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Comment by boxed | Hacker News Reader

Blaming Cubas struggles on the US without acknowledging that Cuba, for example, has labor camps for children, is kinda silly imo.

It's a brutal dictatorship very similar to Iran. Let's all keep that in mind.

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I can find nothing to support the claim that Cuba allegedly has labor camps for children. As far as I can see, this is an unsubstantiated propaganda claim. It is well known that the US is currently having ICE round up people off the streets and imprison them throughout the country. There is evidence that five-year-old children are being detained separately from their parents. The ability of people to apply double standards is always astonishing.

https://www.amnesty.de/sites/default/files/2025-03/030_2025_...

And it is simply irrational not to link Cuba's problems with the US embargo.

Weird. You seem pretty bad at searching: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Units_to_Aid_Producti...

> The ages of the inmates ranged from 16 to over 60

I will read the article and incorporate it into my view of things. I don't get the impression that you are prepared to evaluate information in a similarly open-minded way. You remain silent on all the points I have raised. This makes it clear to me that you are an ideologue.

I already knew about US immigration services abuse. It's absolutely a problem. It seems like a non sequitur in the discussion though. The actions of ICE in the US since Trump was elected don't seem like they have any relevance to the educational problems in Latin America in the 60s though? I mean, unless ICE now has time machines. If that's the case, I will absolutely start worrying. A lot.

I mentioned ICE because you mentioned something about child labor camps in Cuba. You have to keep things in context when you make non sequitur insinuations. I don't share the view that ICE is the first problematic development and that everything was fine in the US before that. We can end the exchange here. Nothing positive will come of it.

Cuba being a totalitarian communist dictatorship is of course the primary reason for both the bad economy, the disappearances, and the labor camps. These are not unrelated.

The issues with ICE are because of totalitarianism too. So one would think we agree on this point.

Attacking a country's people because the government is a dictatorship makes no sense. Especially when we were just fine with the brutal dictatorship that preceded the one we hate, because that one was capital-friendly and didn't try to give white man's money to brown people.

I mean, if your argument is that sanctions never work and are useless, then that's a position that we can argue, but I guess that means you also would support lifting all sanctions against Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, etc?

Sanctions don't never work, but they certainly must be used judiciously. They can and will be anticipated and countered, as Russia has shown. Their overuse has pushed the intended victims into a trading bloc rather than isolating them. I want a competent and effective government, even if it's one that kills innocent people for profit and destroys democracy in other countries. Instead we just get sanctions that do nothing and evil for profit.

> [Sanctions] can and will be anticipated and countered, as Russia has shown.

How have they shown that? I think they've showed that they won't stop the war, but that's not at all the same as anticipating or countering the sanctions. Since they couldn't anticipate the war lasting longer than a week I think we can safely say they didn't anticipate having an ongoing war AND sanctions.

Due to the sanctions, Russia has shifted its economic focus away from the West. This has given BRICS a massive boost. BRICS+ now controls over 40% of global GDP and over half of global oil exports. I don't know how much the sanctions are affecting people's everyday lives in Russia itself. In 2023, there were newspaper articles here in Germany about how we are still importing Russian oil, just not directly from Russia, but indirectly via India.

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