Your point?

How oppressive can a nation be if you're allowed to move away whenever you want to?

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Er, no, because the story the OP posted said she flew to Cuba via Canada, not that she lived there.....

Matt

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I don't know, why don't you ask the several thousand people executed for their political position if they feel oppressed.

I'm not interested in what happened in Cuba 40 years ago, nor should anyone else be (besides the historians).

We should be interested in what is happening NOW.

Aside from which, your own link says that the "neutrality and factual accuracy" of your article is suspect.

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You have it backwards. They are the privileged citizens. Ever heard of Affirmative Action?Many are killed by other blacks and latinos. Others get thrown in jail because they get caught committing crimes. How is that anyone's fault but their own?What is wrong with materialism and "cruel and inhuman" capitalism? Is it inhuman to expect people to EARN their money/possessions? If the last sentence is about Iraq, then I understand your point.

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A federal judge ruled today that graphic pictures of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison must be released over government claims that they could damage America's image.

Someone should tell them that bad press can be prevented by not abusing prisoners in the first place. Censorship is only needed to preserve the good reputation of those who have tortured and/or murdered already.

human rights, tolerance ,and social justice, defend castro and cuba. Funny stuff.

Castro is a murderous dickhead, who like many, hides behind a populist message. Others to do so: Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao, and Lenin to name a few.That group was responsible for the murder of tens of millions of people all in the name of the "people".

Capitalism certainly has its issues and it hasn't been the most moral system. ALot of people have been exploited and killed. But please name a system in which people haven't been oppressed. Oppression is a human wide disease and is not endemic to any one form of government or economic system.

The problem is with the execution thereof and not the system itself. People are the problem. It is what we make of it.


BTW, the Bush/Hitler sig is just another classic example of the intolerant nature of these so called "progressives". If they represent progress, than humanity is in deep shit.

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The article cites examples of arrests and executions as recent as 2003. While the executions in 2003 was for a criminal act, the motivation in using execution as the form of punishment was political.

That is due to the lack of available records. Surprisingly Castro doesn't appear to be willing to share records of his human rights abuses.

Do you have any evidence that the cited article is wrong?

I understand your position, but tell me, why do you include Lenin in the list of national leaders.

Every revolution goes through a reactionary oppressive stage of some sort.
Then it cools down, the Cuba of today is not the Cuba of 1960.
It's a vacation destination for most of the world, and it will be a huge vacation destination for Americans when the embargo is lifted.
The US is the only country that still has an embargo on Cuba, and the reason for it has more to do with Floridas electoral votes than anything else.

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“The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine.”

Senator Thad Cochran, Mississippi (R)
on McCain

“I decided I didn’t want this guy anywhere near a trigger.”
Senator Pete Domenici, New Mexico (R)
on McCain

“My anger did not help my campaign ... People don’t like angry candidates very much.”

McCain on McCain

You know what sounded weird to me?
An impoverished black female chooses college in Havana...

If she was bright enough for medical school, happens to have been black and female, this young lady had a ticket to lots of really great schools right here at home.

Instead, she leaves her poor mother alone in the US (grieving over the death of her only other child as a soldier in Iraq coincidentally).

How many US soldiers have died in Iraq thus far?

The chances that this story is true seem pretty slim to me.

Not that it isn't...

EDIT: 235 black men and women have died in Iraq according to this link: http://www.kendrickmeek.us/ShowPage....eb20060326.asp
So of that couple hundred possible, one of them had a sister who abandon her grieving mother in the US and a chance for scholarships to good schools, to go live and study in Cuba?.

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...the government...is caving in...with their specious arguments couched in the...language of civil rights law, and that the churches ... likewise crumbling to...rhetoric which is nothing but heretical sophistry -- ~F Phelps
Platitudes like the one you offer are no different - and no less incorrect - than the jackass part-time Christian who says, "I'm going to heaven because I'm nice to people." It so misses the point.~Impugn

This is negative cheep CIA propaganda.

Prove it.

This is an example when even CIA is forced to admit the truth about CUBA

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/.../2102rank.html

Cuban life expectancy highest in Latin America in accordance with CIA report.
This according to both the CIA's world factbook and the WHO. At approximately 77 and one half years. This puts it just about equal with the United States, and in the top 25% of nations worldwide.

North Korea, at 71.65 years, is toward the middle of the rankings, and ahead of such countries as the Philippines (70.21), Iran and Indonesia.

Kind of interesting... You might think, from reading news reports in the West, that everyone in both those countries was starving to death, but evidently that is not quite the case. Unless, that is, the CIA world factbook is written by communists, I suppose.

For a tourist, Cuba can definitely be "paradise". It's a beautiful Island with some beautiful beaches, nice people and places to stay. I don't know, however, how ANYBODY in their right mind could call Cuba a "paradise" for those that live there. While some people (mostly party sympathisers, athletes and famous musicians) can have a fairly "comfortable" living, most people don't do so well.

While well meaning, US economic sanctions have served as a way for Fidel to rally people against the US and keep him in power longer. If I'm not mistaken, he is the leader to have been in power the longest currently in the world. Most Cuban-Americans are frustrated at how long Castro has been in power and they view the sanctions as barely enough. They feel that more action is needed, even if way down inside they agree that the sanctions are not going to do anything.

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Fortunatus sum! Pila mea de gramine horrido modo in pratum lene recta volvit!