#cuba sos

[lordandgodoftheobvious]

(Source.)

[ID: Tweet thread by @LunaOi_VN, broken up into three images. Tweet 1:

Sometimes I forgot that I was born when Vietnam was still being comprehensively embargoed by the US.

The economic sanction was lifted when I was 15 and my life change drastically since then.

Lemme tell ya, sanction sucks.

[Tweet 2:

In the sanction time: - No fresh milk except this condensed milk. It was like super fancy at that time. - No soft drinks like Coke, pepsi... - Virtually no candies or cookies except when I was sick or it was Tet holiday, my mom would buy me some Hai Chau cookies.

[images of condensed milk and the aforementioned cookies]

[Tweet 3 (beginning of second image):

- No clean water. We had to drink yellow water from our well. - No stable electricity so of course there was no fridge, no oven, no electric rice cooker... - No gas/electric stove. I had to cook with straw/wood stove my whole childhood.

[Image of a pot of something being cooked in a fireplace] [image of two people getting water from a well]

[Tweet 4:

- No new clothes. I had to wear old clothes from my older brother. - When I was 10, I was chosen to study in art class but I could not join because my mom could not afford new art supplies for me. - Meat was somethign very fancy at that time. I could only eat beef twice a month.

[image of a set of colored pencils]

[Tweet 5:

- Virtually no medicine except for some basic anti-biotics and vitamins. - Mostly all the vaccines we had were from Cuba. Thanks, Cuba! And yes, Cubans vaccines are running through my veins to this day.

[Tweet 6 (beginning of third image):

After the sanction was lifted: - I finally could have some fresh milk. - Instant noodles became affordable. - Finally new clothes! Hell yeah! - More medicine, more vaccines.

[images of consumer food products, IDK]

[Tweet 7:

My final thought:

Fuck the US and its sanction!!!

And fuck YOU if you think sanction doesn't affect a whole country's economy and the life of millions of people just because the US says so.

[Tweet 8:

Vietnam was under US sanction for just 25 years, meanwhile Cuba has been under US sanction for 60 fucking years!!! That is I am so pissed at any fucking bootlickers and CIA-sympathizers who blaimed Cuba for what they has been going through. #HandsOffCuba

[End of thread. End description.]

[chiripepe]

[gale-gentlepenguin]

Gale, if you don’t mind me asking

Why shouldn’t Cuba be used as an example of socialism?

(I’m not saying I do)

To put it simply.

People often romanticize socialism.

And as such treat Cuba as this Socialist ideal. (I won’t name names but certain individuals that are prominent have done this and I refuse to support them).

Cuba is an AUTHORITARIAN COMMUNIST country. Saying it is just a socialist country does not accurately depict it and fools uninformed individuals what is actually happening.

That is what I am specifically referring to. Treating Cuba government as a good example in ANY regard.

The statement is to get people to stop romanticizing Cuba’s F***ed up regime.

[lordandgodoftheobvious]

(Source.)

ID: tweet by @richimedhurst reading:

The US just sanctioned Cuba again for "unjust imprisonment and abuse" of protestors-- which is ironic, given the US runs a military base on Cuban soil, with the sole purpose of detaining & torturing innocent men, kidnapped around the globe, without charge or trial.

[End ID.]

[gale-gentlepenguin]

Cuban protests are still happening. The regime is firing on them! People are dying!

Just because it’s not trending on here doesn’t mean it isn’t happening!

[lordandgodoftheobvious]

(Source.)

(Direct link to article.)

[lordandgodoftheobvious]

Dictators do not give their people universal healthcare. Period. It’s not because they’re evil, mustache-twirling villains, either--it’s just bad politics for a dictator. First of all, a population that is getting its basic needs met is one that can worry about things higher on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, such as infrastructure or democracy or, hell, the latest gaming console--a desperate, starving population is an apolitical population. More than that, though, healthcare is expensive--not as expensive as Americans think it is, with corporate ghouls sucking the system dry of every bloody (see what I did there?) cent they can loot, but expensive nonetheless--and the money you spend on the people, who by definition have no voice in whether or not you remain the leader of your country, is money a potential rival can promise to the handful of generals whose opinions do matter if they back him in overthrowing you. No. The smart thing to do as a dictator is to provide the bare fucking minimum spending required to keep the country somewhat functional and blow the rest as bribes for your supporters.

So tell me, which country does what I just described sound more like...Cuba, or America?

On the flip side of that, the people who are trying to convince us that Cuba is a dictatorship also claim that Vietnam is one, but in the several months I’ve been watching Luna_oi on her public youtube channel where she shows her face, uses her real name (Luna Nguyen), and makes frequent references to the city she lives in, she has made countless (of what I’d call) “low-level” complaints (e.g., generalized corruption, “Hey y’all gonna fix this pothole near my house or what?”), dozens of “medium-level complaints (”This specific politician is corrupt”) and a handful of “High-level” complaints (”This entire-ass policy is completely wrong, right down to the inception of it”). She and her husband do this regularly and casually, usually off-handedly, in a way that people living in a police state very much should not. If they’re actors, they’re fucking good ones--and Vietnam’s propaganda machine is at least as subtle and capable of disguising itself with nuance as America’s is (but if such a small, poor country is capable of such sophistication, why is China’s so hamfisted?) and I have a hard time believing the Veitnamese government would waste their time on a pair of small youtube channels. Unpaid shills exist, of course--people so enamored with [ideology] that they simply ignore the problems of [state that exemplifies that ideology]--but that would imply that these personas are real, and thus that they go around regularly making the kinds of comments about the government that I alluded to--and one would think that the shine would wear off if they’re constantly getting pestered by the government for it.

Hell, one wouldn’t expect an authoritarian government to be cool with their channel existing in the first place, generally approving of the state though they may be--however much one might want to or be able to in a particular instance, a dictator will never respond to public criticism with “I understand why you feel that way, but the reason we’re doing that is...” because as soon as you’ve legitimized the concept of disagreeing with you, oh, boy, that’s the beginning of the end of your reign right there (that’s why Donald Trump immediately and viciously attacks anyone who disagrees with him in any way, no matter how minor, you know).

So yeah. Don’t buy into Western propaganda.

[lordandgodoftheobvious]

If you’ve read Manufacturing Consent and you still believe word one of anything you hear about any “communist” in scare quotes because I’m not here to get into a debate about “state capitalism” or whatever regime in any bit of the mass media...I just don’t know what the disconnect in your brain is. Like, I’m not asking you to believe the exact opposite or anything--China is almost certainly committing some sort of ethnic cleansing in East Turkistan--but like...come on.

Chomsky spelled out exactly how these people lie to you and why, specifically when it comes to things the West deems communist--and yet here y’all motherfuckers are, seeing CNN reporting on “spontaneous” “protests” in Cuba and being all like “Oh my God...the US should do something!”