<p>It’s also interesting to see Hanoi Hilton before and after US normalization with Vietnam.</p>
<p>Before:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093143/[/url]”>http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093143/</a></p>
<p>After:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www3.hilton.com/en/hotels/vietnam/hilton-hanoi-pera-HANHITW/index.html[/url]”>http://www3.hilton.com/en/hotels/vietnam/hilton-hanoi-pera-HANHITW/index.html</a></p>
<p>I’d bet the vast majority of the 3 million Cuban-Americans living in Florida would describe the present Cuba government a failed state. I’d also bet many of Cuba’s 11 million residents would say the present Cuba government is a failed state…they’d say it if they weren’t in fear of what might happen to them by the Castro regime if they spoke up in dissent.</p>
<p>Dragonmom, that article makes Cuba sound like a beautiful, but sad place. It would be hard to truly enjoy yourself on a vacation there, I think, while people are so completely controlled. It makes me wonder, don’t these governments that spend so much time spying on and repressing people have anything else to do or spend their money on?</p>
<p>“I’d bet the vast majority of the 3 million Cuban-Americans living in Florida would describe the present Cuba government a failed state. I’d also bet many of Cuba’s 11 million residents would say the present Cuba government is a failed state…they’d say it if they weren’t in fear of what might happen to them by the Castro regime if they spoke up in dissent.”</p>
<p>They can say anything they want - it doesn’t make it true. </p>
<p>Cuba is not a failed state. </p>
<p><a href=“Failed state - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failed_state</a></p>
<p><a href=“List of countries by Fragile States Index - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Fragile_States_Index</a></p>
<p>Cuba is #107 on the list. Mexico is #106. . </p>
<p>For a reference Israel is 67 on this list and China is 68. Russia is 85. </p>
<p>South Sudan is #1 and Somalia is #2 on the list. </p>
<p>I doubt that many Cubans know what Wikipedia says about anything seeing how so very few Cubans have access to non-censored, open internet in Cuba. Cuban state controls media there carefully and indoctrinates residents with the party line. </p>
<p><a href=“Cuba: Washington Policy Shift Could Mean Better Internet for Cuba | Time”>http://time.com/3640269/cuba-internet-washington-policy/</a></p>
<p>I’m not sure of the actual facts for Cuba, but if you’re not self-supporting, you are failed. As a general rule, if people want to leave… you’re a failure. But it does depend on the reasons people want to immigrate or emigrate. If they want the opportunity to work and determine their own destiny, its good if they’re coming and bad if they’re going. If they want free stuff, its good if they’re leaving, and bad if they’re coming. </p>
<p>Its that simple.</p>
<p>How many people have moved to Cuba over the past decades? They may have one thing to teach us, which is that welfare states cannot have open borders. </p>
<p>None of this changes the fact that the U.S. embargo didn’t work. And that at best it’s a hypocritical stance and a failing policy which makes sense to abolish. </p>
<p>China, Russia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, etc, etc…These are just some of our frenemies that we have perfectly normal diplomatic relations with, a good very long overdue move on our part if you ask me.</p>
<p>I wonder, who gets to determine what a failed state is? I’ll make my own determination here. A country where people live in fear of if they say the wrong thing that they will be imprisoned and tortured… that’s a failed state. A country where large numbers of people have risked their lives and that of their children on rafts and boats to escape…that’s a failed state.</p>
<p>Fine. So Cuba is a failed state according to you. Why should we treat it any differently from the failed states (again according to you) we currently have diplomatic relations with? Or do you advocate we embargo China? </p>
<p>I am not necessarily of the opinion that we should keep the embargo going, or that we should have even had it for the last few decades. My point is that we should not romanticize what Cubans live with, and the thought that everything is now going to change is most likely an illusion.</p>
<p>No one here is romanticizing Cuba (least of all me, who HAS lived under Communism behind the Iron Curtain) and no one is naive enough to say that “now everything is going to change.” We’re simply applauding the first important step in getting rid of a failed policy, and hope that it can lead toward more meaningful change. </p>
<p>
According to Canadians and other nationalities that vacation in Cuba, they really enjoy themselves and go back on a regular basis. I am ready to book as soon as the embargo is rescinded and cruise lines publish their new itineraries.</p>
<p>^ Indeed, it’s a great place to go to.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotels-g147271-zff12-Havana_Cuba-Hotels.html[/url]”>http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotels-g147271-zff12-Havana_Cuba-Hotels.html</a></p>
<p>Busdriver, you keep looking at this from Cuba’s perspective. Absent a global genocidal monster, I am simply not interested in trying to manage the affairs of other countries. I care about individuals, but we are not the world’s hall monitor. I personally believe in the concept of sovereign states, and I don’t think the U.S. should be going around changing other people’s nations. </p>
<p>I care about this for our own self interest. This opens U.S. markets for our people, and that’s a good thing that will have the side benefit of helping the Cubans. </p>
<p>I find it hard to enjoy myself in places where people are suffering. To be afraid that if they had an honest conversation, they might be arrested…it’s not for me. I’m sure many others would be perfectly happy there. I would like to go, because it sounds like an interesting place, but under the Castro regime it still would be very depressing.</p>
<p>Canadians and Europeans and South Americans have been relaxing in all-inclusive beach resorts in Cuba for years.
They fly in, head for the resort, tan, drink, relax, leave, never having interacted with a normal citizen.<br>
But the people my friend interacts with (without the “minder” a journalist gets) are very proud of their country, their culture, their history. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think that would be “like the Taiwanese did Chiang’s”. Mao never occupied Taiwan, Chiang did.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What many tourists do in Mexico, Jamaica, the DR too. Not because of repression or communism, more because they prefer to avoid seeing a lot of poverty and fear crime.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You mean the Nationalist Chinese as calling them Taiwanese is politically charged as it assumes everyone in the ROC are for Taiwan independence, a tall assumption considering 80% of those polled preferred to maintain the current status-quo of considering their society the ROC, not ROT. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Actually, Chiang didn’t occupy the Island of Taiwan. Instead, the Imperial Japanese government which has seized and occupied it since the defeat of Qing China in the first Sino-Japanese War(1894-95) surrendered it to the ROC of which Chiang was the legal head of state at the time at the end of WWII. </p>
<p>In essence, the Imperial Japanese government who were colonial occupiers of the island were returning the territory back to the legal current succeeding government to Qing China under international law, which in 1945 was the ROC under Chiang. </p>
<p>Also, the Taiwan independence movement is dogged by its close association with the Japanese extreme right wing which has tried its utmost to publish and disseminate history textbooks downplaying or even glorifying Imperial Japan’s colonialist militarist past; repealing key portions of Japan’s current Constitution such as its civil liberties, article 9, and women’s rights provisions…repeals which most Japanese citizens still oppose according to recent polls, and endorsing annual public visits by politicians to the Yasukuni national shrine* which would be the equivalent of current Germany’s leaders paying annual public homage to graves of Nazi leaders. </p>
<p>Incidentally, some of the Taiwan independence politicians and party leaders paid visits to Yasukuni and provided public support for the Japanese extreme right wing. </p>
<p>It also doesn’t help that one of their prominent leaders, Annette Lu was embroiled in a controversy a decade ago for calling for Aboriginal Taiwanese to move to South America:</p>
<p><a href=“Annette Lu again says emigration can help Aborigines - Taipei Times”>http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2004/08/05/2003181772</a></p>
<p>A bit hypocritical considering her party and the Taiwan independence movement claim they speak for “native Taiwanese”. </p>
<ul>
<li>Former ROC president Lee Teng-Hui who later founded a Taiwan independence party movement separate from the DPP volunteered as an Imperial Japanese army officer during the last parts of WWII and his brother volunteered as a Navy Chief Petty Officer and is currently interred at Yasukuni Shrine after his ship was sunk during the Battle of the Philippine Sea:</li>
</ul>
<p><a href=“Taiwanese Imperial Japan Serviceman - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_Imperial_Japan_Serviceman</a></p>
<p>Keep in mind that both of them VOLUNTEERED to serve in the Imperial Japanese armed forces. </p>