[Social_Critic]

Penguin, the idea is that people demonstrate for whatever they want to propose, and in most countries they are allowed to vent steam and propose the craziest things. I used the "drive the Toyota" or "live in a capitalist paradise" the same way I could have said "have the right to go naked" or "reduce the retirement age to 55". Or whatever. But in Cuba, people who propose the blandest and most reasonable things, such as changing the constitution to have a system other than the "socialism" installed by the Castros, are beat up by thugs organized by the government. So in Cuba there's no freedom of expression, people can't organize political parties to oppose the ruling oligarchs, nor can they have a free press. Cuba is held in the iron fist of a dictatorship supported by a cadre of oligarchs and people who benefit from the status quo. And this seems to be the fate of "socialist" regimes as they mature and degenerate. We have seen the same process in China, in Viet Nam, in Cuba, and elsewhere.

I have read quite a bit about this issue, and it seems things go full circle. What some people want is just raw power and control. Extreme "right" ie fascism and extreme left (whatever you want to call it) seem to merge and link up - they use populism, militarism, repression, and sometimes personality worship, and the key element is to favor a small group of people who are in business in cahoots with government bigwigs, all of which are under the umbrella of some kind of party, with an annointed leader, who sometimes has reached the postion via hereditary means (see Kim Jong Un and Raul Castro, for example).

[Pants-of-dog]

If it sounds plausible and matches my own knowledge sure, I haven't deemed you to be dishonest yet.

In other words, you uncritically agree with anyone who says anything that supports your own view.

[Kman]

In other words, you uncritically agree with anyone who says anything that supports your own view.

If it was uncritical I would not try and check it versus my own knowledge, genious.

[Pants-of-dog]

If it was uncritical I would not try and check it versus my own knowledge, genious.

In other words, you uncritically agree with anyone who says anything that supports your own view. And it's "genius".

[Kman]

In other words, you uncritically agree with anyone who says anything that supports your own view. And it's "genius".

No it is called checking for inconsistances and that is actually a hallmark of critical thinking, someone might come out and say that North Korea is a democratic country but I have information that indicates otherwise and that means my bullshit alarm goes off IE I start suspecting said person of being dishonest.

I am very impressed that somehow in your head you can turn this process into becoming me blindingly accepting whatever someone tells me.

[Pants-of-dog]

No, it is called checking for inconsistencies and that is actually a hallmark of critical thinking. Someone might come out and say that North Korea is a democratic country but I have information that indicates otherwise and that means my bullshit alarm goes off; i.e. I start suspecting said person of being dishonest.

I am very impressed that somehow in your head you can turn this process into becoming me blindingly accepting whatever someone tells me.

Let me put it this way:

Do you believe that climate change is caused by humans? No. Because, according to you, there is no proof.

But you believe S_C's anecdotes even though there is no proof.

This is a double standard. The reason you apply this double standard is because you like S_C's anecdotes, but you don't like the scientific evidence that shows that anthropogenic climate change. The fact that you use your own ideology as a barometer of veracity has little to do with this.

[Kman]

Let me put it this way:

Do you believe that climate change is caused by humans? No. Because, according to you, there is no proof.

But you believe S_C's anecdotes even though there is no proof.

This is a double standard. The reason you apply this double standard is because you like S_C's anecdotes, but you don't like the scientific evidence that shows that anthropogenic climate change. The fact that you use your own ideology as a barometer of veracity has little to do with this.

When climate scientists say they can predict temperature 50 years in advance while being unable to predict it even 4 weeks in advance that is an obvious contradiction that indicates they are lying and/or incompetant.

When S_C tells stories about oppressive measures used in Cuba and Venezuela they do not contradict with anything, I have heard from plenty of other sources how oppressive Cuba and Venezuela is.

[Pants-of-dog]

When climate scientists say they can predict temperature 50 years in advance while being unable to predict it even 4 weeks in advance that is an obvious contradiction that indicates they are lying and/or incompetant.

When S_C tells stories about oppressive measures used in Cuba and Venezuela they do not contradict with anything, I have heard from plenty of other sources how oppressive Cuba and Venezuela is.

Your inability to differentiate between weather and climate is not a hallmark of critical thinking.

Nor is your inability to be critical of S_C's claims.

This is wandering into discussion about you as a person. Have a pleasant day, Kman.

[benpenguin]

I'm not overly knowledgeable about the affairs of Cuba, but from your description it sounds like a corrupt authoritarian regime that doesn't really subscribe strongly to any particular ideology despite the socialist roots (And I really don't know where "facist" come in)

I was rather skeptical of the posted article because of the heavily loaded language. Still, reading from a few posters on this board, it seems to me that a lot of people is getting quite fed up with the regime. However, since the majority of information flowing out from the country comes from Western news source I hold my doubts as usual.

First, I need to clarify one bit, I don't subscribe too much into the idea of "personal freedom to live whatever lifestyle", which inevitably leads to excessive consumerism and in turn, more inequality - This is happening in any developed countries. I only believe in freedom of expression in a sensible and constructive way between the people and the government (Note: Doesn't necessarily mean democracy or any particular form of government), and freedom to needs rather than wants

The Cuban system sure has a lot of problems. Having government thugs beating down all dissent is certainly not a solution, but what is the alternative? You mentioned the case in China. What I can say for China now is that we (I'm Chinese) are developing a new political model for the country. It has characteristics of socialism, capitalism, fascism with some informal form of democracy. The model is suitable for China and China only - Some call it the China model. It is achieved not only by raw power of control, nationalism, populism, but also a tedious, vigorous, sometimes violent and sometimes constructive communication process between the political elite and the people. The China model is not aiming to achieve "freedom", but to solve a myriad of problems that exists in our country one by one. The model have a million problems, but so far it is holding the country together, and it is evolving very rapidly.

So, I need to ask - what is are the needs of the Cuban society at the moment? Is it freedom? Or is freedom a means to an end? If so, is there an alternative way?

[Social_Critic]

Ben, there is indeed a huge distance between China and Cuba. Let me quote something you said and then comment:

Having government thugs beating down all dissent is certainly not a solution but what is the alternative?

I think there are better alternatives. One would be to beat up the thugs who beat up people who dissent. In other words, the people could empower themselves to take the law in their own hands and destroy those who dare silence dissent. After all, the use of violence should not be reserved only for those in power, should it?

Now let me get a little bit deeper into this subject. What gives those in power the right to organize bands of thugs to beat up those who do not agree and wish to express such disagreement? The power, as Mao says, flows from the barrel of a gun. So, if the power is wielded by those in power because they "have the gun", then it's up to the people to neutralize that "power of the gun" using their own forms of violence. This, I think, leads to violent acts of rebellion against those in power, which in the end, after the people struggle and win, results in the death of those in power.

On the other hand, if those in power can repress the rebellion, then those who do rebel are killed, jailed, repressed. But this state is not permanent, and it's impossible to stop the march of history. and the people win.

But now let's turn to something I've pondered for a long time. Why should the majority of the people, even if they have the power, decide who should lead? Sometimes the majority is deceived, or it's not educated. This is what I saw in Venezuela, where they elected a man who has turned out to be a self-agrandizing megalomaniac who wants to be worshipped and is incredibly corrupt and has really dumb ideas. So there is a very critical need to create a system which allows truly great leaders to emerge, and it allows those leaders to have the information flow to their brains, so they can make good decisions. And to make good decisions, they have to allow dissent and protests, and they have to allow a free press, in which people can say what they want, and complain, and denounce problems and corrupt officials, so they can be removed and punished.

We should always understand that these things I talk about don't have a lot to do with socialism or capitalism. Those are economic systems, not political systems. Fascism is a hybrid system, in which there is strong state control of the economy, but capitalists are allowed to exist and make profits, sometimes huge profits. Many socialist systems evolve into fascism, as the leading party cadres realize that pure socialism is a failure because human beings need something other than patriotism and slogans to want to work hard.

But the true winners are not socialist or capitalist, the true winners are those, like I said, which allow the best to rise to the top, and then create the control systems with feedback (information flow to the center) which allows better decisions to be made. And this is where regimes like China's, Cuba's, Viet Nam's, and others fail miserably. Self-criticism sessions are not enough. China will fail if it doesn't allow dissent, because it's a huge country with a very large economy, so eventually something will go badly wrong, and those at the top will not understand how bad it is, when they do, it will be too late. Japan suffered from this problem to some extent, because they have a flawed system, and their nuclear power plants turned out to be junk, but they thought they were very good. So this isn't an East and West issue, or capitalism versus socialism issue. It's a communication and free flow of information issue. What i do know is that socialist nations, and those who evolve from socialism into a neo-fascist phase, seem to have much more massive failures.

[Sandokan]

Hey guys, keep focus as a lesser beam in the story please.

More frequently desperate Cubans are taking the long way off the island, escaping to Honduras, whose immigration policies have made it the hottest new heaven among Cuban refugees fleeing the Castros tyrannical regime. Due to the fact the many rafters get caught by the U.S. Coast Guard in the heavily patrol waters of the Florida straits, they attempt the risky voyage of 500 miles to Honduras than the 90 miles trip to Florida fleeing the Castros regime miserable human conditions, most of them seeking ultimately to get to the United States.

[Sandokan]

Sara Marta Fonseca, the woman in the video carried away by State Security agents, has been very active participating in peaceful protest for over a year, among them the one at University of Havana, the Capitol building and other places. Due to her activism the regime has been harassing her and her family, detaining them in several occasions.

Fonseca and her husband Julio Ignacio León, beaten and arrested along with here, remain in jail since the arrest in September 24, and are in a hunger and thirst strike.

Almost two weeks after they were arrested, Cuban activists Sara Martha Fonseca and her husband Julio Ignacio Leon were released from jail on Friday.

[benpenguin]

So, if the power is wielded by those in power because they "have the gun", then it's up to the people to neutralize that "power of the gun" using their own forms of violence.

You're talking about a revolution. I'm usually very prudent about such things unless all communications with the government has failed and the situation is no longer bearable. Still, if your observations and opinions hold true with most of the population, then perhaps it really is time. I can't say the same for China. Contrary to popular belief, the majority of the population still thinks the government is tolerable and not beyond redemption. Not to mention the occasionally effective reforms. I guess that's a benefit of having really low expectations

To make good decisions, they have to allow dissent and protests, and they have to allow a free press, in which people can say what they want, and complain, and denounce problems and corrupt officials, so they can be removed and punished.

Not necessary true. Freedom of speech and censorship is not black and white, but rather a scale. Some form of speech, e.g. hate speech, enemy propaganda etc. should be censored, and rightfully so. Other governments might censor / crack down radical elements that seek to destabilize the country (Secular governments cracking down on radical religious elements), and perhaps even popular movements that had tendencies to become dangerous. The list goes on forever. It's a fine balance between stability and free thinking. I believe, at the end of the day, it comes down to whether there is a culture of respecting other people's opinions - for both the ruling class and the common.

In China, we have the left and the right like any other country. The left are staunch government supporters and nationalists. The right are liberals that are heavily influenced by the west / Taiwan / Japanese / South Korea etc. And there are also the middle (Note: They are not "moderately" middle) As a general rule, Northern China has less press freedom (And leans left) and Southern China has more (leans right). Believe it or not, newspapers in the South bashes the government rabidly on a daily basis without getting cracked down heavily (Maybe one or two "removals" per year and occasional government censorship). And guess what? The government actually listens sometimes. Quite a few reforms are actually done in the past decade with respect to civil rights and a lot of other things. The people are actually providing quite a lot of input.

Many socialist systems evolve into fascism

I guess we have a different definition of "fascism". My fascism has more to do with "Transformation of the nation" and an emphasis of strength in character etc. Your definition, again, is more like "corrupt authoritarian with cult tactics" - note that cult tactics are not a monopoly for fascists / communists - take a look if you want to - http://www.howcultswork.com/. You'll find that nearly every country on earth are like that. But let's not lose too much sleep on terminology.

What i do know is that socialist nations, and those who evolve from socialism into a neo-fascist phase, seem to have much more massive failures.

I beg to differ. It is more of a result of the cold war, where the winners (NATO sphere) takes the spoils and the losers bite the dust. Lets not forget that outside the NATO sphere, there are plenty of democratic / capitalist countries, and most of them failed quite miserably.
Surely there are a lot of social failures within the socialist system, but as a brand new social experiment I think it deserves a lot more credit than it did. Remember Russia? They went through a civil war (revolution then vs white army), then a bloody, bloody war with the Germans (Half of the casualties of WW2 come from the Eastern front, imagine that), then another civil war - and rose to become a world power that rivals the US - who had a relatively stable century (No wars on their homeland, and an early head start). Even China benefited a lot in the early years of the great leap, which increased industrial / food output efficiency greatly. Well, until Mao went nuts.

[Eauz]

This happens all the time in the West, it's called the media. Anyone who is against the "status-quo" is turned into a witch and burnt at the stake.

[Donna]

This oligarchy is not communist, and therefore should not be defended by those who support marxism. The Cuban oligarchs are fascists.

This sounds incredibly paternalistic and you're not going to win over hearts and minds by being a snob. There are plenty of reasons for socialists to support the Cuban government against liberal agitators, the most prominent one having nothing to do with Marxist theory and everything to do with the fact that "free markets" are quite simply too dangerous today to be embraced wholesale by economies that have been heavily-intervened for over a generation. It isn't 1989 anymore.

[Social_Critic]

Well Donald, I'm not being a snob at all. I happen to be Cuban and I don't like the people who rule the country. I also enjoy calling them names, insulting them, whatever comes to mind.

I would like to hear why you think there are plenty of reasons for socialists to defend the Cuban government. I just suppressed an urge to get personnal, so I'll just leave it at: Do you think it's OK to put people in jail because they don't agree with you?

[Social_Critic]

Soulfly, I heard the story about the 10 thousand dead Germans from a Russian when I was in Russia. Since you asked for a link, I did a little search and I found this:

While Stalin attempted to construct a tunnel under the Tartar strait with forced labour from the Gulags in eastern Siberia, construction was abandoned after a few kilometres had been completed, and while there is intent to finish the project eventually, no money is forthcoming and for now the only options are to sail or fly.

http://wikitravel.org/en/Sakhalin

I also found a reference to a book written in 1996 called "A Front Without War", page 245 refers to the tunnel being dug using gulag prisoners.

The story I have goes as follows:

Sometime in the early 1990's the Russian Federation and the Sakhalin Island administration, together with the Sakhalin oil organization had asked for foreign participation in what they called "Sakhalin II" bid round. I was asked to critique project strategy being developed by the team preparing the bid by a major oil multinational, and I visited in Moscow with Russians to try to understand the "nature of the beast" first hand. During one of the interviews, I was trying to understand how the oil and gas could be shipped from Sakhalin to market, and a Russian scientist at the meeting blurted:

"we could always use the tunnel we dug, it's almost finished". Then he scratched his head and added "but we would have to take out the 10,000 dead German prisoners". When I asked him about this last point, he explained that the tunnel had been getting dug by German prisoners from WW II, and Stalin had panicked when the US was rolling up the North Koreans (prior to the Chinese getting into the war they had come really close to the Soviet border). Stalin didn't want the Americans to capture the Soviet Far East and get their hands on 10,000 really motivated German veterans who would be very likely to fight like berserkers against the Soviets if they were given the chance. So he gave orders for all the Germans to be killed, and the guys in charge just led the Germans into the tunnel and blew up the entrance.

After the Korean war was over, the Soviets had changed their mind about the tunnel - maybe because they didn't have those 10,000 Germans to dig it. So that's it. According to my source, the corpses are there, and all we have to do is go dig the tunnel mouth and get them out.

[Pants-of-dog]

Was this before or after you worked in the brass mine?

[Donna]

I would like to hear why you think there are plenty of reasons for socialists to defend the Cuban government.

Nationalization of key industries, subsidized stockpiles, universal health care, pensions, public housing, etc. all protect the interests of Cuban workers and farmers from neoliberal globalization and its especially ruthless impact on the global South.

Your argument does not make much sense to me. You are claiming that since Cuba does not conform to Marxist orthodoxy (the Cuban revolutionaries weren't even Marxists originally), it might as well hand over power to the fruit cartels, financiers and multinational parasites.

Cuba's correct-line ideology or lack thereof is not really the issue here. If liberal agitators in Cuba are packaging political reforms with economic liberalization, their movement is not going to be successful in any meaningful way. The majority of Cubans would probably prefer a system with more feedback and a much healthier civil society, but if that means crippling destitution and exposure to the global financial crisis, the Cuban people are not going to get behind reforms like that.

Like I said, it isn't 1989 anymore, when liberalism might have been considered the Hegelian end-point of history. Fukuyama's ideas started falling apart in the 2000s and today they are entirely discredited. The global liberal system is experiencing an utterly destructive structural crisis at present. The countries that have managed to protect themselves from recessive fallout only did so because of heavy intervention in their economies and financial sectors (such as Canada), but even then it is still exposed if the bottom falls out in Europe and the United States. Introducing the unfettered free market into Cuba just seems like a totally insane philosophy of freedom.

Do you think it's OK to put people in jail because they don't agree with you?

This is a very complex issue because many Cuban dissidents have ties to the US government. We're not really talking about a grassroots movement for liberalism within Cuba, but rather, an ideological tendency among more affluent Cuban expats who want to overthrow the Cuban government and restore capitalism in their country (primarily because they possess the start-up capital necessary to immediately profit from a sudden restoration of capitalism in Cuba).

I can accept that liberal political institutions do not work everywhere at anytime. China, for example, will likely achieve gradual feedback mechanisms and a stronger civil society in time, but within the present One-Party state. On a personal level I do not like to see governments treat political activists (of any kind) harshly. In Cuba's case, I'd like to see the philosophy of restorative and rehabilitative justice employed at all levels of the Cuban legal system, including how it handles fifth columnists and agitators.

[Social_Critic]

I never did work in the brass mine. That was my great grandfather 96 times removed, he was the head artificer in Amilcar Barca's army, and his shop was known as "The Brass Mine". He got his job after he was stranded on earth when his spaceship had a malfunction and failed to enter hyperspace, so he had to use the ejection capsule in a real hurry. Eventually he was rescued, but he had been knowing the flesh of earthwomen who followed Amilcar's Army, and my grandfather 95 times removed is the issue from one of those encounters with a local chick near what was later known as the Roman town of Lucentum. He was told this fancy tale by his mother, who by then had used her charms to marry a rich merchant from her own Iberian tribe, and she also gave him the amulet I carry today, which gives me the ability to call upon the Galactic Federation to come to my rescue if I ever need it.

I have seriously considered using the amulet to call upon the Galactic Federation to investigate Fidel Castro, there are signs he may be an interloper, an alien known as a "chinger" who landed on Earth and took over a human body by boring a hole in the back of his skull and crawling inside, where it created a small capsule in which it sits and controls the body functions of its human host.

The chingers are known for their cruel sense of humor, and it's possible Castro's socialist paradise is meant to be a joke of galactic proportions this chinger is going to try to sell as a vid in one of the large planets near the galactic core, where teeming trillions of bored chingers and other races get cheap thrills watching primitive races from the galactic rim suffer the most awful indignities, being forced to wear red outfits, march with their heads pointing to the side, and chant stupid slogans as they practice personality worship of a stooge controlled by a chinger puppet master.

This is a serious violation of the intellectual property of such galactic rim races, but they have been unable to make their case in the appropriate tribunals (which in Earth's case would be the 10th Primary Court of Contentious Affairs located near Formalhaut C) - because these races lack the means to transmit their complaints. Lacking the required ansible, the only thing left to Earth is my amulet. And I'm seriously considering pushing the button and calling on the Federation to come and get the Castro-chinger, as well as the other fascist chingers (Chavez, Noriega, Bush) who are playiing such monstrous jokes on humankind. Every time five Cuban rafters die at sea, they get their video and get their kicks, but is this suffering worth it? I think not.