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The Forum > Article Comments > One last favour: Australia to help out the US over Cuba? > Comments

One last favour: Australia to help out the US over Cuba? : Comments

By Tim Anderson, published 4/10/2007

Is Australia a lackey of the United States in its 'wars of imperialism' or a defender of human rights in Cuba?

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Leaving politics aside for a mo, how perverse that the sanctions have created a society in Cuba which will be the model for a future western world. A world without cheap energy, with a muscle powered agrarian revolution. A world of ingenuity and making-do. A world of universal education, reclaimed wisdom and community care.

Cubans don't describe the crash of their old economy as a depression. They recognise it as an inevitable turning point and call it, "The Special Time". Our special time is yet to come.

It's all the more amazing when you consider how much "junk mail" they cop from the Yanks.

Hopefully we will see the video, "The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil" on our TVs soon. Website here:

http://www.powerofcommunity.org/cm/index.php

Cuba is everything America is not.

Praise be!
Posted by Chris Shaw, Carisbrook 3464, Thursday, 4 October 2007 9:54:18 AM
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Maybe if we compared the number of political opponents in Cuba and the USA who have been imprisoned we might learn a lot about those two countries. Any sign of Ms Clinton, Mr Obama or others who oppose GWB being arrested for holding heterodox views?
Posted by Sage, Thursday, 4 October 2007 10:00:19 AM
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If the Australian Government could metaphorically extract themselves from GWB's orifice long enough to see what benefits could acrue from a positive attitude towards Cuba,they could benefit public health in this country as have countries like East Timor who has over 200 cuban doctors working throughout the country,a medical faculty in the University, hundreds of students studying medicine in Cuba where through necessity Cubans have abandoned reliance on expensive American monopolised pharmaceuticals to research and successfully develop their own industry.

There is a lot to be said for the Cuban's 'special time' when they have had to learn to be self sufficient. Necessity is the mother of invention.

Viva Cuba !!
Posted by maracas, Thursday, 4 October 2007 10:47:10 AM
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It is a embargo, not a blockade. Cuba is free to trade with the rest of the world, but like my friends in Mexico say. they dont make anything we want. sugar and cigars are produced by many many other countries. fidel had all of the citrus groves cut down back about 62 so there are not many oranges or grapefruits to sell, until very recently. As for providing for their people. average Mexicans have much better access to healthful drinking water and sufficient food. Back when the cubans were "the children of the soviets" as they say there, wastewater treatment plants were built, when the soviets left the plants broke down and have never been repaired. sewage is still collected by the pipes and the outfall still goes in the rivers. drinking water treatment in the average cuban rural household is primitive at best. no 100 micron filters there. people use a fine grained sandstone rock with a basin carved into it and the water drip filters thru it. The water comes from the local river, which likley is downstream from a old soviet era wastewater plant. It seems that instead of trying to fix their problems the government just blames everything on the embargo. If they cant fix their houses cause of shortage of materials why are they selling the Jamacians 5000 tons of cement a month
Posted by texcaver, Thursday, 4 October 2007 11:33:42 AM
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sage,

It is a federal offence in the USA to accept foreign funding for election campaigns. The "librarians" and others convicted of accepting foreign gold for political purposes in Cuba took it straight from the hands of American government officials. Anyone doing the same in the good old USA would suffer a similar penalty.

No-one has been prosecuted for it lately, because foreign-owned corporations based in the USA or donating through American branches are considered legitimate donors and provide a very wide loophole for sufficiently wealthy foreign individuals. Citibank, for instance, is a major donor, largely owned by the ibn Saud family and associates. The US government has long been bought by domestic capital, but the oligarchs of the rest of the "free world" own significant minority shares.

The USA has numerous "heterodox" political prisoners on its own soil:

http://www.prisonactivist.org/pps+pows/pplist-alpha.shtml

And of course it also maintains prisons elsewhere. Cuba, for instance. On the island of Cuba there are more political prisoners held without trial behind American barbed wire at Guantanamo than there are convicted political detainees in the gaols of Cuba proper.

The idea that a wealthy corporate Democrat like Hillary Clinton is somehow "heterodox" makes me laugh.
Posted by xoddam, Thursday, 4 October 2007 12:19:30 PM
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LEFTY RUBBISH?

Dear Timbo

Is far leftist orthodoxy now:

"Indeed. Robert Hill personally, as Defence Minister, directed Australian bombing raids and missile strikes in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He was personally responsible for the slaughter of many thousands of innocent Iraqis"

This is an offenssive comment matey and more significant than your Cuban sympathies.

Do you have proof that Australian pilots and soldiers killed thousands in Iraq or are you merely a sad Lefty nutcase?

Pete
Posted by plantagenet, Thursday, 4 October 2007 1:30:38 PM
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