Photos from Cuba have been posted on Argentinian Indymedia. They look like scenes from a post apocalypse SciFi movie, the cities decayed and falling apart. I kept thinking that this is how our cities might look if people disappeared and there was no maintenance for fifty years. No doubt the photos have been selected for their impact, but still. And they do look like other pictures I have seen posted. HT Harry's Place.
Havana was such a thriving beautiful city before the revolution.
ReplyDeleteDown the memory hole. They neither see what is or what was.
3 more years of this Bush Economy and that's what America will look like.
ReplyDeleteI have one moonbat friend (from old times) who goes to CUba on holidays (not uncommon in Canada) and generally takes a pro-Cuba, blame all the problems on America stance (and I admit, the embargo is perhaps wrongheaded). He is appalled by the massive prostitution economy there (some of which is also about desperate women wanting to find a man to help get them out) and yet he still clings to the belief that Fidel's regime of socialist medicine and education is somehow laudable. Oh how we can deceive ourselves!
ReplyDeleteSometimes in former melancholy moods, I used, like the Greenies, to wonder how long it would take for the surface of the earth to hide all signs of human habitation if we were one day wiped out by plague or something. You know, how long before Manhattan is just a forest again? Perhaps Cuba suggests the forest can return without us all dieing of?
He is appalled by the massive prostitution economy there
ReplyDeleteThe amount of prostitution in Cuba has caused me to wonder about the spread of AIDS. Prostitution has been a major vector for the disease in Africa and India. What is the point of healthcare when the economy forces risky behaviour? And how can Cuba afford the needed drugs?
The thing about prostitution in Cuba, as I understand it, is that it is largely focussed on foreign tourists, people with money and no doubt often condoms. Anyway, I am not so sure that prostitution, absent much anal sex or drug taking, is the vector for AIDS it is so often implied to be. Front Page had a number of stories on this; see, e.g., this symposium
ReplyDeleteChuck,
ReplyDeletere AID's
Memory fails, but I recall Castro had a rather Draconian (by our standards) response, like locking victims up, or the death penalty for gay sex, or some such.
No doubt someone will recall, if not we can google.
Castro's crimes
ReplyDeleteThe Castro regime's response to the AIDS crisis has been mandatory nation-wide testing with forced incarceration for anyone who tested positive for the HIV virus.
In addition, Castro has had a long tradition of imprisoning homosexuals and transexuals as "undesirables."
Imprisonment is often based on mere suspicion and rumor.
Recently it was reported that young people in Cuba are purposely "shooting up" with HIV infected blood so that they can go to these camps to avoid forced labor.
Well Doug, it figures that a man who would sell his nation's young women into prostitution in order to provide his regime with hard currency and thus keep it from total collapse, would also be so sick as to take such draconian measures to keep his trade in good health.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, what amazes me about corrupt regimes like this is that no one close to him does the honorable and life-saving thing for the nation, even if it is sure to cost one his life. Is everyone totally corrupted by a regime like this?
Like a Mini Saddam, with his circle of "friends," some of whom disappear many others, some of whom disappear themselves.
ReplyDeletePeter, your 7:17--one wonders how this has escaped notice in so many quarters. Hollywood, Jimmee Carter's handlers, etc.
ReplyDeleteEXCELLent link, BTW, Chuck.
ReplyDeleteNice pictures! Cubans have a great place.
ReplyDelete