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Power

Cuba's Power Grid Collapses Again. And Then a Hurricane Hit (reuters.com) 120

Posted by EditorDavid from the dark-and-stormy-night dept.
"Millions of Cubans remained without power for a third day in a row Sunday," reports CNN, "after fresh attempts to restore electricity failed overnight and the power grid collapsed for the fourth time — all before the arrival of Hurricane Oscar."

A report from Reuters notes it was the fourth power grid failure in 48 hours. "On the forecast track, the center of Oscar is expected to continue moving across eastern Cuba tonight and Monday, then emerge off the northern coast of Cuba late Monday and cross the central Bahamas on Tuesday," the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. The Communist-run government canceled school through Wednesday — a near unprecedented move in Cuba — citing the hurricane and the ongoing energy crisis...

Cuba had restored power to 160,000 clients in Havana just prior to the grid's Sunday collapse, giving some residents a glimmer of hope... Energy and mines minister Vicente de la O Levy told reporters earlier on Sunday he expected the grid to be fully functional by Monday or Tuesday but warned residents not to expect dramatic improvements.

It was not immediately clear how much the latest setback would delay the government's efforts.
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Cuba's Power Grid Collapses Again. And Then a Hurricane Hit More

Cuba's Power Grid Collapses Again. And Then a Hurricane Hit

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  • Most US news sites convert everything to US imperial units. I don't feel like doing conversions.

    As a embargoed country, is Cuba entitled to humanitarian relief?

    If so, will a certain country get pissy, when Cuba gets foreign aid?

    • Re:Questions (Score:5, Insightful)

      by williamyf ( 227051 ) on Monday October 21, 2024 @12:49AM (#64880325)

      As a embargoed country, is Cuba entitled to humanitarian relief?

      Yes

      If so, will a certain country get pissy, when Cuba gets foreign aid?

      Nope.
      In fact, the USoA will probably offer to cooperate.
      If the Cuban Govt. will accept aid from the USoA or not, it remains to be seen.
      99% sure the Aid will be rejected if it is done through the military, like the US Army Core of engineers, of hospital ships from the US Navy, or similar things...

    • Everything needs to use a banana for comparisons. That's what Americans understand. How many banana calories are being lost due to this outage?

  • why haven't they rioted yet? The police state must be quite strong still.

  • Abject Failure of the Cuban Government (Score:5, Interesting)

    by physicsphairy ( 720718 ) on Monday October 21, 2024 @01:14AM (#64880357)

    Even China long ago realized that pure Communism was not a route to success [ft.com]

    Chinese officials have been perplexed and frustrated at the Cuban leadership’s unwillingness to decisively implement a market-oriented reform programme despite the glaring dysfunction of the status quo, the people said.

    You would think that maybe a close pal like, idk, Venezuela, would at least be able to help with the fuel problem. Except oil production there significantly collapsed under Hugo Chavez [forbes.com].

    It's taken a bit longer than the Soviet Union, but communism in Latin America may be reaching its point of collapse as well.

    • Surely the 66 years of embargo had nothing to do with it.

      • Re:Abject Failure of the Cuban Government (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Ed Tice ( 3732157 ) on Monday October 21, 2024 @08:30AM (#64880969)
        Your comment reads as if there might be a sarcastic tone. If being said without sarcasm, it's pretty accurate. Russia gave Cuba $1.3B to improve energy infrastructure. Cuba could use it as they saw fit including buying energy infrastructure components from Russia. You can be pretty sure that no number of years of a US embargo caused Cuba to entirely misappropriate that money.

        • If the US embargo has no effect as you imply, then why keep it going? You can't have it both ways. Either it has an effect, then admit it, or it has no effect, then you're basically advocating to end it.

          • The embargo has an effect. That doesn't mean that it's the cause of every single failure of the Cuban government. Ideally the embargo would have a big enough effect that the Cuban government would see the error of it's ways, recognize human rights, reject imperialistic communism, and start holding free and fair elections. Unfortunately, it hasn't yet had that affect. Maybe it never will.

            Part of the reason that the US embargo doesn't have much effect is because the effects of the embargo are offset by

            • I agree with some of your points but some others make it clear that we can't find an understanding. Like comparing communism to speeding and the US to a policeman. I'll just mention three things. First, Cuba was not great at all before Castro, and arguably worse in terms of personal freedom. Second, the free US isn't as great as you seem to think it is, for example in terms of healthcare it could learn a few things from Cuba (or any country really). Third, using "hosting foreign missiles" as an excuse is on

              • What would you call communism? Because I'm not really great at labeling things. But I do know that there isn't a single place in the communist world that I would even visit. The US is far from perfect and our domestic politics are a mess. But the fact is that the cold war was fought primarily at the expense of the US to the benefit of the world. As far as healthcare, yes, the US could learn from Cuba or just about anywhere else including Taiwan. I have never heard of hosting foreign missiles to be one

      • They chose communism. They wanted to help destroy the West. Oh gosh, the US wouldn't trade with them. Can't imagine why?

        Now they're fucked. Where is the world's smallest violin? Oh that's right, I stored it next to my giant bucket of common sense and my bookshelf of history books that explains these things.

        Next up, you'll do what? Blame Trump?

        Castro fucked Cuba. They're still fucked. Because of Castro. 100% because of Castro. Post-Castro they continue to follow Castro policies. They are still fuc

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Oil production severely collapsed after US started sanctioning Venezuela, such that they could no longer invest money back into their oil sector. Not just the US sanctioned Venezuela but other countries like the UK who basically stole billions of USD that Venezuela had deposited into their accounts. All of this was frozen, and therefore no more maintenance could be done.

      • Re:Abject Failure of the Cuban Government (Score:5, Insightful)

        by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Monday October 21, 2024 @04:36AM (#64880565) Journal

        Oil production severely collapsed after US started sanctioning Venezuela, such that they could no longer invest money back into their oil sector.

        That's the most nonsensical circular reasoning I've heard in a while. And today I watched some political ads.

        • Re:Abject Failure of the Cuban Government (Score:4, Interesting)

          by mjwx ( 966435 ) on Monday October 21, 2024 @08:03AM (#64880897)

          Oil production severely collapsed after US started sanctioning Venezuela, such that they could no longer invest money back into their oil sector.

          That's the most nonsensical circular reasoning I've heard in a while. And today I watched some political ads.

          When US sanctions went in it limited what Venezuela could do in regards to banking and using US dollars (erm... this is exactly what sanctions are meant to do). So was almost literally a case of Chavez having money but not being able to buy anything with it.

          It's a gross oversimplification, there are many other factors to the collapse of their oil sector, not the least of which would be the loss of skilled personnel, a skilled oil worker could easily get a job anywhere else in Latin America, if they speak English, Europe and North America opens up as well.

          Knowing a few Venezuelans in Colombia, I'm definitely no defender of the Maduro (Presidente Bobo) regime or Chavistas. The sanctions are doing exactly what they're meant to, sadly for the Vennies, Maduro controls the military, so controls the country with enough useful idiots still supporting him in the general population.

          • For once sanctions actually had the intended effect.

            Why do you think sanctions were imposed in the first place? Was it random? Just the US waking up one morning and deciding to fuck a random country? Why oh why oh why....? It's a mystery.

          • What oil equipment did Venezuela want to buy that they couldn't?

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by mjwx ( 966435 )

              What oil equipment did Venezuela want to buy that they couldn't?

              Anything produced in the west, you'd be surprised how few non-western sources there are for heavy plant, marine diesels, et al... Just look at the JCB catalogue. Even the rigs that get made in Thailand or South Korea use a shit-ton of equipment that is entirely reliant on tech and parts produced solely in highly developed nations.

              Other nations haven't even managed to make a decent microprocessor equivalent to a x86-64 of 20 years ago or an ARM of 10 years ago. Russia's aviation industry ground to a halt

              • They also kicked out Exxon and ConocoPhillips and any company willing to help them get that stuff. https://www.forbes.com/sites/r... [forbes.com]

                Russia's aviation industry has not "ground to a halt." They are building replacement parts within Russia. It's taken some time to adjust, but they will. Russia has a strong local aviation industry, and they can build what they need.

    • Re:Abject Failure of the Cuban Government (Score:4, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Monday October 21, 2024 @04:37AM (#64880571) Homepage Journal

      If communism really is the problem then why doesn't the US lift the sanctions and just let it fail on its own? Then the whole world would be in no doubt about how terrible the Cuban system is, even when given every opportunity to succeed.

      Claims that it is all due to communism are somewhat undermined when you have your finger tipping the scale.

      • Re:Abject Failure of the Cuban Government (Score:5, Insightful)

        by dfghjk ( 711126 ) on Monday October 21, 2024 @05:34AM (#64880655)

        and that's putting it kindly.

        Why not let Communism succeed or fail on its own merits, then learn something from it to improve our own system? And if it fails, where is the compassion?

        People love to look at the world as a handful of political enemies rather than billions of vulnerable people.

        • Re:Abject Failure of the Cuban Government (Score:5, Insightful)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Monday October 21, 2024 @05:39AM (#64880663) Homepage Journal

          Paranoia over socialism in the US hurts a lot of Americans too.

          • Re:Abject Failure of the Cuban Government (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Ed Tice ( 3732157 ) on Monday October 21, 2024 @08:38AM (#64880991)
            It's not paranoia when a country with the world's largest nuclear arsenal has imposing socialism on the US as their primary foreign policy goal.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              Are you talking about China or Russia?

              Because neither are communist.

              • We can debate what China and Russia are. But, whatever label you apply, I don't want their brand of government here. Russia had, as a primary policy goal, to spread their brand of communism around the world.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

              Not really. Various versions of Marxism *predicted* that there would be communist revolutions everywhere. Some shit disturbers proposed that it was the duty of a good communist to help it along, but except for the most extreme everyone else was just supposed to pick the clearly superior system by looking at the good examples. The US used exactly the same strategy against communist states, for example inventing the supermarket and demonstrating how wonderful and abundant capitalism was.

              The USSR itself pretty

              • The USSR adopted those policies only after concluding that it wouldn't be able to spread communism around the entire world. Marx's original tenet was that communism could only work if it were universal. But, as you say, by that time the USSR was just another autocracy and had lost any of the communist ideology.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

                  Yeah, in the 20s. And before that actively spreading socialist revolution wasn't any kind of official policy as you claim. Trotsky was a big proponent of that, but he had an unfortunate accident with an ice axe.

                  It's not paranoia when a country with the world's largest nuclear arsenal has imposing socialism on the US as their primary foreign policy goal.

                  So given the timeline, unless you're proposing the USSR had nukes in the 20s (which indeed would have made it the world's largest arsenal), we're agreeing it

                  • The USSR clearly didn't have nukes in the 20s. But Russia and the USSR have been a constant threat to the United States since ever since the communists took over. Yes, the threat has evolved and changed over time. But it has been constant. Trying to spread communism to the US. Using economic assistance to war ravaged countries to force them into a military alliance that was a threat to both the US and Europe. Trying to host nuclear missiles in Cuba. Invading Ukraine. The USSR and Russia have chosen to

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

                      The problem with propaganda is that once it seeps in, you'll say anything to support your belief in it. You claimed:

                      It's not paranoia when a country with the world's largest nuclear arsenal has imposing socialism on the US as their primary foreign policy goal.

                      That was never the case. But you're still going. A little handwaving here, a little Newspeak there.

                    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

                      I guess all of Wikipedia is propaganda if you're a puppet of the Soviet Union. If you think it's paranoia, feel free to find somewhere that people are starving to death due to the forced imposition of collectivized farming and try taking up residence. For the rest of us, it's called properly evaluating the threat.

                      Communism is a plague worse than cancer that ruins everything it touches and we don't want it here in the US.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Ed Tice ( 3732157 )
          There's plenty of compassion where communism fails. Look at the former Warsaw pact countries that are now US allies and part of the European Union. Communism is not succeeding or failing on its own anywhere. It failed in the Soviet Union and if failed in China. Both places recognized the error of their ways and changed at least partially to market systems. However, before the Soviet Union failed, they installed puppet states in ostensibly communist countries where the entire purpose of the country and

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by ArchieBunker ( 132337 )

        Obama lifted sanctions and Trump put them back. Because apparently communism is still scary to republicans.

        • Re:Abject Failure of the Cuban Government (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Ed Tice ( 3732157 ) on Monday October 21, 2024 @08:39AM (#64880993)
          Communism is, hopefully, scary to everybody regardless of political affiliation. The policy debate shouldn't be whether communism is scary or not but rather what's the best way to help countries afflicted with it overcome and adopt democratic reforms. There is an argument to be made for engagement and an argument to be made for isolation. There isn't an argument that Communism isn't scary. It has decimated every place it's ever touched.

          • While just about every form of economy deserves to be vilified in some way, communism itself isn't the problem. It's the leadership structure that emerges that imposes a so-called communism. It's not very communal to have a dictator, for example. Having corrupt people in power and an elite class that doesn't live at the level of the "commune" is not part of communism as an idealized concept either. These are just the types of people that would put something like this into effect and call it communism.

            Th

            • I believe that what you are pointing out is that authoritarianism, in general, doesn't work. And communism is just one type of authoritarian government. The relative contribution to failure between the authoritarianism and the non-market economy is something that might be debated for eternity. However, neither has a very good track record. And, yes, I agree that every economic system has its drawbacks. Capitalism is certain the worst form of economy except for all of the others that have been tried. B
              • Disclaimer: I'm not in support of any form of Communism

                Its a tired but true statement that True Communism has never really been achieved, they've stopped at the stage where there is a dictator and never moved past that. There is supposed to be a final stage where government does not exist. Getting there seems like you need the philosopher king that has perfect knowledge, perfect prediction capabilities, perfect wisdom, and absolute power. Its like hoping to find a true maxwell's daemon. I think there are

            • When you were in school I assume you worked hard and got good grades.
              And the kids who fucked around smoking behind the bleachers instead of working hard got bad grades.

              Did you ever consider going to the teacher and asking to have your grades averaged out with the losers who didn't work? Of course you didn't. That's communism in a nut shell. Take from productive people and share equally with lazy people. Destroy incentive to work hard or do better because no matter how hard you work you won't do any bett

              • Destroy incentive to work hard or do better because no matter how hard you work you won't do any better than those losers smoking out.

                Buddy, this isn't the 1950s anymore. Working hard doesn't get you shit unless you're already wealthy. A few people like Mark Cuban have lucked out but the number of everyday people getting rich enough to stop working is pretty low. In fact a millionaire recently tried the experiment of starting over from scratch. He eventually had to stop because of failing health. https://www.ladbible.com/lifes... [ladbible.com]

              • That's not really communism, though maybe it's how some communist countries acted. Communism at the heart is that workers control the means of productions - you don't work hard so that your bosses decide to pay you or not, you work hard because you're a co-owner. Ideally, the hard workers in a cooperative force the lazy bums to get off their asses.

            • Most of the causes of the communist country's governance comes from them forming through a violent civil war. So there's a big tendancy to continuea more militaristic governance at the start, because a sizeable portion of the population is opposed. The same thing happens the other way too, as in the Fascists winning in Spain or parts of South America and keeping a tight control over the population. Ie, start off life as authoritarian and it becomes hard to change, so you could say that communism as define

          • Communism is, hopefully, scary to everybody regardless of political affiliation.

            What scares you about the various communist countries today? Cuba and Vietnam aren't exactly keeping me up at night.

        • Communism should be scary to everyone. Go find someone who's escaped a hard communist country, and have a talk with them. It's enlightening.

      • Re:Abject Failure of the Cuban Government (Score:5, Insightful)

        by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Monday October 21, 2024 @07:58AM (#64880881)
        Why? So many reasons.

        Because scratching the surface of a so-called socialism and communism usually reveals a plain, boring, malignant, old-fashioned dictatorship/oligarchy. And more successful/enlightened/wealthy societies are totally within their rights to isolate from that toxicity.

        Because socialism and communism are a bit like parasites or tumors - they can extend their lives by sucking resources from healthier societies and economies. And, what does an organism do when it detects that it’s been parasitized? It attempts to isolate and reject the parasite.

        Socialisms and communisms are also a bit like viruses. They spread, and can only thrive by tearing down and consuming other organisms. Russia is the most obvious example of this, trying to forcibly spread their system.

        Many socialisms and communisms behave like scavengers as well. They prey on their weaker marginal neighbors, and do their best to weaken the stronger ones before pouncing.


        I’m not ignorant of history. The US has been predatory and expansionist, but that’s in the past. We’re no longer trying to expand our borders. Bush was the last US president who was big on forcibly spreading democracy at gunpoint. While I happen to believe our system is quantifiably superior, thank god we’re past that neo-conservative bs. But we’re under no obligation to sit still while Russia, China, North Korea and Iran work together to knock over other countries.

        I’m also aware that socialism has some truly useful ideas, mixed in with a ton of worthless crap. Our society has already ripped out the good pages, implemented them, and tossed the rest of the mess in the trash. Hello social security, a nationalized military, federal taxation, medicaid, and other good stuff. But there’s a huge difference between a full-blown socialism like cuba, which is a flaming dumpster fire, and a few good socialist policies grafted onto a healthy democratic capitalism, which would be the US.

        There;s something in this post to make everyone angry. Downmod incoming.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          You should come to Europe and see how socialism works.

          • Re:Abject Failure of the Cuban Government (Score:4, Interesting)

            by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Monday October 21, 2024 @08:29AM (#64880961)
            Europe isn’t socialist. It’s democratic and capitalist, with a bit of the best socialist ideas grafted onto the side. There’s a BIG difference between those two things. That difference is lost on a lot of people on the far left.

            Democracy and capitalism are like meat, vegetables and potatoes. That’s what makes a healthy meal.

            Socialism is like black pepper. A little bit on top can improve things, but a little goes a long way. And only an idiot tries to make a full meal from black pepper only.

            And communism is like arsenic. It isn’t on the menu at all unless a society is straight-up murderous or suicidal.

            • Re:Abject Failure of the Cuban Government (Score:5, Insightful)

              by Geoffrey.landis ( 926948 ) on Monday October 21, 2024 @09:10AM (#64881071) Homepage

              Europe isn’t socialist. It’s democratic and capitalist, with a bit of the best socialist ideas grafted onto the side.

              The difficulty is that different people use vastly different definitions of what socialism is.

              I've always gone with the purely economic definition, but if you go with a definition of the government providing social services to the population-- and this is a lot of what what actual socialists were about in the late 19th and early 20th century--yes, you could call much of Europe socialist.

              Also, keep in mind that not all socialism is Marxism. Contemporary Europe very much follows the Fabian model of socialism, and not at all following the Marxist model.

            • If that wasn't their point, then they wooshed themselves.

              And no - communism as an economic structure has likely never existed in the modern world, so we can't really say that. It's used as a name for a corrupt thing that gives money to elites in power while keeping everyone else equally poor.

              • communism as an economic structure has likely never existed in the modern world

                It certainly has existed and in fact does exist now, for example in kubbutzim. Communism actually works pretty well, but only in very small communities with extremely high social cohesion, where hard work and innovation can be rewarded directly through social recognition without the need to intermediate that recognition through money. it just doesn't scale beyond a couple of hundred people because for it to work everyone literally needs to know and respect, if not necessarily like, everyone else.

                I suppos

                • If we're going to the microcosm level then I'm sure there are many households that function this way internally. But at least you understand my point which is that seemingly nobody knows what communism actually is.

                  • Yeah, I think we're largely in agreement, though I'd say lots of people do know what communism is... but that the set of people who know what communism is and argue strongly either for or against it, including calling people/systems communist, don't.

              • This is the old canard about "communism is great but only if someone would do it right! Let's keep trying!"... 100 million deaths and unending misery later.

                • No, communism is probably just impossible with a large group the size of a nation. But anything that is attempted is almost certainly not actually communism. Or even actually trying to be. The important thing is that we put our focus on the actual problems, so we don't waste time talking about the wrong things.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

              There are multiple social democracies in Europe.

              The problem Americans have understanding this is that in Europe socialism is much more than an economic system. Those countries are capitalist, but for example the government might own much of the stock market, or negotiate on behalf of workers. Healthcare is almost universality socialist in Europe.

              European democracies are often socialist as well, with distributed power structures and strict limits on corporate participation and the role of money.

              • Europe also has had the ability to push military spending to social needs for some time. With Russia acting up on their border, they're learning maybe they need to pay more attention to that.
                In a similar vein, i keep telling my friends in the UK and The Netherlands that they better pray the US never goes universal healthcare. Because the ridiculous costs US citizens pay that funds the drug corporations allows them to offset the lower costs there. If that goes away, prices will rise across the board.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by mjwx ( 966435 )

        If communism really is the problem then why doesn't the US lift the sanctions and just let it fail on its own? Then the whole world would be in no doubt about how terrible the Cuban system is, even when given every opportunity to succeed.

        Claims that it is all due to communism are somewhat undermined when you have your finger tipping the scale.

        Because it's mired in politics. I honestly think the sanctions have done more to keep Communism on life support in Cuba than anything else.

        When the revolution came to Cuba, a lot of land and money owned by Americans were seized and loads of migrants fled Cuba to the US who again, owned land and had other money tied up, so for the last 60 odd years compensation has been a huge sticking point with the Cubans who fled to the US. Look at how red Florida turned in the 2000s on just the insinuation that the US

      • Re:Abject Failure of the Cuban Government (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Ed Tice ( 3732157 ) on Monday October 21, 2024 @08:33AM (#64880971)
        The question seems to be rhetorical. But if you are looking for an accurate answer, I'll give you one. There aren't any communist countries other than Russia and China who chose it on their own. Pretty much all other communist countries are places where Russia installed a puppet leader as part of a strategy to also turn the US into a Russian puppet state. Those countries aren't embargoed because they are communist per se. They are embargoed because their governments were installed by Russia as a means to harm the United States. Cuba specifically wanted to host nuclear weapons so that Russia could wipe the US off the map before we even noticed. That would get rid of the US nuclear deterrent and make the entire world ripe for Russian imperialism. You really think it's a good idea to help those governments?

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by qaz123 ( 2841887 )
          The USSR didn't install Castro and his regime in Cuba. Cuba is one of the countries that chose socialism on their own.
          • What are you talking about? The Communist Part of Cuba was founded by Comintern which was created by Russia for the specific purpose of spreading their brand of communism around the world. Cuba only chose communism on it's own for really bad values of choosing. And the first thing they did was install a nuclear missile site for Russia's use.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by qaz123 ( 2841887 )
              Comintern was dissolved in 1943. Even if the USSR helped the communsit party of Cuba that doesn't mean the regime was a puppet installed by the USSR. By the way Comintern was involved in founding of the Communist party of China too. Read about the history of CCP. But you said China chose it on their own
              • That's a fair point. But the Cuban government was (and is) indeed a Russian puppet. Cuba was willing to host Russian nuclear weapons even at the risk of a hot war. No other country in history has ever done this. I'd love to learn something new, but the USSR subsidized Cuba. I do not believe the USSR subsidized China when the communists took over.

            • This was also Stalin who insisted that USSR be the chief of all international communism. Which is precisely where George Orwell (a socialist) came up with the "more equal than others" line.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        Because - Communism in the ideological sense isnt really the problem. It was part of the threat of Soviet Expansionism during the cold war but the real issue with Cuba is the revolutionaries appropriated a lot of property of US nationals.

        The issue is THEFT

        The current Cuban regime MUST be made to pay or return the property full stop! There is can and should never be any negotiation on that point.

        If you ask me any aide to Cuba should have always been and should always be predicated on their complete and unc

        • The big problem, for America at the time, was trade unions. This was pushed back against very fervently, and even today trade unions are seen as un American in many circles. Unions lead to socialism, socialism leads to communism, and that was the belief. Never mind that mistreating or exploiting workers to maximize profits is what leads to unions.

      • Ignoring the geopolitical reasons of the U.S. not wanting anyone using Cuba to place missiles, etc. I do actually agree with you. If we're not at war with some country there's no reason to prevent anyone in the U.S. from doing business in or with another country. Anyone who gets ripped off can be told that they should have known better and to go pound sand. It would also remove the ability of these countries to blame their failures on U.S. sanctions as opposed to their own economic failures.

        However, I ca
      • You can't have "communism is the solution to all economic problems" and "we need free trade with the west" logically work together. In a sense, embargoes are just forcing them to make their system work, which is doesn't. The fact they haven't already been overthrown is probably because the Cuban Government kept letting people run to the US and the US accepted them. If THAT had been blockaded, they'd have failed years ago.

  • Huge tracts (Score:5, Insightful)

    by necro81 ( 917438 ) on Monday October 21, 2024 @07:32AM (#64880811) Journal
    I built this country up from nuthin'. When I started here all there was was swamp. They said I was daft to build a Communist paradise in the middle of a swamp. But I built it all the same - just to show 'em. It lost its soviet patron and sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one! That lost its charismatic founder and sank into the swamp. So I built a third one. That lost its electric grid, got hit by a hurricane, then sank into the swamp.

    But the fourth one stayed up! And that's what you're going to get, lad: the strongest Communist paradise in these isles. Viva Cuba!

  • Hey, but the healthcare is free!

  • What does Michael Moore think about this?
  • Why are countries like Canada, and the US, offering massive support packages? This is a prefect case where international support should be plentiful, and the fact it isn't, is a true black mark on many current governments.
  • ...they should really be worried about the Fire Nation attacking next.

  • One of the smartest (and probably cheapest in the long run) thing the US could do is send a few US-flagged crude oil tankers down to Cuba to fuel them up.

    Doesn't have to be military. Hell, doesn't even have to be US-registered. Just some big-assed tankers with a big-assed US flag flapping on the stern! The word would get around fast enough, once those lights start coming back on.

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