The truth on the other hand, is the unshakable reality that has driven every sanction, every sabotage attempt, and every assassination plot since 1959: Cuba is a threat only to an idea. It is a threat to the imperial doctrine that a small, poor nation in America’s ‘backyard’ must not be allowed to choose socialism, to provide free healthcare and education, and homes to live without the permission of Washington.
For this sin of self-determination, the crime of building a society where capital is not god, Cuba has been punished with the most enduring economic siege in modern history. This is not an ‘embargo’, which I consider to be a sterile, political term. It is a total blockade, designed to constrict and cripple. It is enforced by a plethora of laws with names like the Helms-Burton Act, which terrorises foreign companies from trading with the Island and allows the US to seize ships in international waters. Its goal, as US politician Robert Torricelli once admitted, was to…
‘Wreak havoc’.

  • KimBongUn420@lemmy.ml
    5·
    5 hours ago

    The Cuban embargo made good political sense to pressure the Soviets when they were trying to use Cuba as a nuclear base to bomb us from, and any country would have done the same, in the face of the same threat.

    If you werent a lib you’d know that the US and NATO were the escalating/aggressing party, shitlib.

    • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
      11·
      3 hours ago

      I do know that, and I also know that the whole thing was over and all bombs removed from both Turkey and Cuba by 1963. The embargo continued to keep Russia from re-arming Cuba, and it worked. However, after the fall of the Soviet Union, it should have been lifted. Continuing it has been cruel, and dumb, and both Republican and Democrat presidents are guilty.

      • LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        1·
        1 hour ago

        okay but you see, you’re a liberal for not understanding that it was an act driven by cruelty and imperialist interest before the USSR fell, especially when they literally say that’s the fucking point of it

        Salient considerations respecting the life of the present Government of Cuba are:

        1. The majority of Cubans support Castro (the lowest estimate I have seen is 50 percent).
        1. There is no effective political opposition.
        1. Fidel Castro and other members of the Cuban Government espouse or condone communist influence.
        1. Communist influence is pervading the Government and the body politic at an amazingly fast rate.
        1. Militant opposition to Castro from without Cuba1would only serve his and the communist cause.
        1. The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship.

        If the above are accepted or cannot be successfully countered, it follows that every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. If such a policy is adopted, it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation, and overthrow of government.

        State Department, Memorandum, “The Decline and Fall of Castro,” Secret, April 6, 1960

        like, how much clearer could it be that the U.S. are the bad guys here, literally cartoonish villains monologuing about their evil plan to fucking starve people because it’s the only feasible way to end the communist government, which they seek to do for the express purpose of imperialist profit

        You said you’re “not a liberal” but like, come the fuck on, either you are a shitlib who thinks communism is evil (and thus, no evil is too great to commit to destroy communism) or you’re one of the dumbest motherfuckers to ever live. Which is it? Actually, I’m starting to think it’s both. I’d bet cash money you think communism = evil authoritarianism because they “starve their own people” and, simultaneously, being privy to the information that the people are being intentionally starved by the west has literally no impact on your perception of that

        I bet you support regime change in Venezuela for the same reasons despite multiple U.N. rapporteurs unanimously stating that it’s U.S. sanctions that are starving people