Comments by "LRRPFco52" (@LRRPFco52) on "Should Cuba Integrate with North America? || Peter Zeihan" video.

@willie417 It's similar to how interactions with communists were for Europeans and Asians. The ones who lived through it tell the stories and show the photos of their families before the communists murdered them. The children grow up with this and don't forget either. It's more personal for us, even though we didn't directly experience it. My mom is from Finland. I have family photos and stories about my great uncles and aunts that died when Stalin invaded in 1939. I spent time riding around Helsinki with my great aunt Kerttu, who pointed out the city bus window and clearly recalled being evacuated in a bus in that exact spot when the Russians bombed Helsinki, and she watched people's body parts blown to pieces all over right in front of the central rail station at Rautatientori. Cuban exiles have related their stories about Castro taking over, stealing their farms and businesses under the ideas of some lazy apostate named Marx, and an agitator named Lenin. Their children and grandchildren carry those memories with them, even though they didn't witness it. They also see and hear the stories of other Cuban exiles who lost loved ones and their homes in Cuba at meals and family gatherings. When they pray, they hear grandparents and parents asking for blessings on relatives who are still there. It is very real, not a fading memory. There is a true sense of loss inflicted on people that doesn't just go away.
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When we tried beginning the process of normalizing relations under Trump, the Russians microwaved the US diplomats. Any conversation about Cuba-US relations without mention of Russia is going to miss the big picture.
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Big food/big corn has a ton of influence in DC both in ag and from food & grocery mfgrs. They line a lot of pockets and finance campaigns.
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 @jamesodell3064 Diet is the main factor in that, not NHS. Same with Europe. Food quality laws are very tight in Europe and Canada, whereas the US is run amok with packaged chemicals.
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@davidjones6389 KGB didn't exist during the time of the OSS, but its precursors did with NKVD and other intelligence ministries. Those date back to Okhrana under the Tsars, then the Cheka under the Bolsheviks. Same buildings, same operations, different regimes. Within the Soviets, there was a divide between the internationalists vs Russo-centrists and nationalists in the different states.
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Soviet moles within the US drove that so they could develop Cuba into a strategic trampoline. Notice that the CIA was both helping and fighting Castro simultaneously? Soviets had the OSS and CIA filled with doubles from the start. This is key to understanding US-Cuba relations of the 1950s, otherwise it makes no sense.
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Trump started a process of normalization with Cuba and the US diplomats were microwaved by the Russians, resulting in Havana syndrome. Russia has always seen Cuba as a vector for strategic depth against the US, and Putin would go to great lengths to sabotage US efforts at establishing better relations with them.
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@jamesodell3064 The US has more access to diagnostics, but also a wider range of socioeconomic swaths and demographics who don't trust or participate in medicine until emergencies. 13% of the US is black/Afro-descent, who have unique diseases and health metrics you don't see in Canada or Europe as much, with a unique set of dietary and environmental challenges based on warped family dynamics, lack of fathers, and high homicide rates. When you look at aging, the demographics with high life expectancy from different parts of the world have even higher life expectancy in the US, namely Japanese and other Asian-descent Americans. It's much more interesting when you study this subject after breaking free from the old political theory constructs, which don't align with the bigger data. Instead, more questions arise that deserve more study.
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@jamesodell3064 I lived in Japan. US healthcare options are superior, but Japanese diet with lots of fiber and real food is better, as long as they avoid making a habit out of eating US fast food. Once McDonaru came in, you started seeing teen obesity. I avoid US fast food and packaged crap like the plague. We mostly have home-cooked meals in my family.
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