Castro stepping down....
Message from the Commander in Chief
Dear compatriots:
Last Friday, February 15, I promised you that in my next reflection I would deal with an issue of interest to many compatriots. Thus, this now is rather a message.
The moment has come to nominate and elect the State Council, its President, its Vice-Presidents and Secretary.
For many years I have occupied the honorable position of President. On February 15, 1976 the Socialist Constitution was approved with the free, direct and secret vote of over 95% of the people with the right to cast a vote. The first National Assembly was established on December 2nd that same year; this elected the State Council and its presidency. Before that, I had been a Prime Minister for almost 18 years. I always had the necessary prerogatives to carry forward the revolutionary work with the support of the overwhelming majority of the people.
There were those overseas who, aware of my critical health condition, thought that my provisional resignation, on July 31, 2006, to the position of President of the State Council, which I left to First Vice-President Raul Castro Ruz, was final. But Raul, who is also minister of the Armed Forces on account of his own personal merits, and the other comrades of the Party and State leadership were unwilling to consider me out of public life despite my unstable health condition.
It was an uncomfortable situation for me vis-à-vis an adversary which had done everything possible to get rid of me, and I felt reluctant to comply
Other CNN Story...http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/02/19/castro/index.html
The Current Administrations Reaction...
--
Ask courageous questions. Do not be satisfied with superficial answers. Be open to wonder and at the same time subject all claims to knowledge, without exception, to intense skeptical scrutiny. Be aware of human fallibility. Cherish your species and your
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References -
in better shape than many othercomparable countries.
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)That freedom thing is really overrated anyway. Castro's nation is bottom of the rung in political rights and civil liberties, 156th freest out of 157 countries in economic freedom, and 165th freest out of 169 countries in press freedom. I'm sure the Cuban people are thrilled to have their freedoms gutted so that they could have free but substandard health care and sufficient literacy to be able to read communist propaganda.
--"I want America to know that I'm, like, totally ready to lead." -- Paris Hilton
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| parent )Would you rather be illiterate and free than literate and oppressed? Dead and free rather than alive and oppressed?
Those maxims like "give me liberty or give me death" are nice, but let's face it, there's a hierarchy of human needs. Or at least that's the argument people on your side make when they tell us we should give up constitutional freedoms in order to save our lives from terrorist attack.
--More Wagster!
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| parent )...in the last seven years?
--"I want America to know that I'm, like, totally ready to lead." -- Paris Hilton
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| parent )... 4th amendment...
... cruel and unusual punishment...
... habeas corpus...
But of course your response is non-responsive.
--More Wagster!
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| parent )Your chance of being subjected to waterboarding or being held without recourse to habeas corpus approaches zero. I laugh at your hyperbole.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )at what percentage does it become a problem? Let me guess - it could be 99.99%, as long as it doesn't affect you personally.
What an inspiring message.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )Then it is lost by everyone. It's not a guarantee anymore.
--More Wagster!
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| parent )- Login or register to post comments
| parent )My chance of being harmed by AQ-like activity is clearly not nil, given the instability and chaos it can cause. We were actually driving in to the Museum of Natural History that morning.
Whereas my chance of being harmed by three scumbags being waterboarded and a fourth being held without charge for a couple of years are meaninglessly small. Because said scumbags are of no positive importance.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )even in the event that something so improbable happens, your chance of being killed is 0.015%
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| parent )I believe I said "instability and chaos". At the end of the day, my pleasant little life depends a great deal on the system being allowed to operate without disruption. That which disrupts places a very real cost on me.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )from an Englishman regarding Saudi threats of another 7/7 just about sums it up:
http://reddit.com/info/68ut9/comments/c036wck
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| parent )not every body in america prisons are though. All they have to do is call you muslim, mention 9/11 and bam, off with your head. After a nice bout of torture.
And then I said "whatever" and moved on to the Sunday cartoon section.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )In America, all they have to do is call you a Democratic governor of a Southern state, and whap -- you're in prison.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )As you can see, the part I refer to is the first, highlighted comment. There are plenty of idiots on this site as well, so I don't understand your picking up a random comment on the thread. The comment you noted doesn't even have any upmods.
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| parent )was based on case law and equality before same. So you're all for selective enforcement based on someone's idea of probable outcomes?
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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| parent )....served by its own thread, as we're moving a bit from Castro or Cuba specifically.
But to respond, I can name you numerous examples of period where said case law and/or equality before same were suspended or ignored in the face of an emergency. We've even given some of the guys responsible national holidays. So I'm for being about as selective as we traditionally have been. How about you?
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )According to the Bush Admin the gov't can hold a US citizen in jail without a trial or even charges. See what happened to Jose Padilla if you don't believe me.
--But she's a queen, and such are queens
that your laughter is sucked in their brains. -D. Bowie
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| parent )- Login or register to post comments
| parent )...to call healthcare in Cuba "substandard". Too much evidence, including the CIA Factbook, to the contrary. I know these phrases just seem to type themselves when you get all worked up, but please be more careful regarding what is a fact and what is simply wingnut propaganda here.
Total agreement with you regarding civil liberties and political rights though. As to press freedom, that's a more complex matter. The range of opinions expressed in US newspapers are much closer to what you'd find in Cuba than in most western countries. And being gay in Cuba is probably worse than in even in parts of Texas and the deep south.
It would be nice though if our literacy rate could be as high as Cuba's, or if our infant mortality rate, especially in our inner cities, was up to Cuban standards.
I was listening to NPR early this morning when a Cuban ex-pat was being interviewed. The gist was that Cuba does a good job with the children, but a lousy job in all areas but healthcare when they become adults.
--Me: We! -- Ali
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| parent )Apparently he wanted to stretch his life expectancy beyond what was possible with his own sterling health care system.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )If that is indeed true so much for the one thing Cuba supposedly holds over the Great Satan.
--"That Sam-I-am! That Sam-I-am! I do not like that Sam-I-am!"- Dr. Seuss
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| parent )your evil laugh again?
Link.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )I don't know how to pick and choose so that I can direct vitriol against Communist regimes but not against run-of-the mill thugocracies.
Cuba is weird. It's a badly repressive state with a bizarrely functional government that provides fairly good public services, especially for Latin America. All of these things are true, and noting that there is bizarre ambiguity is not the same as endorsing it.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )Which I would have thought was the American point of view. When this kind of educated and healthy workforce is at your doorstep why not take advantage of it? After all, Cuba is no more illiberal as a society than Saudia (and from the point of view of women's issues is possibly more liberal). And American interests were expropriated from China too. The argument that American interests are tied up with the establishment of liberty when self interest is in the way is not always tenable. See downthread.
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| parent ). . .Castro's Cuba has never been pragmatic, and the failure has been a bipartisan effort. The US never should have tolerated the existence of a satellite of its mortal enemy less than a hundred miles off its shores--the response to Castro so declaring himself should have been immediate invasion and occupation, rather than the roundabout and inadequate methods the US actually used for which it ended up being blamed anyway. The failure to do so almost led to nuclear war, and has contributed mightily to the misery of the Cuban people these past five decades.
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| parent )That would have been one country where we could have actually "imposed" democracy.
--This place is my vacation.
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| parent )We supported Batista's military dictatorship for six years.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )-o-0-o-
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )the conservative love of dictators.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )The die on Cuba was cast during those administrations. Who was the conservative who wanted to put a dictator back in if Castro was deposed? I must have missed that one.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )I knew he was good, but traveling back in time to take over for Ike?
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )There was no Cuban embargo under Eisenhower. JFK started it in early '62 as payback for Castro's appropriation of US interests there. (The connection between those interests, the Mafia and the Kennedy family I'll leave for someone else to comment on.) I think it's pretty obvious that our current hard-line position on Cuba stems from the Kennedy Administration and what seems to have been a very personal and uncharacteristic hatred Kennedy had for Castro. So again, what does this have to do with Eisenhower?
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )mainly because of anger over Castro's expropriation of assets awarded as favors by Batista. Please reread my post -- the problem was how we handled Castro in the very beginning. We all but forced him to swing into the Soviet orbit at gunpoint.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )- Login or register to post comments
| parent )but he was in many ways as nasty, vicious and immoral of a man as ever held the office.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )Kennedy and Johnson would indeed be classified as conservatives by todays standards, but not Republicans.
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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| parent )rule up to the rise of Castros revolutionaries.
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| parent )The pre-Castro history of Cuba isn't the issue we're dicussing. Sorry.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )....on its face. "The die was cast..." Cast how? By whom? Content free. I'm wary of claims that there is no contingency in the course of events spanning 50 years.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )The places we've directly or proxy invaded and occupied have, on average, an even worse quality of life than Cuba currently does. Haiti is much worse, Grenada is better, Guatemala and Nicaragua are much worse, and Chile is better.
The real missed opportunity was in failing to embrace Castro's nationalism; he could have been an independent Red at worst and a semisocialist experiment similar to Scandinavia or Israel at best.
But we were too wedded to propping up the previous dictator. Pathetic.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )You're pitting the interests of a large number of people who don't know they have something to gain, against a small number of people who do know they have something to lose. The latter always wins.
Few politicians have been willing to make the case that the Cuba embargo is counterproductive, and those that have have been greeted by yawns from the voters they're trying to woo, and pitchforks from the tight-knit and strongly opinionated Cuban-American voting bloc.
I think, though, that lately even the Cuban-Americans have begun to realize that the embargo serves no useful purpose. In the next administration it'll probably be phased out, quietly.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )pragmatism gets thrown out the window: as it has for the last 48 years or so: in favor of hard-line oppositionism to anything and everything associated with the Castro regime.
Yes, American "interests" (well, those left after decades of war and revolution, anyway) were expropriated from China after 1949: but look at the length of time it took the US (long after most of the rest of the world) to even recognize the PRC as as a legitimate political entity. And China is a huge, ancient country thousands of miles away.
Cuba is quite a different story: it is practically next door; and has traditionally had a problematic relationship with dealing with the influence of the US (dating back way before Castro) - and more importantly, has had (again, far predating the '58 Revolution) a significant presence, in the form of a non-trivial Cuban-American population - in Florida.
Unfortunately, the crux of the matter, IMO, is that normalizing relations between the US and Cuba must of necessity, legitimize Castro's Revolution*: and there is just too large a (organized and politically active) segment of the population in a politically important state for this be a practical approach. So far.
*The Communism, nationalization and repression-of-the-ownership-classes part anyway: it's not remembered much now (by either side), but Castro had a lot of covert support from the US in his fight against the Batista regime: Fidel was widely viewed at the time - and not just by lefty dupes - as an attractive alternative to an increasingly non-viable dictatorship.
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| parent )a pretty small voting bloc.
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| parent )then why the CW about the fearsome electoral solidarity of the "Cuban bloc"? Just noise?
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| parent ).
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )Money, education, and political organization. AIPAC probably doesn't have a big constituency, but they do okay.
--More Wagster!
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| parent )There are about a million Cuban-Americans -- around 0.4% of the US population. There are about 18 million people in Florida. Even if all Cuban-Americans lived in Florida, that's not even a tenth of the state.
The noise might be due to their influence on the state's pop culture -- music and food, mostly.
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| parent )The reason the old-guard Cuban American population has a disproprtionate effect on Cuba policy is the same reason domestic manufacturers and labor unions have a disproprtionate effect on trade policy in general. The CA's are small as a group but have (or have had) very concentrated interests; they care. The gains to Everybody Else are diffuse, difficult to quantify and, in the mind of a politician, ultimately swamped by the importance of scrounging together another couple of electoral votes or another House seat. Get it?
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )in the same way that a bridge to nowhere might get you a couple of seats in Alaska. I understand why that group has an effect on this policy: as stillnotking mentioned, they're the only ones lobbying. Nobody else cares because nobody's framed the issue in a way that would make a voter in California or Maine notice. But the group is not really very electorally significant. If you want to talk about concentrated interests in Florida, the black vote is larger, the gay vote is larger, and the non-cuban Hispanic vote is much larger. Get it?
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| parent )"Nobody else cares because nobody's framed the issue in a way that would make a voter in California or Maine notice."
No. It isn't about "framing". It's because the actual impact on the typical voter in Maine of Cuba policy, whether open or closed, is so miniscule as to be rationally swamped by other concerns, like the price of lobsters or Canadian border policy. Contrary-wise, the typical old-guard CA in Miami still has family connections on the island, stands a good chance of having been imprisoned and/or expropriated after the Revolution, of having lost relatives to the Cuban CP or of having relative in the Cuban CP, etc.
"Framing" is a way to fake-up some concern about something, but it seldom lasts and requires some plausible "hook" of interest.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )namely the Chinese expropriated to Taiwan, were pragmatically allowed to set up businesses in the mainland in SEZs like Shenzen by Deng et seq. My point is that say business and trade between the US and Cuba might have allowed Cuban-Americans the opportunities of re-investing in Cuba, creating new links that might in fact have led to Cuba to both becoming prosperous, and allowing the wedge to grow bigger that would then allow further Cubans to be exposed to liberal democratic values, and more importantly - the market.
And Fidel/Raul could well have been on their way out by now. What do you think?
We have a similar situation in here in that the People in erstwhile East Pakistan expropriated to India at the time of partition are still forbidden to own land and start businesses in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).
The fact is Bangladesh is floating on a sea of natural gas which can only really be exploited by India - with huge advantages to both countries. Is it happening? No. A dog in the manger attitude is simply harming both the countries.
IMO, the Chinese have shown an immense pragmatism which other countries would do well to follow.
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| parent )The invasion of Iraq has had no impact on anyone's safety in the US, but 51% of voters accepted Rove's framing that it would. The US policy of embargo on Cuba has had no real effect on Castro's power, but Cuban-American voters accept the frame that it does. But you can keep believing that "the typical old-guard CA in Miami" gets any real benefit out of their lobbying.
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| parent )by consolidating his power and giving him a powerful outside interest to claim he was countering; a Goliath he could play David to. An irresistible outside force that could be blamed for whatever failure the Cuban economy was experiencing that year. Like Chavez is trying to do now, but far more amateurishly
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )....comparison. Cuba was significantly richer, in aggregate, than most of the Carib in 1950. What one has seen since then is a strong tendency towards equalization of incomes coupled, not surprisingly, with a miserable stagnation in growth. So the comparison is questionable from the POV of where Cuba started vis-a-vis the DR, and also from the POV of "...and was it worth it?"
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )Cuba has not been allowed to trade with what surely would be it biggest trading partner, the U.S.
--More Wagster!
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| parent )that none of the other Caribbean states became economic powerhouses even with the advantage of trading with the US.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )and education? China, under Mao, for all his excesses did exactly that - when the US came around with investment they had the workforce necessary.
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| parent )You don't actually need a very healthy or educated general workforce for basic manufacturing or resource extraction, after all. It can't hurt, mind you, but it doesn't look decisive from my POV.
At the risk of starting a more general discussion, I'll say it has a great deal to do with property rights. Nobody puts in FDI or portfolio investment if they think there's a great risk of having it expropriated as soon as it looks like it will turn a profit. Chavez is starting to run into that already. I believe post-Mao China was an environment one could work in. The CP leadership was willing to offer some degree of security, and beyond it the local party bosses could be bribed or co-opted into providing a lot more. Fidel could not be co-opted until the USSR was gone, and ever since the Europeans have been and the Americans have been hoping they wouldn't have to. :^)
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )That post '89, hey let's say '93 or so, it's just been stubbornness that keeps the embargo going? Nostalgia?
Also, I haven't been there but I doubt there are too many knuckle draggers in that expansive Shanghai skyline.
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| parent )... have influence too, but education is the silver bullet. Educated workers are better even for mindless jobs because the discipline of school is an excellent preparation for the discipline of work. And of course there are middle managers and upper level managers and small-time entrepreneurs who actually need the cognitive skills education brings.
--More Wagster!
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| parent )or even South Korea.
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| parent )even after the thaw with China post 1972. Surely the ideological premises of trading with China and Cuba were similar. In fact I'd even go as far to say that Castro might have been the Caribbean Deng as a result rather than becoming a Mao that he did become in the end. A healthy educated workforce might have become a manufacturing outsourcing hub a la the current PRC; and Castro might even have been forced out as a result.
Is it just the influence of Cuban expats on US opinion? I'd be interested to get BG's perspective.
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| parent )A very influential Cuban expat community in a very politically important state, Florida.
--More Wagster!
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| parent )...on the part of US national leaders, especially those who bend towards the right side of the ship. I never could understand the shrieking and whining about communism, a thoroughly discredited economic system, but BushCo and the Clintons would rather slit their wrists then trade with the Cubans. Cowards and morons...every one of them.
Of course, BG may have, well, another opinion about this. I'd like to hear it too.
--Me: We! -- Ali
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| parent )Until '92 or so, it made perfect sense to treat Cuba as hostile territory, more so than its sponsor (which is par for the course.)
Manish is off in thinking that China would be the correct model. Nixon came to a political/global understanding with China first; investment came significantly later and in tandem with internal changes. Cuba was still solidly supported by a rather different and unreconstructed sponsor until the USSR fell apart.
Beyond '92, it became a waiting game. The hope was, I think, that the collapse of COMECON would put general pressure on all of the former satellites to reconstruct themselves. This happened in spades in Eastern Europe and somewhat in SE Asia, but not nearly to the same extent elsewhere (Cuba being a notable example.)
So why hasn't it changed since, given that things stabilized and reconstruction under their own power has looked increasingly unlikely? In a way, I think you're correct about fear being the answer. There are two effects associated with an opening of trade:
A) The locals get exposure to the global economy, various free presses, cultures, etc, as well as making money from producing stuff that other people want.
B) The local government, of whatever stripe, gets to skim resources off of the now faster growing economy in order to burnish its reputation and extend its power. The "stationary bandit", if you will.
These two things work at cross purposes. The latter boosts the power of the incumbent regime while the former weakens it. The fear has been that B would outweigh A in the short-run. Couple that with the notion that the regime's gerontocracy has to pass away pretty soon and you have a formula for inaction. "Just wait 'till the really bad guys are dead and then we'll open up to whomever replaces them."
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )fell apart in 1989, so we're talking nearly 20 years now.
Does anyone think there will be any change with the new Administration - from either party? Or will it remain the sort of bipartisan issue it has always been?
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| parent )...is positive in that regard. Very difficult for anybody of either party to come to an understanding with him specifically. Too much baggage on both sides.
Beyond him, though, I'd expect it oddness of the situation to start fading. The CP needs investment and growth in a bad way, the only logical terminus for most of their trade is with us, and it works in our favor in the short-run as far as incomes and in the long-run as far as breaking down the power of the CP.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent )Cuba is such a strange case -- a satellite nation that no longer has a planet to orbit.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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)....permits. While it's true that Communist Cuba is a bit of an anachronism, three things stand in the remaining leadership's favor:
A) Nobody has been trying all that hard to get rid of them for a while, now. The island ceased to have Airstrip One-type importance in 1992. Since then, it's just been folks like my older relatives in Miami who can't stand the %$#@&*s on a personal level and those who find the ideology repugnant but otherwise harmless to the U.S. while confined to a small, poor island.
B) Lefty nostalgia in LatAm comes back into vogue every once in a while, Hugo being the latest example. While ultimately sterile, it provides a sort backstop for how bad things can get in Cuba itself. A friend who is busy spending his inheritance won't last forever, but Raul can keep sponging while the money is there.
C) More concretely, Fidel was smart enough to tap European capital and set up the parallel dollar economy associated with the tourism industry. It ain't makin' anybody (FN1) rich, but it keeps a floor under things.
FN1: Well, very many, anyway. I understand a distant relative of mine has got himself a Lexus and some bling thanks to judicious..um... placement within the heirarchy. Or had. I believe Fidel cracked down on the more visible signs of wealth inequality a couple of years ago.
--The ultimate result of shielding man from the effects of folly is to people the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
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| parent ). . .but we're going to have to put up with a bunch of morons wearing his face on t-shirts when he blessedly kicks the bucket.
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)That faux campaign uniform he always traipsed around in was getting a little threadbare. Time for a Chinese rip-off set of Nike sweats for the old goat, I think.
--Even a dead midget is far from light. - Confucius
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| parent )I wondered why my T-shirt company went bust, no one
wanted Reagan, Pinochet, Videla, Somoza, Batista....
... should have stuck with Che.
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| parent )My Che tee still has a couple years left in it, minimum.
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
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--Ask courageous questions. Do not be satisfied with superficial answers. Be open to wonder and at the same time subject all claims to knowledge, without exception, to intense skeptical scrutiny. Be aware of human fallibility. Cherish your species and your
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