Bush vs. Cuba

[Pathless]

Yes, wil, I also make a living. Kudos to you for what you are doing to create change.

My reactions are not knee-jerk. I see all around me inequality, and I do consider it. I spend a good amount of time reading. I do sit while I do this. So yeah, I'm on my butt a lot. Sometimes when I post in these forums, I must admit my aim is to agitate. I see a lot of complacency in the current American culture, and it does frustrate me. We drop bombs on problems that I see as clearly tied to our own economics and foreign policies. We are a bully for capitalism. Yet I don't think capitalism works. It is an economic system that (dys)functions by creating alienation, discord, and destruction. I don't think that is an overstatement.

If we embraced socialism... now there is something to ponder. I wonder, if we embraced socialism, would we be fighting the wars we are now?

Socialist Party USA

I am willing to consider and accept that Cuba is not a shining light for human rights. If you look through this thread, I think you will find that I never made the claim that their system was perfect. What I would like people to consider is basically what Tao so succinctly said. Cuba is a sovereign nation. Why, then, does the United States have such difficulty treating it as one? Our attitude seems to be one of patronimony: "If Cuba won't embrace democracy as we espouse it, if they won't be a little brother to us in capitalism, well... then we will have to impose sanctions!!" I wonder how much of the crippled health care system of Cuba could be alleviated if indeed the United States began to act altruistically. I don't know, but I would imagine simply removing the embargos we have against Cuba might help revitalize their economy. What do you think?

I find it similar to the situation of sanctions in Iraq. We didn't approve of Saddam (again, someone who we supported whole-heartedly at another time), so we made the citizens of the country suffer through deprivation. Did Saddam suffer from our sanctions? No, not really. I wonder if Fidel Castro has suffered from U.S. economic sanctions along with the people of Cuba. I really don't know.

I am just so tired of people in this country making excuses for the exploitation of the rest of the world for our benefit. It really is sickening to me to hear you talk about how we have choices and repeatedly imply that we are so lucky to live in the U.S.A. Certainly I am not going to disagree with you that we have many advantages over citizens in other nations. Where I do take exception is in justifying and defending an ultimately unbalanced and unfair system. I am not just whining about my own lot in life. I recognize and appreciate that I have it quite easy; yet that doesn't stop me from criticizing the corrupt structure of the United States. I don't know what else to do, honestly, except agitate. Too many people are suffering and dying daily because of run-away economics for me to be happy about living within the largest perpetrator of economic injustice on the globe.

That is simply how I see it.

Peace,
Pathless

[bob x]

Uh, Wil, it was EISENHOWER who put the embargo on Cuba.

[wil]

Originally Posted by bob x

Uh, Wil, it was EISENHOWER who put the embargo on Cuba.

Namaste Bob and Pathless...

Yes didn't he start as a response to the nationalization, tit for tat but wasn't it made 10 fold stronger during Kennedy and then put into law during Clinton?

Pathless, I agree we have issues, but you think socialism is the answer? To me capitalism drives people to invent, create, manufacture, contemplate a brighter future for themselves and the world. Don't get me wrong, there was a time when I would have agreed with you wholeheartedly, I have my old voting cards to prove it....they've changed over the years...and they might change again...my leanings now are more libertarian.

But I don't see capitalist countries moving towards socialism...I see in the world socialist countries that had failing economies moving towards capitalism. If you can't feed your people as country you are not succeeding. Yes their is poverty and folks starving in the US...but it is not the norm..we are basically at full employment...I know in my reality any time I didn't work it wasn't due to lack of work...it was due to lack of wanting to work on my part...when I decided to go to work, I quickly found work.

I'm wondering though...Cuba embargo for example. Say I hate Skippy peanut butter, I don't like their business policy, their employment practices or the taste of the their product...I impose sanctions..I quit buying them, I tell all my friends and family to quit buying them, I start a campaign to get everyone to quit buying them. The company goes broke due to my efforts, closes its factories all its people are unemployed... Just like we do when we protest against nukes, or some other company we deem non green or against our personal policy and agenda...how does that differ from one country putting pressure on another?

Do you think we should back out of the UN and not support that international body and their sanctions? Back out of World Bank and Intl Monetary Fund? Our peddling of influence is a two edged sword is it not?

[Pathless]

Originally Posted by wil

Pathless, I agree we have issues, but you think socialism is the answer?

It certainly seems to make more sense to me than capitalism.

Originally Posted by wil

Yes didn't he start as a response to the nationalization, tit for tat but wasn't it made 10 fold stronger during Kennedy and then put into law during Clinton?

And yet the nationalization of Cuba's sugar product was in response to the monopolies of U.S. corporations that invaded the land in the lates 1800s. It is all written in history for us to see, if we want to.

Take a look at that book by Terrence Cannon, or find the books by Philip Foner about the historic relations between the United States and Cuba. Until you take off your nationalistic blinders or until I put mine on, I don't think we are going to see eye-to-eye on this.

[Pathless]

Originally Posted by wil

I'm wondering though...Cuba embargo for example. Say I hate Skippy peanut butter, I don't like their business policy, their employment practices or the taste of the their product...I impose sanctions..I quit buying them, I tell all my friends and family to quit buying them, I start a campaign to get everyone to quit buying them. The company goes broke due to my efforts, closes its factories all its people are unemployed... Just like we do when we protest against nukes, or some other company we deem non green or against our personal policy and agenda...how does that differ from one country putting pressure on another?

Do you think we should back out of the UN and not support that international body and their sanctions? Back out of World Bank and Intl Monetary Fund? Our peddling of influence is a two edged sword is it not?

I don't hate Cuba peanut butter.

I also don't think the World Bank does the world much good. The U.N.? Do you think that the United States works honestly within the U.N.? From what I see, the U.S. sends its bullies there too, and refuses to recognize international law. You cannot be serious, about the U.S. and the U.N....?

[wil]

Originally Posted by Pathless

It certainly seems to make more sense to me than capitalism.



And yet the nationalization of Cuba's sugar product was in response to the monopolies of U.S. corporations that invaded the land in the lates 1800s. It is all written in history for us to see, if we want to.

Take a look at that book by Terrence Cannon, or find the books by Philip Foner about the historic relations between the United States and Cuba. Until you take off your nationalistic blinders or until I put mine on, I don't think we are going to see eye-to-eye on this.

It appears everything I read is highly biased one way or another....and I still say when Castro is gone and people are free to speak, we'll get yet another story, someplace in the middle with a little more whole truth than the one sided stuff that both feed us...

As far as socialism goes I frankly have not traveled the world to find out how the other countries fare....someday....my current thought is when my kids head for college in a few years...I head for the Peace Corp and I'll get to see some more of this planet...maybe they'll send me to Cuba!

[Pathless]

Here's a timely article that I found through a "Cuba Study Group" link at the top of the page:

Cuba Study Group--Cuba warns US against regime change
Miami Herald- Edith Lederer (AP)

As far as socialism, one needn't travel to other countries necessarily. A good place to start is reading Marx. I've started with the Excerpt-Notes of 1844, aka Comments on James Mill.

[Tao_Equus]

Originally Posted by wil

Do you think we should back out of the UN and not support that international body and their sanctions? Back out of World Bank and Intl Monetary Fund? Our peddling of influence is a two edged sword is it not?

The US attitude to the UN is little short of a rubber stamp when it can get away with it and its contemptuous vetoing of over 70 resolutions designed to limit war, end apartheid, give Palestinians standard human rights, ban chemical weapons, landmines, cluster bombs etc etc etc has been its only interest. And as for the World Bank and the IMF...cannot believe you have the gall to cite the front companies for American Global Rape Inc.

Tao

[wil]

Originally Posted by Pathless

As far as socialism, one needn't travel to other countries necessarily. A good place to start is reading Marx. I've started with the Excerpt-Notes of 1844, aka Comments on James Mill.

First I'm advocating no regime change in Cuba...that will happen by itself when Castro passes...I don't see a successful successor without the citizenry of Cuba being involved.

And for me... before I'd be willing to trade in one economic system for another, I'd have to see it work in practice...not on paper. Not trying to be nationalistic but this terrible country we live in is one people are still dying to get into, standing in line to get into, risking their lives to get into, breaking laws and leaving families to get into. Nobody holds anyone here, except those jailed for crimes everyone is free to leave... there is no mass migration away....and for over 500 years there has been a mass migration in...and for the past 200 during our oppressive capitalistic years the immigration has increased dramatically...in 1830 99% of the population of this country was born here...now it is less than 90%....it appears in the last 30-35 years 25% of all immigration to the US has occurred...now they could have gone anywhere....why did they choose here? Because of lack of freedom? lack of opportunity for the little guy??

[Tao_Equus]

lol Wil,

borrowing a billion dollars a day from China is one helluva hard act to follow aint it

[wil]

Originally Posted by Tao_Equus

lol Wil,

borrowing a billion dollars a day from China is one helluva hard act to follow aint it

its a system.... we'll run it until it collapses...

[Pathless]

Originally Posted by wil

its a system.... we'll run it until it collapses...

Which begs the question, "At what price?"

Here's another opinion piece on Bush's "Operation Cowboy Bubba vs. Castro's Commie Cuba" (like that? I just made it up. ):

The Black Commentator - November 1, 2007 - Issue 251

excerpt:

So, we in the USA are now looking at the following scenario: US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and slowly more in the Philippines; threats of war against Iran and Syria; and threats to the sovereignty of Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia. Without a scorecard it is becoming difficult to keep up. No wonder there are alleged murmurings in the US military about refusing to fly combat missions against Iran should Bush order an attack. From the standpoint of the US global empire, this escalating reliance on military threats and actions is coming to be seen as, at best, counterproductive.

[wil]

Now Iraq WMDs and can't find Bin Laden withstanding, I'd still say Bush has more intel as to what is going on in Cuba than any of us.

Now if one were to want more scoop I'd suggest talking to either of Dem or Rep Senators of Cuban descent, one who is first generation and one who is second. Neither have any love loss for Fidel, and they have family down there. Nor do the 110 students and youth that were arrested for wearing a white wristband saying Change.

I think in the not to distant future, as Bush said, when all the stories come out Castro will soon lose his hero status for all the atrocities against his people under his dictatorship.

(me thinks they'd have quite a bit to say about this thread, including the potential for opportunity here in the US)

Martinez and Menendez find common ground in "cambio"

Republican Sen. Mel Martinez and his Cuban-American counterpart, New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, a Democrat, put aside partisan differences today to blast a common foe: Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
From the Senate floor, the two displayed small white plastic bracelets with the word, "Cambio" (change) etched on them.
Menendez said 70 "young people" wearing similar bracelets were "detained, arrested and harassed" this week for wearing the bracelets in Cuba.
"What was their crime? Acting violent? No, they were walking down a street in Havana...they had on these bracelets," Menendez said. "This one simple gesture was strong enough to have them thrown in prison - this one simple gesture....I also hope it's strong enough to inspire change...Their courage must not fall on deaf ears."
Posted by Lesley Clark at 11:57 AM in Congress

[Tao_Equus]

Lol...as Castro has been in power since 1959 it is hardly surprising a few students want to call for change. As the report says they were detained and harassed I cannot but doubt that they were. But lets face it in the US you do not even have to be protesting to be subject to such treatment. Last week a Member of the British Parliament who has Asian origins was afforded "American hospitality" for "looking Asian".
British MP miffed at second U.S. search : World

To keep it short and sweet... if this is the best you can come up with there is no real possibility of you looking at this from a non-aligned perspective. Which is kind of topical because 118 countries have voted Castro as president of the Non-Aligned Movement for a second time!! Now thats democracy!! I post a map below...I think the picture speaks a thousand word on just who and why he is respected. IE.. by every country that is also getting shafted by the US/IMF/WB trinity.

[Pathless]

As much as I dislike American interventionist and imperial foreign policy, it has come to my attention (finally!! some might say in exasperation) that Fidel Castro's tight reign over the island of Cuba may not be as revolutionary as it should have been. Yet I also temper that with the knowledge that the continued unfavorable economic policies of the United States may indeed have a good deal to do with the extreme poverty and repression experienced by the people of this island nation.

I am deepening my research into Cuba and the reactionary Stalinist (not Marxist) Communist state that it has become in the years after the Revolution of the M-26-7. Of a kind of side interest here is the strange idealization of Che Guevara in the liberal hip crowds of America. I've come across several accounts that expose him not so much as a revolutionary for the people of the world, but as an ideologue of authoritarianism and political repression. It seems to be this spirit of authoritarian ideology that has corrupted Castro's Cuba. Without having a satisfactory picture of Fidel Castro and his passions, beliefs, and values, my impression at this point is of someone who was indeed a revolutionary, yet who when confronted by political necessity, became something closer to a tyrant.

As may be clear from my sometimes inflammatory posting: dissidence, analysis, and social conscience unfettered by political restrictions are very important to me. As a United States citizen and (the closest word I can think of is) socialist, I believe that people should exercise their constitutional rights, become independent thinkers, and agitate for change and against the status quo. With this foundational attitude, it becomes perhaps too easy for me to demonize U.S. rhetoric without taking fully into account the struggles of other dissidents in other countries. Here I am of course talking about Cuba. While I maintain that U.S. imperialism and aggression are gross and obscene, I also am beginning to recognize that my opposition of United States foreign policy may cause me to sympathize with what, under other circumstances, I would not sympathize with.

My loyalties lie with people and their struggles. To the extent of which Fidel Castro's revolution was against hegemony and injustice, it arouses my sympathies. As I begin to understand better the police state that Cuba has become--and again I want to emphasize that U.S. embargoes of Cuba have played a role in this--my sympathies remain with the people. For the dissidents and individuals and communities throughout the world struggling for equality, dignity, self-determination, and sovereignty over their own lives and communities, all my empathy and respect lies with them, and not with the governments that feign to speak for them.