What everyone thought I meant:
if cubaFree
> True
What I meant:
Considering how much political freedom was jettisoned by the US after 9/11, I am amazed that Cuba sits as close to the free side of the freedom spectrum as it does considering its been under existential threat for five decades.
Cuba is not a completely free and open society, and I don't claim to be able to pinpoint with certainty where on the freedom spectrum it sits exactly. I have never been there, as a US citizen I have not been free to travel there.
We are not free to go see for ourselves, we just echo the dominant ideology.
From the reading I have done I know that Cuba is more free than I was led to believe in school. It is not an Orwellian state.
I cite a comment from this thread on the topic:
> When I was there I was struck by people saying how hard it was and how they had to get by on about US$2 a week - this was a while back now.
Cubans are free to complain, I've heard it's a national past time.
They are free to engage in politics within socialism.
They are not free to oppose socialism and work to end it.
Americans have never been free to undermine capitalism. Anarchist/Marxist revolutionaries in the US have always been monitored, harassed, imprisoned and sometimes killed. See the history of the FBI, the Palmer raids, the Wobblies, Joe McCarthy, the black panthers, SDS, etc...
The US has given the Cuban government justification to curtail rights. This justification would not exist if the US would have respected Cuban sovereignty and not tried to murder it's leader, invade and destabilize.
How do you tell the difference between a sincere citizen activist and a foreign spy when the most powerful empire the world has known is actively trying to sabotage your government?
In the US in the years after 9/11 we heard a dire meme repeated over and over that went something like "If we get hit again it will be martial law" and we mostly accepted that as inevitable.
I find the finger pointing at Cuba to be unfair and lacking historical context.
