30,000 Cuban doctors currently active in 67 countries - many in Latin America and Africa, but also European nations including Portugal and Italy
@kravietz what a ‘surprise’ that the ‘great’ British propaganda organisation has a negative Cuba story. Just literally, what we’re the fucking odds? Don’t believe the BBC narrative. They’ve done more to undermine positive steps from Corbyn for a social safety-net and a NHS that’s funded properly. All crap, fake partisan reporting 💩
Or just arguing because someone dared to say people in Cuba are exploited?
@kravietz as if. I’m well read. The timing of this is enough to make anyone suspicious of the provenance of these assertions
If you have just a little bit of self-respect, how can you support a regime whose whole economic model is based on *preventing its own citizens from leaving the country?*
Maybe I'm a bit more sensitive to such oppression because I was born in country that operated just on this principle... When you are not free to leave you country you are nothing more than property of the state - and I wish Western leftists admitted that eventually.
@kravietz Moderate Rebels covered this: the US is asking countries to refuse help from Cuban doctors asking them to recognise them as human trafficking victims. This is mainstream media cooperation with a deeply racist neoliberal State department. Pretending that ‘because you can leave’ you are ‘Free’ is a nonsense; go anywhere you like and you’re debt with follow you.
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/tu-quoque
Can you explain how in your understanding a ban on leaving your country - as NK, Cuba and USSR did - has anything to do with social justice? How do you explain & justify this? You call yourself a socialist - is forcibly keeping people in a country part of your socialism?
I'm genuinely interested. I've read a lot of justifications for why there's nothing wrong with living at $20/month in 70's Poland from people like JP Sartre living in $2000/pm France.
@kravietz you’re applying a ahistorical analysis to a country that’s been under an illegal and immoral blockade for the last 60 years. Actual wage levels per hour are not the issue. Neoliberalism doesn’t have the answer to climate destruction.
@CyberSocialist Because I can tell you first hand $20 monthly salary in communist Poland *was* a huge problem for my parents (I was 13 when the crap collapsed eventually).
Guess what - free housing and healthcare were *not* really free because when there's shortage of everything, from flats to basic medicines, you have to pay bribes and black market prices for these goods.
@kravietz Poland and the Cold War are a coexisting fact from 1960-1989: you can’t re-run history but neither can you ignore the racists that US/Russian geopolitics causes much of what you suffered. Blaming Cuba for fighting for its existence any way it can in the face imperial aggression seems ahistorical and pointless: the Media has an agenda against successful Cuba - that’s obvious, even to those who lived in the eastern block
I'm not blaming Cuba for fighting for independence.
I'm blaming Cuba for forcibly sticking to a failed economic model, keeping its citizens pariahs in their own country and renting them to capitalist countries as some kind of slaves.
> the Media has an agenda against successful Cuba
Except Cuba is *not* successful.
@kravietz yes, it is successful - why are you measuring purely GDP? For ideological reasons you’re ignoring facts: Cuban culture, music, art, dance, medicine, tourism, universal healthcare and education have all flourished despite the immoral and devastating US blockade and sanctions. You evidently know zero about Cuba. Why pretend?
If Cuba is successful, why people are risking lives to escape by boats to countries like Mexico or USA?
@kravietz that’s not a real argument for the success, in the context of a US blockade, of socialism in Cuba: people emigrate from many places for many reasons, even the USA! What are your criteria for ‘success’ then? And do some people wanting to leave mean it’s ‘failed’?
People emigrating from USA or Poland don't have to risk their lives on boats, did you notice the slight difference?
@kravietz no, in the USA they die where they live due to zero healthcare and no employment. Is this your model of success?
Once again https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/tu-quoque
But thank you for that "no" at least. So starting from your honest "no", if people are risking their lives to escape country A, and they can just freely leave countries B,C,D if the don't like it there, would you still classify A as "successful"?
@kravietz Devoid of context the question has no meaningful answer. If 1 person wants to leave it’s a failure? If 10? 1000? And what if their material needs are being denied due to the blockade? I don’t blame them for trying to leave, but I don’t naively conclude that this means ‘country x is a “failure” ‘ as this ignores the historical contingencies that exist and how these impediments could be removed.
It's not about how many want to leave in the first place.
It's about they *cannot* leave because their country holds them as... what exactly? How would socialist theory classify their position? "Enthusiastic members of the collective who don't want to leave, and if they want, they're reactionary traitors"? Just trying to simulate the language I remember from childhood.
@CyberSocialist
Yeah, I guess that would be truly socialist to *blame* these people for trying to escape!
Do you also mercifully spare your blame to wives suffering from marital violence for willing to escape?
Or would you rather console them explaining that violence and austerity are not really measures of a failed marriage because their husband can sing well!