Some minor Soviet apparatus made some unimportant official declaration on the matter or something, idk

I’m not going to mince words over partisan bs. It was illegally disbanded, just as the US would be illegally disbanded if California, Texas, and New York agreed to leave the US.

You have fun with that, buddy.

but impacted them substantially after the USSR was illegally disbanded.

Jesus Christ.

Yes, things could be worse. They’re still bad.

In the same way that describing an unauthorized border crossing as an invasion because it "could be worse" but is still "bad". Words have meanings.

I’m not saying Cuba is competently running their economy, but an incompetently run economy doesn’t lead you to the modern state of Cuba.

Oh. It doesn't? I can name plenty of modern states doing worse than Cuba by their own efforts, without any US opposition. Do you know how easy it is to ruin an economy with total control over the government and nearly no private industry?

You wanna explain to me how one of the foremost countries for cattle in the Americas turned into a net importer of dairy products? Or how emergency measures passed for a hurricane in the 1960s which hobbled the Cuban cattle industry weren't lifted until the 20 fucking 20s?

Why are you so intent on ignoring how the US prevents their citizens, and discourages those of other countries, from doing trade with Cuba?

'Discourages' being an apparently very weak stick considering Cuba's current trade relations.

Plenty of countries trade with Cuba, including the US itself, but that’s all despite US influence.

Okay, so the argument, then, is that without the US's influence, Cuba's economy would be... where?

What industry is currently being hobbled to such a degree that it is crippling the nation by American influence?

What industry in Cuba is reasonably functioning?

What industry in Cuba is not being exploited to a significant degree because it can't find buyers or sellers?

A good step from Poland!

Because the GOP hates the troops. There's not much more to it.

lol

I hope it's expensive and fruitless for the Israeli government.

"You Deserved It", judgement acronyms in the sidebar.

I mean I know about the results of the act,

The results of the act being some international mockery and a couple of failed domestic lawsuits enabled by the act, which has been intermittently suspended as a diplomatic tool anyway.

and the blockade in general.

Fuck's sake. You do realize what an actual blockade would look like for Cuba, right?

And they’re… the state of Cuba for the past 60 years.

Oh, here I thought it was grotesque economic mismanagement combined with utter dependence on Soviet subsidies to keep their sluggish economic system going. Subsidies, naturally, which stopped existing in the 90s, though things weren't great before that either.

Perhaps you should read up on the Cuban government's management of cattle on the island, once the second-largest industry in Cuba.

Domestically, there's a lot of political pull from Cuban exiles, both those who fled during the Cuban Revolution and those who fled afterwards, and their descendants. It doesn't serve US interests in any significant sense at this point, and since the 90s, it's been utterly pointless except as a tool to ensure Florida stays 'in play' with regards to domestic politics.

The Helms-Burton Act. That's really what we're citing. Jesus fucking Christ. Do you know anything about the execution of the act, or did you just skim wiki for whatever looked good?

This is fucking ridiculous and not in any way just “one country won’t trade with you”.

Sorry, "one country won't do any kind of business with you".

I'm an opponent of the embargo for the simple reason that it's fucking pointless. But the tendency of apologists to point to it as some core cause of Cuba's misfortunes is just the usual perpetual search for a Great Satan to blame their problems on.

Given Harris has never and has stated she will never call for a permanent ceasefire, I have no idea where you think your gotcha moment is here.

Do you people even try, or is honesty against the terms of your religion or something?

These commenters are crazy!

Venerable. Dignified. With gravitas!

"Under siege" is when one country won't trade with you, and the more one country won't trade with you, the more siege it is.

The blockade is clearly the problem.

"The blockade"

Jesus fuck, are you being serious right now

Everything is genocide, except Ukrainian and Uyghur genocide, which are Just Anti-Imperialism.

The withering away of the state is one of the main disputes between Marxists and anarchists, I believe, but the Marxist conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat is not some Soviet-style oligarchy, but a democratic socialist society choosing to strip away the pieces of the coercive apparatus of the state until only voluntary communal associations are left. The Marxist-Leninist conception, on the other hand, is completely insane for the reasons you imply.

Might be! The writers of The Witcher 3 definitely drew heavily from history.

And both are fascist shitheads too! Who would have guessed?