Actually that one is true. Doctors per capita: Australia 3.9 US 2.4 Canada 2.1 Cuba 6.7 (2010 figures from The World Bank)

But . . . and it's a big but . . . they lack modern facilities & supplies. I visited a small clinic in Levisa when I did a 'suitcase filled with drugs' drop off 10 years ago. It was a busy place but housed in a decrepit building that we would have bulldozed 40 years ago. Cuba has sent more doctors to the Ebola outbreak this year than any other country in the world. What did the US send? Soldiers & money.

Fint . . . I just don't buy the hype. The Bay of Pigs incident of 1961 is taught in schools as a classic example of what goes wrong when group think prevails. Nothing has changed.

Ian

The soldiers and money (who built treatment facilities and brought equipment and drugs) were needed more than doctors (there were already quite a few there...although they had been dropping like flies because of lack of treatment facilities, equipment and drugs).

Much of what is taught in schools regarding modern history is far from accurate; not so much the facts, but what they mean (analysis and conclusions). The obvious mistake was a weak President not providing the air support he promised.

What does the Bay of Pigs have to do with the Embargo? Although the CIA did support the attempted overthrow of Castro (by Cuban exiles)...that was after he took power, seized American assets, the initial embargo and after we broke diplomatic relations...and just before their allowing Soviet missiles on the island (almost causing WW3).

Here is the general timeline http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/17/us-cuba-usa-history-factbox-idUSKBN0JV2QL20141217:

(Reuters) - The United States and Cuba plan to restore diplomatic relations and end more than five decades of fierce animosity that at one point took the world to the edge of nuclear conflict.

Here is a summary of U.S.-Cuba relations since Fidel Castro seized power in a 1959 revolution (it leaves out unrelated details such as violations of civil/human rights on the island and Cuba's exportation or mercenaries/terrorism throughout Latin America and Africa):

Jan. 1, 1959 - Cuban Revolution. Castro and his rebel army take power after U.S.-backed former dictator Fulgencio Batista flees island.

June 29, 1960 - United States suspends Cuban sugar import quota after Castro nationalizes Texaco refinery.

Oct. 19, 1960 - United States begins partial economic embargo against Cuba.

Jan. 3, 1961 - Washington breaks diplomatic ties with Cuba.

April 19, 1961 - Castro's troops defeat CIA-backed Cuban exile invasion force at Bay of Pigs.

Jan. 22, 1962 - At U.S. urging, the Organization of American States (OAS) suspends Cuba.

Feb. 7, 1962 - Full U.S. trade embargo imposed on Cuba.

October 1962 - Cuban Missile Crisis. The presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba provokes standoff between Moscow and Washington. Many fear a world war, but Russia reaches a compromise deal with the United States and withdraws the missiles.

Sept. 1, 1977 - Cuba and United States establish informal diplomatic missions, or Interests Sections, in Havana and Washington.

April-September 1980 - Mariel Boatlift. Cuba allows mass exodus of about 125,000 citizens to the United States, mostly via Mariel port west of Havana.

March 1, 1982 - The U.S. State Department adds Cuba to its list of State Sponsors of Terrorism.

Oct. 23, 1992 - U.S. President George Bush signs Torricelli Act to tighten embargo on Havana amid severe economic crisis triggered by Soviet bloc's collapse at start of decade.

Aug. 14, 1993 - Havana ends ban on use of U.S. dollars.

August 1994 - Rafter Crisis. More than 30,000 Cubans flee island on flimsy boats. Washington and Havana sign immigration accord to stem exodus and agree to a minimum of 20,000 legal entry visas per year for Cubans.

Feb. 24, 1996 - Cuba shoots down two civilian planes of the Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue, killing four people. Brothers to the Rescue says it was on a humanitarian mission looking for rafters fleeing Cuba. Cuba says they had routinely violated Cuban airspace.

March 1996 - Outraged over downing of the planes, U.S. Congress approves Helms-Burton Act, tightening the embargo and requiring a vote of Congress to repeal it. President Bill Clinton, seeking re-election that year, signs the bill into law.

March 20, 1998 - Clinton announces renewal of direct passenger charter flights and permission for Cuban-Americans to send remittances to families on island.

January 1998 - Pope John Paul visits Cuba, condemning U.S. embargo but also calling for greater freedoms on the island.

Nov. 25, 1999 - Elian Gonzalez custody saga starts, when 6-year-old Cuban boy is rescued at sea off U.S. coast after surviving a shipwreck that kills his mother and 10 other Cuban migrants. After a bitter seven-month dispute, which prompted a massive patriotic campaign in Cuba, Elian flies home to Cuba to be with his father.

July 13, 2001 - U.S. President George W. Bush orders his administration to more strictly enforce sanctions and pledges increased support for pro-democracy forces on the island.

November 2001 - Cuba purchases U.S. agricultural products as the two countries begin their first direct food trade since 1962, under an exception to embargo passed by U.S. Congress.

May 6, 2002 - U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton accuses Cuba, along with Libya and Syria, of working to develop biological weapons, a charge Castro denies.

June 30, 2005 - New U.S. curbs on travel come into force as Bush administration tightens enforcement of embargo.

July 10, 2006 - U.S. government announces increased support for dissidents and more money for anti-Castro broadcasts by Radio and TV Marti.

July 31, 2006 - Fidel Castro provisionally cedes power to brother Raul Castro after undergoing surgery for undisclosed intestinal ailment.

Feb. 24, 2008 - Raul Castro is elected president by National Assembly, replacing his older brother.

Dec. 3, 2009 - Cuba arrests Alan Gross, a U.S. Agency for International Development subcontractor, who had brought banned telecommunications equipment to Cuba and attempted to establish clandestine Internet service for Cuban Jews. He was later sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Jan. 20, 2009 - Barack Obama, who has said he wants to take steps toward normalizing relations with Cuba, is sworn in as president. He soon goes on to ease U.S. restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba.

Nov. 8, 2013 - Obama tells a Miami fundraiser, "We have to be creative and we have to be thoughtful and we have to continue to update our policies" on Cuba.

Dec. 14, 2014 - Obama announces plan to restore diplomatic relations in major policy shift. Cuba releases Gross as well as an intelligence agent who spied for the United States and had been held in prison for nearly 20 years. In return, Washington releases three Cuban intelligence agents held in the United States. Obama says the United States will open an embassy in Cuba and relax some of the restrictions on commerce and travel between the United States and Cuba.

That list leaves out several (like 10 known) instances where the CIA tried to kill Fidel:

1. Femme fatale. Marita Lorenz, just one of many women Castro counted as a mistress, allegedly accepted a deal from the CIA in which she would feed him capsules filled with poison. She managed to get as far as smuggling the pills into his bedroom in her jar of cold cream, but the pills dissolved in the cream and she doubted her ability to force-feed Castro face lotion, and she also just chickened out. According to Lorenz, Castro somehow figured out her plan and offered her his gun. “I can’t do it, Fidel,” she told him.

2. Poisoned wetsuit. While there’s nothing suspicious about receiving random diving gear from your enemy right in the middle of the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the CIA gave it a shot. In 1975, the Senate Intelligence Committee claimed it had "concrete evidence" of a plan to offer Castro a wetsuit lined with spores and bacteria that would give him a skin disease (and maybe worse). The plan supposedly involved American lawyer James B. Donovan, who would present Castro with the suit when he went to negotiate the release of the Bay of Pigs prisoners. A 1975 AP report said the plan was abandoned "because Donovan gave Castro a different diving suit on his own initiative."

3. Ballpoint hypodermic syringe. An ordinary-looking pen would be rigged with a hypodermic needle so fine that Castro wouldn’t notice when someone bumped into him with the pen and injected him with an extremely potent poison.

4. Exploding cigar. But this was no parlor trick – this cigar would have been packed with enough real explosives to take Fidel’s head off. In 1967, the Saturday Evening Post reported that a New York City police officer had been propositioned with the idea and hoped to carry it out during Castro's United Nations visit in September 1960.

5. Contaminated cigar. They may have given up on the TNT stogie, but the idea of spiking his smokes was still being floated around. The CIA even went as far as to recruit a double agent who would slip Castro a cigar filled with botulin, a toxin that would kill the leader in short order. The double agent was allegedly given the cigars in February of 1961, but he apparently got cold feet.

6. Exploding conch shell. Knowing that Castro liked to scuba dive, the CIA made plans to plant an explosive device in a conch shell at his favorite spot. They plotted to make the shell brightly colored and unusual looking so it would be sure to attract Castro’s attention, drawing him close enough to kill him when the bomb inside went off.

7. Nair. Well, maybe not that brand specifically, but according to that 1975 Senate Intelligence Committee report, the U.S. believed that messing with Castro’s beard was messing with the man’s power. The CIA figured that the loss of the beard would show Cubans that Castro was weak and fallible. A half-baked scheme was hatched to use thallium salt, the chemical in depilatory products such as Nair, in Castro’s shoes or in his cigar. The chemical would be absorbed or inhaled and cause the famous facial hair to fall out. (Wait, wasn’t this an episode of Get Smart?)

8. LSD. In what was mostly an effort to discredit Fidel, not kill him, a radio station where Castro was giving a live broadcast would be bombarded with an aerosol spray containing a substance similar to LSD. When Fidel had the requisite freak out live on the air, Cubans would think he had lost his mind and stop trusting him.

9. Handkerchief teeming with deadly bacteria. The CIA was seemingly obsessed with covering Fidel in harmful bacteria and toxins, because they also considered giving him a germ-covered hankie that would make him very ill.

10. Poisoned milkshake. According to Escalante, the closest the CIA ever came to killing Castro was a deadly dessert drink in 1963. The attempt went awry when the pill stuck to the freezer where the waiter-assassin at the Havana Hilton was supposed to retrieve it. When he tried to unstick it, the capsule ripped open.


10 Ways the CIA Tried to Kill Castro | Mental Floss

duplicate post

LOL. Anyone that the CIA has tried to kill is very dead (unless in hiding). Our law does not allow them to assassinate anyone. If these really did occur, they are likely bungled attempts by his countrymen. Note, that they are claims of his bodyguard and likely most are not even true. Getting credit for saving Castro's life probably ensured that, unlike most Cubans...he ate/lived well.

See the Wiki definition.

I believe that "irrational or dysfunctional decision-making" and avoiding "alternative solutions" sums up the US policy toward Cuba well. You have been locked in a circular holding pattern for over 50 years.

Ian

Really?

"The US has made more than 50 attempts to assassinate political party leaders according to William Blum in "Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions since World War II", 2003. Noam Chomsky called this book "Far and away the best book on the topic.". Former CIA officer John Stockwell called the same book "The single most useful summary of CIA history."

All such operations are illegal and almost all such killings are aimed at geopolitical objectives. In almost no cases can any clear humanitarian benefit be identified, even if the target is/was indeed tyrannical."

https://wikispooks.com/wiki/US_Foreign_Assassinations_since_1945

While the CIA may not directly murder people they have been noted for arranging the deaths of people who's interests are contrary to US business interests and that is what happened in Cuba. Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar looked after himself and the other 1% ers in Cuba. He carry out wide-scale violence, torture and public executions; ultimately killing anywhere from 1,000 to 20,000 people. For several years until 1959, the Batista government received financial, military, and logistical support from the United States. He looked after US business interests for a fee. Batista's net worth was estimated as 1/2 a Billion dollars. Not bad for a little guy on a little island. Well the 99% decided they had had enough and the revolution happened. First the US government tried to work with Fidel but when he nationalised US business interests the Bay of Pigs and the assignation attempts started. Some were in conjunction with Myer Lansky and friends because they were pissed that their casinos and brothels were closed.

While I agree with you that the CIA probably doesn't kill anyone in the USA because as you pointed out it's illegal for them to do that, the evidence shows they might help in arranging the deaths of people in other parts of the world. But that's ok as it's not in the USA.

Really. US law since 1976 (executive order)...anywhere in the world. The attempts on terrorists and folks we were at war with do not count....as they are lawful. Arranging deaths. No. Friendly to or provide support to folks who do not obey our laws and don't play nice with our enemies? Of course.

Time to read the Geneva convention.

I have. I believe you are incorrect.

So before 1976 bad and after 1976 ok? And it was ok because Nixon said so?


"The word "terrorism" is politically loaded and emotionally charged, and this greatly compounds the difficulty of providing a precise definition. A study on political terrorism examining over 100 definitions of "terrorism" found 22 separate definitional elements (e.g. Violence, force, fear, threat, victim-target differentiation). In some cases, the same group may be described as "freedom fighters" by its supporters and considered to be terrorists by its opponents. The concept of terrorism may be controversial as it is often used by state authorities (and individuals with access to state support) to delegitimize political or other opponents, and potentially legitimize the state's own use of armed force against opponents (such use of force may be described as "terror" by opponents of the state). At the same time, the reverse may also take place when states perpetrate or are accused of perpetrating state terrorism. The usage of the term has a controversial history, with individuals such as ANC leader Nelson Mandela at one point also branded a terrorist."

No, it was just illegal for Americans to do so after 1976 (Ford). Prior to that, no problem. It was not addressed in the US Constitution or US law before that.

Nope, I had no problem with it in 1975....or with the 5 US backed attempts between 1960 and 1975. Ford did. Probably for public relations reasons.

The terrorists/freedom fighters you refer to are unlawful combatants per the Geneva Convention, and should be treated as such. Mandela was a terrorist and the ANC was a terrorist organization.

Now that's funny! Problem is, they don't follow the law and unless called out or leaked info does the poo-poo become news. Every law enforcement agency breaks the laws. Its tested and contested later on, after the event and in the courts.

Its really no different than everyone here driving their Porsche over the speed limit, every time out. You'll repeatedly break the law, sometimes get busted but will do it again.

Yes they have plenty of "doctors"... But again according to my ex father in law a lot of these "doctors" used to be prostitutes but were reeducated by the Cuban Government after the revolution.
That always sounded hollow to me but who knows? There may be some truth to it but I can't imagine they'd be highly skilled.

My ex father in law was generally a good guy but when it came to Communism as far as he was concerned it was the best system of Government and nothing could convince him otherwise.
Even the collapse of the Soviet Union had no effect on his belief system.

Over the years we often talked about Communism.

After all of our discussions the only conclusion I could come to is that anyone who thinks Communism is a good idea is often belligerent, obnoxious and lazy.

Sad but true IMO. A certain type is drawn to this ideology.

Of course they follow the law. Conspiracy theories are just that. Something you see on TV. If the CIA were really off the reservation and were regularly assassinating folks, Putin, Castro, and the funny little fellow from North Korea would have been dead long ago.

The CIA breaks other people's laws, not ours.

This... As it is for most intelligence agencies throughout the world.

Discretion is the better part of valor.

" It is good to be brave, but it is also good to be careful.; If you are careful, you will not get into situations that require you to be brave."

"Civilisational change", Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.

"Key, historic and brave" move that would help integrate Latin America - Peru's Ollanta Humala.

"Overdue development" Prime Minister Stephen Harper – Canada.

"Warm congratulations" to the former arch-foes for overcoming "the difficulties which have marked their recent history". Pope Francis – Vatican.

"Of great significance" Spain's Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo.

“Decisive" Mexico's Enrique Pena Nieto.

"Today another Wall has started to fall," said EU foreign affairs head Federica Mogherini, adding that the 28-member bloc hoped ultimately to be able to "expand relations with all parts of Cuban society".

"A courageous gesture and a necessary one in history", adding that this was "probably Mr Obama's most important move as president" Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

“Now they will suffocate them in their embrace,” Mr. Rogozin – Russia Deputy Prime Minister.

Ian

...and every single one with a personal motive...none of which is the well being of the US.

"Obama said Dec. 19 that the full opening of relations between Cuba and the U.S. may take years, even as he offered assurances that the new U.S. stance will bring change to the island nation’s closed society. While the changes won’t open Cuba to U.S. tourism, they will make it easier for American businesses to export to Cuba’s construction, telecommunications and agricultural sectors. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker is planning a trade mission to the island."

Why ‘complicated’ Cuba may not see a ‘gold rush’ from the opening of U.S. relations | Financial Post

The population will not get the money. The corrupt leaders will. A taxi driver takes home $10 a day. That won't change. It is all controlled by the govt not how many people he carries. It also won't change after the Castros are gone. The leaders will not allow a system to change that they are getting rich off. All this happy talk about change is by people that don't know about the real Cuba.