forcing or pressuring women with at-risk pregnancies to have abortions against their will. I picked that one because it's a famous case of someone who's been imprisoned for speaking out against it. This practice goes against both pro-life and pro-choice arguments, so I hardly see what it has to do with American abortion politics.

It's beautiful and so full of deep imagery that it doesn't surprise me to find that it has gone WAY over your head

When I google woman forced to abort cuba... I get news about a woman who aborted her attempt to swim to cuba.

Its quite probably that abortion do help the number of infant and mother related deaths at birth low, which is why allowing abortion is a good thing. Besides not enough woman can be forced to abort as to alter the statistics with out it being fairly obvious to the world media such as China`s one child policy is ridiculous.

edited 26th Dec '11 8:15:46 PM by Baff

I will always cherish the chance of a new beggining.

@Ace of Spades You seriously think that actions Cuba took to defend itself from an enemy that was threatening to invade it, in a conflict that supposedly ended, justify a continued embargo?

And anyways, the embargo isn't really destroying the country, the problem is they've got a banana economy, and they relied on Soviet imports until the USSR collapsed. They still haven't moved past the banana economy stage, but they're making (a little) progress.

edited 26th Dec '11 8:18:12 PM by stripesthezebra

No, but there's no real reason one way or another for the US to actually drop the embargo without something in return from Cuba. It's basically a "meh" issue, otherwise.

I am now known as Flyboy.

Okay.

It's beautiful and so full of deep imagery that it doesn't surprise me to find that it has gone WAY over your head

Okay looked at some information about the subject with the links that came out, and it does seem that at least when it comes to infant mortality rate there are some very unethical practices going on.

Still the word "forced abortion" is misleading in many of the reported cases... regardless in other statistics such as life expectancy, Cuba also holds up quite well, and those are harder to fake out.

I will always cherish the chance of a new beggining.

Stripes, did you just not read my post. I said it was stupid we were still doing it. But Cuba's government did a stupid, risky as hell thing. And those kinds of actions have consequences that far outlive the situations that caused them.

I did read, and what I'm saying is that it wasn't stupid at all considering the immediate and very real threat of US invasion. The US maintained nuclear weapons at the time, in the name of defense, Cuba couldn't do that, so they did the next best thing.

Edit: this is kind of a derail, isn't it.

edited 26th Dec '11 8:30:44 PM by stripesthezebra

None of our nukes were pointed at Cuba, though, so that doesn't make sense.

Anyhow, Cuba's track record with human rights as classified by the UN is still abject shit, so I don't see why we're rejoicing over how "awesome" Cuba is. They're just not quite totally fail anymore...

I am now known as Flyboy.

It is kind of a derail, but we weren't even acting hostile towards Cuba before they decided "hey, let's let Russia put its missiles and boats over here" and our guys all freaked out. When you're that close to a paranoid nuclear power, you can't poke it and not expect some consequences.

Anyway, like I said before, this is a good thing. And hopefully lead to better US-Cuban relations. Being less fail at human rights is always a good thing.

That wasn't really Cuba doing anything to be honest. The Cuban Missile Crisis was in direct response to the US placing nukes in US-allied countries right beside USSR. It's just that Americans weren't aware they had done so thus Cuba getting nukes was a huge "surprise". It was tit-for-tat between the US and USSR.

Anyway, I'm not sure of this forced abortion business as I've not heard of it. Additionally, all the stats are from the UN as Baff said, so you might as well not trust numbers for any country at all. They're doing "relatively" well is the statement I would make, in comparison to other countries that continue to perform poorly in the area.

As far as I've seen, South America entered into a democratic spring a decade or two ago when the US pulled out and these are the continuing positive consequences from that.

Part of an aside, Brazil's economy just surpassed UK.

I don't see why Cuba would want to end the US embargo. I mean they're doing the best out of like all the countries in their area, so perhaps they shouldn't end a good thing.

They can't end an embargo we're imposing on them, Cats. Basically it's our president that would have to end it, as well as the travel ban on Cuba. They don't have to trade with us if it ends, certainly, but they can't end something that's being done to them.

Puerto Rico's also in their area, and doing quite well under American influence.

edited 27th Dec '11 12:26:20 AM by AceofSpades

Isn't Peurto Rico like, a territory of the US?

Also, I agree, Cuba should try to work out it's problems despite the US embargo, not just wait and blame the embargo for everything.

BRAZIL'S ECONOMY SURPASSED THE UK!

edited 27th Dec '11 9:03:38 AM by stripesthezebra

It wasn't entirely a surprise; the Soviets did do a good job of disguising the nukes while in transport, but American spy and recon assets did ascertain that they were carrying military hardware for Cuba (fighters, etc.), which was true.

That, and American spy planes caught the nuke launch sites on camera before one was even ready for launch. So the U.S. was fully aware of what the Soviet Union and Cuba were doing—and, Castro had agreed to the Soviet Union's plan, so Cuba was complicit to the action.

Kennedy chose to not reveal that the United States had proof of nukes in Cuba until the U.N. Security Council meeting, though he did make that public address a few days earlier.

Yeah, Puerto Rico is currently American territory as a Commonwealth (or "Associated Free State" in Spanish).

edited 27th Dec '11 12:08:49 PM by TrevMUN

^ Well Cuba being complicit is one thing, but I'm talking about degree of complicity here. If you're a US ally out in Eastern Europe and the Americans told you "I want to put down nukes here", would you refuse? In fact they did not and that's exactly what happened.

What followed was the USSR telling Cuba, "I want to put nukes here to pressure the US to remove nukes from our doorstep". Cuba refusing would be kinda ridiculous to expect, half their economy depended on the Soviet flow of goods.

As I was saying, I don't think it makes sense for the US to continue to hold such a grudge against Cuba when Russia no longer holds such a grudge against countries that did exactly the same thing to them (maintain nuclear missiles pointed at the USSR at the behest of the USA).

—-

Cuba is sorta cleaning up most of their own problems. Social equality is fairly good, the issue is having a better GDP per capita. It currently sits at 5565, which something like half of Mexico. How would they improve that? Well, I'm somewhat concerned they have very few useful industries in the area. So even if the trade embargo were lifted, even if they were democratic, even if the government were the most intelligent and competent force possible, how high can the GDP go when Cuba is just an island nation sitting on very little resources? Maybe 25k per capita? I don't know.

edited 27th Dec '11 12:07:54 PM by breadloaf

We had nukes an equivalent distance away from Moscow in Turkey. I wasn't saying that it wasn't fair what the Cubans did, only that the argument that "the US had nukes, so Cuba needed nukes too!" was absurd because getting nukes would make them worse off in that regard, as they would then be a fair nuclear target...

I am now known as Flyboy.

It's more that I'm saying that when the USSR tells YOU they want nukes in your country, refusing is probably economic suicide.

They could do like China and have a bunch of factories there. *shrug* But really, that's up to them to decide. The smaller island nations aside from Japan seem to depend almost entirely on tourism, and that's a fickle industry.

Funny thing is... that lifting the embargo is the worst thing that could happen to the Castro regime.

If their economy is shit... at least they have an excuse!!

As for everything else Cuba has probably one of the cheapest labour markets out there with very very good professionals. Should they open up they are assured success.

@USAF besides the fact that Cuba is awesome wether is communist or not... its a pretty good country when you compare it to all the other countries in the rigion.

I mean... Cuba is actually the 3rd worst offender when it comes to human rights after Colombia and Nicaragua in the Southern Hemisphere... but on human development they are up there with some east european countries. Which places it almost always 1st or 2nd or 3rd in Latin America after Chile or Argentina (and Mexico in the good old days).

Edit: I forgot to mention Uruguay which does quite well.

edited 28th Dec '11 8:20:00 AM by Baff

I will always cherish the chance of a new beggining.

@USAF/Flyboy

"We had nukes an equivalent distance away from Moscow in Turkey. I wasn't saying that it wasn't fair what the Cubans did, only that the argument that "the US had nukes, so Cuba needed nukes too!" was absurd because getting nukes would make them worse off in that regard, as they would then be a fair nuclear target... "

It's perfectly reasonable to want to get nuclear weapons when you are under threat of attack from a power that A)has nuclear weapons itself B)has been blatantly trying to topple you and C) has used nuclear weapons in the past.

Also, no one is a fair nuclear target.

Truman would have disagreed with you.

I'm not exactly fond of the US or its nationalism, but with them being a democracy, they had way more legitimate use for a nuclear deterrent against the Soviet oppressors than said Soviets had for a nuclear deterrent against the US.

edited 28th Dec '11 8:42:35 AM by HiddenFacedMatt

"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart