: : : *Sounds very similiar to the story here in California about 6 months ago when 12 "illegals" (those men/woman/children/ who slave for less than minimum wage in the 100°+ heat to protect you and I from having to pay one nickel more than we need to for that head of lettuce) were found asphyxiated to death in the back of the moving van employed to transport them to the field... including two girls aged 9 and 11. No charges were filed against the owner of the field.: : Yeah, those sorts of things are always happening along the border from Texas to California. Things aren't so hot in Mexico either I guess if people are begging to work in the fields for a buck an hour.
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: **But how can this be??? Have the Communists taken over parliament in Mexico? Has socialism supplanted capitalism as the dominant economic form? Could it be that your "Cuba can't compete with the US economically because of socialism/communism" just won't hold up under scrutiny? Could-it-be that comparisons of First World Superpowers to Third World nations under embargo are unfair? I'll leave you to puzzle it out.** --K
Not much of a puzzle there my friend, just cheap rhetoric.
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: : If they were illegals, how would any field owners be responsible?
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: **You Ayn Rand types really crack me up. You pour out invective for the death of people on a raft from Cuba and hold Fidel Castro personally responsible for the tragedy; for your own native owning class? Nothing. Fortunately, I doubt everyone else is so obtuse. Obviously, someone is profiting from the use of "illegal" labor and it ain't just the poor suckers from that capitalist Third World paradise. By holding these workers 100% responsible even though they have no say in their wages, hours or working conditions while the employers have all the say but 0% responsiblity, you display the poverty of your position.** --K
Nah, your mind is, typical for a bleeding heart, closed to what conservatives think.
If you want to blame the owners, fine. How are you going to make sure they don't hire illegals? Does the state issue everyone ID? Oh BOY! That'll work! Phony ID is easy to get. Maybe you don't read the papers. ID forms are routinely stolen from government agencies and resold to illegals. Presto! Your legal! So you tell me Brainiac, how do you make the owners responsible?
The Constitution mandates that our borders be made secure by the President via the Border Patrol. We pay taxes to have secure borders, don't we? Of course, in the eyes of a bleeding heart Liberal this don't mean beans..."THE BUSINESS OWNERS ARW RESPONSIBLE!!"
Get a clue (www.getaclue.com)
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: Besides, aren't the real problems in semi-dictatorships like Mexico and Cuba?
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: **I *know* there are some Xians here... what's that one passage from the Bible? (Lark, perhaps could help me out here...) Something about pointing out the splinter in (Cuba's) my eye while ignoring the beam in your (US's) own? Regardless of whether or not you and I can agree upon the cause of Cuba's economic woes, it is the cause of the privations people there endure. What is the US's excuse for the types of abuses human beings suffer here given that this is the wealthiest nation in history?** --K
It always amazes me how quickly guys like you run for the Bible when it's convienent.
As I've already pointed out, the US has an embargo, but that doesn't prevent the rest of the world from trading with Cuba, does it? Maybe other nations won't trade with them because they have nothing to trade and because their money is not convertable.
Besides, the US would lift the embargo tomorrow if Castro would do the right thing, ie; admit defeat, like the Russkies.
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: : : Cuba is a Third World nation under a 38 year embargo enforced by the most powerful nation on the planet which offers automatic citizenship to any Cuban who washes up on our shores (care to examine what happens to Haitian boat people or Mexicans or Guatemalans who cross the border escaping US sponsored poverty and oppression??). This is a First World country and arguably the wealthiest nation in history. What's our excuse?
: : You have the typically "looking at the wrong end of the telescope" disease commonly found on this board. While it's true we instituted an embargo it's equally true that Cuba had access to markets in S. America, the Soviet Union (ooops, that went belly-up, didn't it?) China (why isn't there more fraternal assistance coming from there to Cuba? They are after all trying to get into Long Beach and Panama...), and a lot of European nations as well. Could it be that the return on equity in Cuba is zero point shit? Perhaps....
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: **Let's say for the sake of argument that you are right and socialism is a terrible economic engine and that for reasons, mouthed by you and every other rightwing whore since the Cuban Revolution such as, "the return on equity in Cuba is zero point shit" is correct. Why erect and enforce a 38 year economic embargo on trade in that case?? That's a real head scratcher, huh?** --K
Maybe it is for you, but to me it only shows you don't understand the importance of having a suitable return on an investment. Duh.
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: : "US sponsored poverty and oppression"...stock Cold War boiler-plate rhetoric...MarxSpeak for fostering envy and a false sense of entitlement amongst uneducated and manipulable simple folk.
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: **Would you care to compare and contrast Cuba with its island neighbors Haiti and the Dominican Republic on a wide range of socio-economic indicators? I doubt it. *AND* these receive millions of dollars in US aid and investment; not an embargo. I guarantee you that Cubans have a longer life span, better education, higher rates of literacy, better medical care and higher GDP per capita than their Dominican Republic and Haitian brothers and sisters. Do you fear such an apples to apples comparison? Or should we compare and contrast capitalist Bangladesh with communist China (which is basically what you're doing with Cuba and the US)?** --K
Clever, you've convinced me of the superior...wait a second, did you say apples to apples? Yeah, you did. That's going to be difficult to do because all those other countries that you mentioned didn't have a sugar daddy like the Soviet Union shipping them tons of rubles and military hardware and technicians and God knows what else. Those other countries were shipping bananas to the States in return for dollars. Wouldn't that make Cuba the Whore of the Carribean?
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: **I agree... all such licenses are stupid. Knowledge should benefit all of mankind.** --K
At a price of cour$e.
None.
