Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking too, these old geezers are always stuck in the past refusing to move on....
Stuck in the past?
Castro's pissed off because of Obama's comments regarding political prisoners. Cuba and the Castro' are rather well know for it's consistent oppression of its citizens and jailing of political opponents. To say he's a geezer who is stuck in the past, is to entirely miss who Fidel Castro is. Castro's response is entirely expected, nobody should be the least bit surprised.
As Dark pointed out, one thing to note is that it is very common for aid sent to contries like this to end up in the hands of the head of state and, thus, be used less to help it's people and to help fund the person who put the nation's people where they are.
Castro's a classic communist dictator and Cuba's been run like most other modern communist countries. People don't flee that country on life rafts just for the heck of it.
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I also hope that within a few years the embargo (which they call a complete blockade) on Cuba will be lifted altogether; it's really quite useless and has done nothing but make the civilians suffer from what I had observed during my brief trip over there (to be fair though, Dark-chan would know better, so do feel free to correct me).
Of course, lifting it may not do much for them either. Who do you think will be the primary benefiary of trade? My guess is that it's not going to be the Cuban people and that much of what is made will be confiscated by the government. Moreover, I think dropping it without any
genuine concessions on human rights is a bad idea. Why should Castro be rewarded for abusing his people?
For example, the U.N. Oil for Food program in Iraq was designed to help feed the citizens who were suffering under existing sanctions. That's not what happened. Saddam never got them the food and used program to try and bribe the French and Russians into dropping sanctions on the country.
And based on this argument, it's tough to argue for sanctions against any country. How would this argument be any different when talking about North Korea, Iran, Syria, Saddam's Iraq, Burma, Zimbabwe, and so on? Wouldn't the people always suffer more under sanctions? I don't see Kim Jong Il, the Mullahs, and Mugabe behaving any different than Castro when faced with such an embargo.
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