Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
El Malecon in Havana, on Cuba’s north coast.
It may well be the best-governed country in the world. It has won worldwide acclaim for handling the COVID pandemic better than any other country with the exception of the United Arab Emirates. It is doing more for its people and its infrastructure to prepare for the ravages of climate change, and has done so over a longer period of time, than any other country. Health care is not only free, it is readily available froom clinics located in virtually every rural village. It has been widely regarded for many years, by any number of international studies, to be as the most sustainable country in the world.
Yes. Cuba.
I hear your hiss of outraged denial. I see you making the sign of the cross and retreating into a corner to assume the fetal position and whimper, “But they’re Communists. We hate them!” Both of those things are true, or have been true since the revolution of 1959. And neither of these things matters — except for the fact that they are used as excuses for the U.S. maintaining brutal embargoes and sanctions on the entire country. Despite those shackles, here is what Cuba has accomplished recently:
- Cuba has developed five — count them, five — COVID vaccines which are said to provide 90% protection against COVID symptoms. As a result, Cuba has vaccinated a higher percentage of its population — 86% — than any other country in the world save one.
- Because the vaccines are cheap and do not require special refrigeration, they hold out hope for low-income countries that can’t afford the better known vaccines. Cuba has offered to share its technology without taking s profit and the World Health Organization is in the process of evaluating the vaccines.
- In 1963, Cuba organized a Civil Defense System and tasked it with predicting, warning about, mitigating and studying the effects of extreme meteorological events. It has organized units in every province, municipality and neighborhood in the country. Its speed and effectiveness in dealing with natural disasters is the envy of the world.
- In 1976, Cuba was one of the first countries in the world to amend its constitution to ensure the protection of the environment, and set up a national commission to oversee the process.
- In 2017, the Cuban Government approved a long term plan for dealing with climate change and titled it “Tarea Vida,” or “Life Task.” It laid out a timetable for specific actions to shift to renewable energy, strengthen environmental protection, and protect places endangered by rising seas or other aspects of climate change.
- The accomplishments of Tarea Vida after only a few years are impressive. Eleven percent of the most vulnerable coastal homes have been relocated; forest cover, which the sugarcane industry had reduced to 14 per cent, has been increased to 30 percent; vast coral farms and mangrove forests have been established.
I first wrote about the world’s admiration for Cuba’s sustainability — hard won after its sudden abandonment by the collapsing Soviet Union — in 2015 (The World’s Most Sustainable Country. What? Cuba?) Since then that essay has been far and away the most viewed post on this site. To this day it is accessed by several people every week. Remarkably, there have been no death threats.
The United States’ posture toward Cuba — onerous sanctions, embargoes, denial of access to financing, travel bans — is unforgivable and unsupportable. Fear and loathing of Communism is like fear of polio — completely outdated. As I wrote in 2019 (Cuba: Still Sustainable After All These Years), we should be learning from their impressive successes at finding solutions to problems we have not even begun to define. It’s time to do what we can to make Cuba Libre.
“It may well be the best-governed country in the world.”
My YouTube feed would disagree. I’ve said some nice things about Cuba over the past couple of years, even linked to your 2015 post a couple of times, and my feed has been filled up with “Cuba is the armpit of the world” videos ever since.
And I thought my logarithm was there to support me!
Same thing happens with China. My feed particularly hates when I mention the Belt and Road.
It is doomed to fail Max424, you indoctrinated fool!
Too funny. At the risk of having my “homeless kitten makes good” videos completely displaced, I did find it interesting that Cuba recently signed on to the Belt and Road Initiative.
Chile, Venezuela, Nicaragua, all in the final stages, with more to follow, and if Lulu wins, which he will, the big prize in this hemisphere, Brazil, will be next.
And what does my country offer these nations as an alternative. Sanctions, debt penury, and frozen assets if you cooperate, and drone strikes, occupation and/or war if you don’t
Sure enough.
Russia threatened the USA: Sent Its Cargo to Cuba And Venezuela to Deploy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BelNMx87dmc
Deep Journal. Never heard of it. Must be a newbie, only 143 subscribers. Irritating automated narrator with no understanding whatsoever of how missiles work, but a weirdly balanced report of very fluid geopolitical “situation.”
The reporting belies the clickbait title, that’s for sure.
Put it this way, I learned a lot, and certainly more than I have in the past three weeks from CNN, MSNBC, FOX, NYT and WaPo and the rest combined.
So thanks algo. I apologize.
Somewhat enlightened despotism vs somewhat unenlightened leaderless self-interest.
All have great achievements … in their own ways.
But I still hate both regime, as all mildly misanthrope and disappointed idealist should …
No doubt Tom. Cuba learned how to survive.. and Thrive!!!…. a looking time ago! We could learn a lot from Cuba. Wonderful…resourceful folks Lots of ingenuity. 🥰
Nothing to do with Mr. Algo, Breaking Points is must see TubeTV if you are a radical psychotic leftist like me. Still, I do not believe this to be a coincidence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yah-M-oo6M&t=318s
Chicken and the egg, the stuff that the internet is made of.
Note: Go ahead, call me a conspiracy theorist, I dare you! The best thing the about Covid and the crash of all of its many narratives, most of them quite Official; is the label “conspiracy theorist” can never be bandied about in good company again.
Giggle.
Have to say I do find Lionel Sainsbury’s Cuban Dance No 2 a most charming and elegant musical work. Does offer three minutes of respite from all the madness that has been raging all around the world. If this work is representative of Cuban music, you have to grant that they have excellent taste.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pnVA3tpKV8
Batista was a slime ball. Everybody hated him except, of course, the Mafia. Americans generally rooted for Castro – especially the newly sprouted Baby Boomers: we loved the adventure unfolding before our very eyes, right off the southern coast. It added a bit of spice to our otherwise drab, relentlessly suburbanizing American culture.
But when the Cuban Revolution proved successful and Fidel went Pink, the older folks quickly turned against him. To America’s young, however, he remained a defiant hero. This event, along with Elvis, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, etc…, were sure signs that what was soon to be called The Generation Gap was already well under steam.
Correction: Castro went Red, not Pink – Pink means something else today – at least that’s what I understand.