Cyprus-Forum.com

[unique_earthling]

when you keep people poor any dictator can abuse them, they dont have the will to fight it, when they are concerned with finding their next meal and in survival mode..

[Landis]

Cuban elections are farce. Elections only begain in 1976 and Castro has ran unopposed each turn. There is only one party and there is an unbelievable 98 percent turnout each turn. Castro took power in 1959. It only took him seventeen years to come up with pretend elections.

America never tried to muscle in on Cuba. Rusty as my brain is I do recall that Cuba had been in Spain's control for about 400 years until it ceded the island to the Americans after the Spanish-American War. The US granted the island independence several years later. The US did intervene in Cuba's political affairs somewhat because there were very large American investments in Cuba. A complete US embargo on Cuba began in 1962 following an arms embargo that began several years earlier. After Castro took power from the authoritarian Batista government the US recognized Casto's government for a few years. Americans held large interests in Cuba and legally owned land and businesses until Castro began his sweeping reforms, which nationalized all property and provided compensation to former owners of about 5 percent on the dollar. In other words, land and property were stolen from the legal owners who were offered almost no compensation. Sound familiar? Because of the nationalist reform, the US imposed the embargo. The Soviet Union compensated Cuba for most of what it lost because of the embargo. When the Soviet bloc crumbled so did much of Cuba's support. There have been some very minor relaxations of the embargo and it can be argued that the embargo has turned personal from political but the US did not just place an embargo for no reason. The US had very strong economic ties with Cuba that Castro severed first by seizing substantial assets.

The Bay of Pigs was a definite misstep and probably brought on the missile crisis. The missiles were under Russian control not Castro's. Che Guevara stated many times that had Castro had control of the weapons, they would have been fired at major US cities. Cuba is about 140 kilometers from the state of Florida. Can anyone expect there not to be a reaction to such threats?

This fashionable hatred of the US becomes so tiring. The US is neither the evil imperialist empire most like to believe nor the wonderful and benevolent democratic entity others want to embrace. It falls in the middle, it has its faults like every other nation.

[miltiades]

Landis America like most Western nations , has a democracy and a judiciary that is independent of government control . No nation on this planet can claim total utopia , but in the West we are constantly striving to make progress in areas that need improvement . Sometimes we do go overboard and make mistakes. The free press monitors and reports on the things that are considered wrongs. Most of the American haters of this world would never in a million years depart from the Western world . They blame everything on American thirst for oil , yet they drive to the petrol station always expecting to fill up , do they ever think that with out oil the West that they themselves are reliant upon for their daily bread , would come to a standstill.