Reply With QuoteQuite enjoyed them at the time, seemed preferable and more valid than sitting in a class room with a load of imagination deficient dullards listening to interpretations of Gustav Adolphus' foreign policy.Originally Posted by For_England
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Not true, life in Cuba is infinitely preferable to that in Nazi Germany or fascist Italy. It is only because these nations were industrialized and civilized before fascism that life appears to have been better than in such places a Cambodia and Russia under Communism. Which is also why life is better in Iran than Chad, which is why the comparison is valid.
Which is to ignore the fact that fascism's Imperialistic and militaristic culture brought about the outcome which occurred in '45. That would not have happened had it not been for Fascism.Another pathetic comparison. Communism imploded in peacetime. In 1945 Germany had been pounded into the dust by the UK, USA, and their delightful allies, the Soviet Union. It was nothing to do with political philosophies.
[/QUOTE]Ah. I wondered when the smearing would commence. This is the classic fall-back for The Liberal-Left who run out of facts and answers.
You express it better and with more guile but you basically subscribe to the same standard "nationalist" narrative which is the common currency of Neo-Nazism. I haven't relied on simple smears, I have taken on your analysis point by point and only identify your view point for what it is because it is relevant information for most observers.
immanentize the eschaton!
Quite enjoyed them at the time, seemed preferable and more valid than sitting in a class room with a load of imagination deficient dullards listening to interpretations of Gustav Adolphus' foreign policy.
immanentize the eschaton!
So "Communist" regimes have killed a lot of people, I have never denied that.
The question is why did they kill them? Was it something intrinsic to Communism or was it something intrinsic to the countries and regimes in question? For example was the Cultural Revolution something demanded by Communism and if a Communist regime kills someone for treason is that included?
The figure of 100 million almost certainly includes a massive proportion of people who died of insane governments, not Karl Marx.
I somehow doubt the figure of 90,000 given for Cuba, I doubt the Cuban people would have tolerated 1500 deaths per year for the last sixty years. And it was not as if they had to with the USA waiting at minute to help them overthrow Fidel.
I'm no fan of Communism, but I don't regard it as the mainspring of evil as it is defined in the traditional "nationalist" narrative. In fact I think it is totally irrelevant because the central conjecture, that our current elites are Communists is self evidently absolute Horse-****.
immanentize the eschaton!
You express it better and with more guile but you basically subscribe to the same standard "nationalist" narrative which is the common currency of Neo-Nazism. I haven't relied on simple smears, I have taken on your analysis point by point and only identify your view point for what it is because it is relevant information for most observers.[/QUOTE]
Life in Cuba by the people in the streets of Havana
Published: Thu January 04, 2007
By: Publisher in Cuba Culture > Cuban People
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By Our Woman in Havana | MiamiNewTimes.com
It’s not often that I get to stand on a street corner in Old Havana and talk to an 81-year-old man (who is selling Granma, the state-run newspaper, no less) about Fidel Castro’s asshole.
“What do you think happened to him?” I ask.
“Well, it’s not his rectum,” my new friend, Rene, says. He pauses. He nods. I nod. The word rectum hangs in the air.
“Maybe it’s his intestine. But if he got only a bit of his intestine taken out” — Rene holds up his thumb and forefinger two inches apart — “then he wouldn’t be laid up this long. No, I think he got a lot of his intestine taken out.” Rene holds his hands about a foot apart.
A beret-clad policeman stands on the corner, a few feet away. I wonder if Rene will get in trouble for talking about Fidel’s bowels in public. Rene moves closer to me. “Things have to change here,” he whispers.
Forget about baseball. The new national sport in Cuba is speculation — about Fidel’s health, about Raul’s capabilities as president, about Cuba’s future.
Ralph Amat, a ******-off American who has finally gotten his Cuban wife out of the country after seven years of paperwork, sums it up nicely: “Everybody is just waiting for that ******* to die.”
The difference between Cuba five years ago — when I last visited — and Cuba now couldn’t have been more stark.
Everywhere everyone spewed about how this was the worst holiday season ever (no pork cutlets for Nochebuena, don’t even think about an entire pig), worse than the Special Period after the collapse of the Soviet Union, worse than anything anyone had ever seen. People openly panhandled in the streets — something unseen five years ago. Buildings everywhere are peeling, crumbling, disintegrating into the streets. Internet, cell phones — hell, even phones — are nonexistent for regular Cubans. Even acting president Raul Castro went on national TV while I was there to carp about how bad the transportation and food situations were. “In this revolution, we are tired of excuses,” he grumbled.
On the street, all it took was a “How’s Havana?” or a simple “How are you?” to launch a bitter rant.
“Transportation? Horrible,” Rene said. “Food? Terrible.”
A taxi driver told me he doesn’t make enough money in one month to buy a new pair of pants. “Look at these,” he said, disgusted, rubbing his finger on his thigh. His khaki pants were nubby and frayed.
Paranoia, never in short supply in Cuba, has ratcheted up to uncharted levels. No one, of course, wanted to give me — a white woman from Miami — his or her last name for this article; some didn’t want to give their names at all. Especially in public.
“We can’t talk here,” said Daniel, a 39-year-old parking attendant I met in the shadow of the capitol building. “You can get five years in prison for talking bad about Fidel.”
The busy, bright street suddenly filled with creepiness. We retreated to a dark bar. Like many people I spoke with, Daniel is worried about the future. On one hand, he said, there is hope: Raul recently said he would like to begin a dialogue with the United States. The recent visit from U.S. congressmen — six Democrats, four Republicans, headed by Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Rep. William Delahunt (D-Mass.) — was seen as another positive step.
On the other hand, Raul, who heads the military, is perceived by many as more of a hard-ass than Fidel, people said.
“All Raul wants is war,” Daniel said. “And Cubans don’t want war.”
Whatever happens, Daniel hopes to someday have a girlfriend. It’s nearly impossible now because most Cuban women want to date and marry foreigners. And even if he meets a woman, he can’t take her back home to spend the night.
“I sleep in the same room as my mom,” he said, embarrassed.
The general consensus is that Fidel is history. Everyone acknowledges he is sick, ill beyond the point of returning to power.
So people wait. They wait, as they have done for years, for buses and for bread, for medicine and for visas. This time, they hope, the wait will be worth it.
“I want to see what’s next for Cuba,” said Pedro, a genial taxi driver who chatted about how he watched America TeVe (Channel 41) out of Miami the night the government announced Fidel was sick.
Pedro’s view of Cuba was the most optimistic. He has a vision for a more socialist democracy, along the lines of Spain’s. He’s trying to position himself to take advantage of the changes: He plans to rent out a room in his house, he’s experienced at hooking up pirated DirectTV, and he’s working on his Italian, just in case. (He speaks four languages already.)
The gloomiest vision of Cuba came from Nelida, a weary fortuneteller in the moribund town of Regla, just outside Havana.
“What’s in Cuba’s future?” I asked as she shuffled the cards. Behind her a black Santería doll in a wildly colored dress stood on a faded table. It was stifling-hot inside Nelida’s tiny apartment, and she looked at me seriously as she tapped a card.
“Suffering,” she said. “Sadness and suffering and change.”
I left her with ten dollars and a promise to someday return, hoping that when I do, her predictions won’t have come true.
Cuba is a Hellhole.
Deaths in Cuba
executed 18,000
extrajudicial assassinations 1,000
disappeared 250
died in prison for lack of medical attention 50
murdered in prison by guards (brutality) 500
extrajudicial assassinations of women, for different causes 150
Sub-total for extrajudicial killings 20,400
political prisoners who reportedly committed suicide in prison 200
died at sea attempting to flee "balseros" - estimate based on Coast Guard estimates of casualties 83,000
Cubans killed in "internationalist-solidarity" wars in Africa 10,000
Total 113,600
The above numbers don't include deaths caused by Batista regime, documented by Armando Lago at 2,500, of which 2,200 are deaths in military battles in the Sierra Maestra, mostly soldiers, and 300 were murdered by Batista security forces.
To put these numbers into some context, note that all deaths reported during the entire Pinochet regime in Chile totaled no more than 3,100, a figure which includes the disappeared.
Amnesty International Annual Reports - 2000; 1999; 1998; 1997
Amnesty International Report (June 1999) - Cuba: A Worrying Increase in the Use of the Death Penalty
Amnesty International Report (July 1997) - The Sinking of the "13 De Marzo" Tugboat on 13 July 1994
Human Rights Watch (World Report: Cuba) - 2000; 1999; 1998
Human Rights Watch - Cuba's Repressive Machinery: Human Rights Forty Years After the Revolution
UN Commission on Human Rights' Resolution - Situation of Human Rights in Cuba (2000)
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (Cuba) - 1998; 1997; 1996; 1995; 1994; 1993
BC - its pointless arguing with a very clear apologist for communist states who simply tries to argue his way around simple facts.
Cuba would perhaps be a good place to re-settle the British left in the future.
Im sure they would be happy there.
An anti-Fidel article from the Miami times? Shocking.
Even if it were true that would be considerably better than normal for the Caribbean and Latin America for equivalent sized nations.
Personally I would much rather live in Communist Cuba than Nazi Germany, and I would think 90% of sane people apprised of the facts would concur.
As for Pinochet
compared to the equivalent passage for Cuba
Human rights in Cuba - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
As for the Black book, I note that it has been extensively criticized on the grounds I mentioned and others and here is a quote from one it's contributors.
The Black Book of Communism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
immanentize the eschaton!
I'm not an apologist for Communist States. I am merely debating the standard fascist apologists narrative "The Nazis were justified in anything they did because Communism was worse".
Which is an argument which is a non sequitur, factually incorrect and irrelevant in the context which it is usually deployed.
For years we have listened to this headless narrative which only a moron would not recognize as irrational drivel. It's well past time people stopped indulging themselves in this boring irrelevant McCarthyite nonsense and stood back and objectively assessed the communist movements of the 20th century and realize that, while they were appalling, that does not mean fascism is an appropriate response. Moreover understand that Communism/Marxism is not related in any meaningful way to the political problems we are facing in 21st century Britain.
immanentize the eschaton!
The Black Book was Critisised by the Left.
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