International Events 5, "As the World Turns"

[Week]

9 minutes ago, L'oiseau français said:

Honest to God, drop dead with that effing bullshit. The US did not shape our democracy, did not sponsor us, actually went to war with our colonial predecessor, had citizens try to violently overthrow our government, and doesn’t do anything positive for Canada unless it’s first a positive for the US. So stuff that where the sun don’t shine.

I don't think that is what was meant here. An "American" country as in the continents and not necessarily in relation to the US.

[Winterfell is Burning]

1 hour ago, Dog of England said:

I guess they learned that from the US. The US also used extrajudicial murder as a tool to repress dissent as was done to the Black Panthers. 

To be fair, the Cubans learned that trick from the Spanish long before the US did it with the Black Panthers...

[Spockydog]

1 hour ago, kiko said:

Canada comes to mind.

They'll be getting a dose of freedumb within 100 years.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

To be fair, the Cubans learned that trick from the Spanish long before the US did it with the Black Panthers...

And the US doing this in no way makes it okay for others to do what was wrong when the US did it.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, Rippounet said:

A bit off-topic no doubt, but I do wonder what kind of "development" you guys have in mind exactly. Was there a model path that could have been taken and wasn't? Key choices that should have been made and weren't? Etc...

To put it differently: is there a "success story" you have in mind here, i.e. an American country that managed to develop both democracy and prosperity for its people? I'm genuinely curious.

I think the answer is pretty generic tbh. Individual rights of self-determination, a stable constitutional government, an open society, better central economic planning, etc. There are plenty of examples of how this has worked and failed across the Americas. What is clear is that what Cuba did has failed, and that failure stems from a number of reasons, but still the underlying conditions exist there to eventually turn the country around. Plus improved relations with the US would directly lead to a huge cash infusion so long as people believed the government wasn’t going to steal it all.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

25 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

They'll be getting a dose of freedumb within 100 years.

Possibly sooner than that as we run out of water.   

[Spockydog]

19 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Possibly sooner than that as we run out of water.   

Well, yeah. 

[Fragile Bird]

1 hour ago, Week said:

I don't think that is what was meant here. An "American" country as in the continents and not necessarily in relation to the US.

You may be right, I was reading the flow of conversation about the influence of the US on Cuba over the years and the issues now. But without a doubt the US has cast itself as the role model for every country in South and Central America while propping up dictatorships because that suited the US.

You may as well cast the UK as the role model (the route for Canada, after all) except for the fact the UK has as bloody and racist a history as the US. I don’t think modeling your country after nations that used the suppression of native peoples and the acquisition and accumulation of wealth based on slavery is going to work for any country in the Americas.

[Conflicting Thought]

15 hours ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

They killed, proportionally and relatively, far more people than many, if not all the right-wing dictatorships

Really? Could you provide us with sources of that? Specifically that the cuban dictatorship killed far more people tham most latin american dictatorship. And sources that they killed more than the brasilian dictatroship, if you could. 

[kiko]

2 hours ago, L'oiseau français said:

Honest to God, drop dead with that effing bullshit. The US did not shape our democracy, did not sponsor us, actually went to war with our colonial predecessor, had citizens try to violently overthrow our government, and doesn’t do anything positive for Canada unless it’s first a positive for the US. So stuff that where the sun don’t shine.

Honestly, I'm not sure why you are up in arms here. I was merely answering this question:

Quote

To put it differently: is there a "success story" you have in mind here, i.e. an American country that managed to develop both democracy and prosperity for its people? I'm genuinely curious.

 

[Ran]

5 minutes ago, Conflicting Thought said:

Really? Could you provide us with sources of that? Specifically that the cuban dictatorship killed far more people tham most latin american dictatorship. And sources that they killed more than the brasilian dictatroship, if you could. 

Estimates for political executions in Cuba vary widely from as few as 216 (per Amnesty International) to as high as 17,000 (per European academics in The Black Book of Communism). 4,000-6,000 seems to be a sweet spot.

The military regime in Chile under Pinochet is estimated to have killed 3,000. The military dictatorship in Brazil is estimated to have killed 400 as well as committed genocide against 8,000 indigenous people, but the numbers are disputed by activists who claim they are far higher.

[Larry of the Lawn]

2 hours ago, Week said:

I don't think that is what was meant here. An "American" country as in the continents and not necessarily in relation to the US.

 A rare instance of using 'American' correctly (not as a synonym for the US) and getting yelled at for it. 

[Maithanet]

10 minutes ago, Ran said:

Estimates for political executions in Cuba vary widely from as few as 216 (per Amnesty International) to as high as 17,000 (per European academics in The Black Book of Communism). 4,000-6,000 seems to be a sweet spot.

The military regime in Chile under Pinochet is estimated to have killed 3,000. The military dictatorship in Brazil is estimated to have killed 400 as well as committed genocide against 8,000 indigenous people, but the numbers are disputed by activists who claim they are far higher.

The number of victims of the Castro regime also varies greatly depending on if you count people who died on boats fleeing Cuba in the past 60 years, with some estimates as high as 60k people. 

[Winterfell is Burning]

12 minutes ago, Ran said:

Estimates for political executions in Cuba vary widely from as few as 216 (per Amnesty International) to as high as 17,000 (per European academics in The Black Book of Communism). 4,000-6,000 seems to be a sweet spot.

The military regime in Chile under Pinochet is estimated to have killed 3,000. The military dictatorship in Brazil is estimated to have killed 400 as well as committed genocide against 8,000 indigenous people, but the numbers are disputed by activists who claim they are far higher.

Of course, even one death would be too much, but one also has to take into account Cuba's much smaller population there.

And the fact they get much less bad press despite all that and the fact they still influence Latin American politics today is clearly because of sympathy for them in many left-wing circles.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

@Zorral

Do you really think the current protests in Cuba are astroturf given the fact that the Cuban Government has shut down access to the internet generally?  That doesn’t sound like astroturf.  That sounds like a Government desperate to disrupt a real threat to its power.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, L'oiseau français said:

You may as well cast the UK as the role model (the route for Canada, after all) except for the fact the UK has as bloody and racist a history as the US. I don’t think modeling your country after nations that used the suppression of native peoples and the acquisition and accumulation of wealth based on slavery is going to work for any country in the Americas.

But doesn't Canada also have its own problematic past with regards to suppression and abuse of indigenous peoples, one that's still in the news cycle of 2021 with the discovery of more unmarked mass graves?

Honestly, most countries, and especially those that have had wealth and power, have pasts that should leave them embarrassed to some degree. It's hard to think of a country that can claim otherwise.

[Conflicting Thought]

42 minutes ago, Ran said:

Estimates for political executions in Cuba vary widely from as few as 216 (per Amnesty International) to as high as 17,000 (per European academics in The Black Book of Communism). 4,000-6,000 seems to be a sweet spot.

The military regime in Chile under Pinochet is estimated to have killed 3,000. The military dictatorship in Brazil is estimated to have killed 400 as well as committed genocide against 8,000 indigenous people, but the numbers are disputed by activists who claim they are far higher.

That sweet spot is proposed by archivo cuba... An anti castro organization, known for lying, and making up numbers as they did and do with che guevara. 

If brasil comited under the dictatorship comitted genocide against 8000 indiginous people doest that make the death toll 8400?. 

[Ran]

6 minutes ago, Conflicting Thought said:

That sweet spot is proposed by archivo cuba...

I cited it as the historian Hugh Thomas suggested perhaps as many as 5,000 had been killed. Of the five relevant estimates the article cites, Thomas and Archivo Cuba are the closest in agreement while The Black Book and Amnesty International are at completely opposite poles while The World Handbook is closer to the former two than the latter two -- hence the "sweet spot".

I can't account for the meaning behind why the Brazil military dictatorship article divides it as it does, but yes, if we assume deaths caused by the actions of the government should be totalled together, that'd be ~8400 as a minimum for Brazil... and anywhere from 16,250 to 117,000 for Cuba, when you add in the wide range of estimates of the deaths of the balseros.

[Fragile Bird]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

But doesn't Canada also have its own problematic past with regards to suppression and abuse of indigenous peoples, one that's still in the news cycle of 2021 with the discovery of more unmarked mass graves?

Honestly, most countries, and especially those that have had wealth and power, have pasts that should leave them embarrassed to some degree. It's hard to think of a country that can claim otherwise.

We never imported millions of slaves to build our country, we exploited poor immigrants. While the federal government tried to to “solve” the native problem by integrating indigenous people into the country (ie by forbidding the use of languages and customs) at least we didn’t slaughter tens of thousands of them. But on top of that, I didn’t suggest Canada as a role model. Britain and the US fully engaged in the slave trade, the US literally building large parts of the country with slaves and the Brits making fortunes from the trade. 
 

I just don’t see how you tell countries largely populated by the descendants of slaves or that were exploited by their European “founders” for centuries that they should model their countries after them. Are they supposed to go to the US and Europe, kidnap millions of people and bring them back as slaves to build their countries and amass enormous wealth? Democracies seem to be exclusively for nations that created wealthy societies where learning and study could flourish, where ideas could be put into action. All the leaders of our western democracies came from the middle and upper classes that accumulated wealth through exploitation. 
 

It’s really disturbing to listen to politicians in some of our countries say “if only they had democracy, so that people could start businesses and create wealth!” As if that atmosphere in many Western nations wasn’t created by exploiting the rest of the world.

Maybe I’m just extra cynical today.

[DMC]

8 hours ago, Rippounet said:

A bit off-topic no doubt, but I do wonder what kind of "development" you guys have in mind exactly. Was there a model path that could have been taken and wasn't? Key choices that should have been made and weren't? Etc...

To put it differently: is there a "success story" you have in mind here, i.e. an American country that managed to develop both democracy and prosperity for its people? I'm genuinely curious.

I think self-determination via free and fair elections is a good place to start.  And no matter how you spin it, that is anathema to a one-party state.  If that's western paternalism or hypocrisy, so be it.

As Ran said, Costa Rica is a good success story.  In addition, despite recent unrest, Chile ranks very high on both democratization and HDI scores (their Freedom House score is currently higher than the US').  And that's after the US assassinated Allende and backed a military junta to install the Pinochet regime for 17 years. 

US sanctions providing a unique obstacle to economic development in Cuba due to the geopolitical realities (unfortunately) remains an important factor that should not be ignored, but two wrongs don't make a right.