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Comment by vundercind | Hacker News Reader

A bunch of Floridians who are, or are descended from, folks who had their land and businesses seized during the revolution are holding grudges and won’t let go of them until they’re given their stuff back or a ton of money, which, this far on, isn’t happening.

Florida is important in Presidential elections.

US elections are structured such that dumb stuff like a relatively small—but loud—and also hopeless interest in a single US state can influence policy and make a whole bunch more lives worse for no good reason.

AFAIK that’s basically the story.

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I think that's really underselling the political persecution that many have suffered in Cuba. It's far and away from just wanting reparations for land grabs.

We have sanctions on Cuba for the same reason we have sanctions on Russia and Venezuela now- we don't want to fund what their government is doing, and allying with them gives us little to nothing in return.

That said, it's pretty obvious that economic sanctions aren't bringing about regime change. I don't think anyone has the stomach for putting boots on the ground, though.

It may not in the short or medium term cause regime change, but sufficiently large sanctions on a country do stop it from growing in influence, wealth and power. Eventually, after some number of generations, Cuba could be so poor in comparison to the rising tide of the rest of the world, that it's not even able to defend itself or maintain government control. At some point, the disparity in power becomes overwhelming and you have super high tech society surrounding stone age cave men.

Can that really happen? Won’t one of the visiting tourists bring news of the wheel or what have you eventually?

Seems more likely sanctions would cause a steady state where the sanctioned country is some n months/years behind where it would otherwise be, speaking as a complete geopolitical layman anyway.

Not OP but the problem is not awareness of modern solutions that prevents sanctioned societies from modernizing, the isolation from trade prevents local industry from growing which keeps society living at subsistence levels and when everyone is poor you don’t have a class of people with spare time or the resources necessary to build up local industry that brings about capital that brings about infrastructure modernization etc.

The problem is that not enough nations are participating in the sanctions. Multiple generations should have been plenty of time, especially given the harms done to the population in the interim.

> That said, it's pretty obvious that economic sanctions aren't bringing about regime change.

On the flip side, you have China, where US pretty much helped build up their economy and hoped for a peaceful and democratic outcome. How well did that go?

The USSR and China and prime examples of sanctioning vs opening up. One is still around and persucting its people and the other is on the dust bin of history. The problem with the Cuba sanctions is that a large chunk of countries aren't sanctioning Cuba. If everybody got behind the sanctions regime change would happen. Half assing it won't cut it.

> the other is on the dust bin of history.

and yet US is spending taxpayer money to defend Ukraine.

Why wouldn’t we spend a small fraction of our military budget on bleeding an adversary dry?

same reason you don't corner a rabid animal

They aren't corned though. All they have to do is leave. Then they stop losing so many troops and they have their sanctions lifted.

What you wrote here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41025321

"So?

I'd rather live in the modern day, "unequally" with the rich, than starve or die of disease equally with the rich of the middle ages.

Just because the rich have 100Xed in quality of life over the last century, doesn't negate the fact that the poor have 10Xed in quality of life.

Making everyone equal is easy. Just make them all equally dead, starving, or miserable, just like they were in past centuries."

Shows a lack of historical knowledge. If all were so miserable, how did they built the greatest civilization, Christendom? Did Newton or Leibniz starve to death? The picture you are drawing here of past centuries is ahistorical and completely disregards the unbelievable quality of art and architecture that was possible during times where people were, according to you, "dead, starving, or miserable". (As if they aren't today.)

I don't want to live at all. I would kill myself immediately did I not fear God, Christ, and eternal damnation.

Shows a lack of historical knowledge. All that wealth of Imperial Europe was built off the backs of serfs and slaves.

The Jackson-Vanik amendment was only repealed in 2012, at the same point when the Magnitsky act was signed. I don't think Putin & co see a lifting of sanctions as a possibility, given past experience.

Ok, that doesn't change the fact that all that is happening is that they are losing more and more lives, military power, and are suffering significant economic damage.

Thats the point. They are taking nothing but losses. All for some land that is now worthless after the war.

They obviously see things differently. You cannot claim that the particular sanctions regime in place pushes Putin & co towards your desired course of action without understanding their motivations.

> without understanding their motivations

Oh they are absolutely have motivations against their own people dieing in the hundreds of thousands and they have motivations against them losing significant military assets and having massive amounts of economic damages.

Those are normal motivations they every county has.

That's why the best way to get them to change behavior is to "motivate" them with those consequences.

Current analysis is that Russia has maybe another year and a half left in their war before it ends due to these "motivational factors".

Still a ways to go, but manageable.

The MLRS weapon systems shouldn’t be creating corners if deployed effectively.

Define “small fraction” please.

We've spent a bit over $100B in 2.5 years. Our annual military budget is about $900B, so about 5% annual to strategically neuter the Russian military.

A few hundred Bradleys and Abrams, weapons systems that were designed to murder soviets, which we built by the thousands, in the hope that we could defend Europe from an invasion it turns out wasn't ever likely to happen.

Those machines are not fit for a war with China, which is our current fear, and have to be replaced anyway. It literally costs obscene amounts of money to scrap and disarm them, but it turns out it's very cheap to let them save a few Ukrainian lives.

Nearly every dollar "spent" for Ukraine was either spent in the 80s military build up or is loaned to Ukraine so they can purchase our stuff.

wouldn't have to if russia didn't invade a sovereign nation.

The US (and Russia...) made a commitment to protect Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine giving up its newly-owned nuclear weapons after the USSR broke up.

Are you suggesting that USSR is invading Ukraine? Maybe we are living in different realities since we the USSR no longer exist.

Are you suggesting that Russia is not USSR's legal successor. Maybe we are living in different realities since Russia still exists.

Russia was a state of the USSR, not the USSR itself. That is like saying the Roman Empire exists today because Italy is the successor.

Don't make such far-flung analogies.

The Russia/USSR transition is more akin to that of the Roman Republic to the Principate/Dominate. Or the different stages of other closely related empires throughout history after dealing with internal regime, partial reversals and so forth.

Even Putin sees Russia/USSR as parts of a organic historic continuum, and this is a key component of his rhetoric. That the USSR's territorial losses are Russia's losses and must be reversed if Russia it to "save face" and so on.

In some aspects we could say that, given the high number of USSR tanks, ships and weapons that are being destroyed by the Ukrainian army just right now.

USSR was a necessary collaborator in this invasion.

The USSR is gone. It can't collaborate with anything. Did your great-great-great-great-great grandparents who died before the internet collbarate with you to write this post?

> allying with them gives us little to nothing in return.

Recent events have shown that to be very much not the case. Over the past few weeks we've had news of the Russian Navy paying port calls and the Chinese building major signals intelligence capabilities. Wouldn't it be better to have them as an ally?

It's always interesting to contrast our relationships with Cuba vs Vietnam. We fought a long hot war with Vietnam yet today we have good relations with them. Obviously we can't say we would have a good relationship with Cuba if we had been nicer to them but it certainly makes me think.

> Wouldn't it be better to have them as an ally?

I strongly suspect the possibility of normalizing relations while the Castros held power would have been impossible.

I had actually expected some progress on this front after they got new blood in a few years ago, but he's much the same, and given their relations with other sanctioned countries like North Korea, and calling Israel a terrorist state, I don't really see much desire for change from either side.

> We have sanctions on Cuba for the same reason we have sanctions on Russia and Venezuela

Many senior government officials over the years, including then Vice President Cheney, have plainly said that our interest in Venezuela is their oil. The sanctions, as in any country, are about wanting control over their resources.

> we don't want to fund what their government is doing

What is their government doing that is so terrible?

Anyway let's suppose Cuba is a brutal dictatorship, even though it really isn't by any metric. Why are there no sanctions on Saudi Arabia? Why no sanctions on Taiwan during the white terror? Why no sanctions on Chile when they threw alive protesters from flying helicopters? I could go on for a while.

>What is their government doing that is so terrible?

Surviving while Communist.

My whole family was murdered by the government of Cuba because they verbally disagreed with Fidel and communism. No crimes other than speaking out were committed. That's what they're doing that is so terrible.

That's how revolutions work, if you disagree you usually get killed.

The thing is that people would get killed for disagreeing even under Batista. If your family was happy with Batista then I don't think they were in a clean line of business.

The US did put an arms embargo on Batista's government, though far too late given the violent suppression of the protests towards the end.

I agree, especially considering that Batista had been sold arms until 1958, when the fights with the rebels had been ongoing for a while already (1956 I believe). The result is that Batista fought the rebels using USA weapons, embargo or not.

Batista was a dictator too. No one, except criminals, liked him.

> US elections are structured such that dumb stuff like a relatively small—but loud—and also hopeless interest

I can tell you, not just the US.

See: farmers having an absolute chokehold on the EU despite virtually everyone hating them, and them only being a tiny percentage of population, votes or GDP.

Off topic but, I am curious, why would people hate the people that produce their food? Seems like a footgun position to take.

Usually problems vis-a-vis farmers come from farmers being exalted just like you're doing, so politically they've been given a lot of leeway for government subsidies and entitlements. There are many farmers who struggle making a living on limited land, even with subsidies. But in other professions, there wouldn't be those subsidies and that specific job wouldn't be economically viable. But there are also many other farmers with $10m+ properties and paying meager farmhand wages to those doing the actual work, while the farmer landowner gets the million dollar subsidies paying them to dump milk or grow wasteful corn fuel.

Essentially, it's because producing food doesn't give you the right to be pampered by everyone else and make economically bad decisions.

In Europe specifically, it would be in part because of the "tractor protests" where tractors were mass driven into city centers in protest, especially the Netherlands because they didn't like being restricted on nitrogen pollution. It would be especially irksome when you can get most peoples' votes for bad policy just by saying "support farmers, they grow your food." Except that all that nitrogen in the Netherlands goes to actually growing exported food ($$)...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/16/nitrogen...

Florida was relevant in US elections. When was the last time it was up for grabs?

It is actually interesting, a state converting to single-party rule significantly reduces the electoral leverage it has.

> When was the last time it was up for grabs?

Obama won it in 2012.

That isn't that long ago in electoral cycles.

Obama did start warming relations, probably due to that shift. Trump reversed it. I expect it’ll continue to, at best, see-saw until Republicans are comfortable enough with their advantage in Florida to ignore the Cuban vote.

It was reversed since it was a campaign promise. The idea was that all that money from tourism was only helping the Castro regime. A sentiment I'm sure most Cubans are not happy about.

DeSantis won by 0.5% in 2018…

Where does this plantation-owner story come from? How many plantation owners do you think existed?

And that still doesn't explain the continual drain happening, to this day, as is evidenced by this very article we're commenting on. What, are these 10% also filthy capitalists somehow?

As a Serb whose parents fled an eerily similar situation to Cuba's way back when for greener pastures to the literal other side of the planet, this thing where people blame the citizens rather than the worthless piece of shit government for fleeing these socialist hellholes is always an amusing one for me.

you should really read on Cuba before comparing it to Serbia. completely different situation and the people fleeting it in the last decade is exclusively about the the embargo.

> that still doesn't explain the continual drain happening, to this day,

Are we sure and can be trust that this numbers are really correct?

Alternative hypothese: Maybe a part of this people "left the country" in 2022 by covid 19 and statistics were masked to avoid public embarrassment. I would not bet against it.

Fun fact, I'm a grandchildren of poles who lived in what was polish land but given to Ukraine after WW2 when Stalin moved Ukraine westwards (and compensated Poland with former German land).

I received a compensation 60 years after WW2, but it was few thousand euros (many generations have passed). And by the way it was the polish, not Ukrainian government that compensated us.

Do you own anything of value? What about your family?

Now let's try practicing some empathy: How would you feel if I just took that from you?

Oh, I get it. It’s just not gonna get them anything. That ship sailed decades ago. On a policy level, all this is doing is causing harm.

Ah. So uk should sanction the whole USA, on account of that revolution that costed some people something?

They did and it took a war and a long time for relations to be reestablished

Not true. After the Treaty of Paris (1783) was signed, trade between the US and UK resumed almost immediately; and diplomatic relations were reestablished in 1785. Shortly after the war (1793), when France and Britain went to war, rather than back up the French, the US signed the Jay Treaty to maintain trade and positive relations with the UK... angering France who helped us gain independence.

Other than the revolutionary war from 1776 to 1785, the other break we had was from 1812-1815 during the War of 1812.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom%E2%80%93United_...

Ah ok so other than the war and the tarrifs and the blockade it isnt true

the point is it took less than a decade and half...

In this scenario, should everyone born in the same city as you be punished for your crimes?

This is foundational to American legal system in many cases. If your local cops for instance unjustly beat say Cubans and get sued for it the inhabitants will pay and possibly even their children through debt.

Well, that's how it should work. Qualified immunity massively complicates this in favor of the cop and therefore the city employing said cop and the residents of the city. It is technically not impossible to win such a case if you get a court to take it, but you might be facing some insurmountable odds getting a court to take the case.

Sorry, but I don’t think families who escaped in those times were exactly just innocent property owners.

Sorry, but that does not matter. If they did anything illegal, they should be prosecuted by and in the country it happened, but you are presuming collective guilt here. That is always, universally, the wrong thing to do.

We are talking about the descendants of the wealthy or dissident people who were escaping the Cuban revolution, where Cuba at the time was largely owned by foreign sugar plantations which was perpetuated by the the brutal military dictatorship of Batista, which was supported by the US government as well as organized crime (and where one ends and the other begins is sometimes unclear…)

It’s a tale as old as time!

The legacy of colonialism still casts a dark shadow. You can replace who rules much easier than changing how they rule. Batista a dictator replaced by Castro another dictator.

Yes and collective guilt is still wrong. Being a descendant is not a punishable deed, nor should it be. Also many professionals had to leave too.

It was a better lie when "the people we robbed and killed totally deserved it" was about Kulaks. Seriously it is the same victim blaming bullshit to absolve a government of thieves.

Many were. My grandfather was just a doctor that owned a townhouse. My mom had her toy bear's head ripped off by customs as she was leaving to check she wasn't smuggling gold out of the country. My grandfather was completely uninvolved in the war, like the vast majority of Cubans. Castro promised everyone that Cuba would become a democracy. Stopped buying the leftist propaganda you've been fed. You have 10% of a country fleeing in 3 years and you people still can't admit you were wrong, it's worse than a cult.

The bright side is, despite the suffering involved, moving to America is the greatest thing that could have happened to my family.

I guess that the million people who have escaped in the last couple of years are also guilty of something.

Yeah, we killed the mosquitoes that don't let us sleep and gave us Dengue every month because the gov can't provide electricity and if you protest you dissapear to jail

Depends; were I or my family aligned or complicit with a military dictatorship?

thanks for letting us know you never read a book and take lessons from the tv.

I would still hold a grudge. I hold historical grudges going back centuries.

Right. I still want back Constantinople.

Native Americans called, they want their land back.

see, that's Castro mistake. he didn't buy scalps from land owner exploiters. imagine if all natives were in Florida today instead of dead.

Russians were more aligned with usa tho...

Still mad about Amalek.

Sometimes I want to but it's hard when every European country has tried to kill you. (Maybe there's one that was good to Jews, but I'm pretty sure there wasn't, for the simple reason that all the Jews would go there then, and the countries all the Jews went to, Spain and then Poland, then tried to kill us.) I don't want to have a grudge against a continent.

Albania? Bulgaria?

1. Albania was part of the Ottoman Empire, which, while better than most of Europe for Jews, was not great; being "better than most of Europe" typically meant "you don't get killed every year" and still allows for significant antisemitism. I am willing to grant that they may not have wanted to be part of the Ottoman Empire, though, and there's little on antisemitic massacres. So I concede that I do not need to hold a grudge against Albania. Thank you, Albania.

2. As for Bulgaria...not deporting Jews to their death for one small period of time != lack of antisemitism in the past few hundred years.

According to the USHMM,[1] Bulgaria's actions in World War Two included:

Instituting laws that, among other things, forbid Jews from marrying non-Jews and restricted where Jews could live and what jobs they could have.

Deporting Jews who were not in Bulgaria pre-war (its borders expanded) to their deaths.

Sending Jews to slave labor camps. [1]https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/bulgaria

So, no, Bulgaria was antisemitic in the past few hundred years.

I don't think it's fair to apply that to Poland. Jews were well integrated into Polish society for most of its history during the Commonwealth era. Poland-Lithuania was a very pluralistic state with explicit protection in law for religious liberty, something that didn't exit in pretty much any other European state during the early modern era. The inquisition didn't operate there after the mid 16th century at all, just around the time when Spain was ramping it up.

Most of the examples of antisemitic repression in Poland took place during the post-partition era in the 19th century, when Poland was ruled by Russia, and Poles themselves faced similar repression by the Russian authorities.

> A bunch of Floridians who are, or are descended from, folks who had their land and businesses seized during the revolution are holding grudges

They should've learned from the French making sure there's nobody left to hold a grudge.

Killing people who did nothing wrong always puts you on the right side.

...are you seriously arguing for genocide?

Whenever you have to ask that question, it is often a better idea to sit down with a nice cup of tea, and take some time to reconsider what the person you are replying to was intending to do with their comment.

The comment pokes fun at people holding grudges for that long, on behalf of their ancestors, and at the whole situation in general. Ultimately is is meant to make people think whether demanding reparations from a less well-off people is really a better idea than just moving on. If everyone held grudges like that, no two people on earth would have good relations and we'd all sit in our little caves brooding over some slight our neighbor's ancestors inflicted on our family ten generations ago.

No, I'm not arguing for genocide. But thanks for the laugh.

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