Castro Was Not A Great Leader, and Communism/Socialism is Not Great Either.

originally posted by: projectvxn
a reply to: Winstonian

My other favorite is "It's a great theory on paper".

No it isn't. People who say stupid crap like that have never read or actually understood the Communist Manifesto.

BRAVO!

originally posted by: luthier
I wouldn't be too snide about academics, without them we wouldnt have "Two Treatises of Government, we wouldn't have science, we wouldn't have Voltaire, Roseau, Locke, the French and Glorius revolution etc.

All those things led to the US constitution.

Um, the French revolution happened AFTER the American revolution and was an utter failure. It was a failure precisely because it was an attempt at communal and "scientific" government. And putting Locke and Rousseau in the same sentence is practically criminal.

originally posted by: luthier

I seriously doubt you read the manifesto. It has plenty of flaws but it still pretty sound philosophy. Marx was also able to predict quite a bit of capitalist downfalls.
...
The irony right now is 65 percent or more of Americans couldn't survive off their wages without communism.

It's actually the opposite. What is obvious is that it is people like you who haven't read, or understood in what context the communist manifesto was written, or any of the other writings by Marx and Engels.

For example, Marx writings to pretty much suppress all forms of religious freedom... But I am almost certain you are an atheist, so it would seem that you wouldn't "mind" if other people's religious views were suppressed" aka as per China's policy, or even Cuba's policy...

Heck, Max also argued that in order for peace to exist under communism there has to be no opposition to socialism, which is why communist regimes become oppressive against dissidents...

As for your claim that "65% of Americans couldn't survive on their wages without communism"... You are freaking insane... Cubans, Venezuelans, and many other people living under communism have less to eat than even the poor in the U.S. have to eat...

a reply to: projectvxn

Yeah, i know they won't listen to any Cuban who dares speak up against a communist dictatorship, but even if just a few people get to read the truth about Cuba, that is more than enough incentive to keep talking about this.

originally posted by: ElectricUniverse
even if just a few people get to read the truth about Cuba, that is more than enough incentive to keep talking about this.

Why?

What difference does it actually make?

Organizing and actually taking their island back would be something but bitching from behind the safety of a keyboard is also purely academic.

a reply to: daskakik

There are few if any people actually in Cuba that are typing from behind their keyboard. Only CP members get that luxury.

en.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: Fools

I wasn't talking about them. I was talking about those outside of cuba.

a reply to: daskakik

I am sure they do it because they want to make sure that the propaganda coming out of Cuba isn't believed as well as they do not want any citizen of the United States to ever trust a communist. I am with them on that. Communism and Socialism are dangerous concepts.

And no, a park or highways or whatever are NOT examples of socialism.

a reply to: Fools

I'm sure they do but, that doesn't really help reduce the "real suffering and death" which means that it is also purely academic, which was the accusation in the original post.

a reply to: daskakik

Got you. I would say, even though I hate to say it, that Obama normalizing relations with the US will have more positive effect on the general population than anything else has to date.

However, this will not be reciprocating. I am sure that Cubans in the USA will be carefully left out of the "thawing".

a reply to: sdcigarpig

No, but you claimed that there is free healthcare for all... What free healthcare when Cuban regular hospitals lack the necessary items including medicine?... Regular Cuban patients are often told to get an aspirin, if there is any available, and go home. What free healthcare when people who need an urgent operation are put in waiting lists which can last from 1 year to 3 years. Most sources which you can find on the internet, in Spanish, will tell you different times because it depends on what is needed. Personally I know because recently my two sisters in Cuba needed an urgent operation, for different problems, and the doctors wanted to put them in waiting lists unless they were bribed.

One of my uncles, who is a Cuban doctor had to run with one of my sisters to the hospital because she developed an infection and only because of his connections was he able to get my sister the antibiotics she needed to fight the infection. Then we had to bribe other doctors to get both my sisters operations to a closer date otherwise they would have been put in long waiting lists and they would have certainly died.

Then there is the fact that castro has always been a deceiver, and a liar. He, and the communist regime have made many claims which are false. BTW, from where do you think that organizations like UNICEF and WHO get their information about Cuban healthcare, when Cuba has never allowed independent human right groups in the island to check whether "Cuba has a great healthcare system"?...

It is the usual communist propaganda. Same as the sending of Cuban doctors to other countries when Cuba is in need of doctors... BTW, do you have any idea how many Cuban professionals that were sent to other countries "to help" have tried to escape to the United States? Most Cuban professionals who still have family in Cuba and feel responsible for their families would not leave when they still have family in the island, but many others do, including those that don't have a family of their own.

I am not sure if the BBC covered this in English, but the Spanish version covered an article in August 2015 about some of the Cuban professionals that have tried to escape when they were sent to other countries to help.

El limbo que viven en Colombia los médicos cubanos que desertaron en Venezuela y quieren llegar a EE.UU.

That article talks about some of the Cuban professionals that have tried to escape the "wonderful Cuban system" when they were sent to help in other Latin American countries. Although the article concentrates on three such professionals, but the article also states that "according to Colombian authorities at least 720 Cuban professionals did the same thing those three Cuban professionals did to leave the "wonderful dictatorship"...

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Y no son los únicos. Según datos de autoridades colombianas, al menos 720 profesionales de la salud cubanos hicieron lo mismo (hay versiones que sugieren que son más).

Cruzaron la frontera, dejando sus puestos en las misiones médicas por las que la isla recibe petróleo y dinero del estado venezolano, pensando que la salida a EE.UU, sería relativamente fácil. Pero no fue así....

The translation would be.

"And they are not the only ones. According to figures from Colombian authorities, at least 720 Cuban healthcare professionals did the same thing (there are versions that suggests that there are many more than that)

They crossed the border, leaving behind their jobs in the medical missions for which the island (Cuba) receives oil and money from the Venezuelan government, thinking that their exit to the U.S. would be relatively easy, but it wasn't that way... "

Those Cuban healthcare professionals also talked about the conditions in which they had to live while in Venezuela. Which they say is even worse than in Cuba, and Cuba is really bad.

...
Carlos Hernández, odontólogo de 25 años, abre los brazos y dice: "Era más chiquito que esto". "Esto" es la sala y cocina del apartamento, que tendrá unos 4 por 2 metros, más o menos.

"No había sábanas ni agua", recuerda Yusel, rehabilitadora de 26 años, de su vivienda en Venezuela. Las zonas en las que habitaban eran duras.

"Yo vivía al lado de un basurero", dice Carlos. "Yo vivía en un cerro", cuenta Yusel. "A la parte de arriba le decían 'La Tumbita'".

"Un día llamaron a mi coordinador y le dijeron 'no salgan, porque se va a formar". También vio, en otra ocasión, cómo mataban a un muchacho, un adolescente, a balazos.
...

The translation would be:

'Carlos Hernández, a 25 year old Ontologist, opens his arms and says: "it was much smaller than this". "This" is the dinning room and kitchen of the apartment, which had about 4 by 2 meters, more or less.

'There were no bed sheets nor water', remembers Yusel, a 26 year old rehab (professional), of her living arrangements in Venezuela. The zones that they inhabited were tough.

'I lived next to a garbage dump', says Carlos. 'i lived in a hill' tells Yusel. 'The highest part was called the tomb' (actually "tumbita" is a diminutive of "Tumba", but as far as i know there is no such diminutive in English for Tomb)

One day they called my coordinator and they told him 'don't get out, because there will be trouble.' He also saw on another ocasion how a young man was murdered, an adolescent, riddled with bullets'.

You see, the Cuban regime, just like other communist regimes, thrives in lies and propaganda which many people from outside Cuba believe but don't know about because they didn't live it.

As for your claim of the "free marvelous educational system of Cuba"? (I know you didn't use those exact words, but that's your main premise)

Please... it is more of an indoctrination system, and it isn't free either. Starting around 11-12 years old Cuban children are sent on "summer camps" which are actually "hard labor retreats" where children have to work until they graduate when they are adults. That's the vision of Marx of combining "education with industrial production, etc, etc" that Marx envisioned. In fact Marx's vision was to take away the right of parents to decide what their children should do, and instead the state/government would decide and put them to work for the state. Which is what socialist/communist regimes do.

Have you ever seen your two sisters being literally dragged into a bus menwhile they cried for your parents not to let (the state) take them away to the "summer work camps"?... Have you ever visited your sisters on Sundays in one of these camps, meanwhile you were younger than them, and see them cry to your parents to take them away from there because it was a horrible place"?... Have you ever seen your sisters come back after the "summer labor camps" emaciated because they were fed very little, and full of fleas? Have you ever seen the conditions of living of these "summer labor camps in Cuba" FOR CHILDREN?... I have.

Even after graduating from "segundaria" (high school) if you wanted to continue studying you still had to work in these camps. What do children do in those camps? They pick tobacco, or vegetables, or other harvests they are not allowed to eat, and which are exported to other countries. The state of course doesn't pay the children anything either. So, education is NOT free in Cuba...

BTW, some ATS member in here are claiming that things in Cuba only got worse because the money ran out after the collapse of the U.S.S.R. The thing is, even back then things were bad for Cubans, and since early in the take over of castro did they implement a "socialist rationing system" that all such communist dictatorships are known for. The oppression on Cubans started since the castros took power.

Here is a video from FRance, in English subtitles from 1984 (was uploaded to youtube in 2010) about a world reknown ballet group from Cuba which defected to France, and what they had to say about "the wonderful communist system of Cuba"...

(btw the video parts touches the treatment that gays and the lgbt community has received in Cuba) Of course, not all those Cubans who defected were gay.



What many people outside of Cuba didn't know, and these days don't know or want to ignore, is the fact that "pro-castro demonstrations" were/are ALWAYS orchestrated by the communist regime. When fidel was to give one of his "lenghtly speeches" there were "redadas" (roundups) buses would go to schools, and jobs close to where Fidel would give his speech, and people were forced to attend these speeches. Their "communist" supervisors always oversaw that their workers would cheer for castro and hold the signs made up high, if they didn't their lack of "communist participation" would give them demerits, which would punish those Cubans that didn't cheer for castro and showed "communist solidarity".

a reply to: daskakik

Why?

What difference does it actually make?

Organizing and actually taking their island back would be something but bitching from behind the safety of a keyboard is also purely academic.

Because people like you, who regard those who suffer under this regime, marginalize and offhandedly discount the experiences of the oppressed because they are "biased".

I bet you think you sound sooo intelligent and well reasoned when you put fingers to keyboard to write tripe like that.

originally posted by: projectvxn
Because people like you, who regard those who suffer under this regime, marginalize and offhandedly discount the experiences of the oppressed because they are "biased".

I don't discount it. I compare it to what others have said in order to get a fuller picture.

I bet you think you sound sooo intelligent and well reasoned when you put fingers to keyboard to write tripe like that.

I'm just being honest.

a reply to: luthier

I've read it, and I understand it. The fact that you say crap like this:

By the way if you read the manifesto you would know communism was supposed to spring up from a workers revolt when wealth was contracted to a super minority in an advanced capitalist country.

Proves that you read it without actually understanding the painful ignorance of economics and the mechanics of wealth that Marx displayed in his philosophical construct.

How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.

-Ronald Reagan

a reply to: daskakik

I'm just being honest.

Just not intellectually.

a reply to: daskakik

You are not being honest sorry to say.

If it would help, which I doubt would change anyone's mind", I would only trust projecttvxn getting him in contact with my sisters and other family members in Cuba to corroborate my statements. He is the only one I would trust because I know he is Cuban and he knows if my family's info was made public they would suffer in Cuba. Some pro-socialists and pro-communists including in this website are vindictive and they don't give a s#it about the real problems Cubans face.

If that information was made public my parents and myself would never be able to visit again, and we wouldn't be allowed to help our family in the island. Which if it were to happen because my family information were to somehow make it to some other person in ATS it would open a lawsuit against ATS for doing this because I know project would not give out this information willingly.

a reply to: projectvxn

What is dishonest about taking into consideration the word of someone who defected during hurricane Mitch and hearing him say that he wished he had returned to Cuba?

There was no pressure from the regime to say that. Fear of reprisal. They were the man's honest thoughts.

Propaganda is used on both sides.

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

Your story is anecdotal. It is one story. There is no need and, you are right, it won't make a difference.

I'm not saying that you are lying because you are biased. I'm saying that you see things a certain way because of it.

I live in Guatemala. Life in third world countries can be difficult. My country is a Constitutional republic with a "free market" economy . One of the few countries where the right to bear arms is written into the constitution. We have all the basic rights written into it as well. Our hospitals often lack resources. Our education is also lacking.

People who are well connected live well and many others are suffering and dying. I'm not seeing much of a difference to what you describe.

a reply to: ElectricUniverse

The USA policies towards other countries, from isolating to cutting all ties, is never a good idea. The USA has a long history of interfering with the internal workings of different countries time and time again, to the point where it turns around and harms the very people of that country and creates situations like what happened in Cuba. Castro was not willing to accept the policies that the USA was putting out to it, and thus all ties were cut between the 2 countries, and after the Cuban missile crises, it was far worse. The markets for both country were out of bounds and ultimately it was not good.

So while yes Castro was a dictator and a tyrant, at the same time, how much damage was done due to the policies that the USA had in place against Cuba? Would the conditions had been better if there was some normal ties between the 2 countries?

Make no mistake, I am not saying that conditions were good or that Castro was an angel, but at the same time neither was the USA either.