To paraphrase Kate: Oh sweet Saint of salmonella hear my prayer….
It saddens me to know that there are enough people to fill a banquet hall who have never read (or more likely refuse to believe) about the 50 to 70 million Chinese people killed by Mao’s party and the continued practice of executing political prisoners to harvest their organs for transplant.
Hopefully one way…
Of course the trip is to ‘practice medicine’ on Fidel…
Cheers
Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
If I knew it had anything to do with the nuts at Rabble I would never consider it, BUT…….my wife and her sister went to Varadero last year and had a great time. All inclusive resort, very reasonable and the people were great. Toured Havana and a few other places. No negatives and she and I plan to go next year. A poor country to be sure, and a strong emphasis on communism but it did give the wife a fresh appreciation for Canada and the things we take for granted. Great cigars and good Rum. Cheap. Lack of variety in consumer products. Wife said it was like time travel back to the 60’s.
Yes, it’s important to help prop up totalitarian regimes…
“Of course the trip is to ‘practice medicine’ on Fidel…”
More likely Hugo Chavez.
Look, is “Rabble” the result of some kind of insane asylum blogging therapy experiment or something?
@peterj:
I too went to Varadero last winter. I found the hotel we stayed at dirty and improperly maintained, I found the food poorly prepared lacking flavour, and my travel companions who have been to all-inclusives around the world constantly compared Cuba to elsewhere and found it lacking, on beach, food, cleanliness, friendliness, you name it.
Long story short, there are better places to spend your tourism dollars. Places that do it better and don’t repress their citizens to do so. My suggestion would be to look around.
Posted by: fiddle at February 24, 2012 12:20 PM
Yes, it’s important to help prop up totalitarian regimes…
Every regime is totalitarian to some degree. That does not mean you agree with it. The Batista regime that preceded Castro was a dictatorship that had parallels with many dictators. The only difference was that the USA worked with them. Until last year , vacations to Egypt were popular. Totalitarian regime. Any difference ?
@ oxygentax at February 24, 2012 12:44 PM
Wife stayed at Barcelo Marina Palace and she found it very clean and food was varied and overall good. She is picky and wants to stay there again. We have been all over thw world and went to Costa Rica last year. We like to make up our own minds about a country and if they accept a Canadian passport they are fair game.
Peterj:
Had Egypt been fostering communism in nicaragua, Venezuela Angola and elsewhere and had siezed personal property of Canadians and Americans i would agree that it should have recieved the same treatment. Our ally has invoked a boycott of the Cuban regime. I stand with our ally.
Well, going to Cuba and staying at an all-inclusive doesn’t get you very much contact with the people, does it? The only Cubans allowed to interact with you will be those deemed politically reliable.
But you know, you can go there, rent a car, and tour the country unaccompanied. Stay at bed & breakfasts, that sort of thing. Meet and greet ordinary Cubans in their natural habitat. You can even be a little subversive; tell them about your life in Canada, how much you make in your job, what political freedoms we still possess.
Who knows? You might even do enough good, in a shiite-disturbing sort of way, to counter the harm done by subsidizing Castro and Co.
Gord Tulk at February 24, 2012 1:09 PM
“I stand with our ally”.
So do I but our ally has their own politics. Like i said, I like to see for myself. One of the few countries I have never been to (wife has) and it will probably be a one shot deal. As oxygentax said,there are better places. To be honest with you, the biggest draw for me will be the old cars that are still the mainstay of their transportation system. I’m a car nut and the wife took pictures of everything that made Detroit great in the past. Just me. politics in this case is secondary.
I have some friends who went to Cuba and got off the “beaten track” so to speak with not so pleasing results.
In one instance, one of my friends was on an escorted tour with a group of tourists. The tour guide managed to get them lost and they wound up in a neighborhood that was not friendly at all. The locals were sullen and hostile, and a policeman who came upon them was infuriated with the tour guide and told him to get out of there ASAP. No explanation was ever offered, but I suspect that tourists are only supposed to go to politically sanitized neighborhoods, which benefit financially from the tours. The inhabitants of the unsanitized areas are probably resentful of such favoritism.
Other friends of mine took their kids on a high-school baseball tournament in Cuba for a week. One of the activities was to attend a Cuban baseball game in a stadium in a non-tourist part of the island. The washroom facilities were filthy, but that was nothing compared to the near-riot that broke out when several of the locals had their tickets confiscated to make room for this group of gringos. The baseball team and the parents had to enter and exit the stadium through a gauntlet of police while angry locals threw garbage at them.
gordinkneehill at February 24, 2012 1:18 PM
“The only Cubans allowed to interact with you will be those deemed politically reliable”.
That is what the wife had anticipated but found it was not so. She is politically astute and was pleasantly surprised that the freedom to speak to anyone she chose to in Havana was unfettered. Street vendors, school children, waitresses, cabbies, cops etc. Most speak some degree of english and more than a few rolled their eyes when Castro came into the conversation. His brother Raul seems to garner some respect for bringing home ownership back to the people and wife said there is no animosity towards the USA and people look forward to a warming relationship with the USA.
Spending money in Cuba is doing nothing more than
donating funds to support a repressive Communist regime.
Tourists are doing ordinary Cuban people no favor by
helping to perpetuate their enslavement.
No Thanks
hey peter when you go, STAY!
You know what I love about tourist stories?
I love how the tourists always say how nice,or wonderful or friendly the local people are.
Well of course the people you meet are oh so friendly!
Your a tourist and your giving them MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!
Try TAKING money from them and see how friendly they are,LOL!
peterj, Battista was no prize, but you forgot to mention that under Battista more Cubans visited the USA as tourists then the other way around and they returned home instead of claiming refugee status. Also, there was no food rationing under Battista. Cuba used to export food but now the collective farms produce less than the privately owned farms used to and there is no fishing industry, because everyone would use the boats to escape. As a result food has been rationed since 1962! Go to wikipedia and search for ‘rationing in Cuba’ and read up. You may also wish to research the term ‘Potemkin village’. You might also want to go to babalublog and read more.
P.S. Guess which is the only country in the world where private ownership of an airplane is prohibited?
under Bautista, Cuba had the eighth highest living standard in the world- stong unions, subsidized uni and healthcare
Mubarak’s son, the heir apparent, wanted to open Egypt to direct foreign investment for their defunct economy.
The Nasserite socialist generals own everything, and didn’t want any competition. So they cut a deal with our new Prez in 2009- and Democrat operatives (aka NGO’S) such as Code Pink began ‘organizing’ Egypt- along with much of the Arab world.
The ‘Arab Spring’ is actually an anti-Czarist Bolshevik Revolution. Financed and organized by the same a**holes, by the way. (Trotsky was from New York)
If any should wonder why Iran and her proxies have gotten a free pass for 30 years-
THEY ARE BUYING PROTECTION FROM THE VERY PARTY THAT BROUGHT THEM TO POWER
don’t forget we are Cuba’s number one supplier- the US just insists he pay cash, thus the screaming.
Castro defaulted on all his other creditors
darn it, sorry – one more
I’ve heard Cuba’s main trade is “the nastiest 13 year-old whores in the Western Hemisphere”
Is this the reason for it’s popularity with Hollywood and the Left?
And while in Cuba you can accentuate your trip with “Canadian content” by visiting the luxurious resort and golf course at Guardalavaca beach — brought to you by, Canadian Mohawk Indians!
That’s right folks, those peace-loving Mohawks are investing more than .5 billion ($500,000,000.00) dollars of Canadian land claims settlement money in cooperation with the peace-loving Castros’ regime for the project: http://standing-feather.ca/cubanews.pdf
I guess it’s because Canada’s Mohawks have already resolved all the poverty and underdevelopment on Native reserves in Canada so they may as well start expanding and investing overseas in places like Communist Cuba. Besides, maybe they can get some tips from Castro on how to fight the remnant of nasty imperialist colonial capitalists oppressing the brave Mohawk Warriors in places like Caledonia. It’s a win-win situation.
I dont’t expect anyone to agree with me and never stated I support Castro or his regime. Wife says there are pictures of Che all over the place and he was a sadistic killer. Cuba under Castro picked the wrong side although they were doing OK until the Soviet Union fell apart. If Kennedy had followed through with the Bay of pigs invasion Castro would have been toast. He’s a doddering old fool who is checking out shortly and his brother is not far behind. There could well be changes that benefits the population. That will be up to POTUS and the next Cuban leader . As for me, I doubt if my visit will make the slightest difference. Have visited other commie countries and for some strange reason it has made no difference in anything. It has given me insight into how others live and always confirmed my own opinion that we live in the best place on earth. Anyone that really enjoys hypocracy should visit our good friend and ally Saudi Arabia. Getting carried away here, life is short, never been, wanna go see cars and they welcome Canadians. Good enough. Anyone that disagrees….I agree with every reason you don’t want to go, but bottom line is….don’t care.
You may care if they put you in jail and throw away the key. The law is whatever the dictator says it is. If it’s expedient to jail you, they will.
Keep a low profile…because, bottom line, I don’t care if they do 🙂
Hi peterj, by all means you go to Cuba and look at the neat 1950’s cars but avert your eyes from a suffering people because believe me, they are suffering. The problem is that your tourist dollars are not helping to ameliorate an intolerable situation and I just wished you and those 600,000 Canadian tourists realized that.
For some of those 600,000, things didn’t go so well. Google “canadians jailed in cuba”.
Before you think to yourself, “I would never do those things”, remember that you will have done whatever they say you did. It’s guilty until proven innocent.
@ fiddle
Did you swipe that slogan from the CHRC ? I think ricardo has the real story in this thread.
@ Posted by: nold at February 24, 2012 6:36 PM
“your tourist dollars are not helping ……….”
You are correct in the big scheme of things, but on a micro level that is debatable. The staff in these resorts is very happy to have gainful employment and make above normal wages. Hundreds of employees and the spin off is significant. Wife says the warmth displayed by staff towards tourists is genuine (she can smell BS a mile away)unlike some other resorts we have been to where it feels contrived.
peterj, that’s great, its your money. Just remember that Cuba is Castro’s island prison and a police state, which for you is probably a good thing; your own safety and the safety of those privileged enough to work inside its Potemkin Paradise depend on it.
@ nold
” Cuba is Castro’s island prison and a police state,”
Like I said, I just wanna see cars and old Spanish architecture. Buy some good cigars and drink a little good rum. If you wanted to split hairs though, it is also uncle Sam’s island prison and police state and has been since 1903. Guantanamo Bay.
The US was given a perpetual lease in 1903 on the 45 acres that comprise the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. The 10 year old Guantanamo Bay Detention Center is closed now according to a promise made by Obama; oh wait….
@peterj,
Check out this video of U.S. Senator Marco Rubio on how tourism dollars contribute to the brutalization of dissidents in Cuba: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJHVlOB1CRo
That being said, Communist countries are usually among the SAFEST countries in the world for tourists re: crime. Which is why many tourists come back with stories of a relaxing carefree vacation in places like Cuba. But tourists need to reflect on WHY (e.g. why is Cuba or China safer from crime than Mexico or even Costa Rica?).
The reason is simple: Police State. Communist dictatorships are Police States — not happy places to operate in even for petty criminals. The cops are brutal, the justice system is arbitrary, politicized and corrupt, and the prisons are inhumane. But the trade-off for being relatively “crime free” is that every citizen is treated as a potential criminal in a Communist Police State — common citizens have no rights. More importantly, “crime” is defined in political terms — the most significant crime you can commit is political, and even petty crime is understood in terms of a violation against the political-ideological order of things. If a citizen steals some fruit because she has a sick child at home and has already used up her Government-rationed quota of fruit for the month, then it is a “crime against socialism” not just common petty theft.
And tourists need to understand HOW the Police State is maintained in Communist countries: every square inch of Cuba is parcelled into small manageable local zones consisting of “blocks” which are overseen by Government “block captains” or “CDR’s” (Revolutionary Defence Committees). The committees or “captains” are government-trained spies acting as civilian police to control the activities of people in their neighbourhoods — e.g.: keep a record of people’s comings and goings, who is visiting whom, control of Government rations to households (ration cards also limit freedom of movement from one neighbourhood to another or one town to another), vigilantism of suspected “counter-revolutionaries” or dissidents, et cetera. In other words the highly organized political repression effected by Police State policing would naturally diminish the incidents of common crime as well.
That’s in addition to the regular Secret Police activity which is massive (that’s how the Castros have maintained power for 53 years), and the trained “watchers” in civilian clothes who could be assigned to surveil a particular tourist who may pique the Cuban government’s interest for one reason or another.
That avuncular old man apparently selling fruit in front of your hotel early every morning who you enjoy conversing with when you return from jogging? Well there’s a good chance that he’s not just a common fruit vendor, especially if you don’t see anybody else selling fruit. There’s a good chance that he’s a trained agent placed there to “talk up” the foreign tourists for political security purposes. Keep in mind that Russian is the second language of Cuba –taught in the schools for decades — not English. Although some things have changed, if you are “bumping into” a lot of Cubans fluent in English as a second language it may not always be coincidence…
Just to put the scale of the Communist spy/control project into perspective: declassified intelligence docs from former Communist East Germany demonstrate that roughly ONE out of every TWENTY citizens were spying for the STASI there. And the citizens who refused to spy for the STASI are discovering that there were entire tomes — thousands of pages — of surveillance info kept on them in STASI archives. Many former East German citizens are making access to information requests, reading their files and discovering Secret Police minutiae about them that that they didn’t even know about themselves. Experts believe that it could take more than 200 years to go through all the archives. It’s staggering.
@ ricardo
I like Rubio and understand his passion on getting rid of Castro and Raul. His electorate base and heritage is Cuban so it’s not hard to see where he’s coming from. On the other hand he is still fighting the cold war and one sign of improvement in Cuba is the release of the 46 dissidents, where not that long ago they would have simply disappeared. If the only outside contact in cuba is with people like Chavez,Putin etc ,I’m not sure that serves the long range objective either. Guess we will have a better idea when Fidel and Raul check out. Tourism over the last 10 years have seemed to make Cuba softer rather than harder. 2 million a year and 600M from Canada can have a watering down effect on hardline communists. Anyway, I’ll leave the politics to the big boys. Just wanna see cars. I’m still blown away by your revelation on the natives venture. That’s some serious coin likely to get Rubio pullin his hair out, but cold wars can’t last forever. I hope.
“but cold wars can’t last forever. I hope.”
Hey peterj you shouldn’t concern yourself too much about that; any cold war is pretty far removed from you and I’m not seeing too much collateral damage anywhere close to you or to me for that matter, but say; next time you’re down there enjoying those old cars, and the good cigars and the good rum give a thought to the way most of the Cubans have to live today, not some imaginary time off into the future when things MIGHT improve.
@ nold
I know what you are saying but I’m not naive enough to think I would make any difference one way or another. If things don’t work out after Fidel and Raul pass on and the window of opportunity closes to democracy, then that would be a shame. Can only hope for the sake of the people there that new leadership sees the light. At this time Canada does not see Cuba as a enemy but that could change. The USA and Cuba have been in a pis*ing contest for 50 years but that could also change. Not up to me. Like I said, any country that accepts a Canadian passport is fair game, and I wanna see cars and old Spanish architecture. One time trip and will probably never go back. USA politics is not Canada’s politics. Wife and I have vacationed in the Soviet Bloc and I can’t see much difference as the people all seem to live under despots and all hope for a better future. Several countries in Africa make Cuba look like heaven and the worst place we have ever been to is Saudi Arabia where the hate and mistrust of caucasians is shown openly and every move you make even as a tourist seems to be monitored. Japan treats all people not of Jap ancestry like second class citizens and all tourists with suspicion. The young love western culture and the old still dislike caucasians. China has people following you no matter where you go. Only live once and want to take it all in if possible , with no political agenda. Can’t change the world but we can see the world. Warts and all.
“Too often travel, instead of broadening the mind merely lengthens the conversation” Elizabeth Drew
@ nold
You are right, just look at the lenght of this thread. Enough:)
@peterj,
Actually, I don’t think Rubio is “stuck in the Cold War” at all — if anything he understates the dissident abuse in Cuba, which has been far worse over the last ten years than Republican Hispanic vote-seekers can imagine. Not just “disappearances” but a number of recent deaths. And everytime the Cuban regime releases a bunch of prisoners they re-arrest a whole bunch more. Btw, you obviously didn’t read the rest of my post — I don’t use the word “staggering” lightly when describing how Communist repression works.
Anyway, as you mentioned this thread is getting too long. And you seem to be trying to convince yourself about the legitimacy of your trip — far be it from me to try to convince you from convincing yourself.
But I would ask you to consider doing one thing if you do the tourist thing: at least do something subversive — do something to provide hope to a common Cuban or to encourage democracy, or smuggle a bit of help, etc. I haven’t been involved in activism for a number of years so I can’t suggest anything specific, but I think someone here mentioned the “babalublog” and there are plenty of other Cuban dissident orgs in U.S. and Canada who may have good suggestions for tourists.
Good luck, and peace brother.
(I would be curious to know who is allowed to own those awesome antique automobiles — common Cubans or Party members?)
To paraphrase Kate: Oh sweet Saint of salmonella hear my prayer….
It saddens me to know that there are enough people to fill a banquet hall who have never read (or more likely refuse to believe) about the 50 to 70 million Chinese people killed by Mao’s party and the continued practice of executing political prisoners to harvest their organs for transplant.
Hopefully one way…
Of course the trip is to ‘practice medicine’ on Fidel…
Cheers
Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
If I knew it had anything to do with the nuts at Rabble I would never consider it, BUT…….my wife and her sister went to Varadero last year and had a great time. All inclusive resort, very reasonable and the people were great. Toured Havana and a few other places. No negatives and she and I plan to go next year. A poor country to be sure, and a strong emphasis on communism but it did give the wife a fresh appreciation for Canada and the things we take for granted. Great cigars and good Rum. Cheap. Lack of variety in consumer products. Wife said it was like time travel back to the 60’s.
Yes, it’s important to help prop up totalitarian regimes…
“Of course the trip is to ‘practice medicine’ on Fidel…”
More likely Hugo Chavez.
Look, is “Rabble” the result of some kind of insane asylum blogging therapy experiment or something?
@peterj:
I too went to Varadero last winter. I found the hotel we stayed at dirty and improperly maintained, I found the food poorly prepared lacking flavour, and my travel companions who have been to all-inclusives around the world constantly compared Cuba to elsewhere and found it lacking, on beach, food, cleanliness, friendliness, you name it.
Long story short, there are better places to spend your tourism dollars. Places that do it better and don’t repress their citizens to do so. My suggestion would be to look around.
Posted by: fiddle at February 24, 2012 12:20 PM
Yes, it’s important to help prop up totalitarian regimes…
Every regime is totalitarian to some degree. That does not mean you agree with it. The Batista regime that preceded Castro was a dictatorship that had parallels with many dictators. The only difference was that the USA worked with them. Until last year , vacations to Egypt were popular. Totalitarian regime. Any difference ?
@ oxygentax at February 24, 2012 12:44 PM
Wife stayed at Barcelo Marina Palace and she found it very clean and food was varied and overall good. She is picky and wants to stay there again. We have been all over thw world and went to Costa Rica last year. We like to make up our own minds about a country and if they accept a Canadian passport they are fair game.
Peterj:
Had Egypt been fostering communism in nicaragua, Venezuela Angola and elsewhere and had siezed personal property of Canadians and Americans i would agree that it should have recieved the same treatment. Our ally has invoked a boycott of the Cuban regime. I stand with our ally.
Well, going to Cuba and staying at an all-inclusive doesn’t get you very much contact with the people, does it? The only Cubans allowed to interact with you will be those deemed politically reliable.
But you know, you can go there, rent a car, and tour the country unaccompanied. Stay at bed & breakfasts, that sort of thing. Meet and greet ordinary Cubans in their natural habitat. You can even be a little subversive; tell them about your life in Canada, how much you make in your job, what political freedoms we still possess.
Who knows? You might even do enough good, in a shiite-disturbing sort of way, to counter the harm done by subsidizing Castro and Co.
Gord Tulk at February 24, 2012 1:09 PM
“I stand with our ally”.
So do I but our ally has their own politics. Like i said, I like to see for myself. One of the few countries I have never been to (wife has) and it will probably be a one shot deal. As oxygentax said,there are better places. To be honest with you, the biggest draw for me will be the old cars that are still the mainstay of their transportation system. I’m a car nut and the wife took pictures of everything that made Detroit great in the past. Just me. politics in this case is secondary.
I have some friends who went to Cuba and got off the “beaten track” so to speak with not so pleasing results.
In one instance, one of my friends was on an escorted tour with a group of tourists. The tour guide managed to get them lost and they wound up in a neighborhood that was not friendly at all. The locals were sullen and hostile, and a policeman who came upon them was infuriated with the tour guide and told him to get out of there ASAP. No explanation was ever offered, but I suspect that tourists are only supposed to go to politically sanitized neighborhoods, which benefit financially from the tours. The inhabitants of the unsanitized areas are probably resentful of such favoritism.
Other friends of mine took their kids on a high-school baseball tournament in Cuba for a week. One of the activities was to attend a Cuban baseball game in a stadium in a non-tourist part of the island. The washroom facilities were filthy, but that was nothing compared to the near-riot that broke out when several of the locals had their tickets confiscated to make room for this group of gringos. The baseball team and the parents had to enter and exit the stadium through a gauntlet of police while angry locals threw garbage at them.
gordinkneehill at February 24, 2012 1:18 PM
“The only Cubans allowed to interact with you will be those deemed politically reliable”.
That is what the wife had anticipated but found it was not so. She is politically astute and was pleasantly surprised that the freedom to speak to anyone she chose to in Havana was unfettered. Street vendors, school children, waitresses, cabbies, cops etc. Most speak some degree of english and more than a few rolled their eyes when Castro came into the conversation. His brother Raul seems to garner some respect for bringing home ownership back to the people and wife said there is no animosity towards the USA and people look forward to a warming relationship with the USA.
Spending money in Cuba is doing nothing more than
donating funds to support a repressive Communist regime.
Tourists are doing ordinary Cuban people no favor by
helping to perpetuate their enslavement.
No Thanks
hey peter when you go, STAY!
You know what I love about tourist stories?
I love how the tourists always say how nice,or wonderful or friendly the local people are.
Well of course the people you meet are oh so friendly!
Your a tourist and your giving them MONEY!!!!!!!!!!!!
Try TAKING money from them and see how friendly they are,LOL!
peterj, Battista was no prize, but you forgot to mention that under Battista more Cubans visited the USA as tourists then the other way around and they returned home instead of claiming refugee status. Also, there was no food rationing under Battista. Cuba used to export food but now the collective farms produce less than the privately owned farms used to and there is no fishing industry, because everyone would use the boats to escape. As a result food has been rationed since 1962! Go to wikipedia and search for ‘rationing in Cuba’ and read up. You may also wish to research the term ‘Potemkin village’. You might also want to go to babalublog and read more.
P.S. Guess which is the only country in the world where private ownership of an airplane is prohibited?
under Bautista, Cuba had the eighth highest living standard in the world- stong unions, subsidized uni and healthcare
Mubarak’s son, the heir apparent, wanted to open Egypt to direct foreign investment for their defunct economy.
The Nasserite socialist generals own everything, and didn’t want any competition. So they cut a deal with our new Prez in 2009- and Democrat operatives (aka NGO’S) such as Code Pink began ‘organizing’ Egypt- along with much of the Arab world.
The ‘Arab Spring’ is actually an anti-Czarist Bolshevik Revolution. Financed and organized by the same a**holes, by the way. (Trotsky was from New York)
If any should wonder why Iran and her proxies have gotten a free pass for 30 years-
THEY ARE BUYING PROTECTION FROM THE VERY PARTY THAT BROUGHT THEM TO POWER
don’t forget we are Cuba’s number one supplier- the US just insists he pay cash, thus the screaming.
Castro defaulted on all his other creditors
darn it, sorry – one more
I’ve heard Cuba’s main trade is “the nastiest 13 year-old whores in the Western Hemisphere”
Is this the reason for it’s popularity with Hollywood and the Left?
And while in Cuba you can accentuate your trip with “Canadian content” by visiting the luxurious resort and golf course at Guardalavaca beach — brought to you by, Canadian Mohawk Indians!
That’s right folks, those peace-loving Mohawks are investing more than .5 billion ($500,000,000.00) dollars of Canadian land claims settlement money in cooperation with the peace-loving Castros’ regime for the project:
http://standing-feather.ca/cubanews.pdf
I guess it’s because Canada’s Mohawks have already resolved all the poverty and underdevelopment on Native reserves in Canada so they may as well start expanding and investing overseas in places like Communist Cuba. Besides, maybe they can get some tips from Castro on how to fight the remnant of nasty imperialist colonial capitalists oppressing the brave Mohawk Warriors in places like Caledonia. It’s a win-win situation.
I dont’t expect anyone to agree with me and never stated I support Castro or his regime. Wife says there are pictures of Che all over the place and he was a sadistic killer. Cuba under Castro picked the wrong side although they were doing OK until the Soviet Union fell apart. If Kennedy had followed through with the Bay of pigs invasion Castro would have been toast. He’s a doddering old fool who is checking out shortly and his brother is not far behind. There could well be changes that benefits the population. That will be up to POTUS and the next Cuban leader . As for me, I doubt if my visit will make the slightest difference. Have visited other commie countries and for some strange reason it has made no difference in anything. It has given me insight into how others live and always confirmed my own opinion that we live in the best place on earth. Anyone that really enjoys hypocracy should visit our good friend and ally Saudi Arabia. Getting carried away here, life is short, never been, wanna go see cars and they welcome Canadians. Good enough. Anyone that disagrees….I agree with every reason you don’t want to go, but bottom line is….don’t care.
You may care if they put you in jail and throw away the key. The law is whatever the dictator says it is. If it’s expedient to jail you, they will.
Keep a low profile…because, bottom line, I don’t care if they do 🙂
@ fiddle
Jeez, I’m not breaking any new trails here. Cuba is a fairly popular vacation destination with 600 000 + Canadian visitors a year.
http://www.canada.com/travel/Canadians+answer+Cuba+call/803858/story.html
Hi peterj, by all means you go to Cuba and look at the neat 1950’s cars but avert your eyes from a suffering people because believe me, they are suffering. The problem is that your tourist dollars are not helping to ameliorate an intolerable situation and I just wished you and those 600,000 Canadian tourists realized that.
For some of those 600,000, things didn’t go so well. Google “canadians jailed in cuba”.
Before you think to yourself, “I would never do those things”, remember that you will have done whatever they say you did. It’s guilty until proven innocent.
@ fiddle
Did you swipe that slogan from the CHRC ? I think ricardo has the real story in this thread.
@ Posted by: nold at February 24, 2012 6:36 PM
“your tourist dollars are not helping ……….”
You are correct in the big scheme of things, but on a micro level that is debatable. The staff in these resorts is very happy to have gainful employment and make above normal wages. Hundreds of employees and the spin off is significant. Wife says the warmth displayed by staff towards tourists is genuine (she can smell BS a mile away)unlike some other resorts we have been to where it feels contrived.
peterj, that’s great, its your money. Just remember that Cuba is Castro’s island prison and a police state, which for you is probably a good thing; your own safety and the safety of those privileged enough to work inside its Potemkin Paradise depend on it.
@ nold
” Cuba is Castro’s island prison and a police state,”
Like I said, I just wanna see cars and old Spanish architecture. Buy some good cigars and drink a little good rum. If you wanted to split hairs though, it is also uncle Sam’s island prison and police state and has been since 1903. Guantanamo Bay.
The US was given a perpetual lease in 1903 on the 45 acres that comprise the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. The 10 year old Guantanamo Bay Detention Center is closed now according to a promise made by Obama; oh wait….
@peterj,
Check out this video of U.S. Senator Marco Rubio on how tourism dollars contribute to the brutalization of dissidents in Cuba:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJHVlOB1CRo
That being said, Communist countries are usually among the SAFEST countries in the world for tourists re: crime. Which is why many tourists come back with stories of a relaxing carefree vacation in places like Cuba. But tourists need to reflect on WHY (e.g. why is Cuba or China safer from crime than Mexico or even Costa Rica?).
The reason is simple: Police State. Communist dictatorships are Police States — not happy places to operate in even for petty criminals. The cops are brutal, the justice system is arbitrary, politicized and corrupt, and the prisons are inhumane. But the trade-off for being relatively “crime free” is that every citizen is treated as a potential criminal in a Communist Police State — common citizens have no rights. More importantly, “crime” is defined in political terms — the most significant crime you can commit is political, and even petty crime is understood in terms of a violation against the political-ideological order of things. If a citizen steals some fruit because she has a sick child at home and has already used up her Government-rationed quota of fruit for the month, then it is a “crime against socialism” not just common petty theft.
And tourists need to understand HOW the Police State is maintained in Communist countries: every square inch of Cuba is parcelled into small manageable local zones consisting of “blocks” which are overseen by Government “block captains” or “CDR’s” (Revolutionary Defence Committees). The committees or “captains” are government-trained spies acting as civilian police to control the activities of people in their neighbourhoods — e.g.: keep a record of people’s comings and goings, who is visiting whom, control of Government rations to households (ration cards also limit freedom of movement from one neighbourhood to another or one town to another), vigilantism of suspected “counter-revolutionaries” or dissidents, et cetera. In other words the highly organized political repression effected by Police State policing would naturally diminish the incidents of common crime as well.
That’s in addition to the regular Secret Police activity which is massive (that’s how the Castros have maintained power for 53 years), and the trained “watchers” in civilian clothes who could be assigned to surveil a particular tourist who may pique the Cuban government’s interest for one reason or another.
That avuncular old man apparently selling fruit in front of your hotel early every morning who you enjoy conversing with when you return from jogging? Well there’s a good chance that he’s not just a common fruit vendor, especially if you don’t see anybody else selling fruit. There’s a good chance that he’s a trained agent placed there to “talk up” the foreign tourists for political security purposes. Keep in mind that Russian is the second language of Cuba –taught in the schools for decades — not English. Although some things have changed, if you are “bumping into” a lot of Cubans fluent in English as a second language it may not always be coincidence…
Just to put the scale of the Communist spy/control project into perspective: declassified intelligence docs from former Communist East Germany demonstrate that roughly ONE out of every TWENTY citizens were spying for the STASI there. And the citizens who refused to spy for the STASI are discovering that there were entire tomes — thousands of pages — of surveillance info kept on them in STASI archives. Many former East German citizens are making access to information requests, reading their files and discovering Secret Police minutiae about them that that they didn’t even know about themselves. Experts believe that it could take more than 200 years to go through all the archives. It’s staggering.
@ ricardo
I like Rubio and understand his passion on getting rid of Castro and Raul. His electorate base and heritage is Cuban so it’s not hard to see where he’s coming from. On the other hand he is still fighting the cold war and one sign of improvement in Cuba is the release of the 46 dissidents, where not that long ago they would have simply disappeared. If the only outside contact in cuba is with people like Chavez,Putin etc ,I’m not sure that serves the long range objective either. Guess we will have a better idea when Fidel and Raul check out. Tourism over the last 10 years have seemed to make Cuba softer rather than harder. 2 million a year and 600M from Canada can have a watering down effect on hardline communists. Anyway, I’ll leave the politics to the big boys. Just wanna see cars. I’m still blown away by your revelation on the natives venture. That’s some serious coin likely to get Rubio pullin his hair out, but cold wars can’t last forever. I hope.
“but cold wars can’t last forever. I hope.”
Hey peterj you shouldn’t concern yourself too much about that; any cold war is pretty far removed from you and I’m not seeing too much collateral damage anywhere close to you or to me for that matter, but say; next time you’re down there enjoying those old cars, and the good cigars and the good rum give a thought to the way most of the Cubans have to live today, not some imaginary time off into the future when things MIGHT improve.
@ nold
I know what you are saying but I’m not naive enough to think I would make any difference one way or another. If things don’t work out after Fidel and Raul pass on and the window of opportunity closes to democracy, then that would be a shame. Can only hope for the sake of the people there that new leadership sees the light. At this time Canada does not see Cuba as a enemy but that could change. The USA and Cuba have been in a pis*ing contest for 50 years but that could also change. Not up to me. Like I said, any country that accepts a Canadian passport is fair game, and I wanna see cars and old Spanish architecture. One time trip and will probably never go back. USA politics is not Canada’s politics. Wife and I have vacationed in the Soviet Bloc and I can’t see much difference as the people all seem to live under despots and all hope for a better future. Several countries in Africa make Cuba look like heaven and the worst place we have ever been to is Saudi Arabia where the hate and mistrust of caucasians is shown openly and every move you make even as a tourist seems to be monitored. Japan treats all people not of Jap ancestry like second class citizens and all tourists with suspicion. The young love western culture and the old still dislike caucasians. China has people following you no matter where you go. Only live once and want to take it all in if possible , with no political agenda. Can’t change the world but we can see the world. Warts and all.
“Too often travel, instead of broadening the mind merely lengthens the conversation” Elizabeth Drew
@ nold
You are right, just look at the lenght of this thread. Enough:)
@peterj,
Actually, I don’t think Rubio is “stuck in the Cold War” at all — if anything he understates the dissident abuse in Cuba, which has been far worse over the last ten years than Republican Hispanic vote-seekers can imagine. Not just “disappearances” but a number of recent deaths. And everytime the Cuban regime releases a bunch of prisoners they re-arrest a whole bunch more. Btw, you obviously didn’t read the rest of my post — I don’t use the word “staggering” lightly when describing how Communist repression works.
Anyway, as you mentioned this thread is getting too long. And you seem to be trying to convince yourself about the legitimacy of your trip — far be it from me to try to convince you from convincing yourself.
But I would ask you to consider doing one thing if you do the tourist thing: at least do something subversive — do something to provide hope to a common Cuban or to encourage democracy, or smuggle a bit of help, etc. I haven’t been involved in activism for a number of years so I can’t suggest anything specific, but I think someone here mentioned the “babalublog” and there are plenty of other Cuban dissident orgs in U.S. and Canada who may have good suggestions for tourists.
Good luck, and peace brother.
(I would be curious to know who is allowed to own those awesome antique automobiles — common Cubans or Party members?)