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For nearly half a century, the CIA and Cuban exiles have been trying to devise ways to assassinate Fidel Castro, who is currently laid low in Cuba following an operation for intestinal bleeding. None of the plots, of course, succeeded, but, then, many of them would probably be rejected as too fanciful for a James Bond novel.

Fabian Escalante, who, for a time, had the job of keeping El Commandante alive, has calculated that there have been a total of 638 attempts on Castro's life. That may sound like a staggeringly high figure, but then the CIA were pretty keen on killing him ...

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638 attempts on the life of the Head of State. Mind you, that doesn't stop jokes about Fidel's longevity:

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...jokes about Castro's apparent indestructibility have become commonplace in Cuba. One, recounted in the New Yorker this week, tells of him being given a present of a Galapagos turtle. Castro declines it after he learns that it is likely to live only 100 years. "That's the problem with pets," he says. "You get attached to them and then they die on you".

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Right on, Fidel.

Duncan Campbell in The Guardian.

There's a whole section of stories on Cuba:

Cuba: Special Report

[ 04 August 2006: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

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The main omission in the coverage of events in Cuba is that Cubans aren't shocked by Castro's illness or the shift in power to his brother Raul. When I visited Cuba over the December holidays, many Cubans talked to me about this impending transition, and few expressed anxieties about it.

The media coverage here seems to be aimed at portraying Cuba as on the verge of massive instability — and recent experience would suggest that once a country has been cast as unstable for North American audiences — think Haiti or Iraq as two recent examples — this is an excuse to justify international intervention or, less obliquely, invasion.
....
If I were a Cuban, I would be more nervous about a U.S. invasion than internal instability as a consequence of Castro's illness. Letter to the Star

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That may sound like a staggeringly high figure, but then the CIA were pretty keen on killing him ...

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Don't forget that both u.s. gangsters and ex-pat cuban gangsters have been gunning for Castro as long as the dirty tricks guys. In fact, what other mob target has been able to evade mob thugs for over 50 years without having to 'disappear' off the face of the aarth?

"Today, I would like to speak directly to the Cuban people."

Through the open sewer of Radio Marti. No wonder the Cubans do their best to jam that imperial crap.

"We in the United States are closely watching the events in Cuba. Much is changing there, yet one thing remains constant: America’s commitment to supporting a future of freedom for Cuba, a future that will be defined by you -- the Cuban people."

Freedom means the restoration of transnational capitalism, destruction of the public infrastructure of Cuba, and Haitian-style "democracy". What remains constant is that the Despicable States of America have, for better than 40 years, carried out unending attempts to overthrow, with the assistance of terrorists like Posada and others, the legitimate government of Cuba.

"The United States respects your aspirations as sovereign citizens. And we will stand with you to secure your rights -- to speak as you choose, to think as you please, to worship as you wish, and to choose your leaders, freely and fairly, in democratic elections. "

Cubans have their own electoral system, that is, in many ways, much more democratic than the USA. The USA has never respected the sovereignty of Cuba, and continues to use Guantanamo Bay, a part of Cuba occupied by force and criminal "agreements" with prior puppet regimes, as a safe haven for torture and other atrocities. This is what the USA has planned for all of Cuba.

"All Cubans who desire peaceful democratic change can count on the support of the United States. We encourage the Cuban people to work at home for positive change, and we stand ready to provide you with humanitarian assistance, as you begin to chart a new course for your country. "

Strange then, that the Despicable States of America continues to carry out a criminal embargo of Cuba, even interfering with the decisions of other states in the world to trade and do business with Cuba.

"The United States is also encouraging all democratic nations to join together and call for the release of political prisoners, for the restoration of your fundamental freedoms, and for a transition that quickly leads to multiparty elections in Cuba. "

Maybe the Despicable States of America can release their own political prisoners, starting with the 5 anti-terrorist investigators languishing in US jails. And then the Despicable States of America can stop interfering in the internal affairs of Cuba, stop financing terrorists and saboteurs and others, stop funding political organizations [which would be illegal if any other country did this in the USA, by the way] whose express aim is to destabilize Cuba. Maybe the Despicable States of America can stop, at 638 attempts, trying to kill the Head of State, an especially despicable activity of a most despicable country.

"It has long been the hope of the United States that a free, independent, and democratic Cuba would be more than just a close neighbor – it would be a close friend. "

Americans like writer Ernest Hemingway and many others over the years have been great friends of the Cuban people. It is you, Condi "Keep Bombing" Rice and other functionaries of the US Government that stand in the way of friendship. May the trend of freedom from imperialist dominance, sovereignty and independent development, peaceful foreign policy and true friendship between the peoples of Latin America - policies asserted by Cuba despite US atrocities - continue and cause nightmares to your most Despicable States of America.

[ 05 August 2006: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

The Principle terrorist actions against Cuba from 1990 - 2000

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Fidel is no idiot. I think we can take it for granted that there is a transition plan in place for when he is no longer able to rule. The only question is whether he is planning to keep it in the family or has another chosen successor.

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When outsiders think of Cuba, it's often the lack of political freedoms and economic power that comes to mind. Cubans who have chosen to stay on the island, however, are quick to point out the positives: safe streets, a rich and accessible cultural life, a leisurely lifestyle to enjoy with family and friends.

There are, of course, hundreds of dissidents and political prisoners on the island of 11 million who abhor the system and feel a desperate need for rapid change. But most Cubans would not list political repression among their most immediate concerns.

For all its flaws, life in Castro's Cuba has its comforts, and unknown alternatives are not automatically more attractive. The idea of Cuba without "El Comandante," who has been in power for nearly five decades, provokes alarm and uncertainty — and a tremendous fear they could lose their way of life.
....
Many foreigners consider it propaganda when Castro's government enumerates its accomplishments, but many Cubans take pride in their free education system, high literacy rates and top-notch doctors. Ardent Castro supporters say life in the United States, in contrast, seems selfish, superficial, and — despite its riches — ultimately unsatisfying.

"Socialism is superior to capitalism. It's much more humane," said retiree Luis Poey, 66, whose last job was delivering food to workers in Old Havana.

These Cubans even defend their system as a democracy in which the National Assembly and provincial and city leaders are directly elected. Assembly members then elect one of their own to be president of the country — Castro, a representative from the eastern city of Santiago, has repeatedly won out.

Castro's critics say the notion that Cuba is democratic is a farce — that tight state control, a heavy police presence and neighbourhood-watch groups reporting on "anti-revolutionary" conduct prevent any real political freedom.

Some Cubans retort that a system allowing U.S. President George W. Bush to "steal" elections and wage wars without the people's support is certainly more flawed than their own.

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[ 05 August 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

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Originally posted by otter:

It looks like benevolent dictator wins out once again over democratically elected fascist !

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Originally posted by Bobolink:
Can we safely add you name, otter, to those on this board who dispise democracy and favour authoritarian police states?

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Old trash in new buckets

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Such practices flowed from a powerful combination of factors: the cultural legacy of Cuba's dependent capitalist economic and social relations, sometimes narrowly referred to as "machismo," the heritage of Spanish colonialism and the impact of Catholic Church sexual dogma. To this was added the then-standing Soviet wisdom that homosexuality was perverse, a form of "moral degeneration" and "bourgeois decadence." (Homosexuality was legalized in the earliest days of the 1917 Russian revolution, but was re-criminalized under Stalin in 1934.)

The extent, depth, and scope of events that took place in Cuba under this reactionary construct are exaggerated and exploited by Arenas in his memoir. Worse still, criticism and opposition to such measures, which led to their correction, have no place in the book. Before Night Falls is instead consumed with hatred for the socialist revolution, its undeniable accomplishments simply ignored.

The director of the movie version, Julian Schnable, goes Arenas a step further. He deliberately grafts outrageous lies, slanders and falsifications to the half-truths, distortions and fabrications that define the autobiography.

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No legislature in the USA had the courage to do likewise. It wasn't until the US Supreme Court struck down Texas's anti-sodomy law in Lawrence v. Texas that sodomy was legalized de facto in the home of the brave.

The year? 2003.

[ 05 August 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

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...the U.S. government has, in recent years, openly stepped up its efforts at implementing regime change in Havana. In May 2004, the Bush-appointed Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, co-chaired by Colin Powell, released a 500-page document that was adopted as government policy. As observed in this week’s New Yorker, the administration even appointed a coordinator for the ‘transition’, a sort of “Paul Bremer designate of Cuba” (‘Castro’s last battle,’ by John Lee Anderson, p.54).

According to the Associated Press, GOP senators are already busy drafting legislation to take “advantage of the incapacitation of Fidel Castro to advance civil society-building measures and the transition to a democratic Cuba” (August 2, 2006). Surely the recent cases of Iraq and Cuba’s neighbour Haiti, where the U.S. backed a 2004 coup against the democratically elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide, tell us something about the real transition that the U.S. has in mind. It’s not democracy they’re after in Cuba or anywhere else, but a government pliant to U.S. interests that will implement neo-liberal economic policy.
Seven Oaks

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Originally posted by Bobolink:
Just don't be gay and Cuban.

http://www.galha.org/glh/213/cuba.html

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To be fair, this country and the USA and nearly every other one you can name wasn't much better during that era.

[ 05 August 2006: Message edited by: Dead_Letter ]

There is a continuing need for a GLBT movement in Cuba, as there is an equal need for one everywhere else.

And in defense of the link to http://www.galha.org site, the author of the essay on gay issues in Cuba is Peter Tatchell, a longstanding and courageous crusader on GLBT issues in the UK, and also the victim of one of the most brutal media assaults on an individual political candidate ever launched in the British press when he stood as the Labour candidate in the Bermondsey byelection in 1983. Tatchell is a man of principle and strength, and he holds all ideologies to a high standard on GLBT concerns. He has been one of the few people on the left, for example, who has spoken up for gay and lesbian Palestinians facing oppression from Hamas and before them Fatah(as well as, of course, the oppression they face from Israel for just being Palestinian). And Tatchell stood alone in confronting Robert Mugabe, the onetime revolutionary hero turned senile psychopath, in his vicious campaign(with it's senseless "homosexuality is not African" canard)against gay and lesbian Zimbabweans.

Peter Tatchell, whatever you can say about him, will never be the propaganda tool of anyone. He's the closest thing the modern gay movement has at the moment to a world historical figure.

Do those who defend Cuba have to ignore everything that needs to change within the Cuban system?

Are we really going to go back to the bullshit idea that any criticism of a revolution is "giving aid and comfort to the counterrevolution"?

What good did that idea ever do the left in the past?

[ 06 August 2006: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

[ 06 August 2006: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

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The nieceof Fidel Castro is defying her uncle's beliefs regarding sexual orientation by leading a revolution of pro-gay laws in Cuba.

Mariela Castro is in charge of the government's National Centre for Sex Education, from which she has promoted issues of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights, in stark contrast to country's macho society and homosexual witch-hunts of the 1960s and 1970s.

Her department has previously campaigned for better AIDs prevention and promoted a soap opera involving a bisexual character and most recently pushed for a free gender transition law, which will be voted on in December.

She told the Reuters news agency that she is aiming to extend the Cuban Revolution to sexuality, “I want to bring the revolution’s humanity to those aspects of life that it hasn’t reached because of old prejudices.” ...

“Marriage is not as important in Cuba as in other more Catholic countries. Here consensual pairing is more important, what matters is love.”

If her legislation is approved it would rank Cuba amongst the most liberal Latin American nations on gay issues.

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How can you repeat the calumny against Fidel Castro that he is anti-gay??

Read his own words, from a 1992 interview:

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I am not going to deny that, at one point, male chauvinism also influenced our attitude toward homosexuality. I, myself, you're asking me for my own opinion - don't have any phobia toward homosexuals. I've never felt that phobia and I've never promoted or supported policies against homosexuals I would say that it corresponded to a given stage and is largely associated with that legacy of chauvinism. I try to have a more humane, scientific approach to the problem. Often, it becomes a tragedy, because of what the parents think - some parents whose son is homosexual turn it into a tragedy. It's really too bad they react this way and make it a tragedy for the individual, as well.

I don't consider homosexuality to be a phenomenon of degeneration. I've always had a more rational approach, considering it to be one of the natural aspects and tendencies of human beings which should be respected ... It would be good if the families themselves had another mentality, another approach, when a circumstance of this nature occurs. I am absolutely opposed to any form of repression, contempt, scorn, or discrimination with regard to homosexuals. That's what I think.

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Peter Tatchell may be many things, but he cannot be called a gusano.

And its not like the movie of Before Night Falls called for the overthrow of the Cuban government.

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
How can you quote from that gusano publication??

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Originally posted by Ken Burch:
Peter Tatchell may be many things, but he cannot be called a gusano.

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But while we're on the subject of Peter Tatchell, he is notorious in the British left for allying himself with right wing organizations to demonize all Muslims as homophobes. He's even gone so far as to disrupt anti-Israel demonstrations with signs denouncing the palestinians as anti-gay.

If those who are fighting for a Palestinian state want that state to be anything other than just another dreary, reactionary and soul-destroying "Islamic" state, they have an obligation to defend the rights of those who are persecuted by those fundamentalists. If it is wrong for evangelical Christians in Canada and the US to target gays, it is equally wrong for Islamists within Palestinian society to target Palestinian gays and lesbians.

An Islamist Palestinian state can never be worthy of any progressive person's support, because nothing positive or progressive can happen in such a state. Certainly, such a state could not possibly be better for Palestinians than the status quo. Repression is repression, whether administered by other people or your own people.

As to principles, I'd say Tatchell has several that are consistent and worthy. He supports secularlism, democratic socialism and the rights of oppressed peoples, gays and lesbians as well as others who are oppressed, to be freed from oppression, no matter who is oppressing them.

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The only question is whether he is planning to keep it in the family or has another chosen successor.

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All in the name of the "freedom" to work for Wal-Mart or McDonalds

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Yep. Kind of ironic isn't it - under Fidel's communism, doctors make about a buck a day. Under capitalism, a Wal-Mart greeter would make about six bucks an HOUR.

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Ardent Castro supporters say life in the United States, in contrast, seems selfish, superficial, and — despite its riches — ultimately unsatisfying.

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While there is not a government on the planet that does not have its detractors and dissidents, there is no other government leader in the world who enjoys as much support and admiration from his people as Fidel Castro.

There is, however, a summary of emigration/immingration issues associated with Cuba; it was a very understandable read as I recall:

Why Cubans "flee" the island.

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Whine, snivel and beat your breasts till the cows come home, but you will never be able to counter the fact that Fidel Castro enjoys a level of support among the Cuban poeple for his presidency that other world leaders can only dream about.

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Were that truly so, why would dearest leader Fidel not hold elections from time to time? A certain insecurity in the 'love of the people' perhaps?

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refutes your insinuation that Cuban migration to the US proves that the majority of the Cuban population wants to live in a society with Bush/Cheney values.

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uneven development characterizes the world global capitalist economy.

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Of course. I refered to that in my quote of Winston Churchill. But it is historically apparent that people would prefer an uneven distribution of plenty than equality of poverty.

Socialist countries have never had to put barriers on people seeking to immigrate to their lands, but have always had barriers to prevent their own people from leaving.

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A benevolent dictator is always going to be more acceptable than a democratically elected asshole/fascist.

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Don't you recognize a bit of a conundrum here? The thing about a dictator, benevolent or otherwise is that you have no choice but to 'accept' him.

Assholes are temporary. You get to choose a new one every four years or so.

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IF: Socialist countries have never had to put barriers on people seeking to immigrate to their lands, but have always had barriers to prevent their own people from leaving.

Why is that?

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This is a thread about Fidel Castro Ruz and Cuba. Start another thread for a discussion of other countries.

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You've been provided with a link to an extensive historical piece on the "unique" immigration regimen that characterizes the way the USA treats Cuban immigrants versus how the USA treats immigrants from any other country in the Carribean

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Comrade Beltov, I did read the article. Two things stand out for me. First, you deflect my query as to why communist/socialist countries erect barriers to prevent citizens from leaving by telling me to 'start a new thread'.

How about just anwering the question.

Secondly, having read the article, it cycles back to my first point. The USA places barriers to 'legal' Cuban immigration in order to encourage 'illegal' emmigration in order to make the Cuban system look bad. Have I got that about right?

If the US were to place Cuba on the same footing as say Costa Rica, would Fidel then give his people the same opportunities as Costa Rica? If not, why?

And why aren't Cubans free to emmigrate to most other democracies? I understand they were able to move within other socialist countries, but isn't that akin to an animal being hearded from pen to pen rather than a 'free range' creature?

If one were to offer a plane ticket and citizenship to 100 randomly chosen Cubans, how many to you think would take the opportunity? I'm betting quite a few and moreover, that for most of them, their destiny of choice would be the United States.

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Infocus: First, you deflect my query as to why communist/socialist countries erect barriers to prevent citizens from leaving by telling me to 'start a new thread'.

How about just anwering the question.

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Which country? Cuba or some other one? WHICH OTHER ONE? And while you're at it, you could substantiate your claims, similar to the evidence I've provided in relation to Cuba. Why are trying to derail this thread about Cuba? Do you have some sort of objection to discussing Cuba?

There's a genuine interest among many people about Cuba: its history, law, current situation and so on. On the other hand, you know very well that no one, other than yourself, is interested in emigration law in countries other than Cuba.

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The USA places barriers to 'legal' Cuban immigration in order to encourage 'illegal' emmigration in order to make the Cuban system look bad. Have I got that about right?

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About right. There's much more, of course. Why do you have scare quotes around "legal" ? Do you consider Cuba to be "illegal"?

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And why aren't Cubans free to emmigrate to most other democracies?

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There's all sorts of Cuban emigration. What do you mean "free"? Free to violate Cuban laws - is that what you mean? Do you object to Cuba having its own laws in regard to emigration? Do you object to Cuba's right to sovereignty?

The only "animals in pens" in Cuba, are, of course, the torture victims in Guantanamo, who are human beings that are treated like animals by the USA. Funny how you have nothing to remark about that.

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If one were to offer a plane ticket and citizenship to 100 randomly chosen Cubans, how many to you think would take the opportunity? I'm betting quite a few and moreover, that for most of them, their destiny of choice would be the United States.

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CUBAN EMIGRATION: WAYS AND MEANS

- Legal emigration: During the last forty years close to 900,000 people migrated legally to different countries. It is estimated that around 130,000 Cubans live in Latin America (in Venezuela, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Argentina and Chile); approximately 37,000 reside in Europe (mostly Spain, Italy and Germany) and more than 1,000 in the rest of the world, for example, Canada and some of the former socialist Eastern European countries such as Russia.

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The assertion that Cubans can't leave has no basis in fact.

[ 09 August 2006: Message edited by: S1m0n ]

The group includes 8 Nobel Prize winners [José Saramago (Portugal), Wole Soyinka (Nigeria), Adolfo Pérez Esquivel (Argentina), Dario Fo (Italy), Nadine Gordimer (South Africa), Desmond Tutu (South Africa), Rigoberta Menchú (Guatemala) y Zhores Alfiorov (Russia)] and public figures like U.S. writer Noam Chomsky; singer-songwriter Harry Belafonte; actor Danny Glover; novelists Alice Walker and Russell Banks; rock star Tom Morello; academic and fighter Angela Davis; philosopher Fredric Jameson; the Reverend Lucius Walker; the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer; Le Monde Diplomatique editor Ignacio Ramonet; writers Mario Benedetti, Eduardo Galeano and Juan Gelman; Brazilian theologian Frei Betto; and Mexican intellectual Pablo González Casanova.

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Granma: The “Commission for Assistance to a free Cuba”, presided over by the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, has already pointed out in a report issued in June: “the urgency of working today to ensure that the Castro regime's succession strategy does not succeed” and President Bush indicated that this document “demonstrates that we are actively working for change in Cuba, not simply waiting for change”. The Department of State has emphasized that the plan includes measures that will remain secret “for reasons of national security” and to assure their “effective implementation.”

It is not difficult to imagine the nature of such measures and the “announced assistance,” if one considers the militarization of the current US administration’s foreign policy and its performance in Iraq.

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“The sovereignty of Cuba must be respected” statement is open to signatories via the Internet on www.porcuba.org and [email protected]

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Originally posted by libertarian:
So what Cuban laws are you refering to? Also why do they use boats to leave with? Lack of cash?

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Are Cubans free to leave if they so wish?

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Comrade Beltov replied:

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Of course they are. They have to respect Cuban law, that's all. Do you object to Cuba having its own laws in regard to emigration?

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Oh. I get it now. Cubans are perfectly free to leave as long as they respect Cuban emigration law that says they're forbidden to leave.

How perfectly Orwellian.

Question. Any Canadian is perfectly able to purchase a ticket, visit Cuba and return home. Does every Cuban (assuming they could save two - three years salary for a ticket) have the same right? I suspect not, as Cuban emigration law must be obeyed. How does this not make Cubans prisoners of their own government?

Comrade Beltov, it occurs to me that you are living in a corrupt and capitalist country rather than Fidel's worker's paradise. Why is that? Could it be your duty to work to change Canada into a similar worker's paradise?

In other news, Oscar winning actor Benicio del Toro has added his name to the many public figures who have issued a call to respect Cuba's sovereignty. Others ...

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... included French actor Gerard Depardieu, and Gael Garcia Bernal (Mexico) and Rodrigo de la Serna (Argentina), the two stars of The Motorcycle Diaries, the biographical film about a young Ernesto Che Guevara and his travels across South America. Walter Salles, the films Brazilian director, also signed the document.

Other new signatories were Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo, known for his participation in the debate on postmodernism, and US writer Emmanual Wallerstein, author of several critical essays on the philosophy and politics of his country.

In Puerto Rico the declaration in support of Cuba led to a moving statement by the widow of Puerto Rican Independence activist Filiberto Ojeda Rios. "If he hadn’t been assassinated by the FBI, my husband would be signing this pronouncement today. My greetings and best wishes for recovery to Fidel Castro," said Elma Beatriz Rosado Barbosa.

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Originally posted by Infocus:
Comrade Beltov

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Originally posted by libertarian:
I am still not clear on this point: Are Cubans free to leave if they so wish?

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Yes, it's actually easier for unskilled labourers in Cuba to obtain a travel permit. The barriers to travel for most poor people around the world are often down to money. Are there poor people in Canada and the U.S. who cannot afford a Greyhound bus ticket to the next province or state, let alone outside the country? - yes!.

There are thousands of Cuban aid workers and doctors coming and going from the island on a regular basis. In fact, no country in the western hemisphere donates more physicians to disaster relief efforts around the world than Cuba.

But there are over 600 people being held without legal representation at Guantanamo Bay. They cannot leave the island by any means. A few have left Camp X-Ray feet first apparently.

[ 10 August 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by Infocus:
Comrade Beltov
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You're trolling and if you keep it up you'll be gone.

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Point taken, Michelle. Though I thought the word would not be seen as a perjorative to Mr./Ms. Beltov. If you've ever sung Solidarity Forever, you probably ought not to be offended by the greeting.I have many friends with whom I argue and debate: our differences do not make us any less friends.

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Infocus: How would you prefer I address
he/she ...

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How is it that you are able to modify your settings so as not to receive personal messages yet not take the tiny step of checking someone else's profile for gender? Arguing for the fun of it? Familiarize yourself with some more of babble's features and you will find conversation flows more smoothly.

Address? With a name like "Infocus"? That's pretty funny. "If" for short? At least I have an initial. N.

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Originally posted by Infocus:
If you've ever sung Solidarity Forever, you probably ought not to be offended by the greeting.I have many friends with whom I argue and debate: our differences do not make us any less friends.

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VOA News
"Our desires is for the Cuban people to be able to choose their own form of government," said the president. "And we would hope that - and we will make it very clear - that, as Cuba has the possibility of transforming itself from a tyrannical situation to a different kind of society, the Cuban people ought to decide. The people on the island of Cuba ought to decide."

The president was responding to a question about the rights of Cuban exiles, in a post-Castro era, to one day return to the island and reclaim property confiscated by the Communist regime. Mr. Bush acknowledged the exiles' interest in doing so, but suggested now is not the time to discuss the subject.

"Once the people of Cuba decide the form of government, then Cuban-Americans can take an interest in that country, and redress the issues of property confiscation," said Mr. Bush. "But first things first, and that is the Cuban people need to decide the future of their country."

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Technically no US citizen can legally travel to Cuba without a Treasury license to do so. Doing it otherwise will subject anyone caught to fines up to $10,000 and possibly much higher as well as up to 10 years in prison. Until 2001, the travel restrictions were loosely enforced with only 16 criminal prosecutions between 1983 and 1999. However, all that changed post-2001, and now anyone caught travelling illegally to Cuba stands a real risk of heavy fine and possible imprisonment in this time of USA Patriot Act justice and the fraudulent "war on terror."

For those US citizens allowed to travel to Cuba, there are further limitations on the amount of money they may spend there or send to the country in the case of remittances to immediate family members there or to a Cuban national living in a third country. Under US Treasury license authorization, a visitor is allowed to spend a maximum $50 per day for non-transportational expenses and an additional $50 per day for transportation expenses. It's also permissible for persons in the US 18 years of age or older to remit to an immediate family member in Cuba or a Cuban national in a third country a maximum $300 per household in any consecutive three month period.

These restrictions of movement and a citizen's right to use ones own financial resources freely likely violate two or more amendments to the US Constitution although nothing in the Constitution specifically guarantees the freedom to travel. At the time the Constitution was written, the right to travel freely was unquestioned and was unheard of before the Cold War began after WW 11. After that time limitations were imposed, but challenges to them were made all the way to the Supreme Court which ruled in 1967 that restricting freedom of movement was an infringement of a citizen's constitutional rights. Justice William Douglas said at the time that "Freedom of movement is the very essence of our free society, setting us apart.....it often makes other rights meaningful." On two other occasions in 1962 and 1984, the High Court ruled otherwise by narrow margins but only under "the weightiest conditions of national security" necessitated by the Cold War. It's quite likely a Bush-friendly majority on the present Court would uphold the harsher restrictions favored by the Bush administration and permit one more way for them to destroy our civil liberties.

And they no doubt would do it despite the fact that the right of free movement anywhere encroaches on the right to liberty which the Fifth Amendment specifically states citizens cannot be deprived of without the due process of law. This restriction also likely violates the First Amendment right of free expression and to be able to hear the speech of others, gather information and associate with others as we choose - activities that should be inviolate in a free and democratic society. In addition, the fact that freedom of travel was an unquestioned right when the Constitution was drafted is the reason for the Ninth Amendment which grants the states all other rights not specifically written into the Constitution. Any restrictions thus imposed and enforced in violation of constitutional law are a direct infringement of our sacred freedoms, fundamental rights and civil liberties and unless challenged and successfully reversed in the courts are dangerous steps toward a national security police state under which citizens and residents have no rights.

US restrictive laws also violate international law under Article 12 of the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that guarantees everyone the right to leave any country, including one's own, and return to it. Article 13 of the non-binding Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees the same thing as does the 1975 US - Soviet Union Helsinki Agreement committing both nations to protecting the right of its citizens to move freely across borders. The US, especially since the advent of the current Bush administration, has shown its contempt for international and US constitutional law ruling instead by Executive Order to pursue whatever policies it wishes in a manner characteristic of a dictatorship and with no restraint put on it by the Congress or the courts.

The result is a gross infringement of our civil liberties that will likely become far worse in the wake of the Orwellian Real ID Act of 2005 passed by the US Congress to become effective in May, 2008. This law mandates that every US citizen and legal resident have a national ID card (in most cases a person's driver's license) that will contain on it the holder's vital personal information. It also requires the states to meet federal ID standards. A likely future requirement will be what now is mandated by mid-2007 for all newly issued and renewed passports - that they be embedded with a radio frequency identification (RFID) technology computer chip that will be able to track all the movements, activities and transactions of everyone having them. This is an Orwellian dream for any government wanting police state powers and will let US authorities know the names of all persons in the US travelling to Cuba or anywhere else in cases where they did it from third countries so as to remain anonymous. No longer, and with national ID cards mandatory by mid-2008, the tracking of all US citizens and legal residents will become even easier. Stephen Lendman

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quote:

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So what will happen if Castro's regime falls and a new, democratic government takes root?

Conservationists and others say they are worried that the pressure to develop the island will increase and Cuba's rich biodiversity will suffer.

Barborak said he is concerned that "environmental carpetbaggers and scalawags will come out of the woodwork in Cuba if there is turbulent regime change.

"One could foresee a flood of extractive industries jockeying for access to mineral and oil leases," he said.

"A huge wave of extraction of unique and endemic plants and animals could occur to feed the international wildlife market. And a speculative tourism and real estate boom could turn much of the coastline into a tacky wasteland in short order."

"If foreign investments take a much firmer hold, more hotels will be built and more people will descend on the reefs," added Gebelein, the Florida International University professor.

"If the Cuban government does not have a swift policy framework to deal with the huge influx of tourists, investors, and foreign government interests, a new exploitative paradigm will be the beginning of the end for some of the last pristine territories in the Caribbean."

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[ 30 August 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

quote:

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Chaired by Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, Bush's Cuba Commission foresees a "transition to democracy" - not the succession of one Communist dictator to another. Translating this, I read that the United States will guide Cuba's political reform. Alongside a US style electoral system and US-style parties, Washington would also privatize Cuba's economy. For educated Cubans, the vast majority on the island, the report resonates with the language of the 1902 Platt Amendment, which engraved in Cuba's first Constitution the right for the United States to intervene in Cuban affairs as it saw fit.

The Commission report reads as if Cubans would naively warm to Bush's plan. The Commission members must think islanders have grown weary of having free rent and would welcome an onrush of Miami-based exiles to privatize their homes and apartments and charge them rent. Instead of getting free education and health care, they would no doubt improve their standards by shelling out to profit making enterprises to buy these services, as they would for entertainment, utilities and transportation, which the socialist government subsidizes.

Does Bush think Cubans are stupid or crazy? Despite the hardships of daily life, the absence of a free press or political parties, most Cubans understand that Castro built these public services. Moreover, they will tell any visitor that the revolution put Cuba on the historical map. Hundreds of thousands served in military actions that changed the course of southern African history. Until the Cuban revolution, Latin American nations didn't dare vote contrary to US desires in the OAS or UN.

Under Castro, Cuba opened 13 medical schools that produce more doctors abroad than the World Health Organization. Its athletes, artists and scientists have etched their accomplishments in the minds of people all over the world. When Pakistan was struck by an earthquake, Cuban not US doctors poured in to help, as they did in Honduras when Nature punished that country.

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[ 31 August 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

quote:

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In a recent essay on “Marx After Marxism” he argued that Marxists should begin to see the world anew. Scoffing at neoconservatives who embrace the end of Marxism (and the end of history itself), Alarcon also emphasizes the need for “self-critical reflection on our side as well.” In effect, he is proposing a return to the original spirit of Marx before the 20th-century revolutions in his name. That original Marx organized an early transnational labor movement, with the central demand the eight-hour day, and wrote more theoretical works on 19th-century capitalism. According to Alarcon, that earlier Marx never meant a science-based, inevitable march to socialism based on some objective truth revealed through communist parties. That Marx was a practical revolutionary who himself famously declared “with all naturalness,” Alarcon points out, “I am not a Marxist.”

For Alarcon and the Cubans, history always has been contingent, subject to human will and unexpected developments, rather than an unfolding of the inevitable. After Cuba’s decades of dependency on the Soviet Union during the Cold War, which caused a degree of “subordination” to Soviet interests and “reinforced dogmatism,” Alarcon calls for active exploration of new trends in global capitalism and its oppositional movements. “Old dogmatists are incapable of appreciating new possibilities in the revolutionary movement,” he says.
....
What is interesting about these words of a top Cuban leader, spoken freely and without reserve, is how far they diverge from the stereotypes of Cuba as a gray, thought-controlled Marxist dictatorship. Cuba is not a free society by measurements like multiple parties, but Cuba’s people, from Alarcon to the neighborhoods, are more conversant about trends in the United States than Americans are about Cuba. The ever-tightening U.S. embargo has boomeranged into a dangerous narrowing of American thinking, demonstrated in recent weeks by one hallucination after another. For example, Sen. Mel Martinez, a Florida Republican, was seen on television several weeks ago opining that Fidel was already dead. The streets of Miami filled with cheering Cuban exiles with no way to influence the island. According to the Los Angeles Times, the “most obvious interest [in Castro’s passing] comes from the gambling and tourist industries,” which were run off the island in 1960 [July 6, 2006]. One Florida-based developer’s master plan envisions “moving out all Cubans currently living in Havana” and replacing them with Miami exiles. The U.S. government is constantly updating its official “transition plan” to restore both free markets and the Miami exiles, with the emphasis on “disruption of an orderly succession strategy,” according to the Congressional Research Service [Aug. 23, 2005]. Eighty million U.S. dollars was recently budgeted to support Cuba’s opposition groups. “There are no plans to reach out,” declared White House spokesman Tony Snow after Fidel was hospitalized [Miami Herald, Aug. 2, 2006].

The notion of opening a dialogue with an accomplished diplomat like Ricardo Alarcon is completely out of the question. The Helms-Burton Act forbids any negotiation or loosening of the embargo if Raul Castro remains in power after Fidel.

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I, as you might guess, am still very much in the some-good-some-bad field--while I reject the state capitalist plutocracy that still runs most of the country, I admire a lot of the successful progressive reforms there that put the US to shame.

The sad part of this discussion is the only critics of Cuba are those who barf out the worn-out bald-faced lies and corporate capitalist apologies (ala Infocus and Libertarian BS) that ruin any credible criticism of anything.

So I will wade in with three separate posts to vent my spleen, and if folks want to read them and respond, all the better.

Post 1: dictatorship and democracy in the US and Cuba

quote:

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Here's a novel idea. Why not let the Cuban people decide Fidel's successor in a free and fair democratic election?

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This, I think is the only fair question about Cuba on this whole string. Good on John K (who, I would like to think, is also the founder of the icon of my name here).

The fundamental fact is (despite the lies we keep hearing from the usual corporate capitalist dictatorship), socialism/communism in any form can't exist without democracy. The democratic control of the means of production by workers and their communities, which is the fundamental of socialistic economics, can't exist without a democratic structure. Period.

If Castro is supposedly so principled about developing a prosperous socialist economy in Cuba, his next sensible step, I think, would be to retire and call for an elected presidency. As has been point out here before, the lower levels of the Cuban government are elected. Why not the top spots as well?

quote:

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It would only be free and fair if the U.S. agreed to have nothing to do with it.

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How very true. And if Castro does as I hope, it will take the whole progressive international community and public interest movements around the globe to ensure the US government/Corporate America dynasty keeps its nose out of it.

The problem of course is, the US Government/Corporate America tyranny's great occupation internationally is corrupting and rigging elections, backing dictators, overthrowing elected governments via military coup and terrorism and economic sabotage and, failing all else, direct military invasion--all to ensure these countries, people, resources and markets remain subordinate and at the convenience of multi-national (especially US-based) exploitative interests so they can rob them blind.

quote:

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It looks like benevolent dictator wins out once again over democratically elected fascist !

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Here's where this thread falls flat on its face. The assumption, if I'm correct, here is that Castro is the benevolent dictator and that Bush is the democratically elected fascist.

If so, then neither is correct. Castro may be a dictator and Bush certainly is a fascist, but I don’t think benevolence and democracy enter the picture at all.

First, perhaps even dictators have good intentions, and if so, Castro may just like be one of them. But the fact is dictatorship is NEVER benevolent, since it is based on the subjugation of the freedom and development of the population to an unaccountable and therefore oppressive institution.

It's no different than when corporate capitalist apologists and anti-union flakes talk about how workers supposedly shouldn't form or join unions because a boss or group of bosses are considered relatively good, compared to others, or, as they often say, "fair."

The truth is there are always bosses and authoritarian governments that are comparatively better of or worse than others. But the fact very fact that they are both dictatorial unaccountable structures and institutions that accumulate and extract wealth from the labour of the workers or citizens and enrich and empower themselves at others expense makes them oppressive, since they limit the freedom of those in their employ or under their reign and make the development or success of those workers totally conditional on satisfying their narrow interests first.

Universal ballot voting, just like workers' democratic control of business or forming unions to get a better say or a better piece of the pie, are basic tenants of freedom and equal rights.

quote:

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Can we safely add you name, otter, to those on this board who dispise democracy and favour authoritarian police states?

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This is for the second part. Liking the Cuban government better than the US government sure the hell ain't "despising democracy!"

Anyone--and I mean anyone--who considers the US government democratic by any stretch is either grossly mis-informed or a democracy-hating liar.

As shown in other threads here with fact and experiences, the US government is a bloated state capitalist nightmare of almost totally unaccountable corporations and bureaucracies that easily rival the Soviet Union at the height of Stalinism.

Its electoral system is a regimented closed two-party system, with both parties being tightly controlled by competing wealthy corporate factions (including the democrats, which is why, despite getting lots of labour and social movement support, still can't put together an effective social democratic/public interest agenda). Third parties and independents are almost entirely shut out by prohibitive costs and onerous regulations.

Semi-secret panels and boards, like the Electoral College, supervise elections with the power to close polls early, declare candidates without full ballots counts and disqualify runners on a whim.

In fact, the military industrial complex, that even former Republican US President Dwight Eisenhower admitted to when he retired, clearly overtly dominates the government and most of the economy in that country, using its monopoly control and undue economic and fiscal influence to restrict freedom of political debate and action.

quote:

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Yep. Kind of ironic isn't it - under Fidel's communism, doctors make about a buck a day. Under capitalism, a Wal-Mart greeter would make about six bucks an HOUR.
"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries. Winston Churchill

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[URL] http://latter-rain.com/general/commu.htm[/URL]

[URL] http://www.communism.org/#comments[/URL]

[URL] http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm[/URL]

In Russia after the 1917 revolution, Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy in 1919, which was in fact a comprehensive business and economic reform plan based on state capitalism. Lenin himself admitted to this in an entire book called State Capitalism During the Transition to Socialism

http://books.google.com/books?ct=title&q=Lenin:+State+Capitalism+During+the+Transition+to+Socialism

Mao Ze dong, after the 1949 Chinese revolution, declared that a form of "state capitalism," based on large to-down state owned corporations and bureaucracies were to run the economy and accumulate capital wealth, instead of the population (and released several business plans on this development). Capitalism is what it was then and is today.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_30.htm

The only institution that officially associates communism or socialism with these Stalinist state capitalist regimes in the US state department, US colonial satellite states, like Canada, and the North American based corporate media—hardly accurate or reliable sources.
Second, I don’t know for sure what Cuban doctors make. But I have read in both pro- and anti-Cuban publications that doctors are among the best paid professionals (like most places) and live in relative comfort and plenty.
If they can do that on a buck a day, as Infocus says, then things like rents and mortgages and generally cost-of-living related expenses must be, for the most part, not much more than a few bucks a month.
Wal-Mart, and similar money-sucking tyrannies, pay six bucks an hour in high-priced markets like BC’s Lower Mainland, where such a wage is about like living on welfare (unless of course you need dental work, in which case it’s far lower). Yet, these corporate monstrosities are almost totally dependent on consumers earning between $35,000 and $70,000 a year to stay in business. Yet they refuse to pay their workers anywhere near those types of salaries. These firms are truly parasitic tyrannies that suck the life-blood out of economies.
Third, the Winston Churchill quote is so appropriate for him, considering he was an open admirer of many of the German Nazi regime’s policies, especially on cracking down on civil rights and trade unions, and ensuring, as Hitler’s book Mien Camf says, “enforcing the discipline and efficiency upon workers from the natural superiority of corporate organization” right up until the UK was attacked. That’s partly why the Conservatives, along with Churchill, were turfed out of office right after martial law was lifted after WW II ended.
As to how true the quote is, let’s look at some realities. Although there are no, and never have been, any “socialist countries” or economies where socialistic economics are dominant, there are numerous places where socialistic projects and reforms have developed.
Many European countries, especially Western Europe, where such projects and reforms, as well as socialistic cultures like strong community emphasis, mutual respect and pooling of individual rights and interests for mutual benefits, are more prevalent, clearly have higher living standards and greater personal and social freedoms than places where they are less prevalent.
The Northern European and Scandinavian countries, as well as numerous parts of Italy, Germany, France and Spain, by United Nations estimates, have for most people higher living standards and greater freedom than we do here in Canada and certainly the US. This has become especially apparent in the last 25 years, since general wages, working conditions, educational and training opportunities, retirement security and government accountability have clearly declined in North America.

Finally, Churchill’s claim that capitalism is about sharing the blessings is the most idiotic part of the quote.

quote:

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Socialist countries have never had to put barriers on people seeking to immigrate to their lands, but have always had barriers to prevent their own people from leaving.

There is an historical pattern:
Communist regimes' 1st rule is to prohibit escape and movement within their countries.
e.g. Soviet Union, Soviet satelites, Red China, North Korea, Cuba. If they are such paradises why is this done?

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These types of BS are so old and stale, I find it amusing that any serious activist or thinker would bother re-stating them. Three points:

First, and most importantly, as I said in the last post, there in fact are not, and never have been, any “socialist countries” or “communist states,” or more accurately, any national economy that is predominantly socialist/communist. All economies, regardless of what various governments, leaders or politicians call themselves or claim, are, and always have been, predominantly capitalistic in various forms.

So the truth is whatever “socialist countries” supposedly do or don’t do is irrelevant, since they don’t exist to begin with.

There are, however, loads of successful socialistic/communistic projects and reforms that have clearly made a positive difference in the freedom, prosperity and living standards and community and ecological sustainability everywhere they have developed. Some of these have been around for decades, even centuries.

As said before, the countries and regions where socialistic project or reforms are more prevalent are the ones that enjoy generally and higher standards of living than places where they are less prevalent.

And in these places, there is no mass exodus of people, and no travel or migration restrictions. Scandinavia, most Western European countries, and even Third World places like Mozambique and Madagascar, although still very primitive and pre-industrial, where there are numerous large-scale cooperative and community-based and labour sponsored ventures, poverty is low, living standards are fairly high and democracy is more widely practiced. There is no big demand to leave there and no restrictions on doing so.

So, the second point is that in fact countries with more prevalent and successful socialistic economics aren’t generally places people mostly want to get away from.

According again the United Nations, there have been far more people over the last 30 years who have emigrated to Europe, especially to the above mentioned countries, than to North America—to the point of where many of these governments have had to invest huge resources into finding shelter, training and other assistance for these people in order for them to live and get back on their feet. Some places have literally had to build entire towns just for new immigrants and refugees.

Third, no serious socialist activist ever has believed the self-titled “communist” or “socialist” countries of Eastern Europe, Russia, China, etc. were/are paradises. In fact, it is Marxists, more than anyone else, who have acknowledged the poverty and repression in many of those countries and identified their causes and advocated for democratic change.

It isn’t the Right that’s done it, despite the usual BS they barf out about “democracy,” yet support dictatorial corporate capitalist rule over our economy and markets and people and, as soon as a profiteering opportunity presents itself, are ready to trade with these Stalinist state capitalist regimes they supposedly don’t like.

As with the last post, I provided some links that show the founders of the post-1917 Soviet Union, post-1949 China, etc., were creating economic business plans based on state capitalism—as in the same corporate power structures over the economy run by profiteering hacks and other non-elected, non-accountable bosses, under a nationalized framework. While they maintained that developing socialist economies was their long-term goal, it’s clear that enriching a corporate power structure to compete with other countries on a global scale was their priority.

So BS-ing about these supposedly socialist or communist countries is just so much bunk spewed out by either self-serving power brats in these countries or by sleazy corporate apologists in other countries trying to use these regimes to try to discredit socialist economics.

It’s easy to see this just looking back at the whole immigration thing we’re talking about here, when you compare what was going on between Eastern and Western Europe.

Western Europe, with its much stronger socialist/communist/labour/cooperative community history, was in a much better position to bargain with the conquering US after the second world war, and was able to win large degrees of autonomy and social reforms from the US government, than Eastern Europe, with its much more conservative history, could win from the Russian Stalinists.

The huge social democratic reforms and the spread of militant unions and innovative cooperative businesses in the West, over the next decade, pushed the standard of living and degree of democracy upward much faster than the East, which was dominated by tight-ass largely trickle-down authoritarian economic policies, to the point that when in the early 1960s, there was a big difference in standards between the two European camps.

While the East had managed to establish and fairly decent social infrastructure and safety net, as well as industrial capacity, it lacked in readily accessible services, consumer savings and retirement and wage benefits, as these were largely held down by oppressive means in order to make as much money as possible for the state-owned corporations and the bosses that ran/run them—“correcting the industrial lag” as Stalin called it.

The West, instead, had both the fairly good public infrastructure and safety net and the consumer savings and disposable income from the much higher union wages and benefits.

So workers in Eastern Europe were getting fairly good training and education but with few good job opportunities. So, they started migrating big time to the West, where they could get both.

quote:

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Originally posted by Fidel:
btw, I missed the second part of the David Suzuki Nature special on Cuba. Was it as good as part one, anyone ?.

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Here's an interesting excerpt from a brief interview with Cuban writer Celia Hart, whose parents were two of the historic leaders of the revolution, talking about the "Special Period":

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The difficulties that we are now experiencing are not related to material needs. The liberalisation of trade and of possession of foreign currency - capitalist mechanisms that were introduced, and that some people justify by comparing them to the Russian NEP of the 1920s - led to social differentiation and the appearance of “the new rich”. In a speech on November 17 last year the commander [Fidel Castro] formulated it in the following way: “this revolution can destroy itself all alone, and the only ones who can’t manage to destroy it are them” [the US, imperialism]. “But we can destroy it and it would be our fault”. And he said that while stressing that: “several tens of thousands of parasites produce nothing and earn everything...”

Similarly, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Felipe Perez Roque, insisted at the United Nations that the danger for Cuba was the creation of a bourgeois class. The interpenetration of the bureaucracy and the market economy, that’s where the danger lies. We have to demolish the foundations of the bureaucracy, because it is on these foundations that the bourgeois class can develop - we saw in the USSR, in Poland, and elsewhere how the bureaucrats, who were managers, men of power, became owners, became capitalists.

In Cuba, unlike in the GDR of the 1980s, “Lenin is alive”: the bureaucratic counterrevolution has not been carried through. We must take advantage of that to demolish the remaining foundations of the bureaucracy. Because it is from there that the danger of capitalist restoration can come.

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[ 01 September 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

I recognize that Stalin's war communism was not meant to be a permanent mainstay of communism in the Soviet Union, but does anyone actually believe that the Soviets could have possibly felt safe in the 1950's at the height of the cold war ?. Paranoia in the U.S. was real but fomented in large part by the Pentagon and cold warriors shilling for the military industrial complex. Gore Vidal said he remembers an American General who liked to show up at cocktail parties for the rich and famous all over the world and convincing people that the Soviets were bent on world domination. You've got a country surrounding you with missiles and funding dirty wars to prevent what the CIA termed as 'domino effect'. Who had a legitimate right to be ultra paranoid in the 1950's ?. Bad Stalin yes, but there were millions of Soviet people who were also for a strong military. They remembered WWI, 1917, the 25 country incursion into Russia to put down the revolution, WWII, and then a super-fascist nation menacing them and China at every turn ?. Who wants to open up borders and trade freely at that point ?. Meanwhile, Keynesian-militarists were becoming richer and richer and richer. A shadow government was born.

And so who is bent on world domination today with almost 900 military installations around the world and CIA agents in every major city in the world ?. Where is the peace dividend ?.

[ 01 September 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

On a very happy note, it seems Fidel's health is improving:

Visibly improved Castro greets Chavez's visit

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Cuban President Fidel Castro, looking notably better than he did when last seen almost three weeks ago, happily greeted Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez during a brief visit aired on state television Friday.

“Brother!” the 80-year-old Mr. Castro said from his sickbed, his face lighting up as Mr. Chavez entered the room Friday where he was recuperating and gave him a warm embrace.

Dressed in red pyjamas, Mr. Castro appeared much more animated and alert on the video than in those made when Mr. Chavez made his first post-surgery visit to the Cuban leader Aug. 13, his 80th birthday.

During the earlier visit, Mr. Castro was more lethargic and did not even move his head from the pillow. And it was difficult to make out his words.

The Venezuelan president visited Mr. Castro a second time during a brief stop in late August before he launched his foreign tour.

On Friday Mr. Chavez said: “I note an improvement in the patient!”

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quote:

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
Bobolink, we're all getting sick of your spreading lies and imperialist propaganda.

[ 05 August 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

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hmmm head in the sand.

quote:

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Originally posted by John K:

Here's a novel idea. Why not let the Cuban people decide Fidel's successor in a free and fair democratic election?

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And here's a point to ponder for all you democratic Castro-bashing Liberals. I've asked it several times before, but I think the democraticks lose interest at some point about now and will tend to jump to another anti-Castro thread to avoid the headache of trying to answer.

Why can't Haitian's vote for Jean Bertrand Aristide if they want to in a free and fair democratic election just 50 miles from Cuban shores ?.

Is it because they're not fighting hard enough for their rights as some here would suggest ?. Do they need a few good union leaders and social activists?. Or do Haitian's really need a large number of rifles, ammunition and about 82 good men to start off with ?.

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Originally posted by TemporalHominid:
Autocratic

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Fidel has targetted homosexuals.

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Fidel has his faults,

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and this is one of them.

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One out of four. Tsk Tsk.

[ 02 September 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
Lie

One out of four. Tsk Tsk.

[ 02 September 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

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Not according to the documentation of gay and Human rights activists.
I am relieved to see that you don't think your Hero is infallible.
As Fidel mentioned above, machisimo contributes to the attitudes /prejudices and oppression towards homosexuality in Latin America. It is documented by anthropologists.
Machisimo influences attitudes towards women, homsexuals and sex education. It is well known Cuba quarantines those that are HIV positive, and those with AIDS. LGBT associations, publications, and events are not permitted in Cuba.

Castro himself reagarding rural life in Cuba: "in the country, there are no homosexuals". Homosexuality is considered bourgeois decadence, and Castro denounced "maricones" (faggots) as agents of imperialism.

Autocratic control and centralisation of power, and latin society's preferences for conformity contribute to the institutionalised bigotry towards homosexuals and HIV/AIDS communities.

but of course, to Castro's apologists, any GLBTs that speak out against Cuba's prejudices and actions towards the GLBT community would be a decadent capitalists spreading lies.

quote:

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Originally posted by otter:
For that matter, is there any country in the world that does not have a segment of its population or its government that does not discriminate against GLBT's in some manner or another?

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Exactly. Or how about women? Or the disabled?

quote:

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Originally posted by TemporalHominid:

Autocratic control and centralisation of power, and latin society's preferences for conformity contribute to the institutionalised bigotry towards homosexuals and HIV/AIDS communities.[/URL]

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The AIDS rate of infection on the island of Hispaniola, shared by two of Uncle Sam's special partners in the Caribbean, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, is the second-highest in the world, after sub-Saharan Africa.

Haiti is where 85 percent of infected AIDS victims Latin Americans live and are largely heterosexual.

In Uncle Sam's partner-nation democratic third world, you're free to starve to fucking death and die in misery in any shithole corner of it.

Once again, and it's a biggy this time cuz I think you Castro pundits may need new eye glasses,

Why can't 80 percent of Haitian's vote for Jean Bertrand Aristide if they want to just 50 miles from Cuba ?

Final Jeopardy tune plays on

[ 02 September 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

Back then the GBLT community in Canada was still fighting for same sex spousal benefits and Canada was also rightly criticised by Amnesty International for its discriminatory policies on this issue.

Fortunately a lot of progress has happened since then on this issue, in BOTH countries. Quoting completely out of date information and pretending nothing has changed would be equivalent to stating that Canada still interns its ethnic Japanese citizens using sources from the 1940's.

As EVERYONE here has stated, progress still has to be made to achieve pure equality throughout all of Latin America. Ignoring the progress that has been made in the past 13 years by dredging outdated sins from the past does not help this progress at all.

For someone who claims another group has blinders, it's sad to see that your views haven't changed in 13 years. To paraphrase Unionist; pot thy colour is black.

[ 02 September 2006: Message edited by: a lonely worker ]

quote:

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pot thy colour is black.

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UMmmmmmm, black pot. must be some of that Lebanese hash in town

[ 02 September 2006: Message edited by: otter ]

quote:

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Originally posted by a lonely worker:
Temporal, that book you quoted was published in 1993. You realise that was over 13 years ago?

...For someone who claims another group has blinders, it's sad to see that your views haven't changed in 13 years. To paraphrase Unionist; pot thy colour is black.

[ 02 September 2006: Message edited by: a lonely worker ]

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Ah, resorting to weak rhetoric when there is a difference of opinion, and because you lack imagination, put words in people's mouths. Creating strawmen, claiming that someone said something they did not actually say. Making up a position that I have never taken and then attacking it. Where did I make a claim that anyone had on blinders. Nope, you made up that claim and attributed it to me. Then you attempt to shoot down this position you attributed to me.
Oh, and never mind the name calling.

quote:

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Originally posted by otter:
For that matter, is there any country in the world that does not have a segment of its population or its government that does not discriminate against GLBT's in some manner or another?

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quote:

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you democratic Castro-bashing Liberals.

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Haw Haw HAW GUFFAW HAW GUFFAW!!! Fidel, I think you outdoen yourself with this goofy insult to the point where I think it's time to issue an Idiot Award.

No Kidding! THis is hilarious! The stupidity and blatant denial of Staliinists and Fascists in truly amazing.

I notice you never bother to answer any of my questions or address my concerns about CUba, which are from a very socialist perspective.

Nope, you just ignore the mounds of fact I post on the state capitalist nature of Leninist and Stalinist/Maoist regimes, and just go on referring to them as "communism" or "socialism (despite their not being based on any of these economics) and then start making all kinds of excuses for why they are the way they are, never looking to find solutions to problems

You act like a typical right-wing Zionist trying to absolve the Israeli government of whatever it does by trying to deflect the issue by pointing to the crimes of everyone else.

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I've asked it several times before, but I think the democraticks lose interest at some point about now and will tend to jump to another anti-Castro thread to avoid the headache of trying to answer.

Why can't Haitian's vote for Jean Bertrand Aristide if they want to in a free and fair democratic election just 50 miles from Cuban shores ?.

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The answer is as simple as the question you refuse to answer:

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Why not let the Cuban people decide Fidel's successor in a free and fair democratic election?

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People did vote for Jean Bertrand Aristide. It's just that after he was elected, many of his progressive policies managed to piss off the US corporate dictatorship just North of Haiti. And since his government and economy were totally subordinate to US corporate interests, they had him removed via military force and had a dictatorship re-instated.

That's why Haitians can't vote for Aristide, or anyone else.

We know that Castro condemned the violent removal of Aristide by US (and Canadian) forces as a blatant act of imperialism that thwarted the self-determination of the Haitian people--which is all very true.

Now, Fidel, answer the question you keep avoiding. To help you do so, I'll even paraphrase it better for you.

Since Fidel is so opposed to the thwarting of the fledgling democracy in Haiti by the US, why can't he defy the anti-democratic US corporate agenda by calling for Cubans to vote for their next leader in a free and fair election just 50 miles from Haiti's shores?

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Fifty years ago this weekend, a 30-year-old Cuban calling himself Alejandro became a mojado - literally a "wetback" - by swimming the Rio Grande from Mexico to the United States. Had he been caught by border patrolmen the Cuban revolution might never have happened.

According to a report in the official Cuban media, the man, whose real name was Fidel Castro, was on a secret mission on 1 September 1956 to get money to liberate their island from its dictator.

Castro had been forced into exile the previous year by Fulgencio Batista. Now heset up a meeting with exiled former Cuban President Carlos Prio Socarras, the man Batista had overthrown in a 1952 coup. Castro believed Prio should put back some of the money he had skimmed from Cuba into getting rid of the dictator. Prio agreed to meet Castro but only on US soil, fearing abduction by Batista's agents.

Castro returned with enough cash for 200 vintage rifles and ammunition, and a battered yacht. Then he, his brother Raul, 28-year-old Ernesto "Ché" Guevara and 79 others set sail. On 2 December 1956, they landed in Cuba, where their leader declared to a local farmer: "I am Fidel Castro and I have come to liberate our country." Source

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
.

That's why Haitians can't vote for Aristide, or anyone else.
...

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But you're saying that Cuban's should ignore CIA intervention and death squad mentality of the ruling elite, and get on with demockeracy ?. You're a real clown, but of course you know that already. You can argue both sides of the street until a child cries out, "Steppenwolf Allende, you're so full of shit that your eyes must be a deep brown!"

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Now, Fidel, answer the question you keep avoiding. To help you do so, I'll even paraphrase it better for you.

Since Fidel is so opposed to the thwarting of the fledgling democracy in Haiti by the US, why can't he defy the anti-democratic US corporate agenda by calling for Cubans to vote for their next leader in a free and fair election just 50 miles from Haiti's shores?

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Yes, now I'll paraphrase your bullshit answer for you,

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Steppenwolf Allende says, essentially,~~ The most well-funded shadow government in the world abducted and kidnapped their democratically-elected leader in Haiti, so let's tempt the bastards not to pull the same shit in Cuba. Never mind that they have multi-party democracy in El Salvador and Guatemala just a few days drive from Texas, and abject poverty, illiteracy and oppression by an elite few land barons and multinational corporations is their democratic reward. Besides, the rich need their playground back, and hey, Havana Clubs all around!

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I was hoping for a real answer. But that was pathetic, Steppenwolf Allende.

Let's see, Haitian democracy is a sham, but let's try multi-party demockeracy in Cuba where kids are actually in school all fucking day and aren't condemned to a childhood robbed with having to rummage through landfill sites picking through human excrement and medical waste for something valuable to sell to support a subsistence existence for them and their god damned families in El Salva fucking dor. Back of the class for you.

Better yet, go preach multi-party fucking demcrockery in Guatemala ffs. And don't forget to tell the kids you'll see begging in the streets for money and your thread-bare Nike knock-offs how good it is in Sweden and Denmark. And tell them that they, too, will have a chance to go to school and see a doctor on a regular basis like Cuban children if they keep the hope and the demokratic drive alive. Ya, that'll do them a lot of good in the here and now, ffs.

Go defy multiparty demockracy and Uncle Sam in Haiti or Guatemala, Steppenwolf Allende. Go crap in his backyard a few days drive from Texas, we dare you. D'mockeracy needs someone like you to start mouthing off against imperialism infront of the wealthy rancheros, their bounty hunters, policia and CIA drones. Smarten up and use your head for something more than a hatrack.

cio chica

[ 02 September 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Making up a position that I have never taken and then attacking it. Where did I make a claim that anyone had on blinders.

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Hmm let's see what you wrote the post before...

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to Castro's apologists, any GLBTs that speak out against Cuba's prejudices and actions towards the GLBT community would be a decadent capitalists spreading lies.

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And in response to this gem ...

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When you can focus on the weeknesses of my arguments or opinions, instead of creating a fictional TemporalHominid with fictional positions , I'll be impressed

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Let's see the weaknesses of your argument ... well you quote a source that is 13 years old, then you make outlandish claims on the basis of these 13 year old facts and attacking anyone who exposes your outdated shite without addressing the criticisms would be considered pretty weak arguments in my book.

And as for SteppenwolfeAllende who is pleading for anyone to respond to the brilliance of their arguments. All I will say is that in 3 other posts I responded in great depth to the exact same points you continue to raise. Instead you just move onto another thread and spew the same shit looking to bait someone else into an argument.

My original view was that you were a different breed from the likes of temporal, but unfortunately I am realising that you use the same circular arguments that these other anti-Cuban obsessors employ.

In one last attempt to respond to the extremely repetitive question about having a "fair election" in Cuba. You wrote this:

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And if Castro does as I hope, it will take the whole progressive international community and public interest movements around the globe to ensure the US government/Corporate America dynasty keeps its nose out of it.

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Like you are doing in Mexico right now to overturn the fraudulent election there?

As farmpunk correctly points out AMLO isn't even a proper socialist yet they are taking these steps against him. Imagine a small country like Cuba against a trillion dollar empire? But I think you know that already as in response to the very same question you annoy us with you wrote:

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The problem of course is, the US Government/Corporate America tyranny's great occupation internationally is corrupting and rigging elections, backing dictators, overthrowing elected governments via military coup and terrorism and economic sabotage and, failing all else, direct military invasion--all to ensure these countries, people, resources and markets remain subordinate and at the convenience of multi-national (especially US-based) exploitative interests so they can rob them blind.

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So go ahead keep arguing with yourself or better yet pick a fight with temporal as you both use the same tactics. I think you both will find a lot in common with each other.

[ 02 September 2006: Message edited by: a lonely worker ]

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Originally posted by a lonely worker:
...fascist, stalinist and zionist in one post though!

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It happens again, with these academic self-proclaimed "socialists" who argue like Republicans and just never get it, no matter how you try.

I'll waste one more post on this, just for clarification for those who may be reading this thread but are smart enough not to waste time arguing with these people.

I know it won't matter, since anything I say, regardless of how much fact or reason I apply will simply be distorted by these types into, in their little minds, a pro-US apologist who opposes the Cuban revolution. Why? Simply because I have pointed out historic facts (such as the rise of state capitalism in post-revolutionary Russia, China, etc), which they can't dispute.

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Yes, now I'll paraphrase your bullshit answer for you,

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Steppenwolf Allende says, essentially,~~ The most well-funded shadow government in the world abducted and kidnapped their democratically-elected leader in Haiti, so let's tempt the bastards not to pull the same shit in Cuba. Never mind that they have multi-party democracy in El Salvador and Guatemala just a few days drive from Texas, and abject poverty, illiteracy and oppression by an elite few land barons and multinational corporations is their democratic reward. Besides, the rich need their playground back, and hey, Havana Clubs all around!

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Bingo! This idiot writes this vicious drivel, simply because I asked a basic question: why can't the Cuban people get to democratically elect their next leader, after Castro retires?

This question is taboo, since none of the Three Darlings here can answer it, other than the say the US tries to rig elections with terror and fraud, which is true. Of course, by this reasoning every country in the world should enact martial law to, which is exactly what the US government wants, to supposedly "protect" itself from the US.

It's funny how these guys claim they support the Venezuelan Bolivarian government and other center-left coalitions that have won elections throughout South America--elections they fought so hard for so long for against US-backed brutal dictatorships in order to achieve.

Tell Chavez that he should ban free elections in Venezuela to supposedly "protect" his country from the US. If you're lucky, he would just spit in your face.

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My original view was that you were a different breed from the likes of temporal, but unfortunately I am realising that you use the same circular arguments that these other anti-Cuban obsessors employ.

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Man O man, this is so hilarious coming from a real side-stepper like you, who can't even accept the fact that all is not perfect with the Cuban government--and answer straight-forward questions, like the one I ask, with circular arguments about how bad the US and its puppet dictatorships are, without noticing the fact I have repeatedly said I know that already so there's little point in arguing about it.

BTW, I DID read your posts, and I haven't responded--although I would like to since I find some of your info new and interesting, and there some things I would like to know more about--for two reasons:

1) I agree with much of what you say, and

2) I have been wasting too much time responding to your other two pals trying repeatedly to get my points across actually being dumb enough to think they were interested in what I was trying to say.

It's clear now they aren't, and from your last couple posts, neither are you.

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Like they say, bullshit baffles brains. And he's full of it.

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Of course, Fidel. After all, fact is fiction. Freedom is slavery. Truth is lies. Intelligence is stupidity. Those were statements populist (or pseudo-populist) dictator a few decades back. You'd probably like his methods. Can you guess who is? Here's a hint: Viva la Revolucion.

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fascist, stalinist and zionist in one post though!

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Yep, and each of you three can pick one for yourselves, since either of these groups would be happy to have you working in their PR offices.

Now where was I? Oh, yes.

Sept. 1 Interview with Raul Castro

This interview is interesting for the insights it offers into the personality and politics of Fidel's brother, who is still acting President. In the course of it, Raul talks about Cuba's preparedness to resist any attempts of the USA to meddle in Cuba's affairs during the transition of leadership. Here's an excerpt:

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To cap it all, just a few days ago, on July 10, President Bush officially approved a document complementing the former one, and which they had posted with a very low profile on the Internet in June. They have openly stated that it includes a secret appendix that is not being published "for reasons of national security" and "to ensure its effective implementation;" those are literally the terms that they used, and which constitute a flagrant violation of international law.

For a while now we have been adopting measures to confront those plans. These were reinforced particularly when the current U.S. government initiated the unbridled warmongering policy that it has maintained to date, including the announced intention to attack without previous warning any of those places that they call the "sixty or more dark corners of the world."...

...in 2003 the plans became more explicit. On December 5 of that year, Mr. Roger Noriega, then assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs, declared – I don’t know if it was intentional or a slip – that "the transition in Cuba – in other words – the death of Fidel – could happen at any moment and we have to be prepared to be agile and decisive." That "the United States wanted to be sure that the regime’s cronies have no hope of holding onto power" and, so as to leave no doubt, he added that they were working "to ensure that there was no succession to the Castro regime." Subsequently he and other senior U.S. officials have returned to the theme insistently.

What other form exists for obtaining these goals that is not military aggression? Thus, the country adopted the pertinent measures for counteracting that real danger.

Faced with similar situations, Martí taught us what to do: "Plan against plan. Without a plan of resistance, a plan of attack cannot be defeated," he wrote in the newspaper Patria on June 11, 1892.

The United States government is not revealing the contents of that appendix because it is illegal. Its publication must be demanded, above all now that they have spoken about its existence in order to threaten Cuba.

On the contrary, our defense plans are transparent and legal, simply because they do not threaten anybody; their sole objective is to guarantee the sovereignty and independence of the homeland; they do not violate any national or international law whatsoever.

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
Ooooh wow! The tired old accusations and insults I'm getting for criticizing another cult superstar, elevated to God-hood.

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Does anyone remember the poster, "Vigilante" ? So V, How did you enjoy Walt Disney World with dum and mad this year ?. Did yez get the same room at the EconoLodge?

Kid, we know what you did last summer, and we're calling your parents this time!!!

[ 03 September 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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I'll waste one more post on this,

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Cuba Conducts Vaccination Campaign

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Cuba is the second country in the world, after France, to develop a children’s vaccine against five diseases, to be applied nationwide starting September 1.

Dr. Miguel Angel Galindo, head of the National Immunization Program, informed that Cuba will include the combined vaccination in the Ministry of Public Health’s effort to combat diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, hepatitis B and Haemophilus influenzae type B.

Under the name Heberpenta, this product of Cuban biotechnology is certified by the National Center for the Control of Medications and will be administered to babies of two, four and six months old.

Dr. Galindo said that this 5-in-1 vaccine, tested on a sample group of 500 children in the province of Villa Clara, proved to be a guarantee of protection while eliminating six shots (earlier it was nine) to the baby as well as other discomforts and risks.

The vaccination will be applied in 494 polyclinics throughout the country to an estimated 50,000 babies during the remainder of 2006.

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President Fidel Castro was elected by acclaim on Friday as president of the Movement of Non Aligned Nations, whose 14th Summit began today in Havana presided over by Cuban acting President Raúl Castro.

At the suggestion of Malaysia's Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, the heads of the more than 100 delegations of member countries applauded the decision to choose the Cuban leader as President of the Non Aligned Nations, a duty he will assume for the second time.

Shortly before, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque announced that acting President Raúl Castro would be heading the island's delegation as the Commander in Chief is still convalescent and is complying with the doctors' orders to rest.

The Malaysian Prime Minister also suggested - and it was approved by acclaim - that Raúl Castro would be the acting president of the Summit until Fidel assumes his State and Government duties again.

The 14th Summit of the Movement of Non Aligned Nations began around 10:00 a.m. on Friday after Raúl Castro officially welcomed the heads of delegations.

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Last week, US government officials briefed reporters to suggest that Fidel Castro might have only months to live. They have, of course, been predicting his demise for the last four decades but what was significant about the latest briefing was the tacit acceptance that the Cuban leader will die a natural, rather than an unnatural, death.

There have now been, according to the Cuban security service, no fewer than 638 plots to kill Castro, either directly organised by the CIA or their many proxies. The attempts have been annotated by two of Castro's top minders, Fabian Escalante, who has written about them in his book, 638 Maneras de Matar a Castro (638 Ways To Kill Castro) and his colleague, Xavier Solado, who wrote a pamphlet of the same name a few years ago.

Now a film about those plots is to be shown on British television. It could hardly come at a more timely moment as the world is being asked to take a stance against terrorism and western horror is expressed at the assassination of political leaders.

"Some of the attempts were a bit like Clousseau," says Peter Moore, the film's executive producer. Some of them are familiar - the exploding cigar, the ballpoint hypodermic syringe, the gift of a poisoned wetsuit, others more traditional. Dollan Cannell, the film's director, says that the plots seem to have failed through a mixture of incompetence, chance and bad timing. "The CIA had to do it without being blamed for it," says Cannell. "There had to be no smoking gun."

Castro has now seen off no fewer than eight American presidents, many of whom, Cannell believes, must have sanctioned the various attempted hits. John F Kennedy even asked Bond creator, Ian Fleming, for suggestions and there were plans to outsource the job to the Mafia.

"We can be 100 per cent sure that Eisenhower and Kennedy signed off on them," says Cannell. "And I think you could say that probably also Johnson and Nixon agreed to them. Jimmy Carter told us when we met him during the making of the film that he did not."

Two of the chief anti-Castro plotters agreed to participate in the film: Orlando Bosch, weakened by a stroke, and Luis Posada, who is currently wanted in both Cuba and Venezuela in connection with the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner...

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[ 30 November 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]