{"id":4581,"date":"2018-04-23T12:22:05","date_gmt":"2018-04-23T12:22:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/04\/23\/michael-j-totten-on-cuba\/"},"modified":"2018-04-23T12:22:05","modified_gmt":"2018-04-23T12:22:05","slug":"michael-j-totten-on-cuba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/04\/23\/michael-j-totten-on-cuba\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael J. Totten on Cuba"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 11pt;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldaffairsjournal.org\/blog\/michael-j-totten\/castro-steps-down-cuba-so-what\">Excerpt<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 11pt;\">As Christopher Hitchens once said of North Korea, communist states are places where everything that isn\u2019t absolutely compulsory is absolutely forbidden. Mounting any kind of resistance against them is nearly impossible unless and until the state loses its will to continue. Don\u2019t be deceived by Havana\u2019s crumbling beauty, its upbeat music and people, its enviable location in the Caribbean. \u201cThe surveillance and denunciation system is so rigorous,\u201d French historian Pascal Fontaine wrote in&#0160;<em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldaffairsjournal.org\/blog\/michael-j-totten\/The%20Black%20Book%20of%20Communism\">The Black Book of Communism<\/a><\/em>, \u201cthat family intimacy is almost nonexistent.\u201d \u201cCuba looks exactly like its photos,\u201d M.J. Porter wrote in the Introduction to&#0160;<em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1935554255\/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1935554255&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=michajtottesm-20\">Havana Real<\/a><\/em>&#0160;by Cuban dissident Yoani Sanchez in 2011, \u201cand yet if feels&#0160;<em>different<\/em>. I fell in love with Cuba and Cubans. Something felt like home. Completely unforeseen, however, was the weight of the totalitarian state.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 11pt;\">Surveillance-cum-denunciation. Don&#39;t say it can&#39;t happen here. It is happening here.&#0160;&#0160;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 11pt;\">And you are <em>still<\/em> a Democrat?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia, palatino; font-size: 11pt;\">Related: <a href=\"http:\/\/maverickphilosopher.typepad.com\/maverick_philosopher\/2015\/09\/mona-charen-on-the-left-leaning-pope-francis.html\">Mona Charen on the Left-Leaning Pope Francis<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Excerpt: As Christopher Hitchens once said of North Korea, communist states are places where everything that isn\u2019t absolutely compulsory is absolutely forbidden. Mounting any kind of resistance against them is nearly impossible unless and until the state loses its will to continue. Don\u2019t be deceived by Havana\u2019s crumbling beauty, its upbeat music and people, its &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2018\/04\/23\/michael-j-totten-on-cuba\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Michael J. Totten on Cuba&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4581\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}