Cuba and US to normalize relations

[ReindeerThistle]

Well, this thread just jumped the shark.

I rest my case.

 

[MobBoss]

I rest my case.

You should.

'Hate Crime Thread'.

 

[Borachio]

It could be worse. Cuba could be Haiti.

Oh, no, wait. *fumble fumble*

Haiti's a republic, isn't it?

 

[ReindeerThistle]

From Democracy Now! Thurs 12/18/14

President Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro announced Wednesday that the United States will restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba for the first time in more than half a century. The historic deal will include the opening of a U.S. embassy in Havana and comes with a prisoner exchange. Live from Cuba, we go to Havana for reaction from Peter Kornbluh, director of the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive at George Washington University. "Finally after 55 years, an element of sanity and effectiveness and modernization has arrived to the insane U.S. policy that U.S. presidents have been pursuing towards Cuba or all these years," Kornbluh says. He is the co-author of the book, "Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana."
AMYGOODMANresident Obama announced Wednesday the United States will restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba for the first time in more than half a century. The historic move will include the opening of a U.S. embassy in Havana. It was reportedly facilitated by Pope Francis and the Vatican, who helped begin secret negotiations last year.
The softened relations come with a prisoner exchange. Cuba has released Alan Gross, a subcontractor for USAID—that’s the U.S. Agency for International Development. He was arrested in 2009, sentenced to 15 years for smuggling illegal technology into the country for opposition groups. Also released was a Cuban who had provided information about Cuban spy operations in the United States. Obama did not identify the prisoner by name, butNewsweekreports he’s Rolando Sarraff Trujillo, a former Cuban intelligence officer who who worked secretly for theCIAuntil he was arrested on espionage charges in 1995. Meanwhile, the United States freed the remaining members of the Cuban Five—Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero and Ramón Labañino. The men were arrested in the United States in 1998 and convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage. But Cuban intelligence officers say they were not spying on the United States, but rather trying to monitor violent right-wing Cuban exile groups responsible for attacks inside Cuba. President Obama outlined the exchange as the prisoners were already returning home.
PRESIDENTBARACKOBAMA:Over many months, my administration has held discussions with the Cuban government about Alan’s case and other aspects of our relationship. His Holiness Pope Francis issued a personal appeal to me and to Cuba’s President Raúl Castro, urging us to resolve Alan’s case and to address Cuba’s interest in the release of three Cuban agents who have been jailed in the United States for over 15 years.
Today, Alan returned home, reunited with his family at long last. Alan was released by the Cuban government on humanitarian grounds. Separately, in exchange for the three Cuban agents, Cuba today released one of the most important intelligence agents that the United States has ever had in Cuba, and who has been imprisoned for nearly two decades. This man, whose sacrifice has been known to only a few, provided America with the information that allowed us to arrest the network of Cuban agents that included the men transferred to Cuba today, as well as other spies in the United States. This man is now safely on our shores.
AMYGOODMAN:The deal between the United States and Cuba is a major diplomatic victory for Cuba’s President Raúl Castro, who has offered to engage in direct conversations with Obama, quote, "as equals" since he came to power in 2006 after taking over from his brother, Fidel Castro. President Castro announced the changes in his own midday address to the nation.
PRESIDENTRAÚLCASTRO:[translated] As a result of a dialogue at the highest level, which included a phone conversation I had yesterday with President Obama, we have been able to make headway in a solution of some topics of mutual interest for both nations. As Fidel promised on June 2001, when he said, "They shall return," Gerardo, Ramón and Antonio have arrived today to our homeland. The enormous joy of their families and all of our people, who have relentlessly fought for this goal, is shared by hundreds of solidarity committees and groups, governments, parliaments, organizations, institutions and personalities who, for the last 16 years, have made tireless efforts demanding their release. We convey our deepest gratitude and commitment to all of them. President Obama’s decision deserves the respect and acknowledgment of our people.
AMYGOODMAN:News of the U.S. deal follows news thatUSAIDtried to infiltrate Cuba’s hip-hop community in a botched plot to foment anti-government unrest. As part of the program, the agency hired Creative Associates International, a firm that also played a key role in the "Cuban Twitter" program, a fake social media program launched in another bid to undermine the Cuban government. In the hip-hop case, Creative Associates was directed to recruit young rap artists looking to make "social change." The program ended up endangering some of the artists and their careers. On Monday, the head ofUSAIDsaid he will step down in February. Rajiv Shah gave no public reason for leaving and, in a statement, said he had mixed emotions that the United States is restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba as outlined by President Obama on Wednesday.
PRESIDENTBARACKOBAMA:I’m now taking steps to place the interests of the people of both countries at the heart of our policy. First, I’ve instructed Secretary Kerry to immediately begin discussions with Cuba to re-establish diplomatic relations that have been severed since January of 1961. Going forward, the United States will re-establish an embassy in Havana, and high-ranking officials will visit Cuba. Where we can advance shared interests, we will, on issues like health, migration, counterterrorism, drug trafficking and disaster response. ...
Second, I’ve instructed Secretary Kerry to review Cuba’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism. This review will be guided by the facts and the law. ...
Third, we are taking steps to increase travel, commerce and the flow of information to and from Cuba. This is fundamentally about freedom and openness, and also expresses my belief in the power of people-to-people engagement. With the changes I’m announcing today, it will be easier for Americans to travel to Cuba, and Americans will be able to use American credit and debit cards on the island. ...
I believe that American businesses should not be put at a disadvantage, and that increased commerce is good for Americans and for Cubans. So we will facilitate authorized transactions between the United States and Cuba. U.S. financial institutions will be allowed to open accounts at Cuban financial institutions. And it will be easier for U.S. exporters to sell goods in Cuba.
I believe in the free flow of information. Unfortunately, our sanctions on Cuba have denied Cubans access to technology that has empowered individuals around the globe. So I’ve authorized increased telecommunications connections between the United States and Cuba. Businesses will be able to sell goods that enable Cubans to communicate with the United States and other countries.
AMYGOODMAN:Well, today we spend the hour looking at this new chapter in U.S.-Cuba relations. Here in New York, we’re joined by attorney Martin Garbus, member of the Cuban Five legal team, and Michael Ratner, who’s president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He has written several books on Cuba,Who Killed Che?: How theCIAGot Away with Murder, and also is the co-editor ofChe Guevara and theFBI: The U.S. Political Police Dossier on the Latin American Revolutionary. Joining us from Washington, D.C., is Robert Muse, an attorney, an expert in U.S. laws relating to Cuba. He was in Havana, Cuba, Wednesday when the deal was announced. His recentpiece
published inAmericas Quarterlyis "U.S. Presidential Action on Cuba: The New Normalization?" And in Havana, we go to Peter Kornbluh, director of the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive at George Washington University, co-author of the bookBack Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana.
We welcome you all toDemocracy Now!Let’s begin in Havana with Peter Kornbluh. Your response to this historic announcement by President Obama in Washington, D.C., and President Raúl Castro in Havana, Cuba, where you are right now, Peter?
PETERKORNBLUH:Well, I have a one-word response, Amy: finally. Finally, after 55 years, an element of sanity and effectiveness and modernization have arrived to the insane U.S. policy that U.S. presidents have been pursuing towards Cuba for all these years, all these decades.
As you can see from looking at me, the sun is coming up here over Havana Bay. ...

 

[luiz]

Going to ignore the fact that compared to the rest of the world Cuba's healthcare and education were better prior to the Revolution than now, eh? Well, that wasn't hard to see coming.

Anyway. Because they say one image is worth a thousand words, here's Cuba in all its socialist glory:

Cuba is one big favela.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Looks like Trenton, NJ

USAID subversion

Another USAID covert plan exposed
According to an investigation by the Associated Press, the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, attempted to infiltrate the Cuban hip-hop movement as part of a covert project to destabilize the country.

According to an investigation by the Associated Press, the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, attempted to infiltrate the Cuban hip-hop movement as part of a covert project to destabilize the country.
Documents obtained by AP indicate that USAID hired a group of rappers to develop a youth movement in opposition to the Cuban government. The covert plan was implemented over more than two years, with the aim of using Cuban musicians to establish a network to agitate for social change on the island, PL reported on Thursday.
The Huffington Post website published a chronology of USAID covert operations in Cuba, detailing the activities of Rajko Bozic, a Serbian national who presented himself as a musical promoter and arrived in Cuba with instructions to involve Cuban rappers such as the Aldeanos duo in the covert hip hop program, to promote an opposition movement.
The publication also describes the creation in Panama of the Salida Company in March 2009, a front for Creative Associates International based in Washington. AP reports that in August of 2009 Creative Associates hosted a meeting in San Jose, Costa Rica, to discuss using the Concert for Peace, organized by Colombian musician Juanes in Havana, to boost Los Aldeanos and their rebellious discourse.
Coincidentally, on December 3, 2009, USAID contractor Alan Gross was arrested in Havana for having illegally imported satellite phones and computing equipment to Cuba without the appropriate permits.
The USAID hip hop covert operation was conducted in tandem with two other programs sponsored by the U.S. agency, which were exposed by AP - the Zunzuneo or Cuban twitter project, and a plan to send young Latin Americans to Cuba to build disenchantment among Cuban youth and promote criticism of the government.

Cuba celebrating Human Rights Day

Innumerable children, young people and members of mass organizations led Human Rights Day celebrations in Cuba. Squares and parks across the country played host to diverse activities, including debates and discussions in various universities.

Among the topics discussed were access to information and communications technology, which in Cuba are at the service of the people; internet connectivity, which is currently being facilitated and prioritized at social and community centers and institutions; as well as current efforts to combat subversion through the use of such technologies.

It is precisely younger generations, which figure among the high priority groups with regard to social policies, who raised their voices in song on a day of various activities which included book sales, dances and sporting events.

Among the reasons to celebrate are Cuba’s achievements “in the protection of children,” as highlighted by UNICEF, while UNESCO, in its most recent global Education For All Monitoring Report (2012), positioned Cuba in 16th place based on its educational development indices.

Cuba going solar

 

[luiz]

Cuba as a whole does look like the poorest parts of the US's poorest city.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Cuba and the rest of Latin America

Strengthening our unity
Leaders of delegations attending the Summit emphasized, in all of their remarks, the accomplishments achieved by the alliance during the 10 years of its existence, including Operation Miracle and literacy efforts which have allowed five million citizens to learn to read and write
LETICIA MARTÍNEZ HERNÁNDEZ YAIMA PUIG MENESES

Heads of state and government, meeting in Havana Sunday, December 14, reaffirmed the principles of solidarity, genuine cooperation and complementarity shared by the countries which comprise the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-Peoples Trade Agreement (ALBA-TCP).
Precisely 10 years ago, also in the Cuban capital, this pro-integration mechanism was founded, on the initiative of Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro Ruz and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Frías, whose legacies of great importance to present and future generations were emphasized during the XIII Summit.
Cuban President Raúl Castro Ruz described the discussion as productive, and commented that very interesting ideas had been presented, reflecting the concrete results of the gathering.
He called for continuing to strengthen joint political work, unity, and cooperation in all spheres, among nations participating in Alba-TCP, CELAC, CARICOM, UNASUR and MERCOSUR.
The Cuban President emphasized the importance of establishing concrete, realistic goals for the future, while defining and agreeing upon attainable efforts, which strengthen the complementarity of Alba countries’ economies, based on principles of rational, efficient use of resources.
He said that work must be done to make more visible the undeniable accomplishments of Alba-TCP, and disseminate the advantages of the integration model which the alliance proposes and defends. A concrete example of what can be done together, he recalled, was the agreement adopted at the Special Summit on Ebola, and subsequent joint efforts.
Raúl reiterated the comments he made, during last week’s CARICOM-Cuba Summit, thanking the Panamanian government for its invitation to the upcoming Summit of the Americas, and expressed Cuba’s willingness to participate as an equal, without pre-conditions, reaffirming that this does not in any way imply a return to the Organization of American States (OAS).
The first decision made at the XIII Alba-TCP Summit was to formalize the incorporation of Grenada and St. Kitts and Nevis as members of the alliance, whose contributions, Raúl affirmed, will support the development and consolidation of efforts to promote integration being made by the group, which additionally includes Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda and St. Lucia.
Leaders of delegations attending the Summit emphasized, in all of their remarks, the accomplishments achieved by the alliance during the 10 years of its existence. Cited were Operation Miracle, through which some three million Latin Americans and Caribbeans have recovered their sight; national genetic and psycho-social studies of the disabled; literacy campaigns which have allowed some five million citizens to learn to read and write; and the training of thousands of doctors. Also recalled was significant progress in the financial arena including the creation of the Unified System of Regional Compensation (SUCRE) and the Alba Bank.
Participants agreed that while much has been accomplished, many challenges remain, which require the further perfecting of current collaborative programs in all areas.
During the discussion, strong support for Venezuela was reaffirmed, and sanctions against the Bolivarian Republic approved by the U.S. Congress were forcefully condemned.
Alba leaders once again demanded a change in U.S. policy toward Cuba; an immediate end to the blockade and subversive intervention; the removal of Cuba from the arbitrary, absurd list of state sponsors of international terrorism; as well as the release of the three Cuban anti-terrorists who remain unjustly held in U.S. prisons.

And 3 days after this meeting, Cuba and Latin America got what it wanted from the US. The US Government is a weak, cornered, flailing rat. Guns and bombs don't make your worthless, self-serving, fascist ideas any more desirable.

Parroting the US lies about Cuba doesn't make them true.

 

[luiz]

Yeah, reports by the UN, the International Labour Organization and several others which were made prior to the Revolution are no doubt lies made by time travelers in order to make Castro look bad.

Damn those CIA-backed time travelers!

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Cuba's Medical Record Shames the US Blockade

Four months into the internationally declared Ebola emergency that has devastated west Africa, Cuba leads the world in direct medical support to fight the epidemic. The US and Britain have sent thousands of troops and, along with other countries, promised aid – most of which has yet to materialise. But, as the World Health Organisation has insisted, what’s most urgently needed are health workers. The Caribbean island, with a population of just 11m and official per capita income of $6,000 (£3,824), answered that call before it was made. It was first on the Ebola frontline and has sent the largest contingent of doctors and nurses – 256 are already in the field, with another 200 volunteers on their way.

While western media interest has faded with the receding threat of global infection, hundreds of British health service workers have volunteered to join them. The first 30 arrived in Sierra Leone last week, while troops have been building clinics. But the Cuban doctors have been on the ground in force since October and are there for the long haul.

The need could not be greater. More than 6,000 people have already died. So shaming has the Cuban operation been that British and US politicians have felt obliged to offer congratulations. John Kerry described the contribution of the state the US has been trying to overthrow for half a century “impressive”. The first Cuban doctor to contract Ebola has been treated by British medics, and US officials promised they would “collaborate” with Cuba to fight Ebola.

But it’s not the first time that Cuba has provided the lion’s share of medical relief following a humanitarian disaster. Four years ago, after the devastating earthquake in impoverished Haiti, Cuba sent the largest medical contingent and cared for 40% of the victims. In the aftermath of the Kashmir earthquake of 2005, Cuba sent 2,400 medical workers to Pakistan and treated more than 70% of those affected; they also left behind 32 field hospitals and donated a thousand medical scholarships.

That tradition of emergency relief goes back to the first years of the Cuban revolution. But it is only one part of an extraordinary and mushrooming global medical internationalism. There are now 50,000 Cuban doctors and nurses working in 60 developing countries. As Canadian professor John Kirk puts it: “Cuban medical internationalism has saved millions of lives.” But this unparalleled solidarity has barely registered in the western media.

Cuban doctors have carried out 3m free eye operations in 33 countries, mostly in Latin America and the Caribbean, and largely funded by revolutionary Venezuela. That’s how Mario Teran, the Bolivian sergeant who killed Che Guevara on CIA orders in 1967, had his sight restored 40 years later by Cuban doctors in an operation paid for by Venezuela in the radical Bolivia of Evo Morales. While emergency support has often been funded by Cuba itself, the country’s global medical services are usually paid for by recipient governments and have now become by far Cuba’s largest export, linking revolutionary ideals with economic development. That has depended in turn on the central role of public health and education in Cuba, as Havana has built a low-cost biotech industry along with medical infrastructure and literacy programmes in the developing countries it serves – rather than sucking out doctors and nurses on the western model.

Internationalism was built into Cuba’s DNA. As Guevara’s daughter, Aleida, herself a doctor who served in Africa, says: “We are Afro-Latin Americans and we’ll take our solidarity to the children of that continent.” But what began as an attempt to spread the Cuban revolution in the 60s and became the decisive military intervention in support of Angola against apartheid in the 80s, has now morphed into the world’s most ambitious medical solidarity project.

Its success has depended on the progressive tide that has swept Latin America over the past decade, inspired by socialist Cuba’s example during the years of rightwing military dictatorships. Leftwing and centre-left governments continue to be elected and re-elected across the region, allowing Cuba to reinvent itself as a beacon of international humanitarianism.

But the island is still suffocated by the US trade embargo that has kept it in an economic and political vice for more than half a century. If Barack Obama wants to do something worthwhile in his final years as president he could use Cuba’s role in the Ebola crisis as an opening to start to lift that blockade and wind down the US destabilisation war.

There are certainly straws in the wind. In what looked like an outriding operation for the administration, the New York Times published six editorials over five weeks in October and November praising Cuba’s global medical record, demanding an end to the embargo, attacking US efforts to induce Cuban doctors to defect, and calling for a negotiated exchange of prisoners.

The paper’s campaign ran as the UN general assembly voted for the 23rd time, by 188 votes to 2 (US and Israel), to demand the lifting of the US blockade, originally imposed in retaliation for the nationalisation of American businesses and now justified on human rights grounds – by a state allied to some of the most repressive regimes in the world.

The embargo can only be scrapped by congress, still stymied by the heirs of the corrupt US-backed dictatorship which Fidel Castro and Guevara overthrew. But the US president has executive scope to loosen it substantially and restore diplomatic ties. He could start by releasing the remaining three “Miami Five” Cuban intelligence agents jailed 13 years ago for spying on anti-Cuba activist groups linked to terrorism.

The obvious moment for Obama to call time on the 50-year US campaign against Cuban independence would be at next April’s Summit of the Americas – which Latin American governments had threatened to boycott unless Cuba was invited. The greatest contribution those genuinely concerned about democratic freedoms in Cuba can make is to get the US off the country’s back.

If the blockade really were to be dismantled, it would not only be a vindication of Cuba’s remarkable record of social justice at home and solidarity abroad, backed by the growing confidence of an independent Latin America. It would also be a boon for millions around the world who would benefit from a Cuba unshackled – and a demonstration of what can be achieved when people are put before corporate profit.

"No major research?"
Cuba Develops Four Cancer Vaccines

 

[luiz]

Cuba sells doctors as slaves to work in other countries. There are thousands of Cuban doctors working in Brazil. The Brazilian Government pays R$ 10,000 per month per Cuban doctor, the same as they pay Brazilian doctors working for the same program. But the money goes to Cuba, not the doctors. Cuba sends back to the doctors about R$ 3,000 per month, and that was after a huge public outcry, because they only used to send back R$ 1,500, which is barely enough to survive. The doctors are not allowed to even leave the cities they work on without asking for permission from Cuban "supervisors". Leaving the country is of course totally forbidden. Nevertheless, every month several escape and ask for asylum at foreign embassies (the criminal Brazilian government does not grant them asylum).

The sale of doctors abroad is a critical source of hard currency for the Castro regime, and they make billions of dollars a year out of it.

It's a modern day slave trade.

 

[luiz]

Cuba’s Slave Trade in Doctors
Havana earns almost $8 billion a year off the backs of the health workers it sends to poor countries.

Western cultures don’t approve of human trafficking, which the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines as “organized criminal activity in which human beings are treated as possessions to be controlled and exploited.” Yet it’s hard to find any journalist, politician, development bureaucrat or labor activist anywhere in the world who has so much as batted an eye at the extensive human-trafficking racket now being run out of Havana. This is worth more attention as Cuban doctors are being celebrated for their work in Africa during the Ebola crisis.

Cuba is winning accolades for its international “doctor diplomacy,” in which it sends temporary medical professionals abroad—ostensibly to help poor countries battle disease and improve health care. But the doctors are not a gift from Cuba. Havana is paid for its medical missions by either the host country, in the case of Venezuela, or by donor countries that send funds to the World Health Organization. The money is supposed to go to Cuban workers’ salaries. But neither the WHO nor any host country pays Cuban workers directly. Instead the funds are credited to the account of the dictatorship, which by all accounts keeps the lion’s share of the payment and gives the worker a stipend to live on with a promise of a bit more upon return to Cuba.

It’s the perfect crime: By shipping its subjects abroad to help poor people, the regime earns the image of a selfless contributor to the global community even while it exploits workers and gets rich off their backs. According to DW, Germany’s international broadcaster, Havana earns some $7.6 billion annually from its export of health-care workers.

This is big business, which if it weren’t being carried out by gangster Marxists would surely offend journalists. Instead they lap it up. In an Oct. 24 interview with World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour lighted up when she talked about Cuba’s health-care workers in Africa. “Cuba clearly has something to teach the world in its rapid response, doesn’t it,” Ms. Amanpour gushed. Mr. Kim agreed, calling it “a wonderful gesture.”

What the Cuban workers in the line of the Ebola fire are being paid remains a state secret. But human trafficking is not new for Havana nor is it limited to the medical profession. In October 2008 a federal judge in Miami ruled in favor of three Cuban workers who claimed they, along with some 100 others, had been sent by the regime to Curaçao to work off Cuban debt to the Curaçao Drydock Company. The plaintiffs described horrific working conditions for which they were paid three cents an hour.

The Christian Science Monitor reported at the time that the company “admitted that the Cuban workers’ passports were seized and that their unpaid wages were deducted from the debt Havana owed the company.” Tomas Bilbao of the Cuba Study Group in Washington told the paper that “these types of violations are not out of the ordinary for the Cuban government.” Their attorney told the paper that back home in Cuba, after they cried foul, their family members lost jobs and access to schooling and suffered harassment from gangs.

Making medical professionals an export product is provoking a doctor shortage in Cuba, which is exacerbating widespread privation in health care. A humane government might turn its attention to this domestic misery, but there’s no money in that. Instead Cuba sells the labor of health professionals abroad even in the midst of persistent dengue and cholera outbreaks on the island.

Cuban doctors are not forced at gunpoint to become expat slaves, but they are given offers they cannot refuse. As Cuban doctor Antonio Guedes, who now lives in exile in Madrid, told the German DW, “Whoever does not cooperate may lose his job, or at least his position or his son will not get a place at university.” As with the workers in Curaçao, the regime keeps health-care workers under constant surveillance and confiscates their passports. Something about that doesn’t sound voluntary.

When given the chance, many of those trafficked have fled. In the last two years alone almost 3,100 Cubans have taken advantage of a special U.S. visa program that recognizes the exploitation of Cuban health professionals sent to third countries. As punishment the regime prohibits their families from leaving Cuba to see them. Getting certified to practice medicine in the U.S. can be long and arduous.

Doctors groups in Brazil have pressured the Brazilian government to demand that Cuba raise the slave wage it was paying some 11,000 Cuban health workers in that country. But last week Brazilian federal prosecutor Luciana Loureiro Oliveira said there is evidence that Havana still keeps at least 75% of the money designated by donors as salaries. She called this “frankly illegal” because it violates Brazilian labor law and said the Cubans should be paid directly.

That would be the end of Cuban do-gooding in Brazil.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/mary-ogrady-cubas-slave-trade-in-doctors-1415573715

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Socialism for the win!

But, seriously, Mary O Grady?

Guest post by Peter Beattie:

So when my friend Keane asked me to write a guest post exposing the U.S. media's horrid coverage on Latin America, I thought I'd help out by injecting a little humor into this space. But how, I wondered, can the subject of misreporting Latin America be funny? And then, like a banana creme pie to the face, Wall Street Journal op-ed writer and human editorial cartoon Mary Anastasia O’Grady came to mind.

It's been a while since I last read one of O’Grady's editorials. The last time I had the misfortune, the blistering idiocy I encountered spurred me to read the two books she had mentioned and write dozens of pages about them. After that attempt to restore a bit of karmic balance to the universe that O’Grady had blithely upset, I relegated her to the back of my mind: arranged, according to degree of intellectual respectability, next to North Korean reports of Kim Jong-il's sporting prowess.

And there O’Grady remained. The problem with her is that as soon as she starts writing in defense of some Latin American oligarchy or other, the blood of campesinos starts gushing out from between her lines—and the often hilarious lies she tells just aren't enough to soak it all up. But her weekly attempts to whitewash bloodstained rightwingers in Latin America or explain why Fidel Castro is, like, the worst terrorist ever in the universe, just passed under my radar, no more noticeable than an official press release detailing how Jong-il's reanimated corpse had scored a triple-double playing solo against the Lakers, or whatever. But then, I discovered that O’Grady recently bad-mouthed Chilean activist-heartthrob Camila Vallejo. My reaction was: "Aw hell no she didn't!" (That's not to say that I make all such decisions on this superficial basis.)

In the recent editorial assault she initiated against Vallejo, and by extension, the entire student movement in Chile, O’Grady is in typical form: completely unmoored to reality, yet arrogantly self-assured. The combination is just precious. She starts with the claim that “for decades, Chile has been intellectually swamped by leftist ideas.” Whoa! Really? Swamped? For how many decades, Mary? Just a few decades back, espousing leftist ideas in Chile might have led to your mutilated corpse being found in a swamp—perhaps that is the connection O’Grady was going for? Because back when her ideological soulmate Augusto Pinochet was running the country, espousing leftist ideas would subject you to the kinds of torture that Bret Easton Ellis would later write into the fevered imagination of the main character in his American Psycho, a misogynist psychopath serial killer and torturer. One might infer from O’Grady’s portrayal that Chilean Psycho and former dictator Pinochet was not only unsuccessful in reducing the spread of leftist ideas in Chile, but somehow he allowed for them to “swamp” Chile. Surprised by this, I checked the source that O’Grady cited and . . . oh wait—she didn't cite anything. I guess I'll just trust her.

One paragraph later, O’Grady writes, “Chileans aren't interested in communism.” Gee, they’re swamped by leftist ideas . . . but they aren't interested in communism. Chileans must be extremely interested in anarchism instead! But how does O’Grady know that Chileans are so enamored of Bakunin and Proudhon that they “aren't interested in communism?” Well, it’s because upon returning home after a trip to Cuba during which she said a few nice words about Fidel Castro, Camila Vallejo “looked like a Castro stooge” to all Chileans, “and her popularity dipped.” I tried in vain to find a Chilean polling firm that tracks student activist Vallejo's approval rating, until I realized that it was exclusively monitored by respected pollster Mary-Anastasia-O'Grady-Pulls-It-Out-of-Thin-Air, S.A. (traded on the Santiago Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol: BLSHT).

Rebuffed by the precipitous drop in her closely-tracked approval ratings, student activist Camila Vallejo apparently then decided, according to O’Grady, to turn instead to . . . student activism. As O’Grady explains, student activism "is a safer route for a rising demagogue" (and student activist). But while saying anything positive about world's-worstest-terrorist-ever-in-history Fidel Castro is awful, protesting for free higher education is almost as bad, according to O’Grady. It's all about the sickening "middle-class sense of entitlement." Ew, yucky! The filthy rabble, what with its sense of entitlement to free, government-provided things like education, not to mention roads, sanitation systems, water and the like.

 

[luiz]

So the fact that Cubans have an electricity consumption more in line with the late 19th Century than the present is something good?

Also note, on education. If Cuba spends 9.8% of the GDP on education while the US spends 5.9%, that means Cuba spends around $10 billion a year on education, while the US spends around $990 billion. Adjusting for population, the US spends 3.4 times more per capita on education than Cuba.

Capitalism for the win!

 

[Tee Kay]

In this thread: dialogues of the deaf

 

[luiz]

In this thread: dialogues of the deaf

Cool, pretend there's any equivalency between what I'm saying and what RT is saying. Typical leftist.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

This is not a dialog. I am simply pointing out the insanity of luiz' posts. I have cited and pointed out objective criteria and data, and luiz keeps posting Wall Street Journal editorials as reference. It was time to call BS.

And, apparently, while the rest of the world is viewing a reduction of energy usage as a GOAL, and carbon emissions reduction as a good thing, a paid agent of the world petroleum mafia thinks it's a bad thing.

Jeez, even oil giants like T. Boone Pickens are in favor of energy use reduction.

But, oh, because the sentiment is shared by a commie-dictator-terrorist country, it's a bad thing.

 

[onejayhawk]

I rest my case.

Good. You lost on the pleadings.

J

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Cuba's contribution to ending apartheid

Cuba and the struggle for democracy in South Africa

The revolution in Cuba, culminating in Fidel Castro’s seizure of power on 1 January 1959, was from the beginning based on a non-racial ethos, and revolutionary Cuba was an early opponent of apartheid and racial segregation. It is no surprise to read Castro’s many pronouncements against racism, which he considered one of the central challenges of the new society the Communist Party sought to create. What is nevertheless surprising is the massive effort that Cuba – with its finite resources further limited by the United States (US) economic blockade – expended in support of African liberation struggles. Cuba supported the armed struggles of liberation movements of South Africa, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Angola and Mozambique.

Cuba’s support for South Africa’s liberation was of a different sort from that of other Anti-Apartheid Movements: it came not in the form of civil society activism, but as a state in alliance with provisional governments and independent states in the African continent. Cuba’s military engagement in Angola kept the apartheid state in check, foiling its geopolitical strategies and forcing it to concede defeat at Cuito Cuanavale, and ultimately forcing both PW Botha and FW de Klerk to the negotiating table.

Already in the 1960s, Che Guevara provided support for the liberation movement in the Congo, and in the 1970s Cuba helped defend Agostinho Neto’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) against aggression by the US and its agents, Zaire and South Africa. This support continued until the 1980s, when the aggressors were forced to back down, leading to the liberation of the entire subcontinent.

At the first Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Non-Aligned Summit in Belgrade in September 1961, Cuban President Osvaldo Dorticos Torrado denounced apartheid. Attending the United Nations (UN) Conference on Trade and Development in Geneva in 1961, Che Guevara, the minister of industry, said that South Africa ‘violates the Charter of the United Nations by the inhuman and fascist policy of apartheid’, and he called for South Africa’s expulsion from the UN. Speaking at the 19thGeneral Assembly of the UN in New York in December 1964, Guevara pointed to the UN’s failure to act against apartheid.
In 1960, Cuba began to receive students from the Republic of Guinea, Congo-Brazzaville and Mali, and in 1963 Cuba sent a team of medics to newly liberated Algeria.

By 1999 more than 28,000 African students had graduated from educational institutions in Cuba, and more than 76,000 Cubans had served in Africa in some capacity or other.

Perhaps Cuba’s most sustained support was for the Angolan MPLA when it was locked in a struggle against South African troops. This intervention was crucial for the entire subcontinent, whose peoples were held in subjection by an unholy alliance between a racist regime (South Africa), a superpower (the USA), and a corrupt dictator (Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko). South Africa, in fighting the MPLA, was willing to go to war because it saw in the MPLA the demise of apartheid rule in South Africa and Namibia. In fighting the South Africans, the Cubans were thus fighting for the liberation of Angolans, Namibians, and South Africans.

Taking on South Africa’s Army
Cuba’s war against South Africa and its allies (the National Front for the Liberation of Angola [FNLA] and National Uinion for the Total Independence of Angola [UNITA], supported by the USA and Zaire) occurred in a few stages. At first, Cuba came to the defence of the MPLA when the South Africans were trying to install Jonas Savimbi of UNITA and/or Roberto Holden of the FNLA as the leaders of Angola. Seeing Agostinho Neto’s MPLA as a communist movement that would alter the geopolitical balance in the region and help bring the downfall of the apartheid regime, the South Africans did all they could to displace the MPLA before independence was announced....

Fidel on Cuba's Ebola response

Duty calls
October 17, 2014 •By Fidel Castro

Our country did not hesitate one minute inresponding to the request made by internationalbodies for support to the struggle against thebrutal [ebola] epidemic which has erupted in West Africa.

This is what our country has always done, withoutexception. The government had already givenpertinent instructions to immediately mobilize andreinforce medical personnel offering their servicesin this region on the Africancontinent. A rapidresponse was likewise given to the United Nationsrequest, as has always been done when requests forcooperation have been made.

Any conscious person knows that political decisionswhich involve risks to highly qualified personnelimply a high level of responsibility on the part ofthose who call upon them to fulfill a dangeroustask. It is even more difficult thansendingsoldiers, who have also done so as their duty, tocombat and die for a just political cause.

The medical professionals who travel to any locationwhatsoever to save lives, even at the risk of losingtheir own, provide the greatest example ofsolidarity a human being can offer, above all whenno material interest whatsoever existsas amotivation. Their closest family members alsocontribute to such missions what they most love andadmire. A country tested by many years of heroicstruggle can understand well what is expressed here.

Everyone understands that by completing this taskwith maximum planning and efficiency, our people andsister peoples of the Caribbean and Latin Americawill be protected, preventing expansion of theepidemic, which hasunfortunately already beenintroduced, and could spread, in the United States,which maintains many personal ties and interactionswith the rest of the world. We will happilycooperate with U.S. personnel in this task, not insearch ofpeace between these two states which havebeen adversaries for so many years, but rather, inany event, for World Peace, an objective which canand should be attempted.

Monday, October 20, at the request of severalcountries in the area, a meeting will take place inHavana with the participation of importantauthorities who have expressed the need to implementpertinent measures to prevent thespreading of theepidemic, and combat it in a rapid and efficientmanner.
Caribbeans and Latin Americans will be sending amessage of encouragement and of struggle to the restof the world’s peoples.

The hour of duty has arrived.

 

[MobBoss]

If Cuba is such a wonderful place, why aren't people lining up to move there?