Mugabe's Land reform driving economic growth in Zimbabwe.

[johnnycakes]

Re: Mugabe's Land reform driving economic growth in Zimbabwe

And of course you both are dancing around the elephant in the room which is the neo-colonial and capitalist economies which are crushing and killing the people of sub-Saharan Africa.

It does not matter if Zimbabwe has a black or white president. If your LIMITED wealth is concentrated in the pockets of a handful of wealthy and other resource wealth is expropriated by globalized corporations, you cannot possibly reform that sort of have and have-not society to the point that you eliminate extreme poverty and human deprivation.

A 5% growth rate might be fine for a developed nation but for an extremely poor underdeveloped nation it is a drop in the ocean of need.

Even that slight improvement in Zimbabwe's economy does not reach all levels of the society as that is not how capitalism works. The created wealth goes largely to the already wealthy.

You cannot seriously talk about reform or radical change in Africa/ Zimbabwe without getting rid of neo-liberal capitalism.

Blaming the neo-colonialist exploiters is fine but as long as you use capitalism to operate a nation's economy you will have people selling national resources and treasures right out from under your feet to make themselves a dollar.

You cannot cure the corruption that is an integral part of any society in which the almighty dollar is God.

Neither can you have much democracy in any country where you are ruled by the unelected dictatorship of the dollar.

Why cannot the people of Zimbabwe live as well as the Cubans?

[franksterr]

Re: Mugabe's Land reform driving economic growth in Zimbabwe

johnnycakes

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">And of course you both are dancing around the elephant in the room which is the neo-colonial and capitalist economies which are crushing and killing the people of sub-Saharan Africa.</div></div>

Not around it, like China today we are dancing with the elephant.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">It does not matter if Zimbabwe has a black or white president. If your LIMITED wealth is concentrated in the pockets of a handful of wealthy and other resource wealth is expropriated by globalized corporations, you cannot possibly reform that sort of have and have-not society to the point that you eliminate extreme poverty and human deprivation.</div></div>
Maybe to you it does not matter, but the people of Zimbabwe fought so that an indigenous Zimbabwean(African) would be there leader. The land reform and the indigenization of wealth is an attempt to rectify the concentration of wealth.



<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">A 5% growth rate might be fine for a developed nation but for an extremely poor underdeveloped nation it is a drop in the ocean of need.</div></div>

Given the the powers arrayed against Zimbabwe vis a vis the present sanctions and recent attempts at destabilization it is an improvement and a step in the right direction.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Even that slight improvement in Zimbabwe's economy does not reach all levels of the society as that is not how capitalism works. The created wealth goes largely to the already wealthy.</div></div>
Well this is not the case in Zimbabwe, as the wealthy are usually white and they are fleeing Zimbabwe. Once poor blacks are now raising up to replace them.


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">You cannot seriously talk about reform or radical change in Africa/ Zimbabwe without getting rid of neo-liberal capitalism.

Blaming the neo-colonialist exploiters is fine but as long as you use capitalism to operate a nation's economy you will have people selling national resources and treasures right out from under your feet to make themselves a dollar.</div></div>

A Journey of a thousand miles starts with one step in the direction of your hopes dreams and destination.
In Zimbabwe they have just accomplish land reform, and they are now moving onto wealth indigenization. They are going good so far.







<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">You cannot cure the corruption that is an integral part of any society in which the almighty dollar is God.</div></div>

Do you know a country where there is no corruption?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Neither can you have much democracy in any country where you are ruled by the unelected dictatorship of the dollar.</div></div>

If that was the case whites would still be the political leaders of Zimbabwe

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Why cannot the people of Zimbabwe live as well as the Cubans? </div></div>

Because they are not Cubans

[johnnycakes]

Re: Mugabe's Land reform driving economic growth in Zimbabwe

&quot;The land reform and the indigenization of wealth is an attempt to rectify the concentration of wealth.&quot;


Sorry, but if Zimbabwe retains a capitalist economy there will be no rectification of anything. Capitalism is not reformable and it is especially not workable in underdeveloped countries. Land reform is a big step but it is only one step and not the solution to poverty, Indigenization of wealth, I assume, means somehow putting the wealth of the country in the hands of the masses instead of just in the hands of the wealthy and the corporations, How is this possible in Zimbabwe. How can it be done to the point where it makes a serious difference in the lives of desperate people?


C'mon, don't kid yourself. Capitalism cannot and does not work in poor countries. Just how much evidence do you want or need to tell you that.

Sub-Saharan Africa has poverty rates that can get up to 80% in a given country and even the best economies have poverty and deprivation rates that are inhumane.

The answer is democracy.


How do you feel about democracy? A government of, by and for all the people?
A society where the governments do what the electorate wants.

Your answer has to take into account that: 1) multi-party democracies are not democracies in that the parties nominate the candidates and not the people.

2) Capitalism is the unelected dictatorship of the dollar. It buys the politicians , it sways public opinion with expensive ads on TV, radio. It is the reason we go to war.


oeple

[franksterr]

Re: Mugabe's Land reform driving economic growth in Zimbabwe

&quot;The land reform and the indigenization of wealth is an attempt to rectify the concentration of wealth.&quot;

The problem with most countries regardless of the political or economic system they employ, is that it makes it easier for people in power to do wrong and difficult for them to do right. When you find a leader willing to do right, the system cannot stop him or her only the people can.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
Sorry, but if Zimbabwe retains a capitalist economy there will be no rectification of anything. Capitalism is not reformable and it is especially not workable in underdeveloped countries. Land reform is a big step but it is only one step and not the solution to poverty, Indigenization of wealth, I assume, means somehow putting the wealth of the country in the hands of the masses instead of just in the hands of the wealthy and the corporations, How is this possible in Zimbabwe. How can it be done to the point where it makes a serious difference in the lives of desperate people?</div></div>

As you see Mugabe did it with Land, and if he lives will do it with the nations bounty – wealth.



<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">C'mon, don't kid yourself. Capitalism cannot and does not work in poor countries. Just how much evidence do you want or need to tell you that.</div></div>

Who would have thought that Land Reform on the scale that it has been accomplished in Zimbabwe could have been done in a capitalist country….Give Zimbabwe a chance lets wait and see, they are making all the rights moves.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Sub-Saharan Africa has poverty rates that can get up to 80% in a given country and even the best economies have poverty and deprivation rates that are inhumane.</div></div>
The poverty in Africa is a direct result of Racism.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">The answer is democracy.</div></div>
Democracy did not defeat slavery, peonage or grant civil and human rights.


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">How do you feel about democracy? A government of, by and for all the people?
A society where the governments do what the electorate wants.</div></div>
Sounds Good.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Your answer has to take into account that: 1) multi-party democracies are not democracies in that the parties nominate the candidates and not the people.

2) Capitalism is the unelected dictatorship of the dollar. It buys the politicians , it sways public opinion with expensive ads on TV, radio. It is the reason we go to war.</div></div>

Neither capitalism or democracy will guarantee our freedoms or lack thereof, They are only tools and they are as bad or good as the people using them.

[johnnycakes]

Re: Mugabe's Land reform driving economic growth i

&quot;Neither capitalism or democracy will guarantee our freedoms or lack thereof, They are only tools and they are as bad or good as the people using them.'


Capitalism is totalitarianism. It is run from the top down. It is the antithesis of democracy.
It denies freedom.
Democracy literally means rule by the people.
Unless you believe that people want not to be free then how can you deny that democracy means freedom.
Totalitarianism denies freedoms and democracy guarantees them.
Neither Zimbabwe nor the United States nor Jamaica is a democracy nor even representative democracies.
They are run from the top down.



As for racism being the cause of poverty, there are at least 50 million poor people in the United States and they are of all races. Blacks have a disproportionately higher poverty rate because of racism but racism only adds people to the list of poor that is already huge under capitalism, the root cause.

In a democratic economy, there is no rich-poor chasm and as we see in Cuba the living standard afforded by a more egalitarian economic system enables all people to have the necessities for a decent life. In Cuba, the blacks who were the poorest actually benefited the most from institution of socialism and the elimination of capitalism and capitalist enabled racism.


.And then just what do YOU mean by &quot;freedom&quot;?
Freedom from want?
Freedom from illiteracy?
Freedom from disease?
or is Freedom just another word for &quot;nothing left to lose&quot;.


&quot;As you see Mugabe did it with Land, and if he lives will do it with the nations bounty – wealth.&quot;


Yeah, sure, and if my aunt had testicles, she'd be my uncle.

Mugabe will redistribute the wealth from the richest to the poorest when rattlesnakes do pushups. Even were he of a mind to do that, the wealthy in the country would have him killed if he were to try it.
It has never been done in any poor Third World capitalist country because it would take a revolution to do so and a socialist revolution is the only kind that redistributes the wealth.

[johnnycakes]

Re: Mugabe's Land reform driving economic growth i

Here is a not-so-pro-Mugabe analysis on Zimbabwe's situation from an article reprinted at ZNET.

Will Zimbabwe Again Regress?
By Patrick Bond

Sunday, November 14, 2010
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If leaders of a little African country stand up with confidence to imperialist aggression, especially from the US and Britain, that would ordinarily strike any fair observer as extremely compelling, especially when the nightmare of racist colonialism is still be to exorcised and when whites hold a disproportionate share of economic power, and when state rulers appear serious about changing those factors.

But that country needs a second glance. What may seem to some a progressive and brave government is upon closer examination a tyranny whose leader repeatedly acts against grassroots and shopfloor social solidarity, and notwithstanding rhetoric about land redistribution, is ultimately very hostile to its own society’s poor and working people, women, youth, elderly and ill.

‘Progress in Zimbabwe’ was the title of a four-day Bulawayo conference last week, gathering mainly academics but also leading civil society strategists. It was organised by University of Johannesburg political economist David Moore and by Showers Mawowa of the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) School of Development Studies and Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development.

Said Moore, “For many analysts, the end of progress is signified in the political projects of Robert Mugabe and Zanu(PF) – not to mention the Government of National Unity”. It’s been two years since South Africa’s outgoing president Thabo Mbeki negotiated dysfunctional power-sharing between Mugabe’s junta and Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Just before the deal took effect in early 2009, the local currency collapsed entirely, and is no longer used. On the upside, that move ended hyperinflation and empty shop shelves. The tiny elite is happier, as is the World Bank (not yet lending, but carefully looking over the state’s shoulder). Yet without any ability to earn hard currency, what’s a peasant or the unemployed (90 percent of the workforce) to do?

A related problem: monetary policy is now set in Washington and Pretoria, since the US$ and South African Rand are now Zimbabwe’s core currencies. The Reserve Bank cannot stimulate the sickly economy, because its governor, Gideon Gono, gave Zimbabwe ‘monetary gonorrhea’, a corrupting disease transmitted from his overworked printing press to the economy as a whole.

A $2 billion bill for Gono’s leftover local debt is being negotiated, and another $5+ billion in foreign debt remains unpayable. Progressives writing the National People’s Convention Charter in February 2008 demanded a debt audit before any World Bank and IMF loans are serviced, and as happened similarly in Ecuador in December 2008, “the right of the people of Zimbabwe to refuse repayment of any odious debt accrued by a dictatorial government.”

Politically, progress against Mugabe’s dictatorship is terribly fragile, as the army is now being deployed in many hotly-contested peri-urban and rural areas. Since paramilitary violence forced Tsvangirai to pull out of the mid-2008 run-off presidential election (after winning the first round – but, claimed Mugabe’s vote-counters, with less than 50%), a constitutional rewrite outreach process has provided space for 4000 meetings in recent weeks.

Many were marred by intimidation. Worse, a mid-2011 election announced by Mugabe promises a return to bad habits: outright violence, including murder, ending in poll thievery. The most likely scenario, according to leading commentator John Makumbe? “The MDC will win and Zanu(PF) will again refuse to concede power”. So back they will go into the cul-de-sac of renewed power-sharing talks.

Hence the conference was devoted mainly to recording regress not progress, given Zimbabwe’s deep plunge. History needed reviewing, for after all, the most banal measure of progress, that of the economics profession, is per person Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and the point it began declining may surprise.

Per capita GDP didn’t begin its slide in February 2000 when President Robert Mugabe lost his first election (a constitutional referendum) and unleashed the war veterans on white farmers. Nor was it on November 1997’s Black Friday, when the Zimbabwe dollar lost 74% of its value in four hours, a world record. Nor was it when the Washington-sponsored structural adjustment program began in 1991, nor when Independence in 1980 meant the small economy’s rearticulation with hostile global capitalism after fifteen years of sanctions.

If one thinks of progress in this conventional way, as GDP per person, then Zimbabwe began shrinking in 1974, as indeed was the case in most of Africa, as the world slowdown hit the poorest continent hardest, at a time most African leaders had succumbed to neocolonialism. In Zimbabwe, overproduction of luxury goods, machinery and steel for a limited market left the economy with huge excess capacity at a time of shrinking confidence in Ian Smith’s racist Rhodesian Front regime. After liberation was won in 1980, the economy then recovered some of the lost ground in a growth spurt from 1984 to 1990.

Income in 1990 was much better distributed then than under Smith’s white rule - or than under Mugabe’s kleptocracy after it became avaricious in the mid-1990s. A small black middle class had emerged mainly through the expansion of Zimbabwe’s civil service, though the World Bank successfully insisted that it shrink by 25% during the 1990s.

Sorting out the politico-ideological confusion in historical context requires, according to Sheffield-based Zimbabwean Ian Phimister, a ‘distinct paradigm of radical historiography’. But Muchaparara Musemwa lamented that their discipline still lacks cohesion and purpose. Phimister recommended the new book Becoming Zimbabwe – featuring work by Alois Mlambo, Brian Raftopoulos and younger historians – which treats contemporary degeneration in historical context.

By all accounts, a central challenge in an era of Mugabe’s state-sponsored ‘Patriotic History’ – a mirror image of Rhodesia’s racist settler history – is recovery of the liberation tradition from damage done even before Independence in 1980, a task aided by the coming publication of Wilf Mhanda’s autobiography. Mhanda’s leadership of the Zimbabwe People’s Army offered an alternative liberatory trajectory, one Mugabe violently suppressed two years before signing the Lancaster House compromise deal that maintained the repressive state and white-biased property relations entirely intact.

Mugabe’s overarching need, it seems, is control of the telling of history - as a way to remind his subjects there was once a time when Zanu(PF) was indeed a popular force, like fish swimming in the sea of the people. Regurgitation of that memory is what motivates the ‘Talk Left, Walk Right’ project of crony nationalist capitalism, which Mugabe and so many other post-colonial despots adopted, as Frantz Fanon predicted in his 1961 book The Wretched of the Earth.

Today the main legacy of this struggle is ‘securocrat’ control of the state. Remarked Joshua Mpofu, “Talking about political parties is like chewing gravel. Military culture never died, and a lot of public institutions are headed by brigadiers and generals.”

Another memory is of a time when indigenous Zimbabweans controlled their land. According to Blessing Karumbidza, whose recent UKZN doctorate describes post-Independence land experiences, there will be “a truly restructured and dynamic farming sector IF and only if the support mechanisms and institutional regimes necessary for land and agricultural rationalization are put in place.”

That’s not happening, insists University of Zimbabwe (UZ) geographer Esther Chigumira: “Bifurcated land ownership continues, not by race but by class, favouring elites who are politically connected.” Those nationalists, recalled former war veteran and now UZ sociologist Wilbert Sadomba, emerged from internecine liberation movement feuds, and “hijacked that revolution, in connivance with international capital. We war vets are opposed to both Zanu(PF) elites and MDC elites. We see neither being able to take the country forward.”

Added leading liberation-era intellectual Ibbo Mandaza, “There was a Zanu(PF) that we were part of, the liberation movement, and then there was Mugabe’s Zanu(PF), which is very different. Mugabe is essentially rightwing, notwithstanding the anti-imperialist rhetoric.” As for his own role, Mandaza confessed, “We helped in many respects dress up an essentially rightwing regime in leftist clothing.”

Raftopoulos agreed: “This discourse threw off many African scholars, most importantly in the Mamdani debate” – referring to the great Ugandan political scientist Mahmood Mamdani’s 2008 London Review of Books defense of Mugabe. The two most prominent scholars who are supportive of land redistribution, Mamdani and Sam Moyo, were invited but could not attend. In their place, Ben Cousins from the University of the Western Cape promoted the post-2000 land reform’s “changing structures of ownership and new agrarian structure,” concluding, “The positives probably outweigh the negatives.”

In the main A1 land programme, he said, “About a third of the new farmers are succeeding, a third getting by, and a third getting out.” The negatives in Cousins’ list include “the collapse of Large Scale Commercial Farms which contributed to wide-scale economic decline; the motor force of land reform was the Zanu(PF) power grab; the decline of the rule of law; violence.” Added Zimbabwean human rights advocate Elinor Sisulu, “food security, environment, HIV-AIDS, and the gender and class dimensions.”

No matter how Zimbabwe needed to end white domination of good farms before 2000, an overall judgment on the land invasions (which sporadically continue because 10 percent of 4000 white farmers hung on by hook or by crook), will wait long-term evidence. The spate of new research by those associated with Moyo and Cousins does show a few selective sites of success, especially in Masvingo Province near the ancient Great Zimbabwe empire’s capital, but critics argue this is not a typical region.

But opposition policies came in for equally harsh critique. “In the 1990s the motivation for the MDC was the struggle for social and economic justice – and that’s the crucial unique character of the MDC’s origins,” said Hopewell Gumbo of the Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development. “But the trend to neoliberalism within the MDC means we will not see progress. We need to look for new alliances and new formations. “

But the terrain is uneven, for Harare-based urban civic organizer Mike Davies pointed out the profusion of petit-bourgeois suit-and-tie professionals amongst the capital’s NGO cadre: “They acquire a self-preserving aspect perhaps more concerned with continuation than function. They became more remote from their members, even elitist, losing their accountability, more concerned with meeting donor aspirations and requirements than serving the needs of their members.”

According to Davies, “opportunistic elements make every effort to preserve their positions, often at some cost to their member organisations and undermining their stated goals. In my opinion, we failed to identify and contain these elements as well as the vehicles that carry them. As a result, the super-NGOs captured the voices of civics and domesticated them for the consumption of an increasingly externalised audience of international donors and Zimbabweans in the diaspora.”

How, then, can progress emerge against both a sell-out to the Washington Consensus (by either or both of the leading parties) and Mugabe’s fake populist language and violence-prone delivery, short of awaiting his death – but then inevitably a new Zanu(PF) power struggle (between the Mujuru and Mnangagwa factions) that could be even more disruptive?

An answer came from the leading trade unionist present, Kumbirai Kudenga: “In terms of mass action, we need people without fear. If you’re not used to going to the ground, it’s hard. Mass action is for people who are used to the ground.”

She even provided a new vehicle: “We have a Democratic United Front for the workers, especially for mass action. What we need is support. Can you take down our email: [email protected] That is if you are serious, we are there to act.”

For the rest of us, according to Raftopoulos, a renewed “international labour solidarity discourse is one of the best antidotes to Mugabe’s rhetoric”, especially the ‘exemplary solidarity’ shown in April 2008 when in Durban, transport workers refused to unload three million bullets destined for Mugabe’s army from the Chinese ship An Yue Jiang.

Even if the conference was way too top-heavy with talking heads and NGOers, all agreed that a new surge of such solidarity will be needed next year, when regress again trumps progress in Zimbabwe.


(Patrick Bond is on sabbatical from the UKZN Centre for Civil Society, based at UCal-Berkeley Department of Geography. His books include Uneven Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe’s Plunge.)

[franksterr]

Re: Mugabe's Land reform driving economic growth i

JC

Neither capitalism or democracy will guarantee our freedoms or lack thereof, They are only tools and they are as bad or good as the people using them.'


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Capitalism is totalitarianism. It is run from the top down. It is the antithesis of democracy.
It denies freedom.
Democracy literally means rule by the people.
Unless you believe that people want not to be free then how can you deny that democracy means freedom.
Totalitarianism denies freedoms and democracy guarantees them.
Neither Zimbabwe nor the United States nor Jamaica is a democracy nor even representative democracies.
They are run from the top down.</div></div>

Name a democracy?



<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">As for racism being the cause of poverty, there are at least 50 million poor people in the United States and they are of all races. Blacks have a disproportionately higher poverty rate because of racism but racism only adds people to the list of poor that is already huge under capitalism, the root cause.</div></div>

That’s not what I said, “I said the poverty in Africa is a direct result of racism” please keep it honest and try not re-interpreting my words.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">In a democratic economy, there is no rich-poor chasm and as we see in Cuba the living standard afforded by a more egalitarian economic system enables all people to have the necessities for a decent life. In Cuba, the blacks who were the poorest actually benefited the most from institution of socialism and the elimination of capitalism and capitalist enabled racism.</div></div>

So everybody in Cuba lives like Fidel and Raul?
I will hazard a guess that party apparatchiks tend to get more social services and have more access to influence and power thereby maintaining a higher standard of living than the vast majority of Cubans?


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">.And then just what do YOU mean by &quot;freedom&quot;?
Freedom from want?
Freedom from illiteracy?
Freedom from disease?
or is Freedom just another word for &quot;nothing left to lose&quot;.</div></div>
All of the above
Freedom to travel if you so desire and have the money to afford it


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">&quot;As you see Mugabe did it with Land, and if he lives will do it with the nations bounty – wealth.&quot;


Yeah, sure, and if my aunt had testicles, she'd be my uncle.</div></div>
I guess she would.
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">

Mugabe will redistribute the wealth from the richest to the poorest when rattlesnakes do pushups. Even were he of a mind to do that, the wealthy in the country would have him killed if he were to try it.
It has never been done in any poor Third World capitalist country because it would take a revolution to do so and a socialist revolution is the only kind that redistributes the wealth.</div></div>

Mugabe and ZANU-pf did it with land and people thought the same, lets wait and see.

[franksterr]

Re: Mugabe's Land reform driving economic growth i

Understand that at this time to oppose Mugabe is to pave the way for the MDC and Morgan Tsvangirai.... a party and its leader that has admitted its loyalty to white racist colonialist views and agenda.

http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=GVAkVyuS8pQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8YLsOwgy5o&amp;NR=1

http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=23V0we85O6c&amp;feature=related

http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=SZN0fAARoy0&amp;feature=related

[johnnycakes]

Re: Mugabe's Land reform driving economic growth i


F:
Name a democracy.

J: There are no direct democracies in the world only representative democracies most of which have been corrupted so that the elected representatives who have been nominated, not by the people, but by the political parties serve the desires of both the political parties and the status quo they represent.
Cuba is the only representative democracy I know of where the people themselves nominate the candidates from amongst their voting district members.

Democracy means one thing and one thing only and that is rule by the people and not by political parties.





F:
That’s not what I said, “I said the poverty in Africa is a direct result of racism” please keep it honest and try not re-interpreting my words.

J: Okay, so if Africa is now black ruled why doesn't the poverty due to racism disappear? The reason is that there are black elites, black rich people who have a disproportionate amount of money and the rest of the people have very little.
That accumulation of money at the top is what capitalism is all about. Keeping blacks poor because they're black is racism. Keeping people poor because the economy is based on a have and have-not principle is what is happening and that is capitalism at work.



F:
So everybody in Cuba lives like Fidel and Raul?
I will hazard a guess that party apparatchiks tend to get more social services and have more access to influence and power thereby maintaining a higher standard of living than the vast majority of Cubans?

J: When Fidel was convalescing from his abdominal surgery the newspaper showed his apartment/home and it was nothing special. Better than the average Cuban but no gold plated anything and no ostentatious show of wealth. It would be what the Cubans , who love Fidel would want him to have.
You seem to be conflating the PCC ( Cuban Communist Party) with the old corrupt Stalinist regimes that have gone away.
I have read that when you join the PCC you wind up doing your regular job and also have to put in long hours of volunteer work. It's what people who are dedicated to advancing the revolution do much like the old cane-cutter brigades back in the 70's.
It's mostly work and little privilege. That's why only about 15% of Cubans are members of the PCC. It is not too dissimilar to people in the U.S. who don't get involved in government because they don't have the time, talent or inclination but at 15% Cubans definitely show that they are interested in working extra to improve the country.
There is bound to be some corruption in the country given the shortages but I read everything I see on Cuba and I have only heard about a corruption problem in the general population and have never heard about party members being either corrupt or privileged.
Think about it, when Fidel announced HIS land reform and large estates were taken and broken up and given to landless people, Fidel made sure that his family home was the FIRST one to be taken in order to provide a good example.
A man who thinks like that does not seek palaces nor privilege and in fact rejects those things.
Che Guevara was as important as you could get in post-revolutionary Cuba and he turned down fancy housing. He said as long as there are poor with poor housing he would live in poor housing as would a principled socialist and revolutionary.

I get the feeling that most of us have lived so long in countries with corrupt politicians that we just cannot believe that there are honest and principled leaders anywhere including Cuba.



Quote:
.And then just what do YOU mean by &quot;freedom&quot;?
Freedom from want?
Freedom from illiteracy?
Freedom from disease?
or is Freedom just another word for &quot;nothing left to lose&quot;.

F:
All of the above
Freedom to travel if you so desire and have the money to afford it

J: The Cubans are free from hunger, free from illiteracy, free from lack of health care, free of crime, free of drugs and the drug trade, free of the endemic violence associated with capitalism, free to NOMINATE and vote for ANYONE they want as their representative.
They are poor and while they are not as free to travel as many others because of the money their lives, the lives of ALL Cubans are far better than the lives of a huge percentage of sub-Saharan Africans and sure, not better than the relative handful of moneyed people in Africa who can afford to travel since the poverty rates are way up past 50% in Africa.
Do you really think that having a countries with 50-80% of the people living in desperate poverty is preferable to the lives the Cubans have?

Sure, their speech is restricted and their ability to travel is limited but in African countries whatever you want to say can be said but that does not alleviate the poverty nor keep the poor from dying or improve democracy.
Sure the people with money can travel but the hundreds of millions without a dollar are not more free to travel.




Mugabe will redistribute the wealth from the richest to the poorest when rattlesnakes do pushups. Even were he of a mind to do that, the wealthy in the country would have him killed if he were to try it.
It has never been done in any poor Third World capitalist country because it would take a revolution to do so and a socialist revolution is the only kind that redistributes the wealth.


F:
Mugabe and ZANU-pf did it with land and people thought the same, lets wait and see.

J: I would not hold my breath waiting for Mugabe to do anything that will improve the lives of the average Zimbabwean. He is not a revolutionary. He is playing within the neo-colonial economic rules. He believes in capitalism and capitalism does not work in poor Third World countries. PERIOD. He has made a few reforms but the effects have been less than dazzling and I would bet the ranch that he's done with reforms and will have to just run out his term in office and retire to Switzerland so he can be with his money. (Unlike Fidel)

Again I ask: in which poor Third World country has poverty, starvation, illiteracy, crime and hopelessness been eradicated ? and why should your expectations for Mugabe's success be so high given the lack of a single example ?

[franksterr]

Re: Mugabe's Land reform driving economic growth i


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">J: There are no direct democracies in the world only representative democracies most of which have been corrupted so that the elected representatives who have been nominated, not by the people, but by the political parties serve the desires of both the political parties and the status quo they represent.
Cuba is the only representative democracy I know of where the people themselves nominate the candidates from amongst their voting district members.

Democracy means one thing and one thing only and that is rule by the people and not by political parties. </div></div>

Who decides or approves whose names gets to run for elections? I understand that the people may nominate individuals the question I am asking is who whittles it down to only two….
Is Cuba ruled by the Communist Party?
Are dissidents free from repression in Cuba?
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">That’s not what I said, “I said the poverty in Africa is a direct result of racism” please keep it honest and try not re-interpreting my words.

J: Okay, so if Africa is now black ruled why doesn't the poverty due to racism disappear? The reason is that there are black elites, black rich people who have a disproportionate amount of money and the rest of the people have very little.
That accumulation of money at the top is what capitalism is all about. Keeping blacks poor because they're black is racism. Keeping people poor because the economy is based on a have and have-not principle is what is happening and that is capitalism at work.</div></div>

Things do not happen overnight.
Blacks have political power….but in most cases is still fighting for economic power.
The Land issue is a first step in the direct achievement of economic power.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">

J: When Fidel was convalescing from his abdominal surgery the newspaper showed his apartment/home and it was nothing special. Better than the average Cuban but no gold plated anything and no ostentatious show of wealth. It would be what the Cubans , who love Fidel would want him to have.
You seem to be conflating the PCC ( Cuban Communist Party) with the old corrupt Stalinist regimes that have gone away.
I have read that when you join the PCC you wind up doing your regular job and also have to put in long hours of volunteer work. It's what people who are dedicated to advancing the revolution do much like the old cane-cutter brigades back in the 70's.
It's mostly work and little privilege. That's why only about 15% of Cubans are members of the PCC. It is not too dissimilar to people in the U.S. who don't get involved in government because they don't have the time, talent or inclination but at 15% Cubans definitely show that they are interested in working extra to improve the country.
There is bound to be some corruption in the country given the shortages but I read everything I see on Cuba and I have only heard about a corruption problem in the general population and have never heard about party members being either corrupt or privileged.</div></div>
The fact remains he has more than the average Cuban, so he belongs to an elite.


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Think about it, when Fidel announced HIS land reform and large estates were taken and broken up and given to landless people, Fidel made sure that his family home was the FIRST one to be taken in order to provide a good example.
A man who thinks like that does not seek palaces nor privilege and in fact rejects those things.
Che Guevara was as important as you could get in post-revolutionary Cuba and he turned down fancy housing. He said as long as there are poor with poor housing he would live in poor housing as would a principled socialist and revolutionary.

I get the feeling that most of us have lived so long in countries with corrupt politicians that we just cannot believe that there are honest and principled leaders anywhere including Cubao .</div></div>

Why would he need a large estate in Cuba, when in effect the whole Island is now his estate, he just past it on to his brother.
Even in Cuba there is corrupt politicians
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">J: The Cubans are free from hunger, free from illiteracy, free from lack of health care, free of crime, free of drugs and the drug trade, free of the endemic violence associated with capitalism, free to NOMINATE and vote for ANYONE they want as their representative.
They are poor and while they are not as free to travel as many others because of the money their lives, the lives of ALL Cubans are far better than the lives of a huge percentage of sub-Saharan Africans and sure, not better than the relative handful of moneyed people in Africa who can afford to travel since the poverty rates are way up past 50% in Africa.
Do you really think that having a countries with 50-80% of the people living in desperate poverty is preferable to the lives the Cubans have?</div></div>

Free to nominate anyone, but that person may not make it on the approved electoral list?
Free of hunger – why then the rise in child prostitution?
Freedom to travel is extremely important, without it you become a prisoner.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Sure, their speech is restricted and their ability to travel is limited but in African countries whatever you want to say can be said but that does not alleviate the poverty nor keep the poor from dying or improve democracy.
Sure the people with money can travel but the hundreds of millions without a dollar are not more free to travel. </div></div>

You do not need money in Africa to travel from state to state if you are able to walk or swim.
In Cuba even when you have the wherewithal you are stopped by the government.



<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
J: I would not hold my breath waiting for Mugabe to do anything that will improve the lives of the average Zimbabwean. He is not a revolutionary. He is playing within the neo-colonial economic rules. He believes in capitalism and capitalism does not work in poor Third World countries. PERIOD. He has made a few reforms but the effects have been less than dazzling and I would bet the ranch that he's done with reforms and will have to just run out his term in office and retire to Switzerland so he can be with his money. (Unlike Fidel)

Again I ask: in which poor Third World country has poverty, starvation, illiteracy, crime and hopelessness been eradicated ? and why should your expectations for Mugabe's success be so high given the lack of a single example ?</div></div>

No need to hold your breathe, Mugabe has already improved the lives of the average Zimbabwean
Mugabe has eradicated illiteracy, and there is no starvation in Zimbabwe..
Even in Cuba there is crime and proverty


Now your responses and question make it seems I am against Cuba or Castro, please note that is not the case.

[johnnycakes]

Re: Mugabe's Land reform driving economic growth i

F:
Who decides or approves whose names gets to run for elections? I understand that the people may nominate individuals the question I am asking is who whittles it down to only two….

J: The people in the voting districts can nominate any number of candidates. .
There could be ten but that's only possible but not probable. They get all the nominees' pictures and biographies up at a central public place for the electorate to read. They have the election and whoever gets 51% wins. If there are multiple candidates and no one gets 51% then they have a runoff election between the top two or three finishers and the one who gets 51% or more is the winner.
So, the whittling is done in the most democratic way there is; by the people.
Wouldn't you like something as democratic where you vote.?

F:
Is Cuba ruled by the Communist Party?

J:
Only about 15% of Cubans belong to the PCC but those 15% are the kind of revolutionary activists who are the type who want to get involved in government so the percentages in elected positions are much higher.

The PCC definitely controls the economy and any laws passed by the Assemblies that affect the socialist economy has to be okayed by them. Their economic system is new sometimes fragile and under attack from the United States and Europe and so needs a watchdog .

In government, party members have the same power as any other elected official and no more.

F:
Are dissidents free from repression in Cuba?

J: First explain what you mean by &quot;dissidents&quot; and what you mean by &quot;repression&quot; Because I have been down this road many times before I would ask that with your answers you both acknowledge and take into consideration the fact that the United States is waging war on Cuba and that the survival of the revolution is under threat.

Do you mean the imprisoned &quot;journalists&quot; ?

F:
Things do not happen overnight.
Blacks have political power….but in most cases is still fighting for economic power.
The Land issue is a first step in the direct achievement of economic power.

J: Things do not change under capitalism, at least not enough to end starvation for some 8 million people a year, or to prevent and cure diseases that kill millions or to end illiteracy or to stop crime.
Blacks would have power in a democracy but there are no democracies in Africa.
There are only multi-party electoral systems wherein the PARTIES decide for whom you get to vote. They are corrupt and self-perpetuating. Secondly, those with the money at the top buy off the politicians to keep the economies as they are; dedicated to the wealthy and/or powerful. Under that kind of system you could vote out corrupt people every year and they are replaced by another individual who is either already corrupt or who soon becomes corrupt because that's how that game is played.


Here's the kicker: It does not matter who is running the country either.
As long as wealth is allowed to concentrate in the hands of the top 5-10% of a given poor country, nothing CAN change. There is not enough money to effect social improvements.
If it could be done, it would have been done. It has not been done.
Look around you.
One step forward, two steps back. Eternal poverty and human misery. Half the world living needlessly (no pun) in poverty.
Mugabe is throwing the man drowning in a river 50 feet away a 2 foot rope.
Nice thought. All he can do in the circumstances but he cannot do better and it's not nearly enough. It's not all him, it's neo-colonialism but it's mostly capitalism that is holding Zimbabwe and the world back.
Things will not make sense to you until you understand that.



F:
The fact remains he has more than the average Cuban, so he belongs to an elite.

J:
Yes, elite. A nice apartment.
Fidel has said and I have already offered to take all bets that say otherwise that when he dies it will be with just the money in his pockets.
No Swiss bank accounts, no palaces, he wears jogging suits.
Elitist that he is.

F:
Why would he need a large estate in Cuba, when in effect the whole Island is now his estate, he just past it on to his brother.


J:
Fidel lives in an apartment or a house. How can Cuba be his estate? Is the U.S George Bush's estate?

About Raul. I will not respond to what you said about Fidel &quot;passing the presidency&quot; on to Raul except to say that you'd be wise to get a copy of Arnold' August's &quot;Democracy In Cuba: The 1997-1998 Elections and learn how the Cuban government is formed before you make statements like that. Once you read it you can come back and make the requisite retraction.


F;
Even in Cuba there is corrupt politicians

J;
Again, buy and read that book and you will understands why corrupt elected officials are the rare exception in Cuba. You will learn that the same voters who both nominated and elected that official meet with him/her every six months and at those meetings if the electorate thinks that he's corrupt or not doing a good job, anyone in the crowd can stand and call for his removal. Some one has to second the motion and then they vote by show of hands or, an actual head count if it is close. If the vote is to remove the official, he is gone right there and they start the nomination process for the new election.

Now, don't you wish YOU had that good an electoral system?

F:
Free to nominate anyone, but that person may not make it on the approved electoral list?

J; I explained this. GO read the book.


F:
Free of hunger – why then the rise in child prostitution?

J:
SHOW ME proof of child prostitution or any child exploitation in Cuba.
I am serious as cancer about this .
Show me , prove to me that child prostitution exists in Cuba.
The U.S., Zimbabwe, absolutely, Cuba: not a chance. They take care of THEIR kids.

F:
Freedom to travel is extremely important, without it you become a prisoner.

J:
Freedom to not starve to death and freedom not to die from preventable or curable disease are extremely important too, without them something like 12 million people die in sub-Saharan Africa EVERY goddammed year.
Where is your sense of perspective.





J:
YOU DID NOT ANSWER THIS:

Again I ask: in which poor Third World country has poverty, starvation, illiteracy, crime and hopelessness been eradicated ? and why should your expectations for Mugabe's success be so high given the lack of a single example ?

F:
No need to hold your breathe, Mugabe has already improved the lives of the average Zimbabwean
Mugabe has eradicated illiteracy, and there is no starvation in Zimbabwe..

J: I will trust you on this but will verify those claims.

F:
Even in Cuba there is crime and poverty.

J: Cuba has the lowest crime rate in the western hemisphere .
Cubans have little extra money because the nations wealth goes into health, education, jobs, homes, electrification, and all the things that have placed Cuba 51st on the Human Development Index of the U.N which a deals with peoples living standards. They may well be poor but NO ONE person in Cuba suffers from hunger, disease, illiteracy, homelessness or joblessness.
Come and talk to me when Mugabe or any other African leader accomplishes those things for all THEIR people.


F:
Now your responses and question make it seems I am against Cuba or Castro, please note that is not the case.

J; Well, friends of the revolution call Fidel Castro &quot;Fidel&quot;. All opponents of the revolution call him &quot;Castro&quot;.
Your accusational tone and lack of understanding of Cuba's revolution and what it has done carry all the signs of someone opposed and disinformed about the revolution.

Cuba's revolution was an anti-colonial revolution to put a halt to many of the same conditions that afflict Zimbabweans.
I would have thought you'd be hugely supportive rather than questioning the morals of the Cuban Revolution.

I have never considered whether or not you support capitalism and/or oppose socialism but if you say yes to either or both, that would explain the difficulty of your position.

You have to consider what is best for all and not just a few and you cannot do that with a capitalist mindset.

You cannot lift ALL Zimbabweans with anything that has to do with capitalism.
As long as you have a capitalist economy you will have huge levels of poverty and poverty under capitalism is fatal to millions upon millions every year.

Whose side ARE you on?

[franksterr]

Re: Mugabe's Land reform driving economic growth i

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
So, the whittling is done in the most democratic way there is; by the people.
Wouldn't you like something as democratic where you vote.?</div></div>
I hear you.... would dissenter be allowed if he had 51%

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
&quot;Local elections candidates are nominated in open meetings run by the CDR (Committees to Defend the Revolution) that are closely linked to police and security forces. They report and sanction dissent. Prison terms of 4 years threaten those that openly oppose the regime in that public meeting filled with informants. People not supporting can be threatened with losing their home and jobs.&quot;</div></div>

http://www.cubaverdad.net/democracy.htm

F:
Is Cuba ruled by the Communist Party?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
Only about 15% of Cubans belong to the PCC but those 15% are the kind of revolutionary activists who are the type who want to get involved in government so the percentages in elected positions are much higher.

The PCC definitely controls the economy and any laws passed by the Assemblies that affect the socialist economy has to be okayed by them. Their economic system is new sometimes fragile and under attack from the United States and Europe and so needs a watchdog .

In government, party members have the same power as any other elected official and no more.</div></div>

In short contrary to what you said earlier Cuba is run by a political party???

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
Are dissidents free from repression in Cuba?

J: First explain what you mean by &quot;dissidents&quot; and what you mean by &quot;repression&quot; Because I have been down this road many times before I would ask that with your answers you both acknowledge and take into consideration the fact that the United States is waging war on Cuba and that the survival of the revolution is under threat.

Do you mean the imprisoned &quot;journalists&quot; ?
</div></div>
Anyone who disagrees with the way the nation is being run and voice their opinion, whilst trying to bring attention and voices to their cause.


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
J: Things do not change under capitalism, at least not enough to end starvation for some 8 million people a year, or to prevent and cure diseases that kill millions or to end illiteracy or to stop crime.
Blacks would have power in a democracy but there are no democracies in Africa.
There are only multi-party electoral systems wherein the PARTIES decide for whom you get to vote. They are corrupt and self-perpetuating. Secondly, those with the money at the top buy off the politicians to keep the economies as they are; dedicated to the wealthy and/or powerful. Under that kind of system you could vote out corrupt people every year and they are replaced by another individual who is either already corrupt or who soon becomes corrupt because that's how that game is played.</div></div>

Aren’t you ignoring the fact that a whole lot has changed under Mugabe ?
The Rich Have already lost their lands in Zimbabwe….you seem bend on not admitting this to yourself.
They control over the economy is set to be shared up.


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Here's the kicker: It does not matter who is running the country either.
As long as wealth is allowed to concentrate in the hands of the top 5-10% of a given poor country, nothing CAN change. There is not enough money to effect social improvements.
If it could be done, it would have been done. It has not been done.
Look around you.
One step forward, two steps back. Eternal poverty and human misery. Half the world living needlessly (no pun) in poverty.
Mugabe is throwing the man drowning in a river 50 feet away a 2 foot rope.
Nice thought. All he can do in the circumstances but he cannot do better and it's not nearly enough. It's not all him, it's neo-colonialism but it's mostly capitalism that is holding Zimbabwe and the world back.
Things will not make sense to you until you understand that.</div></div>

Your arguments always sound like religion to me, based on faith of a socialist utopia. Sociali
sm like capitalism are tools and they are as effective as the individuals using them.




<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
Yes, elite. A nice apartment.
Fidel has said and I have already offered to take all bets that say otherwise that when he dies it will be with just the money in his pockets.
No Swiss bank accounts, no palaces, he wears jogging suits.
Elitist that he is.

Fidel lives in an apartment or a house. How can Cuba be his estate? Is the U.S George Bush's estate?

About Raul. I will not respond to what you said about Fidel &quot;passing the presidency&quot; on to Raul except to say that you'd be wise to get a copy of Arnold' August's &quot;Democracy In Cuba: The 1997-1998 Elections and learn how the Cuban government is formed before you make statements like that. Once you read it you can come back and make the requisite retraction.</div></div>

http://www.therealcuba.com/Castro%20the%20multimillionaire.htm

He has no need of either, as the state treasury is his private preserve and will fund all his needs and desires.
Will probable read that book one day, but not now.
I have always been and still is impressed by Castro and Cuba


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
Again, buy and read that book and you will understands why corrupt elected officials are the rare exception in Cuba. You will learn that the same voters who both nominated and elected that official meet with him/her every six months and at those meetings if the electorate thinks that he's corrupt or not doing a good job, anyone in the crowd can stand and call for his removal. Some one has to second the motion and then they vote by show of hands or, an actual head count if it is close. If the vote is to remove the official, he is gone right there and they start the nomination process for the new election.</div></div>

And that is exceptional and good if not great, but that does not negate existence of corruption in Cuba’s Government.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Now, don't you wish YOU had that good an electoral system?</div></div>
Yes



<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
Free of hunger – why then the rise in child prostitution?

J:
SHOW ME proof of child prostitution or any child exploitation in Cuba.
I am serious as cancer about this .
Show me , prove to me that child prostitution exists in Cuba.
The U.S., Zimbabwe, absolutely, Cuba: not a chance. They take care of THEIR kids.</div></div>

Anywhere there is prostitution, there is child prostitution…

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cuba/castro-prostitution.htm

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
Freedom to not starve to death and freedom not to die from preventable or curable disease are extremely important too, without them something like 12 million people die in sub-Saharan Africa EVERY goddammed year.
Where is your sense of perspective.</div></div>

Those deaths and diseases in Africa is a result of poverty which is a result of racism
One does not negate the other…
Sure it is a good and great thing that starvation and disease are low in Cuba….





<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
YOU DID NOT ANSWER THIS
Again I ask: in which poor Third World country has poverty, starvation, illiteracy, crime and hopelessness been eradicated ? and why should your expectations for Mugabe's success be so high given the lack of a single example ?</div></div>

I answered it, I do not know about poverty, crime and hopelessness being absent from any country… but illiteracy is not a problem in Zimbabwe and starvation is no longer a real threat.
If all the above is eradicated, would it still be a third world country?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
No need to hold your breathe, Mugabe has already improved the lives of the average Zimbabwean
Mugabe has eradicated illiteracy, and there is no starvation in Zimbabwe..

J: I will trust you on this but will verify those claims.</div></div>

Have you done so ???



<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">J: Cuba has the lowest crime rate in the western hemisphere .
Cubans have little extra money because the nations wealth goes into health, education, jobs, homes, electrification, and all the things that have placed Cuba 51st on the Human Development Index of the U.N which a deals with peoples living standards. They may well be poor but NO ONE person in Cuba suffers from hunger, disease, illiteracy, homelessness or joblessness.
Come and talk to me when Mugabe or any other African leader accomplishes those things for all THEIR people.</div></div>
How do you know the crime rate in Cuba?...doesn’t the government control and disseminate all such info?
How free is the press to report unfavorable things?

http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y06/mar06/10e1.htm

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/18/jailing-the-jobless-in-cuba/

http://www.therealcuba.com/Page10.htm

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
Now your responses and question make it seems I am against Cuba or Castro, please note that is not the case.

[quote]Well, friends of the revolution call Fidel Castro &quot;Fidel&quot;. All opponents of the revolution call him &quot;Castro&quot;.
Your accusational tone and lack of understanding of Cuba's revolution and what it has done carry all the signs of someone opposed and disinformed about the revolution.

Cuba's revolution was an anti-colonial revolution to put a halt to many of the same conditions that afflict Zimbabweans.
I would have thought you'd be hugely supportive rather than questioning the morals of the Cuban Revolution.

I have never considered whether or not you support capitalism and/or oppose socialism but if you say yes to either or both, that would explain the difficulty of your position.

You have to consider what is best for all and not just a few and you cannot do that with a capitalist mindset.

You cannot lift ALL Zimbabweans with anything that has to do with capitalism.
As long as you have a capitalist economy you will have huge levels of poverty and poverty under capitalism is fatal to millions upon millions every year.

Whose side ARE you on?</div></div>

I am on the side of poor disenfranchise Africans.
Did Castro experiment with capitalism in the 90’s?
Is there still some capitalism in Cuba?
I go with what works.
The questions I ask may sound accusatory only because they are a result of my doubts of this perfect utopia that you paint Cuba as.
I support the revolution, but have my doubts…….Why restrict freedom of movement?
Why no independent press?

[johnnycakes]

Re: Mugabe's Land reform driving economic growth i


F:
I hear you.... would dissenter be allowed if he had 51%

J:
EXCELLENT question. The answer is YES. That said, you must remember that the overwhelming majority of Cubans like their revolution and want to keep it. Dissenters by definition do not. They want a return to what the revolution threw out. In the electoral process under Poder Popular someone from the voting district has to nominate that dissenter and someone else has to second the nomination in order for the dissenter to become a candidate. If 90%+ of the people support the revolution, who is going to nominate a dissident? and then how in the world could the dissenter get 51% of the vote?


F: http://www.cubaverdad.net/democracy.htm

J: I don't know if you realize it but this is a right wing anti-Cuban website and it does not contain much objective information.
Were you familiar with Poder Popular, you'd know that.
Try Hello Cuba on Google and then go to the sections that explain the governmental form to know how it works without having to sift out the lies and half truths of cubaverdad.

F:
In short contrary to what you said earlier Cuba is run by a political party???

J: If you like, Cuba could be said to have certain areas of the society controlled by the PCC but it does not run candidates for office under the PCC banner. No parties are allowed to run political campaigns in Cuba because that corrupts the system as it does in the United States. Everyone runs as an individual. Every one of those elected are directly answerable to those who have elected them.
It is nothing like any other electoral or economic system that has ever existed and the fact that Cuba has ended illiteracy, lack of medical care, drug use and trade, gangs most crime etc show that it works better than anything you could name in a poor Third World country.



F:
Anyone who disagrees with the way the nation is being run and voice their opinion, whilst trying to bring attention and voices to their cause.

J: Anyone in Cuba can say anything they want. However, if they take action against the government then it's a crime as it would be in any country. Many of the so-called journalists and dissenters in Cuban prison have taken money from official U.S. sources to speak out and try to overturn public opinion in Cuba and bring Cuba back to what existed before the revolution.
As I've had to remind people many many times, the United States is at war with Cuba and is trying to destroy it.
Under similar circumstances in any other country, those people would be shot for treason during war rather than sitting in prison for seven or so years.

Most people in Cuba complain about the things that are wrong in their lives and in the country but very, very few would choose to get rid of either their electoral or their economic system and most would fight to the death for it were the U.S. to invade. .

F:
Aren’t you ignoring the fact that a whole lot has changed under Mugabe ?
The Rich Have already lost their lands in Zimbabwe….you seem bend on not admitting this to yourself.
They control over the economy is set to be shared up.

J: Mugabe has made the few moves that a capitalist economy in a poor country like Zimbabwe permits him to make and no more. He got rid of the rich white farmers and now you have lots of small farmers in varying degrees of success and failure.
Overall that is not going to end the poverty and the problems that come with capitalism in the Third World.
Mugabes limited successes have only had effect for about a year. That is no indicator of where Zimbabwe will wind up. I think you see it as the first steps in a longer process of renaissance while I see it as the only steps he will be able to take without being chased out.

Quote:
Here's the kicker: It does not matter who is running the country either.
As long as wealth is allowed to concentrate in the hands of the top 5-10% of a given poor country, nothing CAN change. There is not enough money to effect social improvements.
If it could be done, it would have been done. It has not been done.
Look around you.
One step forward, two steps back. Eternal poverty and human misery. Half the world living needlessly (no pun) in poverty.
Mugabe is throwing the man drowning in a river 50 feet away a 2 foot rope.
Nice thought. All he can do in the circumstances but he cannot do better and it's not nearly enough. It's not all him, it's neo-colonialism but it's mostly capitalism that is holding Zimbabwe and the world back.
Things will not make sense to you until you understand that.


F:
Your arguments always sound like religion to me, based on faith of a socialist utopia. Sociali
sm like capitalism are tools and they are as effective as the individuals using them.

J: It works in Cuba. That's not faith. That statement is based on good hard fact.
For 50 years -no starvation, complete (98%) literacy, universal healthcare, no crime , no drugs, etc etc etc, 51st place on the Human Development Index and ALL WHILE AT WAR FROM THE UNITED STATES.
There is absolutely NO reason why democratic socialism cannot do the same for Zimbabwe or any other poor country except there is no one with enough charisma and vision to carry it off given the forces of the status quo arrayed against them.

You seem to be saying that capitalism can work in a poor country but are unable to show me where that has ever happened to the extent that problems were solved as extensively as they were in Cuba in short order and under socialism under fire.
The better a nation is at capitalism the greater is the disparity in wealth .Capitalism guarantees at least a 25% poverty rate where people don't have the basic of life.
That is a persistent figure. To think that capitalism in Zimbabwe is somehow the exception is not logical.
Mugabe has no chance of accomplishing anything near like what Cuba has done for all its people.


F:

http://www.therealcuba.com/Castro%20the%20multimillionaire.htm

J; Sorry this is not only another counter-revolutionary website with which I am very familiar but if that story about Fidel is the one from Forbes about him being one of the richest leaders in the world , then you have been taken in by a huge lie.
This story was shot down as soon as it appeared . You are reading trash.
I give you alternative and valid sources and you come back with this sort of rubbish?
You're wasting your time and mine here.

F:
He has no need of either, as the state treasury is his private preserve and will fund all his needs and desires.

J: So you're saying Fidel can walk up to the national treasury and just take out a few million pesos? Dictators do that sort of thing.
Fidel lives quite simply for a world leader . What would he do with a ton of money?


F:Will probable read that book one day, but not now.

J: What you need to do is some very intensive study about Cuba's electoral system and while you should read every side of things , you will inevitably be misled by the types of websites that you have so far referenced. They really are academically poor and nothing any serious student should take at all seriously.
The problem is, when you do not KNOW what is true, you might believe anything especially when all you've ever heard or read or seen about Cuba has been from anti-Cuban sources and just about everything from the United States and its allies is anti-Cuban and often either lies, exaggerations, propaganda, yellow journalism.

I can plainly see it in how you express yourself.


F:
I have always been and still is impressed by Castro and Cuba

J: What is it about FIDEL and Cuba that impresses you FAVORABLY?
All I've been doing here is responding to what I think are anti-Cuban posts from you..
You have been questioning the democracy of their electoral system, their way of life and it would seem the intelligence and courage of the Cuban people.
You seem to have been saying that they do not love their revolution.


F;
And that is exceptional and good if not great, but that does not negate existence of corruption in Cuba’s Government.
J: Feel free to show me any website, even anti Cuban websites or sources that detail electoral corruption in Cuba. You'll have to look for a long long time .


Free of hunger – why then the rise in child prostitution?

J:
SHOW ME proof of child prostitution or any child exploitation in Cuba.
I am serious as cancer about this .
Show me , prove to me that child prostitution exists in Cuba.
The U.S., Zimbabwe, absolutely, Cuba: not a chance. They take care of THEIR kids.

F:

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cuba/castro-prostitution.htm

J:
I will check this out and get back to you.



Freedom to not starve to death and freedom not to die from preventable or curable disease are extremely important too, without them something like 12 million people die in sub-Saharan Africa EVERY goddammed year.
Where is your sense of perspective.


F:Those deaths and diseases in Africa is a result of poverty which is a result of racism

J: We disagree on the primary cause .


One does not negate the other…
Sure it is a good and great thing that starvation and disease are low in Cuba….





Quote:

YOU DID NOT ANSWER THIS
Again I ask: in which poor Third World country has poverty, starvation, illiteracy, crime and hopelessness been eradicated ? and why should your expectations for Mugabe's success be so high given the lack of a single example ?


I answered it, I do not know about poverty, crime and hopelessness being absent from any country… but illiteracy is not a problem in Zimbabwe and starvation is no longer a real threat.
If all the above is eradicated, would it still be a third world country?

Quote:

No need to hold your breathe, Mugabe has already improved the lives of the average Zimbabwean
Mugabe has eradicated illiteracy, and there is no starvation in Zimbabwe..

J: I will trust you on this but will verify those claims.


Have you done so ???

Yes I did and it seems that the improvement in Zimbabwe as regards ending starvation came only this year and there is a 90% literacy rate . There were many websites with horror stories on conditions prior to this year. You can hardly state that Zimbabwe is at an end or anywhere near resolution of the many problems it has.

Again, you think it's just the beginning of change while I think it is the same old same old putting bandages on a cancer, lipstick on a pig.

If history is any indicator, any improvements in the lives of Zimbabweans is minor and will be short lived. I've seen this in country after country since I started looking at these things back in the 60's. Capitalism simply is not fixable.




F;
How do you know the crime rate in Cuba?...doesn’t the government control and disseminate all such info?
How free is the press to report unfavorable things?

http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y06/mar06/10e1.htm

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/18/jailing-the-jobless-in-cuba/

http://www.therealcuba.com/Page10.htm

J: Fine , you can present any number of anti-revolutionary websites you'd care to but I will counter those by saying that people who run travel businesses
are among those who say that Cuba is the safest tourist destination in the hemisphere. Their livelihoods depend on being right about that and they do not care about socialism, capitalism, democracy or dictatorships. They want to send their customers to a safe place and all RELIABLE,sources on crime statistics say that Cuba is the safest place in the hemisphere.l.


F:
I am on the side of poor disenfranchise Africans.
J:
You cannot be both for capitalism and for the poor.
Do I have to explain why?


F:
Did Castro experiment with capitalism in the 90’s?

J:
Absolutely, positively not.
He is a dedicated and principled socialist.b

F:
Is there still some capitalism in Cuba?
J:
Not to my knowledge. There is a lot of free lancing by individuals but if you have an understanding of economics you would understand that this is not what defines capitalism. They work independently of the government and pay taxes on what they make. That is not capitalism.

F: I go with what works.

J: Capitalism does not work. The proof is amply displayed over the past 150 years anfd the world today.
Cuban democratic socialism has shown it works


F:
The questions I ask may sound accusatory only because they are a result of my doubts of this perfect utopia that you paint Cuba as.
I support the revolution, but have my doubts…….Why restrict freedom of movement?
Why no independent press?

J: Your questions are the result of what you have absorbed from what you've read , heard and seen in the anti-Cuban media you depend on for your information. That much is reflected in your questions which are no different from those asked by right wing anti-Cuban sources.
The statistics and info I gave you on health, education and welfare, government in Cuba are things I have checked constantly for over 40 years.
They are not in doubt and prove that Cuba's democratic socialism works.
Here's another statistic for you: In every election in Cuba, 97% of the eligible voters participate. people who dislike their government do not participate in elections.
The Cuban people love their revolution because it does work for them.

Lastly and I will repeat this until you acknowledge it,
The United States is waging a war against the Cuban people.
When any nation is threatened with extinction as Cuba is and has been for 50 years, rights are always restricted.
Or are you of the opinion that they should just somehow forget about that threat.?

Look at what the United States did to VietNam , Korea, Indonesia, Timor, Nicaragua, Chile, Grenada, Jamaica and then tell me why you even thought of asking about free speech etc.

The Cubans have put the restrictions on that are necessary to preserve their revolution in the face of the proven and 50 year old threat from the biggest meanest country that has ever existed yet you somehow cannot understand the necessity.

The United States locked up all the Japanese in the country during WWII and what do you thinks happened to any people in the U.S. who spoke up for the Nazi way of life ?

There is very little difference in the two situations.
_________________________

[johnnycakes]

Re: Mugabe's Land reform driving economic growth i

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cuba/castro-prostitution.htm

I went and read this. There is nothing at all about child prostitution. There was one mention of penalties for &quot;child abuse and pimping&quot; but nothing about any child prostitution.

With CDRs (Block Committees) present in every neighborhood and with all Cuban kids going to school or in day care, it would be very difficult for anyone to be prostituting kids in Cuba and if caught they would probably be jailed for 30 years given how much Cubans care about their children.
Remember Elian Gonzalez? .

[franksterr]

Re: Mugabe's Land reform driving economic growth i


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">F: http://www.cubaverdad.net/democracy.htm

J: I don't know if you realize it but this is a right wing anti-Cuban website and it does not contain much objective information.
Were you familiar with Poder Popular, you'd know that.
Try Hello Cuba on Google and then go to the sections that explain the governmental form to know how it works without having to sift out the lies and half truths of cubaverdad.</div></div>

So if it says any about Cuba that’s does not fit your ideas….its lies and unobjective?

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
In short contrary to what you said earlier Cuba is run by a political party???

J: If you like, Cuba could be said to have certain areas of the society controlled by the PCC but it does not run candidates for office under the PCC banner. No parties are allowed to run political campaigns in Cuba because that corrupts the system as it does in the United States. Everyone runs as an individual. Every one of those elected are directly answerable to those who have elected them.
It is nothing like any other electoral or economic system that has ever existed and the fact that Cuba has ended illiteracy, lack of medical care, drug use and trade, gangs most crime etc show that it works better than anything you could name in a poor Third World country.</div></div>

Please stop doing gymnastics, Cuba is ruled by a political Party and in Cuba there is only One political party for the past 40 yrs.


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
J: Anyone in Cuba can say anything they want. However, if they take action against the government then it's a crime as it would be in any country. Many of the so-called journalists and dissenters in Cuban prison have taken money from official U.S. sources to speak out and try to overturn public opinion in Cuba and bring Cuba back to what existed before the revolution.
As I've had to remind people many many times, the United States is at war with Cuba and is trying to destroy it.
Under similar circumstances in any other country, those people would be shot for treason during war rather than sitting in prison for seven or so years.

Most people in Cuba complain about the things that are wrong in their lives and in the country but very, very few would choose to get rid of either their electoral or their economic system and most would fight to the death for it were the U.S. to invade. .</div></div>

Sure you can say what you want, is what happens after you say what you want that’s important.
Not everyone who dissents is on the US payroll.
.
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
J: Mugabe has made the few moves that a capitalist economy in a poor country like Zimbabwe permits him to make and no more. He got rid of the rich white farmers and now you have lots of small farmers in varying degrees of success and failure.
Overall that is not going to end the poverty and the problems that come with capitalism in the Third World.
Mugabes limited successes have only had effect for about a year. That is no indicator of where Zimbabwe will wind up. I think you see it as the first steps in a longer process of renaissance while I see it as the only steps he will be able to take without being chased out.</div></div>

They have already tried to chase him out for land reform and failed.
.
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
J: It works in Cuba. That's not faith. That statement is based on good hard fact.
For 50 years -no starvation, complete (98%) literacy, universal healthcare, no crime , no drugs, etc etc etc, 51st place on the Human Development Index and ALL WHILE AT WAR FROM THE UNITED STATES.
There is absolutely NO reason why democratic socialism cannot do the same for Zimbabwe or any other poor country except there is no one with enough charisma and vision to carry it off given the forces of the status quo arrayed against them.</div></div>

What ever the people of Zimbabwe decides to do that works is fine by me be it communism, socialism or capitalism.
Without freedom of travel, it is difficult to know whats actually happening in Cuba.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">You seem to be saying that capitalism can work in a poor country but are unable to show me where that has ever happened to the extent that problems were solved as extensively as they were in Cuba in short order and under socialism under fire.
The better a nation is at capitalism the greater is the disparity in wealth .Capitalism guarantees at least a 25% poverty rate where people don't have the basic of life.
That is a persistent figure. To think that capitalism in Zimbabwe is somehow the exception is not logical.
Mugabe has no chance of accomplishing anything near like what Cuba has done for all its people.</div></div>

When and where capitalism works the nation ceases to be poor, so that question is mute.
They are many countries that capitalism is working in, with varying degree of success.
Personally socialism is best, but in the final analysis it comes down to the people running the system.


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">

http://www.therealcuba.com/Castro%20the%20multimillionaire.htm

J; Sorry this is not only another counter-revolutionary website with which I am very familiar but if that story about Fidel is the one from Forbes about him being one of the richest leaders in the world , then you have been taken in by a huge lie.
This story was shot down as soon as it appeared . You are reading trash.
I give you alternative and valid sources and you come back with this sort of rubbish?
You're wasting your time and mine here</div></div>

ONLY You would expect a pro-Castro website to tell the painful truth.


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
J: So you're saying Fidel can walk up to the national treasury and just take out a few million pesos? Dictators do that sort of thing.
Fidel lives quite simply for a world leader . What would he do with a ton of money? </div></div>

Yes if he so choose, of course there are other more palatable methods that he may employ.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
J: What you need to do is some very intensive study about Cuba's electoral system and while you should read every side of things , you will inevitably be misled by the types of websites that you have so far referenced. They really are academically poor and nothing any serious student should take at all seriously.
The problem is, when you do not KNOW what is true, you might believe anything especially when all you've ever heard or read or seen about Cuba has been from anti-Cuban sources and just about everything from the United States and its allies is anti-Cuban and often either lies, exaggerations, propaganda, yellow journalism.</div></div>
I have read the experts on both sides, including yourself.
None has satisfied my doubts.


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
J: What is it about FIDEL and Cuba that impresses you FAVORABLY?
All I've been doing here is responding to what I think are anti-Cuban posts from you..
You have been questioning the democracy of their electoral system, their way of life and it would seem the intelligence and courage of the Cuban people.
You seem to have been saying that they do not love their revolution.</div></div>

The educational system, Cuba’s role in Africa struggle, Cuba ability to survive against the US will, willingness to give aid.
Yes I question their democracy
I have already quoted an instance of electoral corruption, in which dissenters and all who nominate them stand to face serious reprisals.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
SHOW ME proof of child prostitution or any child exploitation in Cuba.
I am serious as cancer about this .
Show me , prove to me that child prostitution exists in Cuba.
The U.S., Zimbabwe, absolutely, Cuba: not a chance. They take care of THEIR kids.

F:
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/...ostitution.htm </div></div>

If there is prostitution, there is child prostitution it goes without saying.
Cuba's Real Record On Child Prostitution
Cuban lawmakers have opted to not criminalize prostitution but, rather, to focus on sexual procurement (i.e., pimping) by increasing the penalties. The sentence for pimping was increased to four to ten years, <span style="font-weight: bold">increasing to seven to fifteen years if minors are involved</span>. Prison sentences were increased for the corruption of minors in an effort to stop the activities of sex offenders and pedophiles. The penalty for pedophilia was set at fifteen to thirty years.

http://www.gvnet.com/childprostitution/Cuba.htm

http://www.childtrafficking.com/Docs/o_connell_1996__child_prost2.pdf

http://vodpod.com/watch/4112931-corrupci...itution-in-cuba




<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Freedom to not starve to death and freedom not to die from preventable or curable disease are extremely important too, without them something like 12 million people die in sub-Saharan Africa EVERY goddammed year.
Where is your sense of perspective.


F:Those deaths and diseases in Africa is a result of poverty which is a result of racism

J: We disagree on the primary cause .


One does not negate the other…
Sure it is a good and great thing that starvation and disease are low in Cuba….</div></div>
Chickens and cows meant for slaughter are well fed and provided with the best health care…..the only thing denied them is the ability to leave the farm – they are imprisoned or penned. Back in colonial days slaves where fed quartered and provided with heath care, the only thing denied them was the ability to leave on their own.



<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
Yes I did and it seems that the improvement in Zimbabwe as regards ending starvation came only this year and there is a 90% literacy rate . There were many websites with horror stories on conditions prior to this year. You can hardly state that Zimbabwe is at an end or anywhere near resolution of the many problems it has.</div></div>

Thru-out the 80’s Zimbabwe was known as the breadbasket of Africa, until the West want to impoverish using the IMF forced policies on them that destroyed their reserves and local market.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Again, you think it's just the beginning of change while I think it is the same old same old putting bandages on a cancer, lipstick on a pig.

If history is any indicator, any improvements in the lives of Zimbabweans is minor and will be short lived. I've seen this in country after country since I started looking at these things back in the 60's. Capitalism simply is not fixable. </div></div>
Africa and Africans will not fall for the neo-colonial policies of the west, like happen in the sixties and Mugabe victories is signaling that change. Mugabe’s success is a regional effort.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">

http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y06/mar06/10e1.htm

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/18/jailing-the-jobless-in-cuba/

http://www.therealcuba.com/Page10.htm

J: Fine , you can present any number of anti-revolutionary websites you'd care to but I will counter those by saying that people who run travel businesses
are among those who say that Cuba is the safest tourist destination in the hemisphere. Their livelihoods depend on being right about that and they do not care about socialism, capitalism, democracy or dictatorships. They want to send their customers to a safe place and all RELIABLE,sources on crime statistics say that Cuba is the safest place in the hemisphere.l.</div></div>
Dictators have always been able to handle crime better than democracies, during Mussolini reign the mafia and crime was at an all time low in Italy.


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
You cannot be both for capitalism and for the poor.
Do I have to explain why?</div></div>
Please do.
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
Did Castro experiment with capitalism in the 90’s?

J:
Absolutely, positively not.
He is a dedicated and principled socialist.b

F:
Is there still some capitalism in Cuba?
J:
Not to my knowledge. There is a lot of free lancing by individuals but if you have an understanding of economics you would understand that this is not what defines capitalism. They work independently of the government and pay taxes on what they make. That is not capitalism.
</div></div>
How is that not capitalism?
What do you understand about the “special period”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/16/AR2010091607381.html

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> Capitalism does not work. The proof is amply displayed over the past 150 years anfd the world today.
Cuban democratic socialism has shown it works</div></div>
Of course it did when they were getting 6 billion dollars a yr from mother Russia.
The yrs fallowing Russia collapse Castro instituted capitalistic changes

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">J: Your questions are the result of what you have absorbed from what you've read , heard and seen in the anti-Cuban media you depend on for your information. That much is reflected in your questions which are no different from those asked by right wing anti-Cuban sources.
The statistics and info I gave you on health, education and welfare, government in Cuba are things I have checked constantly for over 40 years.
They are not in doubt and prove that Cuba's democratic socialism works.
Here's another statistic for you: In every election in Cuba, 97% of the eligible voters participate. people who dislike their government do not participate in elections.
The Cuban people love their revolution because it does work for them.</div></div>
Where do you get your info….from pro-Castro media?
If you cannot see the difference between my question and a right wing anti-Castro protagonist then maybe you are seeing enemies where none exist.
You will turn out to vote if your freedom or If your next meal depends on it you will.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Lastly and I will repeat this until you acknowledge it,
The United States is waging a war against the Cuban people.
When any nation is threatened with extinction as Cuba is and has been for 50 years, rights are always restricted.
Or are you of the opinion that they should just somehow forget about that threat.?

Look at what the United States did to VietNam , Korea, Indonesia, Timor, Nicaragua, Chile, Grenada, Jamaica and then tell me why you even thought of asking about free speech etc.

The Cubans have put the restrictions on that are necessary to preserve their revolution in the face of the proven and 50 year old threat from the biggest meanest country that has ever existed yet you somehow cannot understand the necessity.

The United States locked up all the Japanese in the country during WWII and what do you thinks happened to any people in the U.S. who spoke up for the Nazi way of life ?

There is very little difference in the two situations. </div></div>

Never denied that Cuba and America is at War(cold)
Did they lock up the Germans? No – Racism at work.
What rights are restricted, what speech is restricted….The American Bund.