30,000 Cuban doctors currently active in 67 countries - many in Latin America and Africa, but also European nations including Portugal and Italy

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-48214513 #cuba

@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 💩

@CyberSocialist

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

@CyberSocialist

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.

@CyberSocialist

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

@CyberSocialist

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?

@CyberSocialist

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’?

@CyberSocialist

So the question is: why would an allegedly successful country prevent its citizens from leaving and how "successful" it is if people are so desperate to risk their lives to escape?

@kravietz Cuba would be 100x richer without the US blockade. Why not argue for the lifting of that?

@CyberSocialist

So what you're trying to say here, is that country that has built a socialist economy that is scientifically proven by Marx to be superior to capitalist economy, is 100x poorer only because an unsuccessful capitalist country doesn't trade with it and doesn't give it loans?

Can you see any, you know, possible contradictions in this logic?

@kravietz what a deeply flawed understanding of ‘the blockade’ you have! The US is unique in having a governing seat on all the world financial institutions and an overriding veto on supranational trade organisations that even China can hardly compete in a trade war: what chance Cuba? The US seeks to punish every other nation that trades with Cuba.

@CyberSocialist

How come? https://oec.world/en/profile/country/cub/

The top export destinations of Cuba are China ($379M), Spain ($184M), Germany ($82.3M), Indonesia ($55.4M) and Singapore ($52.4M). The top import origins are China ($1.35B), Spain ($1.01B), Mexico ($356M), Algeria ($353M) and Brazil ($345M).

And how come 7% of Cuban imports come from... the US?

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/cuba-exports-and-imports.html

@kravietz really? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/18/cuba-food-production-us-oil-sanctions you’re really denying the reality of this for ideological reasons? Because your childhood was impacted you’re denying the material reality of the US in Cuba and blaming socialism?

@CyberSocialist

Because my childhood was impacted I can sympathise with people of Cuba under a regime that prevents them from living decent lives or - if the regime prevents them from it - leave the country.

Apparently for people living in wealthy Western countries it's easier to accept rather twisted view that "the people of Cuba want to live in a prison country because building socialism is more important for them".

I'd argue it's important for *you* as long as it's done with *their* hands

@kravietz again, you’ve refused to focus on the impact of the US blockade. We’re 12 tweets deep and you’ve still not acknowledged the part it plays and the moral, legal and ethical implications of this. Why??

@CyberSocialist

So the problem is not me "refusing to focus on US sanctions", it's you taking them as an exclusive reason for poor life in Cuba.

You're trying to imply that if US removes sanctions against Cuba, the country will suddenly grow decent economy and people will enjoy freedoms.

But... this actually happened! US has softened sanctions on Cuba on numerous occasions (last 2016) and nothing really changed, except for Castro family being able to travel more and buy more US cars.

@kravietz 2016
Was not the removal of sanctions. Not was it in place sufficiently long to notice this overnight reform you think exists (nowhere) in the world.

@CyberSocialist

Once again, back in 1989 it was a single legal act by then (still) communist government of Poland that decriminalised (!) private trade that resolved all shortages and it happened literally overnight (same for travel).

There's *nothing* preventing Cuban government from saying "hey, from tomorrow you can open private firms, open a newspaper and get a passport for travel abroad".

If they're so "proud of their country" as you say, most of them will come back, won't they?

@kravietz societal reform doesn’t occur overnight without consequences. Try advocating for the removal of illegal and immoral sanctions and see what happens. What Cuba has achieved with them in place is remarkable. What they’d achieve without them is mind blowing. And even then ‘some’ would want to leave. And that wouldn’t make it a failure either