Jack and Hill

That's not red-baiting, although it almost shifted the focus away from Ben's point... He was calling the guy out for making nice to a dictator who kept his people subjugated. Nicholson flew there, met with Castro, met with leaders of the Cuban film industry and then had a grand old time... local restaurants, jazz clubs, visits to cigar factories. He said he was greatly impressed with the country and with Castro, who he described as "a genius." No mention of the fact that the luxuries Nicholson was treated to during his visit are off-limits to 98 percent of Cuban citizens. Nicholson should be ashamed of himself for making like the ugly American and then allowing himself to be a PR tool, when millions of the Cuban people stuck living there without the royal treatment Nicholson gets when he jets in, sleep outside when it it is too hot because they have no electricity to power fans.

 

Nope. I don't. You make it sounds like Cuba is the 51st U.S. state, and we owe it to the country to provide a level of welfare to help make up for a dictator that has plundered what resources they had and kept the population living in greater poverty than necessary. Castro has been the country's problem. Not the U.S. Whatever effect the U.S. embargo has had has been offset by other countries that trade with Cuba on favorable terms that no one else enjoys. Russia subsidized Castro for years. Do you take that into account? And now other countries, such as Venezuela do. Do you take that into account?

Out of curiosity, do you think there should be a few less Cubans sleeping outside today, when the cost of energy, which is what most hammers economies, including ours, is being subsidized to ridiculous levels by a country that has a ton of oil and is giving Cuba favorable, below-market terms, in order to try to boost their economy?

One reason Castro always gave for the electricity problems was that oil was so expensive... Yet, Hugo Chavez has virtually been giving Venezuelan oil to Cuba... I don't know the exact prices, but the price of a barrel in Cuba is less than half of what it is the U.S. thanks to Chavez subsidizing the Cuban economy out of his pocket. Yet even with that advantage that no one else enjoys, millions of Cubans still live without electricity.

Could it possibly just be that Castro has not done right by his people?