Cuba

Rorie · Post by **Rorie** » Mon Apr 18, 2011 7:55

what is all this talk about america telling it's citizens that they are not allowed to travel to cuba? surely a government cannot tell it people that they are not allowed to travel to another country that thier government does not like so why all the anti cuba sentiment from america?. yes the country is a dictatorship lead by the castro brothers but also there are freindly cubans who need the money to survive. cuba cannot even adopt the u.s dollar cuz of the embargo placed by the united states. also if you use bank cards issued by ameican banks they are rejected at every atm, so if an american wants to travel to cuba and needs currency how do they get it? travelers cheques? this is not an anti-america thread i grew up a long time ago and stopped attacking americans. i just want clarification on this controversial subject

shikadi · Post by **shikadi** » Mon Apr 18, 2011 9:11

maybe it has something to do with this

kuliwil · Post by **kuliwil** » Mon Apr 18, 2011 9:28

The US doesn't even allow the import of Cuban Cigars. It's all about the Cuban Missile Crisis, as shikadi said.
This has been going on since the cold war.

StupidBunny · Post by **StupidBunny** » Mon Apr 18, 2011 9:40

shikadi wrote:maybe it has something to do with this

...which is silly because, while that was obviously a very severe and real crisis back in the 60s, the world environment has changed quite a lot since then. Cuba at this point presents no threat to the US, and interestingly enough the US citizens who most want to keep the embargo going are actually generally Cuban-Americans who fled the Castro regime.

RoboBlue · Post by **RoboBlue** » Mon Apr 18, 2011 11:33

I think we're technically still "at conflict" with Cuba, and the US reserves the right to ban civilians from entering a war zone. The cold war never ended anyway, those damn commies turned around and got one of their own elected president.

thehackercat · Post by **thehackercat** » Mon Apr 18, 2011 20:39

Every Cuban-American I know has a horror story. Even the kids. A lot of anti-Cuban sentiment comes from - surprise! - the ones who fled the country in the first place.

Castro's a garg. But I haven't heard anything about travel restrictions.. Should I be paying more attention?

StupidBunny · Post by **StupidBunny** » Mon Apr 18, 2011 21:14

thehackercat wrote:I haven't heard anything about travel restrictions.. Should I be paying more attention?

Travel to Cuba is and has been illegal for most US citizens since the 1960s, and it only became legal in 2009 for people with relatives in Cuba to visit the country. It's still possible to go by chartering a flight, typically out of another Latin American or Caribbean country. I don't know of any other countries that US citizens can't legally visit, even North Korea is allowed (although in that case it's the North Korean government that's likely to refuse US citizens access.)

Rorie · Post by **Rorie** » Tue Apr 19, 2011 0:17

RoboBlue wrote:I think we're technically still "at conflict" with Cuba, and the US reserves the right to ban civilians from entering a war zone. The cold war never ended anyway, those damn commies turned around and got one of their own elected president.

that just sucks!. fancy having your own government dictating where you can and cannot travel to!

MOM4Evr · Post by **MOM4Evr** » Tue Apr 19, 2011 1:34

Rorie wrote:fancy having your own government dictating where you can and cannot travel to!

Hee, hee. Actually, I personally don't care a lot. Cuba isn't on my top list of places in the world to visit anyway. We aren't blocked from going there because we're mean; we're blocked because the Cuban and American governments hate each other (and some of the people hate each other too). I personally feel it's a little better than trying to travel between Israel and Palestine, as there's huge amounts of distrust on both sides. Better just to stay out of each others' way rather than being worried about the guy next to you on the bus carrying a bomb just because he's from another country.

It isn't the best of any world, to be sure, but it could be worse. (Yay for Pollyanna attitudes!

)

RoboBlue · Post by **RoboBlue** » Tue Apr 19, 2011 1:52

Rorie wrote:
RoboBlue wrote:I think we're technically still "at conflict" with Cuba, and the US reserves the right to ban civilians from entering a war zone. The cold war never ended anyway, those damn commies turned around and got one of their own elected president.
that just sucks!. fancy having your own government dictating where you can and cannot travel to!

Worse, they take nude photos of you even if you do abide by the rules.

Post by **Levellass** » Tue Apr 19, 2011 3:17

As far as I'm aware the whole *point* of governments is to tell you what to and not to do. That's what they're FOR.

Paramultart · Post by **Paramultart** » Tue Apr 19, 2011 3:38

Levellass wrote:As far as I'm aware the whole *point* of governments is to tell you what to and not to do. That's what they're FOR.

Exactly. That's why I say fucl 'em.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism

RoboBlue · Post by **RoboBlue** » Tue Apr 19, 2011 4:41

Libertarianism isn't the same as Anarchism though. Libertarians still believe in government for purposes of military and police forces.

DHeadshot · Post by **DHeadshot** » Tue Apr 19, 2011 11:44

I'm just glad I'm not American...

Actually, the fact that You lot can't go to Cuba but we can go to Argentina, France, India, Pakistan, Germany, Australia, New Zealand - in fact basically anywhere - begs the question "Has everyone forgotten about what we got up to during the Empire days?"

StupidBunny · Post by **StupidBunny** » Tue Apr 19, 2011 17:06

DHeadshot wrote:Actually, the fact that You lot can't go to Cuba but we can go to Argentina, France, India, Pakistan, Germany, Australia, New Zealand - in fact basically anywhere - begs the question "Has everyone forgotten about what we got up to during the Empire days?"

This is a lot more noticeable when travelling to Africa south of the Sahara. A lot of African countries will charge much higher fees for their former colonizers and for western Europeans in general, while charging relatively little or nothing for Americans. The most amusing case of this was when our tour group was considering a day trip into Rwanda, and the one Belgian guy would've had to have paid like 3 times more than anybody else.