EDITORIAL: End Cuban travel ban

[drfemoe]

http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2003/Oct-27-Mon-2003/opinion/22445144.html
--snip--
Brushing aside veto threats from the White House, the U.S. Senate last Thursday joined the House in voting to end the long-standing travel restrictions.

Foes of the restrictions, many of whom represent states that want to sell agricultural and other products to Cuba, argued that the constraints hurt the United States more than Cuba and help Castro by enabling him to blame the United States for his country's problems.

In fact, the "Cuban embargo" now leaks like a sieve, anyway. An estimated 160,000 Americans, many of them with relatives in Cuba, traveled legally to Cuba last year under exceptions to the travel restrictions; thousands more are believed to have "illegally" routed there through third countries.

The best way to give the lie to Castro's malarkey and free the Cuban people is to allow them to see the affluence which capitalism and relative freedom have brought to their former countrymen here. Far from cutting them off, we should smuggle them radios and little pocket televisions on which they can finally get a glimpse of how far the free world has progressed in 40 years.
--snip--

Monday, October 27, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

[alonso_quijano]

1. "capitalism and relative freedom"

"capitalism and relative freedom"! They got the BFEE number on that one!

[Judi Lynn]

2. I followed the article right up to the suggestion

we smuggle radios and pocket tvs so they can glimpse how we live.

Try driving 100 miles from your city. See if you can pick up your radio stations, or even bring a portable tv with you and see if you can pick up your city's tv stations. You can in both cases.

I recall spending a summer with an aunt 100 miles from my house many years ago, and watching tv programs there on the tv station I watched at home, with no cable, of course.

Cubans watch Miami tv stations, and listen to Florida radio stations, and they pick up signals from all over the Caribbean. DU'ers who have been there have found this to be true themselves.

There are tons of rap groups, jazz groups, etc., etc. They are very informed on any American fads and trends, even the Marlins baseball team.

A lot of Americans simply have bought a boatload of propaganda from our own government, or the Cuban "exiles" in Miami who would prefer to keep Cuba open only for their vacations and visits to relatives.


Cuban rasta guys

[Mika]

3. Cubans in Cuba listen to the Guy James Show on their own radios

Isn't it just amazing that these fools can get away with pure propaganda such as the "Cubans don't have radios or TV's" line of BS? How hoodwinked can Americans be to believe that in one of the most musical countries in the Caribbean that the people don't have a way to listen to music on cd, tape and radio?

Oh my god.. If Americans actually believe this crap, then they are going to get an eye opening, mind blowing experience if they ever get to go to Cuba.


My personal observation,

Cubans tune in local S Florida TV broadcasts on their own TV's where they can hear all the anti Castro spew that comes out of that hellhole of broadcasting, if they want to. My friends in Cuba used to split a gut laughing when they watched Miami TV broadcasts of Rick Sanchez (formerly of WSVN Ch7 TV in Miami) who used to squat over a map of Cuba during the many anti Cuba "news" segments he did.

Why Cubans would want to listen to Clearchannel broadcasting, or Rush or Hannity or O'really, or the pablum pop, or the re-regurgutated Led Zep rock classics coming from S Florida radio towers is beyond me.