Fidel Castro has decided that he will be el presidente no more. After suffering an invasion attempt and bungled attempts at assassination, he gets to leave on his own terms which will royally piss off the Cuban émigré in the US and their supporters. It also represents a failure of the cold war hissy fit that passed as US policy on Cuba for many decades.
Hopefully, Castro’s resignation will see a detente in relations between between the US and Cuba and an end to the irrational US policy on Cuba. On the Cuban side, there is a lot that needs to be done to relax restrictions on political freedom as well as improve their human rights record.
A historical what if is would have Castro held onto power so long of the US had adopted more liberal approach to their relations with Cuba?
Then again, maybe the reason for Castro’s resignation is something akin to what happened in this Simpsons’ episode:
Fidel Castro: Comrads, our nation is completely bankrupt! We have no choice but to abandon communism!
Castro’s Aide #1, Castro’s Associates: [sigh]
Fidel Castro: I know, I know, I know… but we all knew from day one this mumbo jumbo wouldn’t fly! I’ll call Washington and tell them they won.
Castro’s Aide #1: But presidente, America tried to kill you!
Fidel Castro: Ah, they’re not so bad. They even named a street after me in San Francisco!
[Aide #2 whispers something into his ear]
Fidel Castro: It’s full of what?
I’ll miss the old bugger. The way he used to stick it to the yanks was a constant delight.
I’ll miss him too. Already Bush is spewing excrement about American helping Cuba to ‘democratise’. (Yeah cause they are being so helpful bringing democracy to the ME). I know this is unfinished business for the Yanks but I do hope that they will let the cubans work out what’s next on their own…(sigh)
As with Suharto, I prefer my dictators dancing on a gibbet like Saddam.
But dying screaming with cancer is good too.
What a horrid little man: riding to victory on waves of discontent under dictator Battista, at first claiming he didn’t want to be President, then bringing in a murderous and dictatorial regime; and – surprise, surprise – awarding himself President-for-Life.
By duration of rule, easily outdoing Battista. By duration of Presidential monologues in Havana, vying for Bore-of-the-Century. By low living standards, a disappointment to his people. By secret police, Neighbourhood Watch for dissidence, jail terms for oppositionists, just another crummy little tinpot, macho dictator. What a fraud. Gave “centralist socialism” a bad name – were it possible to outdo various predecessors around the globe.
The economic blockade was nasty – but pehaps preceded by Cuban Govt seizing US property? (I can’t recall). It may have been entertaining to watch him taunt los Yanquis – but at what cost to the Cuban people? What price are we prepared to pay [meausred in the misey of distant sisters and brothers] for a bit of cheap political entertainment? I ask as one who once found him amusing…. but have since been reading accounts of his early years. Sad reading, vicious and ineffectual policies.
The front page story in The Age today referred in its second paragraph to Castro as the man “who brought the world to the brink of nuclear war”. Several pages inside there was a story about Lee Oswald and Jack Ruby and the assassination of John Kennedy. Surprise, surprise, Kennedy wasn’t glossed as a man “who had brought the world to the brink of nuclear war”.
I’m reminded of Hitchens’ line: many people remember where they were when Kennedy was killed, but how many remember where they were when Kennedy tried to kill them?
Anthony, the notion that Castro and Che Guevara “brought the world to the brink of nuclear war” was also held by the Soviet leadership at the time. This transcript of a discussion between Anastas Mikoyan and the Cuban leadership (sans Castro, who was indisposed, but including Che) shows that the Cubans were deeply unhappy with the Soviets’ decision to withdraw the missiles. Che berated Mikoyan in the most romantically r-r-revolutionary terms. Mikoyan sagely said in response:
At the risk of confirming Graeme Bird’s prejudices, I think we owe a debt of gratitude to the cool heads of Mikoyan and Khrushchev during the Cuban Crisis, without which there might well be many fewer of us here to argue about those events.
George is speaking out, all right, Raye.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/world/americas/20rwanda.html?ref=world
He reckons the Cubans should have “free and fair elections” in a move towards democracy. We can only hope that something similar might eventuate in his homeland. That boy is always good for a laff isn’t he?
Hopefully this will mark the beginning of the end of the futile sanctions regime, and the regime it has bolstered.
For a start they might begin with legalising political parties other than the ruling Communist party, then holding free and fair multi-party elections.
And by establishing an independent judiciary which upholds the rule of law rather than the whims of the dictator.
One can only hope.
Some more interesting transcripts from the missile crisis here, here and here.
Hopefully this is 1989 for Cuba.
I should add that the documents I’ve linked to will all require some sifting of the Leninist-Stalinist rhetoric and codes in order to get to the gist, but it is clear enough that Castro and Che were spoiling for a fight with the Americans and probably had no idea of the possible consequences.
Craig Mc,
While I never approve of capital punishment, murderous tyrants like Castro come closest to deserving it. The gibbet should be for no-one.
The pity is he may never face a court and be forced to confront the simple fact that he has murdered, starved and impoverished “his” people for half a century and, in the process, tried to help the process that would have killed us all.
The US policy was and is undoubtedly a failed one, but that in no way excuses him for his many crimes.
I have always found it odd that some people will excuse (or even laud) crimes when they are done in the name of “Socialism” or “Communism” while those same crimes, with the same effects, are detested when they are done in some other cause – like “Nationalism” or “Patriotism”.
Both are wrong, and using affectionate terms (like “old bugger”) for their perpetrators is simply, IMHO, wrong.
“I should add that the documents I’ve linked to will all require some sifting of the Leninist-Stalinist rhetoric ….”
Paul thanks for the warning but i am sure that many here listen and watch The ABC, the official organ of the communist party of Australia. We can pick the nuance.
Now that Castro is gone or will have less influence on events in Cuba there is a great opportunity for the true flower of socialism to bear fruit. It’s unfortunate that Castro became sidetracked by the enmity bestowed upon Cuba by the United States and failed to achieve in other areas of the Cuban economy the wonderful results that came about in Health and Education.
We can only view with envy what really principled policy can achieve and with Castro’s leaving the stage new opportunities for socialism to flourish and provide an example of what is possible in a decidedly hostile region should be looked forward to by all socialists and progressives with eager anticipation.
Ive always seen Castro’s Cuba, whatever else it might be, as a a long delayed nationalist period. Cuba was unusual in not already being independent from Spain when the US seized it and Puerto Rico as colonial booty in 1898, followed later by a host of absolutely worthless and abusive tyrant puppets backed by the US.
Much of Cuban Communism was a long delayed nationalist movement.
I personally dont expect much will change till Castro dies; whether he’s retired or not he’ll wield power.
and I similarly always find it odd that people who are so quick to beg for “context”, nuance, counterfactuals and deep analysis when discussing dictators who are friends of the west, like Suharto and Pinochet, never extend the same kindness to a man who took over a repressed and poverty-stricken nation. What would Cuba have been like without the revolution? Haiti, most likely, and I bet there aren’t many Cubans who would like to live in Haiti. Cuba without the embargo is a different story altogether, yet it is always Castro who is blamed for “impoverishing” Cuba, a nation which despite a 49 year embargo can give development aid to other nations.
Perspective, eh, it’s a wonderful thing in defense of Pinochet, but a right shit when you have to offer it equally to all sides.
(Not that I particularly accuse you of this, Mr. Reynolds – but the media are rife with it today, and of course no challenge of the embargo, which really … has there ever been a less effective piece of foreign policy barbarity?)
Cuba has a crap economic growth record despite huge Soviet subsidies, due to self-inflicted errors. Human Development indicators look good for the current level of national income but ask why national income is so low? On human rights the main factor that will drive the CP’s electoral defeat is less the individual persecutions of dissidents than the overwhelming sense of surveillance and control. What % of the population are secret police informers?
SG,
What would Indonesia have been without Suharto? Perhaps Cambodia or Laos? Does that excuse what Suharto did any more than what Castro has done to Cuba? I would say no, but it certainly does not place Castro in any better a category that Suharto is in.
Suharto took a country that was grindingly poor but rich in natural resources, stole much of the resource base but at least kept development going.
Castro took a country that was (comparatively) rich and has left it an economic basket case. We do not know if he stole much of it. As for the embargo really hurting? Nonsense. It has been a convenient whipping boy for decades. Europe and the rest of the world never blocked trade with Cuba and the things Cuba sells were always in demand beyond the US.
At a rough guess, at a proportion of the population killed they would be much of a muchness – although I am happy to be corrected there.
Who was better?
Actually, Cubans-against-Castro are a bit like the Judean People’s Liberation Front from Life of Brian:
“What has that despot ever done for us apart from remove our political freedoms?”
“Well, there’s education”
“… and better child mortality indices than the US”
“… close to the best doctor/patient ratio in the world”
“… almost no incidence of AIDs”
“… the world’s only country that meets sustainability and human development criteria of the UNDP”
“… Yes, but apart from health, education, and a sustainable environment, what’s he ever done for us?”
Dave,
You could at least get the revolutionary group’s name right – they were the “People’s Front of Judea”. The “Judean People’s Liberation Front” were a mob of splitters.
As for the rest, looks like you have swallowed the propaganda virtually wholesale.
Hands up if any of the statistics that came out of any of the former Soviet Bloc countries was correct. Any of them. Any at all.
Even if any any every one of those numbers was correct (and I very much doubt they are) even then you are at risk of excusing mass murder on the basis health outcomes. Dodgy grounds indeed.
I’m not really a defender of Cuba, but to compare it in any way to Suharto’s Indonesia in terms of state orchestrated executions is ridiculous, and probably undermines serious critique of the regime in question.
Indonesia by a country mile.
Well Andrew, if you are going to complain that only what you believe is true (the statistics are wrong, are they?) and if you are going to use some legalistic excuse like “Europe never blockaded Cuba”, there isn’t much left to talk about is there? The claim that Cuba was “comparatively” rich before Castro could be fleshed out a little – is that comparative to the US or Haiti? The US or Indonesia?
And then we’re meant to believe that Cuba experienced the same level of mass murder as Indonesia? Or perhaps you were comparing it to Cambodia?
I thought I mentioned something about balance…
Indonesia refuses to admit homosexuals exist.
Castro on the other hand recognised their existence… by putting them in front of a firing squad for it.
Oh yeah, the US Mafiosi who controlled the casinos and pulled Battista’s strings were very rich.
As a friend of mine who spent time in a Cuban labour battalion observed – if the Yanquis move back in after Castro dies, they’ll have the best educated children in the world to exploit as prostitutes this time
My take on that is that Castro was compelled to ally with the Soviets considering the policies of the United Stated states as evidenced by the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954.
>
When Castro took power Allen Dulles was still the director of the CIA. Dulles, along with his brother John (Eisenhower’s Styate Secretary) had interests in the United Fruit Company which was cosy with Latin American plutocrats like Batista. Castro’s choice was plain: go with the Yanks and continue on with business much as usual thus making his revolutionary struggle meaningless, try and go his own way and set up a liberal/social democracy aka Arbenz and risk getting the boot or the bullet from the CIA or ally himself with the Soviets.
>
In realpolitik terms the solution was obvious. It was also a class illustration of Machievelli’s assertion that politics have no relation to morals. Given that the United States, at least from the end of the second World War to the present, has betrayed itself (to borrow from Barbara Tuchman) and that it has frequently undermined genuine democratic movements in favour of ruthless autocracy in furtherance of its own interests, Castro made the smart move. A cursory examination of the treatment of the Sandanistas will show how difficult it is to institute genuine democracy in the region if the US feels such is counter to their interests.
>
Which isn’t to say that this wasn’t most unfortunate for all those people who faced the rough end of Communist ‘justice’.
>
I hope that the Cubans will be able to make the transition to democracy in the near future. I hope also that the US will produce a leader who is wise enough and strong enough to see that, no matter the short term losses, in the long term it is in their interests and the interests of the world to see such happening; to say nothing of Cubans themselves.
>
Funnily enough I was thinking of this thru the prism of A Few Good Men last night. Two lines went thru my mind. The first by Col Jessop who boast that he “eats breakfast 300 yeards from 4000 Cubans who are trying to kill him”; the second from Lt Comm Galloway (Demi Moore) who lauds the marines because “they stand on a wall and say nothing is going to hurt you tonight. Not on my watch”.
>
??? The self-delusion is amazing. I know it’s only a movie but I think it expresses something about the paranoia at the heart of US foreign attitudes. From these lines one would think that it was Cuba that was the aggressive superpower occupying a corner of the sovereign land of the poor little United States.
>
Castro should’ve called elections in 1964 when he promised to do so. That he didn’t is his fault. It is however hard for most people to simply walk away from power. The Americans made it much much harder.
Suffice to say, political killings are unacceptable, period.
But if we’re talking ‘levels’ or percentages, Cuba is much like Pinochet’s Chile – and a mile behind the disgusting ‘anti-communist’ (actually, anti-indigenous)purges by US backed regimes in Guatemala, with nominally elected leaders like Rios Montt (of course, a graduate of US School of the Americas). Estimated deaths since the installation of a pro-US regime in 1954 are at least 100,000, mainly between 1960 and 1985. And still going on – 2500 murders since 2001.
Rios Montt is yet to face justice.
Andrew Reynolds
You said:
Hands up if any of the statistics that came out of any of the former Soviet Bloc countries was correct. Any of them. Any at all.
Actually, data I’ve used on my own blog (this is the post with the densest hard data) comes from such sources as the UN Development Program, the World Wildlife Fund, and, wait for it, wait for it, THE CIA WORLD FACT BOOK. If the US Central Intelligence Agency were to fudge any figures about Castro, you can bet the data would have been skewed negatively. CIA data on Cuban demographics, literacy and health are here, child mortality rankings here (US is 180th worst in the world, Cuba at 182, Oz at 202, Singapore (best) at 221).
Do you care to give a source for what you call “mass murders”?
BTW: If you visit the CIA, check out the Junior Secret Squirrel pages, including games.
Cuba never had much going for it besides cigars, sugar, tobacco and tourism, all of which continue to support, if you can call it that, its economy today, and those’re all it’ll have when Castro and communism are gone for real. The transition away from communist totalitarianism is inevitable at this point, although, like the Miami exiles I’m not holding my breath. Don’t expect the U.S. to invade, either, absent a descent into Haitian-style chaos. But when the change comes, the biggest export Cuba will produce will be immigrants, and it’s biggest import will be lawsuits.
And music. Don’t forget the music.
Poor Cubans, frozen in a rictus of commie self-righteousness.
Dumb Yanks. They could have loved Castro to death decades ago. Instead they elevate him into icon status with their own version of self-righteousness.
Even the Bay of Pigs veteran interviewed on the ABC this morning implored Bush to butt out of Cuban affairs, given the now genetic inability of the US to deal sensibly with the existence of a small, poor nation under its nose.
Castro bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war?? Gimme a break. He exercised his sovereign right to arm his country as he saw fit.
The Khrushchev got rid of the Jupiter missiles in Turkey, got a guarantee of non-invasion of Cuba by the US.
And the KGB got rid of Khrushchev.
(And about 50 nukes remained in Cuba after the pull-back of the photographed ones.)
Not a bad result for 13 days’ work.
Hands up if you know how many Cuban doctors have voluntarily served in East Timor.
I very much doubt that 50 nuclear-armed missiles remained in cuba, el katz!
hasta la vista
286 Mr zorronsky
As I said, happy to accept correction. If anyone has (reasonably) accurate statistics related to political murders (or any murders) by the governments of Cuba both before and after the revolution I would be interested. I strongly suspect they would have gone up markedly after the revolution – though perhaps not to the levels of Suharto, or, much worse, Cambodia, China or Russia.
As for the rest, I agree with Greg. Despite having (probably) improved health outcomes and better education the people of Cuba they are now dirt poor and, after the next government actually ditches dictatorship, they will probably be well-educated taxi drivers and other underpaid service personnel.
I hope I am wrong in that, BTW.
That was the allegation made to John Ranelagh in his study of the CIA, ep 1, “Hi-Tech, Low Cunning”.
http://www.answers.com/topic/cia-the-secret-files-part-1-hi-tech-low-cunning?cat=entertainment
Bill Mollison the Alternative Peace Prize winner,and Permaculture Gardens were immediately acceptable to Castros Cuba.Barefoot Marxism had him as a booted Marxist,or to be more correct Barefoot Socialism,a good mag,all about leading a green revolutionary life,and work no more than two hours a day.Apparently,one can only find fault with Cubas Castro for shooting homosexuals,to starving the population to viciousness generally,whilst the U.S.A. is the cleanest skin on the Planet with all sorts of records out in front of any known civilized society in the killing and other races.The reason they havent bombed the innocent citizens of Cuba is because they had other locations to get rid of spent Nuclear warheads,and,also destroy other island states around the Bermuda triangle.The bravest thing Fidel has achieved is retiring unambiguously,and heaps of money for and against him has gone to all the publishers of books on him,maybe more than the total Gross figures for every year of Cubas existence.And all these Publishers are totally and completely honest without a vested interest!?Dont you think!?
There are several hundred Cuban doctors in Timor – Ive met a few. More importantly, they are training nearly 1000 Timorese back in Cuba to take over when they graduate. PNG and Vanuatu look likely to take some doctors to, may have already.
The Cubans also run a major rural literacy program in Timor.
Lefty E,
Good to see they are sending out people suited to help fix problems, rather than Che.
Also good to see the doctors are doing some thing more useful than driving taxis, as they probably would be doing in Havana.
Katz@28
“poor Cubans”, eh? Perhaps you meant “Poor Cuban government”? If there were free elections, I doubt the commies would get many votes. Shall we open a book here? I bet their vote is below 15%.
Katz said: “Castro bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war?? Gimme a break. He exercised his sovereign right to arm his country as he saw fit.”
oh well, that’s OK then. By this logic it’s OK for Israel, Pakistan, India, France, North Korea, Iran, Syria, Canada, USA, China, UK, Australia, Ghana, Egypt, etc to have nuclear weapons too. Sovereign states. Arm themselves as they see fit. Fine and dandy. No objections from Katz. I’m lost for words. Really. Have you read about or visited Hiroshima? And that was a SMALL nuclear bomb, nowhere near “world’s best practice” Katz.
Katz writes: “Not a bad result for 13 days’ work”. Although there’s a fair bit of competition, I nominate this as an entrant in the next Callous Flippancy Awards. My guess is that you were alive and literate in 1962. Do you remember the fear, Katz?? Many millions in Europe, USSR, North America thought they were likely scheduled for vaporisation. And the vaporised would have been the lucky ones. The radiological pall would have blighted the planet for decades. Yet you adjudge the outcome of that international crisis “not a bad result”. Your words send a chill through me. The planet is real, Katz. Many of us would prefer it NOT be converted into a longlasting horror….
Katz you call Cuba a small, poor nation. By your lights, do most “small, poor nations” have the right to possess or host nuclear missiles? You can guess my likely attitude. I’m interested to hear of yours.
Andrew you don’t get it, do you? 50 years of blockade and you accuse Castro of making Cubans dirt poor? The blockade was intended to stifle capital flows and trade – how else was Cuba meant to get rich?
It’s ridiculous blindness, plain and simple.
SG,
Is the US really the only country Cuba can sell sugar, tobacco etc. to? Nonsense. All the embargo (not blockade – that was in place for a few days in 1961 only) has done is close US ports to Cuba. Everything Cuba has wanted to sell it has been able to sell to others. All the capital it was willing to take could have been provided to it.
The embargo has been a consistent, and incorrect, excuse for decades – held on to by those who imagine that trading with the US is the best type of trade of all. I would not have thought you as being such a starry-eyed admirer of the US, SG – but I guess I was wrong.
What is this, Confected Outrage Week?
Why didn’t someone tell me? I’m genuinely outraged.
No actually, I’m only pretending to be outraged if it is in fact Confected Outrage Week.
Gosh Ambi.
Let’s straighten a few things out.
1. My sympathy was for the suffering of the Cuban people who have had to put up with Castro for almost half a century.
2. They weren’t Castro’s missiles. They were the Soviet Union’s missiles. Castro simply agreed to host them, like Turkey did for the US’s at the same time.
3. It was up to the US whether they decided to chuck a spaz over the Soviet Union’s missiles in Cuba. That’s what Kennedy did. No US spaz, no missile crisis. Capeche?
In reality the only ones to suffer from the blockade, SG, have been US cigar smokers who, if they want a legal one, need to get one from the Dominican Republic. They are not as good.
Wow! Clear thinking at its worst. Try no nuclear tipped missiles 130 kms off your coast then no missile crisis. And before you jump in with “what about Turkey?” I think that a very good outcome of the missile crisis was that the US withdrew their missiles from Turkey.
It gave us twenty years of relative peace until the Soviets decided to deploy the SS20, leading to the inevitable US and NATO response.
I certainly liked Castro. He reminded me of my father. Ready to lead from the front. Liked the sound of his own voice. Hard as nails.
I dare say the patriarchal thing is a strong element in his popularity throughout the world, especially amongst those with Latin background. Just as matriarchy works for the Queen, particularly amongst those Anglos who remember nanny.
I also had some time for his ideological program. Welfarist in economics, Nationalist in politics. Conservative in culture.
The results were not to bad, esp given the diverse nature of his nation. Cuba’s HDI rating is 51, ahead of Mexico. Evidently close economic relations with the USA are not the only thing that go to make a society work.
Pity he couldnt find some space for a bit of entrepreneurial capitalism, ala China.
Castro made Cuba a nicer place for families. was rather old-fashioned in his cultural philosophy, which favoured harsh punishments for social vices. The streets of Cuba were safer than pretty much any other Carribean country, except perhaps for Barbados. No Yardies in Havana!
All that will change when the Cubans get a proper dose of post-modern liberalism, surely coming their way as they open up to the RoW, esp Miami. It already got a taste, unfortunately.
GregM exhibits ideational inflexibility.
Why couldn’t the US have accepted missiles in Cuba as an unwelcome inevitability of the nuclear age?
Need I remind him that the US had already accepted the much more dangerous reality of the USSR as first a minor nuclear power and then for a time the most capable nuclear power without threatening imminent global armageddon? Why not threaten to go to war over that unwelcome inevitability?
It was the choice of the US to escalate the Cuban missile sites, a relatively small increment in the nuclear balance of terror, into a potentially world-ending confrontation.
27 Lefty E Feb 20th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Castro on a par with Pinochet as a political murderer! Well, that is almost right, except a little hard on Pinochet. He re-stored Chilean democracy and reived the Chilean economy.
Still it does Fidel an injustice. He always came accross as more human than the cold and unsympathetic Pinochet.
Lefty E says:
The ruling elites of Latin America have never needed much help from the US to monster their populations, as the example of Cortez proves. In fact Latin America , as the Cold War wound down in the late eighties, started to liberal democratise, with considerable prompting from the Reagan admninistration.
Now they wont have gringos to blame their problems on anymore.
But I understand it is important for Lefty preachers to maintain a healthy fear and loathing of right-wing demons amongst their congregation.
I saw Castro speak at a UN conference about 10 years ago. It was true there were few heads of state there, but when Castro addressed the conference, the hall was packed with members of other countries’ official delegations. He had a bigger audience than anyone else by a long shot. I thought this was interesting in itself.
He spoke in Spanish, but we had the instant translation. He railed against the west and against the US in particular. I thought he was charismatic and was a compelling performer. Lots of people lined up to have their pictures taken with him – including one of my colleagues.
Andrew, you do know that foreign companies which do business with Cuba are penalised in the US, don’t you? The embargo isn’t quite the toothless tiger you make it out to be.
But even if it were, are you trying to tell us that the sudden disappearance of US trade from the world economy tomorrow wouldn’t affect us all a little? That all those central banks and governments the world over worrying about a US recession are just silly? How much worse for a small nation economically dependent on primary industry exports to a vastly richer economy, do you think? Especially if that richer economy completely disappeared?
Few people in the Western world have any idea of the all-pervading vindictiveness of the medieval economic siege that Cuba has been forced to operate under for almost 50 years, one that has only increased in intensity over time.
Western propaganda has ensured that Westerners are almost totally ignorant of the fact that any corporation or business anywhere in the world that does any form of commercial exchange with Cuba is blackballed in the international commercial arena. So they stay away.
Yes, Cuba’s standard of living is low and its buildings are falling down and they have few flush toilets and they are forced to keep reconditioning cars from the fifties and bicycles probably from the forties to get around. Yet I defy any nation on earth to operate under such a horrendous, long-term, foreign-imposed economic burden and still manage to keep its people basically fed and sheltered – let alone achieve a world class medical and education system.
And, yes, a tight lid is kept on any form of seditious dissent – particularly of the right-wing kind. Yet in the face of the ongoing terrorist campaign mounted from US soil by the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organisations (including the downing of Cuban Airlines Flight 455 in 1976 with the loss of 73 lives) to overthrow the Cuban government and assassinate its president, I defy any nation to respond in any way other than Cuba has.
Jack, its wise to put a sock in it when you know nothing about an issue.
Read up on Guatemala, the School of the Americas, the fall of the Arbenz government (US planes literally flew in the new junta) and get back to us later.
The US could not have more centrally involved in the Guatemalan regime.
Well they could respond by having free and fair multi-party elections to resolve the issue. In the last twenty years lots of countries have done that and overall the outcome hasn’t been bad.
We seemed to have pulled off one here in Australia last year without too much bloodshed.
But there I go again with ideation inflexibility, a heinous wickedness according to Katz.
I wouldn’t assume free and fair elections would bring about all that much change. Almost all the anti-Communist Cubans live in the States, and the great majority wouldn’t be rushing back. Although the human rights picture is disturbing, it would be foolish to overestimate the size of the mostly middle class and very small opposition to Castro. I’m not pushing the whole “socialist paradise” line, but you have to remember what came before – and the reality of literacy and health in Cuba.
The same sort of thing that happened in Russia is most unlikely to happen in Cuba. Any sort of transition is likely to be much closer to where, say, Vietnam is now.
And, incidentally, Russia is a good counter-example to the narrative of “with democracy comes love of capitalism” thing. Not that I’m saying that’s what you’re saying, GregM.
Interesting and nuanced post from Shiraz Socialist, who was in Cuba in the 90s:
http://shirazsocialist.wordpress.com/2008/02/20/socialism-in-one-country-fidel-steps-down/
Not wicked, just enervating.
<blockquote.And, incidentally, Russia is a good counter-example to the narrative of “with democracy comes love of capitalism� thing. Not that I’m saying that’s what you’re saying, GregM.,/blockquote.
Actually it is what I am saying Kim. Russia is working itself out. With a legacy of five hundred years of autocracy and seventy years of even worse autocracy it’s not doing a bad job at all. Just be patient.
.I’m not pushing the whole “socialist paradiseâ€? line, but you have to remember what came before – and the reality of literacy and health in Cuba.
Kim, have you ever researched those statistics. Cuba before Castro wasn’t heaven on earth but it wasn’t hell either. They were doing pretty well both on the literacy and health scales of the time, indeed on a number of measures better than European countries.(I appreciate that here Katz will intervene to point out my ideation inflexibility, but I’d rather stick with the facts).
Oh yes it would,Kim. Even if it returned every member of Castro’s party to office it would give them legitimacy. They would speak as authentic voices of their people, which they are not now.
Gee, just when I was agreeing with Jack’s observations for once, he had to go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like “started to liberal democratise, with considerable prompting from the Reagan admninistration”.
You mean like funding the Contras by selling weapons to murderous fundie dipsticks?
“And, incidentally, Russia is a good counter-example to the narrative of “with democracy comes love of capitalismâ€? thing.”
As is China. Between ‘em they’ve a invented a new model for the 21st century. Globalised capitalism without democracy. Good for us Western legacy holders (cheap computers!)so far…
GregM, that comment at 53 was completely facile. It isn’t even true – Palestine had free and fair elections a year ago too, remember, and as a result their democratically elected government was put under siege by an aggressive foreign power, thrown under a vicious embargo by the US, and then subjected to a coup. This is what would happen if Cuba had “free and fair” elections which voted in anyone but the preferred US partner.
Is there some special name for the argument that people like GregM and Andrew Reynolds are using? Some kind of toxic combination of wide-eyed naivete, glorification of western virtues, ignorance of history, ignorance of pretty much everything else, and breathless optimism all at the same time…
Cuba provided great support for other countries in their struggle against dictatorship and colonization. This generosity came at a cost internally.
They have been on a war footing for a long long time. A bit like those Japanese in the jungle.
Is there some special name for the argument that people like GregM and Andrew Reynolds are using?
Yes. We call it democracy. An alien concept to you, apparently. Still we’ll stick up for it while you think of a better way, in your opinion, that you’d like to make other people, but not yourself, live.
GregM, at which point between the succesful overthrow of Batista and today do you think Cuba’s best shot at Australian style democracy came?
And what factors lead to this failure?
“It was the choice of the US to escalate the Cuban missile sites, a relatively small increment in the nuclear balance of terror, into a potentially world-ending confrontation.”
Not sure about being “relatively small”, Katz. I don’t think ICBMs existed at that point, so before Cuba the USSR had no way to guarantee delivery of nuclear weapons to US soil. Long-range bombers could be shot down by the extensive US air defense system with its specialised interceptors. Soviet nuclear missile subs would have to come close to the US coast, making themselves vulnerable to ASW.
But I’m just quibbling. You’re quite right about the morality of the crisis. I don’t follow the logic of the people on this thread who think US nuclear missiles in Turkey were hunky-dory, but Soviet missiles in Cuba were TEH OUTRAGE!
Morality is hardly the issue anyway. The US and USSR were playing hard-nosed strategy, and they both in the end made the right choice: each gave up something in exchange for something they wanted more, and defused the crisis. One can respect both Kennedy and Khrushchev (though not Castro) for their decision making at this time.
Letterman put his finger on the real danger here. Will Castro be succeeded by his idiot son Fidel W. Castro?
It’s fascinating to read this thread in conjunction with the recent one on Saudi Arabia. Let me see if I can synthesise the two.
Let’s say we have a country X that has a less-than-ideal record on human rights and democracy.
Who must be blamed for this? Well, it depends …
a) If the US has friendly diplomatic relations with X, and buys its products in huge quantity, well then, its obvious — the US is to blame! The US should cut ties and impose sanctions in order to pressure country X to improve.
b) If the US has unfriendly diplomatic relations with X, and buys none of its products, well then, its obvious — the US is to blame! The US should normalise relations and remove sanctions in order to entice country X to improve.
Or to put it more briefly, if anything bad is happening anywhere in the world, it’s America’s fault.
I’ll be fascinated to see if this attitude changes at all once Obama gets in.
Well, I won’t debate Russia with you, GregM, because it would be off topic. Suffice it to say that we differ.
Yep, they were coming off a reasonable base. But there are significant advances in penetration and equity of delivery, and Batista’s regime was hardly a pinup for either democracy or human rights (again, not that you’re saying that, but it’s worth saying).
I have no doubt the regime has majority support, but point taken. However, don’t assume they won’t take that step, or a few steps along the way. It would put the US’ rhetoric in a very interesting light and put the economic blockade on very shaky grounds indeed.
By the way, slightly off topic, but a great insight (and a sympathetic one despite his own leftieness) into the mentality of the Cuban exiles is John Sayles’ novel Los Gusanos (and it also gets Miami just right). If people only know Sayles as a film maker, and like him, they really should track down his novels!
Err, Paulus, I haven’t read the whole thread but I, for one, don’t think
(a) Castro had anything to be proud of on human rights (as I said);
(b) that the US’ stance towards Cuba has anything much to do with human rights.
It has everything to do with winning votes in Florida. Ask any of the congress people (including McCain, if memory serves) who’ve tried and failed to wind back the blockade.
Anyway, I thought the standard free trade argument was that economic relations being enhanced promoted freedom.
Kim, I don’t disagree with any of that. I’m just responding to the people who think you’d help the HR/democracy issues with Saudi Arabia, by the US imposing sanctions, and with Cuba, by the US removing sanctions.
So, which is it to be: help HR/democracy by free trade, or by sanctions? Personally, I’d go for the former rather than the latter. But either way, one should be consistent.
I’m not sure you do have to be consistent, Paulus. Horses for courses, I reckon. The Cuban economy could potentially be interlinked much more closely than the Saudi economy with the US, and the nature of the two regimes (and for that matter the nature of the human rights abuses) is very different.
NB – I wasn’t saying sanctions for Saudi Arabia, either, lest I be misunderstood.
But political moves would presumably be much more fruitful there, because the US and Saudi governments are close. The Cuban government wouldn’t give a fuck what representations were made to them by the current administration, at least. There’ve been several attempts on the part of past administrations to make things more sensible, but all have fallen on the stony ground of domestic US politics. In any case, as with so many other things, nothing much can be hoped for til there’s a new American president – whoever that might be.
Fred Halliday in Open Democracy:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization/castro_3855.jsp
GregM, your definition of democracy is “ome kind of toxic combination of wide-eyed naivete, glorification of western virtues, ignorance of history, ignorance of pretty much everything else, and breathless optimism all at the same time…” ? No wonder we got howard. Perhaps from this working definition you could answer wbb at 62?
Paulus at 65, is you seem to be suggesting that some commenters here believe the US is way too friendly with some dictatorships, and way too cruel to the citizens of other dictatorships it doesn’t like. You seem, in fact, to be suggesting that some commenters here have a problem with the hypocrisy of US foreign policy, and maybe even believe US power could be used in a more positive way across a range of problems. Good of you to catch up with the discussion, but I don’t think the rest of us needed the summary. Do you have any other unique insights to add?
Got up close and personal with Fidel one night, nearly two decades ago. One of the few Anglos in the Presidential palace, besides me – a dry as, pommy acquaintance, who was cracking funnies with me, about Fidel and/or his beard – gave me the tip to stand behind the most beautiful blonde in the ballroom, and bang-o, up comes 20th century revolutionary icon and translators, to have a chat, (in Spanish of course) with said blonde. I was standing behind her suppressing a serious desire to do rabbit ears. The English bloke’s black London-based Cuban wife stood patiently beside the blonde, Fidel finally noticed her, and asked about her braided hair, while fingering one of her braids, and asking where she was from. When she said ‘from Cuba’ – he smiled and said loudly – “but of course you areâ€?, petted & kissed her hand, before heading off to another group of guests. We almost had to revive her.
I was in Havana as delegate at a Latin American film festival; the fortnight had everything and more than you would expect:
A sleazy Cuban general, hiding the supposed dissident Cuban lover of my French film-maker friend in our hotel room, with bumbling hotel security pretending not to look for him, (he was behind the curtains with his feet sticking out – really dumb stuff, they didn’t find him btw, and I heard he was a diamond or narcotics smuggler years later), the cream of the Latin American arts scene lounging on elegant crumbling verandahs most nights – Gabriel Garcia etc, second generation PLO and ANC trainees arguing about tactics in lobbies, fat Eastern European bureaucrats in bad suits stuffing breakfast in the old Sinatra room, an official welcome home to Cuba’s soldiers from the Angolan war in which Cuba, the US, and South Africa had only signed a peace treaty the year before, , oh, a film festival……and then if it wasn’t already like a film about a film festival, it turned into Rick’s Cafe late one night, as the combined US airforce took off from Gitmo and other home bases to invade Panama and take down Noriega (current address: Federal Penitentiary) shock and awe alright, curing the German head jurist of at least five neuroses in his room (ok. too much information) and lastly ‘Socialism or Death’ on the telly, and mass street protests just as the carnival pulled out of town, a few days later.
In relation to Cuba generally, I thought at that time, that you clearly wouldn’t be swapping places with any ‘poor bugger’ in Honduras or Guatemala or Haiti, or a number of other central and south American countries with firing squads aplenty, and no decent hospital for the bullet wounds. It was a functional society with a lot of joyousness, personal safety, a huge amount of national pride and multi & mixed racial harmony in spades.….but for someone who’d grown up in the West, it did feel like a giant school camp with some serious penalties for disobeying the camp rules, let alone wanting reform, or indeed regime change from within. But considering the constant war footing Cuba had stood at for decades, it was remarkably relaxed and although poor – it wasn’t grindingly so. Like I said, school camp seemed infinitely preferable, given that choice.
It was also clear that there was going to be a growing generation gap between older Cubans, who had experienced life before the revolution and then the revolution with subsidies, and younger people who were sooner enough going to be confronted with the American dream with increased communications, amidst much tougher times.
Right at that moment, the eastern bloc was dissolving on an almost daily basis, I think CeauÅŸescu,
had just been strung up weeks before, and sugar wasn’t going to be swapped for buses and power plants etc. in the new world order. Castro should have taken the first steps towards to a mixed economy, and some low key democratic reforms at that point, but from all the signs on the ground, you could see that tourism dollars, and low value state exports, and a hardening up by the regime against the small but growing internal dissatisfaction, was about as grand a plan there was, in the pipeline.
It was also hot and fertile, and I wondered why locals in the cities, didn’t plant fruit trees and veggies, in their tropical gardens, instead of spending hours lining up in front of shops full of empty shelves. A local version of Burke’s Backyard would have been most useful, I was thinking. And I lined up quite a few times, just to line up.
And the music was fooking amazing – it was pre-the Buena Vista Social Club, and the house band at the Havana Libre Hotel (the old Havana Hilton completely intact, with mattresses from 1958) were these old amazing old dudes….funnily enough….. I’m pretty sure Ruben Gonzalez was the pianist (or his older brother), as we sat long into the night drinking mojitos as the almighty righteous drone of Uncle Sam flew over head.
And in relation to being a ‘poor country’ – the spread Castro laid on for his very esteemed guests was the proof, literally in the pudding – the hot tucker was served from old sunbeam electric frypans – beans and rice (angels and devils), and some other hot dishes, and cut up fruit platters for dessert. If he was hoarding something, it must have been good food. The rum however, instantly addictive, and the coffee as strong as pub speed. The guards at the Presidential palace btw. were the sharpest looking black dudes in Shaft-era clobber packing 70’s heat in all the right places.
As for the general who trapped me one night on the lawns of the Hotel Nationale and was fondling without permission, I whispered in his hopeful ear – that he shouldn’t be fooled by my good hearted fellow country folk, who come to Cuba to dig sewers and build school houses in their own holidays – where I came from we sent armies to kill communists…. and took our own ammo. He didn’t speak English, but got the message.
And lastly, the reason I got the gig was, I had shot a video for my French fellow film student, based on the Rainbow Warrior story – half French/English – a black comedy – called ‘Let Them Eat Yellow Cake’, I never saw the final edit, or attended its modest screening.
Everyone:
Okay, I’ll own up. As a young fellow, I was one of those who cheered when Castro took power – after the appalling murdering, plundering Batista regime, who wouldn’t? Then, Castro spoiled it all by becoming yet another lawyer-turned-politician.
What Castro did, though, was build Cubans’ pride in themselves and give them a respected place in the world. For instance: of all the foreigners working in Viet-Nam in the early 1980s, the Cubans were probably the most genuinely admired and liked; maybe it was the same in parts of Africa too.
Of course, all the education and health care and national pride in Cuba came at a heavy social cost – and Castro was indeed ruthless in dealing with opposition – but he was far less so than were some of the brutal dictators who were our supposed friends-and-allies.
Would Cuba be different today if the United States had not been so irrationally and counter-productively hostile to Cuba? You bet it would!! And today, Sen~or F. Castro would be signing copies of the 9th edition of his monumental History Of The Hispanic Peoples, written during his decades in open detention, with everyone praying he would last long enough to receive his well-deserved 2008 Nobel Prize for Literature. It didn’t happen.
It didn’t happen because the United States cannot survive without having The Evil Enemy on whom to focus their hatreds – what else can you expect out of a country that was founded by Puritan fanatics and by the 17th century religious extremists, Bible-banging terrorists and the hate-filled fundamentalists kicked out of a devastated Europe after the Thirty Years War? Just as well the Americans in power had Castro and Cuba to hate …. otherwise we Australians might have become their evil enemy. It’s a real pity, though, that all the sensible Americans who wanted a firm yet open approach to Cuba had their voices drowned out by the screaming zealots.
Thanks for your comments Paulus. You have highlighted the lack of clarity infecting some of the discussion.
The Soviet Union’s R7 ICBM was operational from 1958, four years before the Cuban Missile crisis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-7_rocket
Castro should have taken the hint from Gorbachev and retired 15 years ago. The cold war was long over even then. He could have negotiated a relatively good deal with Clinton on lifting the embargo and normalising relations, up to a point anyway. Cuba could have made the transition to a social democracy.
But he didn’t. He’s hung on till he’s 81 and handed power to his 76 year old brother. That is pathetic. There’s every chance now that there will be a power vacuum the dreams of the Miami emigres, who are as nasty a group as it possible to imagine, will be realised.
Thats a fantastic story, Jo!
Chris McGillion and Morris Morley argue that Cuba could evolve into a social democracy with a strong nationalist bent, if left to its own devices by the US.
Graham Bell
‘Would Cuba be different today if the United States had not been so irrationally and counter-productively hostile to Cuba? You bet it would!!’
That’s the frustrating thing about Cuba – we will never know. And everything else is speculation. If the fat cat rulers of the world would just leave a socialist country alone for once, we might get to find out if a primarily socialist system can actually work or not – and/or what it would naturally evolve into.
To point the finger at a ‘failing’ socialist state, while hoping no one notices that we’ve got our foot on its neck, does not do wonders for capitalist credibility.
jo
I agree with Lefty E. Wonderful account. A good friend of mine has just returned from Cuba and I was staggered by one anecdote she told …
On a tour of a hospital, she said she and her travel group were serenaded by an impromptu band of about twenty doctors with guitars – doctors!! I can’t imagine medicos behaving like this in any hospital in downtown Miami … or Oz for that matter – I’d settle just for some eye contact.
Might be because there’s so many doctors, Pangar, they form sub-cultures.
Just reading about Vic’s chronic GP shortage. Maybe Cuba could help us out.
I tell you one thing – a lot of countries will miss their medical assistance program if it goes.
Some more perspectives on Cuba after Castro at the Grauniad.
Thanks GregM around [45]
The despair in my post [40] was genuine, Katz. You are of course free to read it as “Confected Outrage”. After reading your post which I found so distressing, I am ready to give up on LP. I despair of human organisms who move nuclear weapons around the globe as if they’re chess pieces. I despair of “tit for tat” as if it’s all a valid and sovereign right of governments (totalitarian or democratically elected).
We got rid of “divine right of kings” didn’t we? This is far, far worse.
Though it’s only a tenth-order addendum* to the main nuclear weapons waltz, I also despair of those human organisms who excuse, or cheer on, the participants in these deadly manoeuvres. For me, this is an area where I find “nuance” difficult to attain.
At post [75] Katz claims to have diagnosed “the lack of clarity infecting some of the discussion”. Dr Katz, I trust you will find sterility conditions improving, as you make your rounds of the wards.
For myself, I abhor the sterility that a huge nuclear explosion could impose on a hapless target. It stinks. It’s lacking nuance. It’s anti-worker. It’s anti-women. In fact, I dare say it’s anti-Cuban too. Los cubanos son mis hermanos y hermanas. {Cubans are my brothers and sisters}
* but if sufficient numbers of humans require their governments to remove this threat, it will be removed.
*** full marks to Nelsdon Mandela – on his election to the Presidency, he renounced nuclear weapons and had the (unannounced but suspected)South African specimens destroyed. But Mandela, unlike Castro, is a true humanitarian.
goodbye Katz
SG (#50)
They are only “penalised” if they use property stolen from US firms to profit – Fidel unilaterally nationalised (AKA stole) much productive resource when he came to power. Unless the international firms use the property that was stolen from US firms they are free to do what ever they want. If Cuba was really hurting from it they could simply return the property to its rightful owners, or, if they are claiming it was stolen by the corporations in the first place, they could sue. The fact
It is a “toothless tiger”, SG – deal with it. Cuba’s economic failures are Castro’s, not the various US governments since.
Spiros [76]:
Nice thought about Clinton and Castro getting together. So long as the Pentagon and the State Dept. were both infested with raving loonies, albeit clever and highly qualified raving loonies, such a meeting of minds was impossible no matter how much it would have been mutually beneficial. Maybe Castro could then have retired to upstate New Jersey or to Long island – apparently he enjoyed living in the U.S. when he was a young man.
Pangar Ban [79]:
One of the nice things about blogosphere is that we can all speculate to our heart’s content with minimal penalties.
A mature and evolving socialist/Marxist state? China? Viet-Nam? DPRK doesn’t really fit the model. You are right about mainstream criticism of Cuba though.
Lefty E [80] …. and Pangor Ban too:
Why not bring in Cuban doctors? I would be happy to be treated by one of them – even if we had to have an interpreter. If we had a Cuban-style health system instead of Howard’s highly protected and delightfully profitable Doctors’ Unions, there would be no shortage at all of doctors in Australia.
Ambigulous, there’s no need to stop lovin’ us generally coz you’re annoyed with Katz!
My views about democracy, or the lack of it, in Cuba have not changed since this comment in 2003.
The comment elicited this response from local Fidelista Kim Bullimore, who in turn was answered by David McKnight.
And there’s no need to stop loving me.
Coz I’m cute.
Andrew, all that talk of “rightful owners” is a bit naive in the context of pre-1959 Cuba.
So, some mafia scumbag bribed another crook in Batista regime for a casino licence (in a return brown paper bag), 50 years ago, while humming a Sinatra tune and snorting coke of a lithe brown belly.
Big deal! Tell someone who cares …. You might find a handful in Florida.
I’m not suggesting you’re this WHWL, Dave, but it’s too good to ignore:
Lefty E,
You may want to actually re-visit your understanding of property ownership in pre-1959 Cuba. The vast bulk of the foreign owned stuff was not casinos but such things as agricultural processing plants, port facilities etc.
There were a few casinos, but the bulk of the stuff that Castro stole was good, productive assets – many of which are still in use, 50 years later.
He ’stole’ them? Thats interesting, most of them were on completely unpaid for Cuban land. And “productive” for whom?
The concession granted US companies then were unbelievable. Go read about United Fruit Co in Guatemala. The Arbenz government were very moderate, but decided to redistribute unused (only unused, mind) United Fruit Co land to peasants, so they could eat something.
Thats when the US backed coup happened – and the US literally flew in the new government. Arbenz wasn’t Castro – he was elected by the people.
Suffice to say, ‘property’ in 1950s central America was not what we might understand in 21st century, constitutional AU.
Lefty E,
I am aware of Guatemala, but, to paraphrase you, Guatemala wasn’t Cuba. Arbenz wasn’t Batista (who, incidentally, was also embargoed by the US) either. As a side note, in this instance Eisenhower backed probably the best party in pre-1959 Cuba – Barquin.
“Property” in 1950s central America was not what we might understand in 21st century, constitutional AU, Lefty E, but theft is still theft.
LeftyE [88 & 91] and Andrew Reynolds [90]:
There seems to be a convenient mass amnesia in the West about the Batista regime and about everything that happened to the Cubans throughout the decades after the expulsion of the Imperial Spanish. Talking about stealing from the Batista regime and its supporters is amusing – what will we have next, perhaps a movement to protect the rights of robbers?
The casinos and brothels were a nasty but comparatively small part of the economy – but journalists and trendy-lefties alike do prefer to focus on them.
Cuba used to be the world’s biggest producer of sugar and as such it had the potential to use part of that, together with all sorts of sugar-cane by-products, to launch other industries. Naturally, the good old reliable Batista regime made sure Cuba didn’t get too uppetty and it continued to export crystal sugar and cigars and not much else that had been processed/transformed. The mystery is why Castro, despite all the brotherly love of his East German and Soviet fellow “socialists”, did not himself launch a Cuban industrial revolution – there were no Yankee corporations to stop him.
As for the Batista regime, my guess is that there were so many people who crystal-clear memories of exactly what life was like for them under Batista that they would tolerate almost anything Castro did or failed to do.
Yes Andrew, I’m sure the Americans apply their embargo with a very fine sensibility, and every small and medium export-import company in the rest of the world acts on the assumption that trading with Cuba carries zero extra risk due to the embargo.
I bet too that all during the 70s and 80s when the US was willing to sponsor murderous regimes throughout Latin America – you know, the ones with all those disappearances, tortures, and internal wars – there was zero chance it was also pressuring them to refuse trade with Cuba.
I’m pretty confident you’re one of the sorts of chaps who argues that protectionist regimes need to disappear because third world countries need access to major Western markets more than we need the protectionist policy. If you don’t argue this, I’m sure you’re aware of the economics of the argument. Now we find you here arguing that the complete removal of the world’s largest economy from its near neighbours trade options has zero effect on that neighbour’s economy.
Consistency, it’s important to have consistency when analysing the economic failings of latin american countries, wouldn’t you agree?
He did, Graham. In the mid-sixties. It was a failure. Not surprising when Che Guevara was the Minister in charge of it and when it was premised on import substitution, a la North Korea.
SG, difficult as it will be for you to accept the reason for Cuba’s desperate economic condition is the insane economic policies pursued by its government which meant that, notwithstanding the US embargo, they had very little that the rest of the world wanted to buy and could not buy somewhere else at a cheaper price and of a better quality than what Cuba had to offer.
Andrew Reynolds, I am more than a bit iffy about the theft of land argument you raise especially where it involves agricultural land. A large proportion of the agricultural workers in Cuba under Batista effectively subsisted in peonage, and that is an abuse of human dignity and rights that any responsible government should end, even if it involves expropriation of land. Castro did this, albeit he then reduced them from peonage to State serfdom. However to restore those expropriated lands to those who held the Cuban agricultural workers in peonage would be, to put it mildly, a retrograde step.
Greg M [95]:
Che Guevarra might have been a reasonably good clinician and revolutionary but as the leader of a great leap forward? Well, 2 out of 3’s not bad. is it? Surely you are not suggesting that Castro tossed in the towel on industrial revolution, are you?
Just on a technical point –
What??? Not unless the Cuban raw sugar was full of rocks, stones, tramp metal, dead cattle, tree-trunks and glow-in-the-dark toxic waste products. The customer pays for the raw sugar on the basis of mass and sucrose content anyway and there are always penalties for impurities; quality assurance during manufacturing and handling is relatively easy; besides, the Cubans are long-practiced at making sugar. No, sorry, market demand – or rather, world-wide market oversupply – was a very big factor but not quality. That story sounds like it came out of a Republican’t dream factory after the boys had overindulged in hooch.
Kimmmy kimmmoi …. I have one word for you: hastalavista
(cheerio)
Graham, I will at the outset make a point that I have made on this site before. I take great exception, when my words are quoted, to be selectively and therefore dishonestly quoted. My quote was:
You have, for your convenience, omitted those bolded words. That is dishonest, although very convenient to you. You can splutter all you want. And you will. But don’t ever again misquote me by leaving out my full quote and expect to be called anything other than dishonest.
Quote me in full and criticise me on that and I will wear that criticism.
Unlike you I don’t have a point to prove about Cuba and so, unlike you, I don’t clutch at straws. Sugar is a commodity. Yes Cuba could produce it, although your ignorance about what can happen with quality in the production of agricultural commodities is -well how can I put this diplomatically- oh yes- not surprising.
However declining prices because of new entrants in the market (think here the wicked European CAP policy making sugar from sugar beets viable behind a tariff wall and the American corn syrup substitutes protected by legislation) and new technologies (think Australia’s sugar industry, and Thailand’s) meant that sugar wasn’t going to have a long term future in sustaining Cuba’s economy.
But hey, that’s the way of the world. The world doesn’t owe Cuba and doesn’t owe Castro, in particular, a living. He could have got out there and fought for the future of his country, as Lee Kwan Yew did, but he didn’t. He indulged himself and he impoverished them.
Again, a lot of things about the Cuban regime make rather more sense when you see it as a long delayed nationalist movement. The expropriation of property is sanctioned – quite effectively – as part of expelling foreign colonialists. The Indonesians actually demnaded a big cheque from Ramos Horta in 2001, you know, for all the infrastructure they built (or maybe just the bits they didnt destroy). For good or ill, the Cubans see the “property” argument the same way.
Anyway, In the context of its delayed emergence in 1959 (compare 1820s for much of Latin America), the polarities of the cold war are then embedded in the nationalist movement. But unlike Eastern Europe, its a domestic revolution. No one flew it in, or brought it with tanks. A now outdated ideological mould survives beyond its time, mainly because of the nationalist root, and the sheer stupidity of the US policy – which has achieved nothing but keeping a majority of Cubans behind Fidel.
Guatemala is different, yes, but you must recall Fidel, Che and all the rest on the Granma were in Mexico in 54 , watching events south closely. They were deeply affected by the fall of the Arbenz government – reformism seemed doomed. At the time, well, you could hardly blame them for reaching the conclusion.
Long time ago now, though….
“The expropriation of property is sanctioned – quite effectively – as part of expelling foreign colonialists.”
I don’t know much about Cuba’s old system of property rights, but the exact same argument was made (with much justification) in Vietnam’s case – the settled order of property rights was completely disrupted when the French usurped the Emperor and began to mulct the peasants by jacking up rice acquisitions and “rents”, etc. Many peasants went to the wall by this system, and their grandchildren wanted their land back. So they took their chances with the Communists.
Of course the Communists, being Communists, pulled a big Leftist reversal on the land question, from “land to the tiller!” to “the government owns everything!”, and subsequently went on to creating a highly regimented command economy, which was a complete, predictable, disaster (as everywhere else). But had they frozen their lines after the 54 land reform, and avoided the usual collectivist idiocy, then it would be difficult to find much to fault them for. Revolutions happen.
So, gregM, maintaining the rage there. Castro and Che were to single-handedly transform the agricultural economy to a world’s best standard industrial one, using the excellent capital flows available to them…? I think not. Maybe you would have preferred they did it Stalin’s way, with brutal suppression and collectivisation.
Oh no, probably not.
I like that little rhetorical touch too, with peons being “reduced” to state serfdom. Very ideologically neutral, undoubtedly the serfs would agree.
The Vietnamese got back into the US’s good books, despite bleeding them WAY worse than the Cubans did, as they did in engineering the greatest foreign policy humiliation and confidence shock in the US establishment’s history, simply by announcing they were open for business after a decade or so. There. That wasn’t so hard, was it? And they didn’t do too badly out of this either. Liberalising agriculture and foreign investment, and ploughing the surplus into industry worked way better than stealing everyone’s land (for the second time already!) under the banner of “collectivisation”, mulcting a pittance from reluctant farmers and nearly sparking a widespread rice revolt, and blaming “imperialists” for your own failure. The Vietnamese failed at the latter and switched to the former. Why don’t the Cubans try the same?
Plus, the Vietnamese have a decent military, and could stomp any would-be gunboat diplomats quicksmart. So foreign investors know full well whose terms they’re coming in on, and that they’ll be no funny business of slinking up to any “Defense” or “Intelligence” cronies if matters become a little biffish. And the Cubans probably have a tidy arsenal left over themselves. If Castro and co really are as popular as they like to think, I’m sure they could stand up to a bunch of callow, cashed-up foreigners, especially if the latter got too uppity over a deal.
We agree on that. However Castro did not. Hence his insane economic policies.
As Steve Edwards points out once Vietnam gave up similar insane economic and social policies with Doi Moi in 1986, though the more substantial reforms were in 1991, their economy took off- and this, until 1996, in the face of a US trade embargo.
Who cares what the serfs think? Certainly not Castro. If he did he wouldn’t be running a police state and he’d allow genuine multi-party democracy in his country so that they could express their opinions and follow their aspirations. All he cares about is his own opinion.
Greg [98]:
Be a good chap and hop off your high horse. No dishonesty intended – except in your imagination or maybe so that you could score “points [wtf???]“. I don’t have any points to score about Cuba and Castro, none! – Shaun Cronin opened this topic for all-and-sundry to comment and I’ve done just that; nothing more.
You did actually say [and again, I quote you in part]
Well, how can I put this diplomatically- oh yes- for reasons that are too long to go into here, you’ve made yourself look a right royal fool because you have made some rather basic and quite foolish assumptions. I could advise you to be be more careful about how and who you insult – but why bother?
Anyway, enough of stoushery – back to Cuba and Castro..
Differences in raw sugar costs and prices affect EVERY exporting and importing country. That’s what happens in the market – it happened even back in heyday of International Sugar Agreement [though the effects were better cushioned back then]. There was no special case whatsoever relating to the price of Cuban sugar. Cuba, like every other sugar exporting country, had to face price competition from the escalated overproduction of sugar throughout the world.
Lefty E [99] and Steve Edwards [100,102,103]:
Quite right.
Steve Edwards [102] and Greg M [104]:
The Vietnamese Doi-Moi reforms will probably be remembered long after the Viet-nam War is forgotten. What I cannot understand, given the very close links between Viet-Nam and Cuba [perhaps the personal links at senior management level too], is why Castro did not follow the Doi-Moi path. Was Castro that much of an autocrat? A communist emperor perhaps?
Graham – perhaps it was Fidel’s ego? Maybe a tad hard to come to terms with all those assassination attempts?
Sorry Graham. On reflection I was too stroppy. I am sensitive about being selectively quoted and therefore misquoted, but on re-reading your post you were only looking at one aspect of my quoted words (quality) while acknowledging the other (price).
to quote Brad De Long who quotes the Mises institute The hideously depressing thing is that Cuba under Battista–Cuba in 1957–was a developed country. Cuba in 1957 had lower infant mortality than France, Belgium, West Germany, Israel, Japan, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Cuba in 1957 had doctors and nurses: as many doctors and nurses per capita as the Netherlands, and more than Britain or Finland. Cuba in 1957 had as many vehicles per capita as Uruguay, Italy, or Portugal. Cuba in 1957 had 45 TVs per 1000 people–fifth highest in the world. Cuba today has fewer telephones per capita than it had TVs in 1957.
You take a look at the standard Human Development Indicator variables–GDP per capita, infant mortality, education–and you try to throw together an HDI for Cuba in the late 1950s, and you come out in the range of Japan, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Israel. Today? Today the UN puts Cuba’s HDI in the range of Lithuania, Trinidad, and Mexico. (And Carmelo Mesa-Lago thinks the UN’s calculations are seriously flawed: that Cuba’s right HDI peers today are places like China, Tunisia, Iran, and South Africa.)
Thus I don’t understand lefties who talk about the achievements of the Cuban Revolution: “…to have better health care, housing, education, and general social relations than virtually all other comparably developed countries.” Yes, Cuba today has a GDP per capita level roughly that of–is “comparably developed”–Bolivia or Honduras or Zimbabwe, but given where Cuba was in 1957 we ought to be talking about how it is as developed as Italy or Spain.
Castro was one miserable addition to the world and Cuba in particular
Greg M [107]:
No worries.
Anyway, how does Fidel Castro compare with Sun Yat-sen or Mustafa Kemal Ataturk or Benito Mussolini or General Pil’sudski or General Franco …. or, dare I ask, Robert Mugabe or Kim Il-Song?
FDB [106]:
Can’t understand why anyone would have n obsessive personality – just because so many people were striving to kill him.
Graham Bell,
Given the number of people killed on his orders, the impoverishment of his country, his readiness to export his (failed) ideas I am not surprised many people want to kill him.
I am not saying they should, mind, just that it is an understandable reaction.
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I don’t always agree with Homer, but in this instance I think he is absolutely right. Castro was and is a disaster for Cuba. The sooner he is imprisoned for his many crimes (unlikely) or dies (of natural causes, of course) the better.
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As for the expropriation issue – I have no problem with land redistribution (voluntary or otherwise), provided the property holders are properly compensated for the loss of the property. Without that compensation it is just theft.
If this thread insists on munching on the “Bad King John, Good Queen Bess” chestnut (where, surprise, surprise Castro gets to play the role of “Bad King John”) let it also be noted that a man has a right to defend himself.
The US gave Castro no avenue of honourable retreat in the early days of the revolution. For him it became a question of creating a sustainable sanctuary for himself and his cadres or facing invasion, exploding cigars, poison pellets, exploding conch shells, facial depilation with extreme prejudice and economy embargo.
It is, of course, notoriously true that Castro survived all of these attempts upon his person and upon his regime.
The cost was to be trapped in a state of permanent vigilance — quite a reasonable response, given the circumstances.
What other choice was consistent with self-preservation and loyalty to his friends?
I was expecting Homer to write something like “Cuba needs real democratic reform, not just Fideling about at the edges.”
Katz – maaaate!
You may think the critics of Fidel and the Fidelitas cubanas, are being simplistic, but I disagree with that characterisation. Among the critics represented on this thread are those who give him low marks for
* autocratic actions and a despotic regime
* running the economy downwards
* hosting Soviet missiles and thereby contributing to a near-catastrophe
* having political opponents executed or jailed
* failing to modernise his society and the island’s agriculture
These are critics, but they’re not jeering and cat-calling: they’re giving you chapter and verse. I invite you to read post [108] and tell us it’s empty rhetoric. It looks like very detailed summative economic and social indicators to me. What some people use to get a rough idea of “life on the ground” or “daily life” or “life prospects” for the general population. The critics are trying to look at some facts.
What do YOU do when people present facts? Do you, like JM Keynes, sometimes change your mind?
I’m not saying Castro is 100% evil, but I think he would have been voted out if he had ever faced a general or presidential election. Let’s say, any time after about 1965. But he didn’t. Why did he fear elections?
That’s a pretty fundamental question for a democrat. Are you a democrat, Katz? Or do you have your own restricted list of nations where Aussie-style multi-party democracy is OK by you? John Howard had faults but he faced an election and accepted defeat. So did Jeff Kennett. So did Paul Keating.
Guess what, Robert Mugabe has driven his country into the dirt, and rigs elections; can you see a connection? I think there’s a very close analogy between Mugabe and Castro. Both ride a nationalist wave to victory. Mugabe bumps off hundreds of opponents. Castro has thousands executed. Castro at first says he doesn’t want to rule at all…..{ ummm what changed his mind? Oh, I see, the CIA must have forced him to become President-for-life, the bastards!! }
Katz, I think the critics of Castro on this thread put
1)the general well-being and political freedom of the Cuban population ABOVE what you describe as
2)”self-preservation and loyalty to his friends”.
We’re funny like that, us democrats. Somehow 1) seems a good general goal, while 2) sounds more like politics-as-mafiosi-naked-power.
Mind you, I’m not condoning assassination plots. I think it was a shame that JFK was shot dead. He was one of the most intelligent US Presidents… oh dear, am I off-thread, am I “infected with unclear thinking”? Do I display teh dreaded ‘ideational inflexibility’? [code for 'disagreeing with el Katz']. Well, golly gosh, it FEELS GOOD Katz.
Now I realise it's standard practice to characterise some you disdain as trolls. It's not my blog, you may play by whatever tactics you so choose. If you now judge me trollish, I'll accept the accolade.
I'd like to finish with one of the best quips I ever heard at a public lecture. Dr Frank Knopfelmacher circa 1970, accused by a member of the audience of being "against peace". Dr K: "Yes, I emm a vorrr-monger [war-momger]. You see before you the wrrreck of a once-bewdiful child!!"
close Paul but no cigar!
Ambi,
If those critics of Castro were running Cuba (or anything else for that matter) I’d take some notice of their preferences. But as far as I know, none of them run Cuba (or anything else).
Castro has put self-preservation etc., ahead of other priorities. and he was remarkably successful at it. To recognise that fact is not necessarily to endorse that fact.
But in the real world of hard choices Castro’s critics have to decide whether he does have the right to self-defence, and they must decide what to do with Castro given that he has invoked his right to self-defence, whether or not he has that right.
BTW, welcome back from your (very short) self-imposed exile.
I read the Vietnamese language press, particularly the “World Security” (An ninh the gioi) paper, and it is clear from this that they still have pretty close relations with Cuba. They had a highly sycophantic interview with Che Guevera’s daughter a few editions back, and they occasionally have articles on the Cuban revolution (however, they definitely mind their words on the Great Satan these days). Plus they are very chummy at a diplomatic level, always lauding each other’s achievements.
Problem is, Vietnam is now a member of the WTO, growing at about 8% a year, basically moved half its population out of absolute poverty in about 10 years. What does Cuba have to show for their “revolution”?
muchas gracias
Katz [115], you said –
Not being a logician myself, I have no idea why my Logic Alarm went off when I got to that bit; the red light is still flashing.
Steve Edwards [116]:
Yeah. That’s why I wondered why the Cubans didn’t follow the Vietnamese example. Perhaps when both of the Castros are out of the picture, they will. Then we may see Vietnamese advisors and specialists returning the favour by helping the Cubans?
Andrew Reynolds [110]:
Fidel Castro was a disaster for Cuba in that he didn’t step down years ago and hand over to somebody younger with manifest leadership skills [no shortage of them, either]. The problem was that, until Jiang Ze-min stood down from being boss of China only a few years ago, there had rarely been a successfully peaceful transfer of power in any Communist country. My guess is that, vanity and the lust for power aside, Castro simply didn’t know at all how to step down without ending up somewhat dead or with an eternally unchanging close-up view of four walls. Just how do you dismount from the tiger???
There are always winners and losers in any land redistribution program [good ones minimize the harm and the inevitable resentment]. For example: although the 1953 Land To The Tiller Act in Taiwan granted shares in manufacturing enterprises to those landlords who lost their agricultural lands, those industrial assets were ones built by, and confiscated from, Japanese at the end of the Second World War [Taiwan was part of the Japanese Empire for several decades before that]. The losers there were the Japanese who had invested in those industrial enterprises – oh yes, and much of the agricultural land was formerly Japanese-owned too. the winners were the Chinese farmers – and the Chinese capitalists who had the inconvenience of swapping businesses, usually for far greater long-term profit. Compared with that, property and asset ownership in Cuba has the potential to be a real can-of-worms and should provide a good living for a generation or two of lawyers.
Ambigulous [113]:
Without starting a competition in body-counts, Robert Mugabe caused the deaths of a few ten-of-thousands – not merely hundreds.
Graham,
The “disaster” of Cuba was that Fidel did not do what he promised to do in his manifesto and restore the 1940 constitution. The reason he did not (I speculate) is that he listened more to the murderous louts in the Party (like Che) than to the Cuban people (who expected him to keep his promises) and the US (who were at the very least initially agnostic towards him – particularly in that he kicked out Batista, who the US government did not like).
If he had restored the Constitution and held elections under it I suspect he would have been (deservedly) enormously popular. The fact he did not is what put him on the “tiger”. To then try to excuse his subsequent behaviour, as you seem to be doing, for the fact he was on a “tiger” is, at the least, a bit rich.
All he had to do was keep his promises. He failed then and he continued to do so subsequently.
Problem is, Vietnam is now a member of the WTO, growing at about 8% a year, basically moved half its population out of absolute poverty in about 10 years. What does Cuba have to show for their “revolution�?
Nobody could seriously deny that Castro’s Cuba had many failures, both democratic, and economic.
Equally undeniably, however, is the fact that Cubans were, despite these failures, significantly better off than they were under Batista. Furethermore, Cuba compares favourably to many a Carribean/Central American country, particularly since many of the latter were ruled by pro-US military juntas that make Castro’s regime look benevolent and restrained in comparison.
GB, I can tell you why you can turn off your alarm without danger to your good self.
If the commenters to whom I was referring could turn their preferences into action, then I and the rest of the world would have to take some notice of those preferences.
But they can’t, so we don’t have to.
Now, anyone’s opinion about anything deserves to be respected to the extent that it is based on some understanding of the world.
Perhaps the above-mentioned commenters, if they had found themselves in Castro’s position, may simply have chucked in the towel. But I doubt it.
Castro was put into a position early in his regime where there was no realistic chance of compromise with the US. For Castro it was a case of crash through, or crash. To an extent Castro crashed through. We all agree that US policy towards Castro has been less than intelligent.
It seems to me that several of the commenters to whom I was referring simply did not take the contingencies that Castro faced into account when they were so free with their sermons about Castro’s baleful influence upon his own people and the world in general.
In short, said commenters displayed a want of empathy. (Which as I have suggested on earlier threads is not the same thing as sympathy.)
Andrew Reynolds [120]:
I mentioned Castro lacking the knowledge of how to “dismount the tiger” as a probability; certainly not as nay sort of an excuse for his oppression and brutality!!
As for the U.S. government not liking the Batista regime – what do you think would have happened to any Congressman who was foolish enough to kick up a fuss about the Batista regime and its American business pals? And the only “agnosticism” towards the rebels [Castro and his crowd] was a delusion that they could not succeed so quickly and the U.S. government’s slowness in backing up the Batista regime with hefty military force. Admittedly, it was not until later, when Castro revealed his hand by “turning Communist” that the United States became overtly hostile.
Katz [120]:
Well explained.
Well you’ve got to hand it to Castro on the teaching-literacy bit. After all, if you want to jail and torture your own citizens for reading and writing the wrong things, it helps if they know how to do it first. The man’s a planner.
Graham, we all look forward to Katz’s empathetic explanation of Pol Pot’s rule in Cambodia and, of course, his empathetic explanation of that well-meaning character Kim Jong-il in his governance of North Korea.
With the all-powerful tool of ideation flexibility Katz should have no problem at all in rationalising genocide and mass repression which, in North Korea’s case, has been going on for over sixty years. After all what worth are the lives of millions compared to the needs of some self-regarding psychopath to “crash through”?
Loves his dictators, does Katz.
j-p-z [124]:
So do I take it then that you have looked behind the image of an inspiring and progressive revolutionary leader …. and found just another dictator?
Graham Bell,
I understood the US was enforcing an arms embargo against Batista. I thought Eisenhower’s policy was clear – Batista was a coup leader and in power illegally. It was the reason he was so keen to get mob money.
The agnosticism was real – not faked. If Castro had done as he promised and held elections under the 1940 constitution (which he probably would have won) then I do not think there would have been an issue. The problem was on Castro’s side – holding one election implies more.
Andrew-
The two main factors determining US foreign policy toward Latin America in the 50s were the Cold War and economic interests. During most of the 50s this led Eisenhower et al to adopt friendly relations with anti-communist dictators like Batista and Somoza, the enemy of my enemy etc. The relationship was much like that of the modern Middle East. The US supported ‘our bastards’ because to them it was preferable to the communist alternative that many, like the Dulles brothers, were convinced would be inevitable if democracy was introduced.
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It’s also significant that many in the US government hierarchy, like the Dulles brothers, had interests in Latin America. The poor and uneducated can be good for business they’re much less likely to ask for the wages and conditions they’re entitled to because they’re not even aware they are so entitled. And if the bastards rule they can always just shoot the uppity ones anyhow.
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In any event the US relations with Latin American dictators tended to convince local intellectuals that the US was the ultimate bad guy propping up the domestic bad guys. There was a tendency to blame America for all local ills. This of course was not true. However the blatant use of America military might to influence the course of Latin American politics didn’t help. For example: the ousting of Arbenz by the Allen Dulles-led CIA.
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Arbenz’s experience was instrumental in the anti-democratic course taken by Castro and Guevara. In their minds an open society would expose a post-revolutionary regime to the sort of subversion and manipulation that had occurred (and would continue to occur) courtesy of the CIA. Have democracy and the Americans institute a puppet party with massive resources win the election thru media manipulation and subterfuge and then go back to Batista-like business as usual.
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So they allied themselves with the Soviets: in simple realpolitik terms the smart play.
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There were of course certain doubt expressed in the American halls of power re propping up dictators but these were always too little, too late and always tempered by realists who simply didn’t see democracy flourishing in Latin America. To them it was a choice between a brutal pro-US plutocratic dictatorship or a brutal pro-Soviet Marxist-Leninist dictatorship. If those are the only choices then there’s no choice at all.
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I’m not certain to what extent things could have been different. Altho’ I do think that the US would probably not be as despised as it is today in Latin America (or the Middle East) if it had simply done the right thing and let these people alone. But I could be wrong. It’s quite possible that had they done such the world would today be a totalitarian nightmare. Who’s to say.
Nice work Adrien.
You demonstrate how the Castro critics on this thread have been quite ahistorical in their sermonising about what Castro “should” have done.
No one with a modicum of insight could assume that the rise of Castro in the late 1950s happened in some sort of vacuum.
The fresh memory of the fate of Arbenz, a model democrat, not to dissimilar in his outlook on the world from the much more important and more devastating case of Iran’s Mossadegh, demonstrated to all the baleful influence of the eisenhower regime, and especially the obsessional Dulles brothers on US foreign policy.
No regime with a reform agenda could trust the US not to meddle in their affairs, as Castro himself learned when the ghost of John Foster Dulles reared up in the form of the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
The Dulles brothers bent many twigs that have since grown into powerful anti-American trees.
And it was all so unnecessary…
Yeah thanks Katz.
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But we shouldn’t go overboard blaming the Americans. It’s very easy to forget that the 50s were the first time in a long time that liberal democracy looked like it would actually last. During the 40s the common sense point of view was that some sort of state controlled system was inevitable. A lot of what we write off as Cold War paranoia these days actually made sense back then. Even Eric Hobsbawn has said as much.
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However the Arbenz thing is a crucial lesson. At the other end of the tale there’s the Sandanistas who managed to institute a democratic government despite harassment from the US.
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I try hard not to buy into a view of history that posits battles between good and evil everywhere. In reality they’re comparatively rare and even then not simple.
The US government did actually cut off all arms sales to Batista in March 1958. Obviously, that helped swing the balance massively towards Castro. So much for being a “staunch ally”.
“…the U.S. government’s slowness in backing up the Batista regime with hefty military force”
The US was not “slow” to back up Batista with hefty military force. It actively cut off all military supplies a little less than a year before Castro took Havana.
But I didn’t.
I blamed three men: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles and Dwight D. Eisenhower for failing to keep them in check.
Paranoia always makes sense to a paranoiac.
Andrew Reynolds [127]:
There are embargoes and there embargoes. Sometimes it’s nudge-nudge wink-wink [for Iraq], sometimes through third countries [for North Viet-Nam]. Sanctions busting and embargo dodging must surely be the third oldest profession.
The Americans were moderately hostile to Castro but what really infuriated the living daylights out of them was that he lied through his back teeth to them and they didn’t find out until later.
Adrien [128 and 130};
Well put.
Steve Edwards [131 and 132]:
There was already, in the United States, a domestic groundswell against the Batista regime and starry-eyed support this bearded latter-day Robin Hood – the U.S. government’s response to this was no more nor no less cynical than any other government since Adam and Eve.
Katz [133]:
Make that two-and-a-half. You’re a bit tough on poor old Eisenhower, he was only the President …. not the sheriff too.
That’s very well, but you haven’t shown that Batista received arms from the USA government after March 1958, except by implying through generalities that people violate sanctions and they are cynical. That’s not an argument – either they continued to be supplied by the USA, or they didn’t.
Steve Edwards [135]:
You put up the research funding and I’ll fly over to the U.S.and ferret out unshredded documents from deep in the Pentagon just for you.
The basis for my comments are many conversations with U.S. military personnel [some Hispanic others non-Hispanic; USAF and US Army ... and others] during my own military service serving alongside them and very actively involved in both the theory and the practice of Counter Revolutionary Warfare 40 years ago – on the subject of the Communist threat in general and Cuba in particular, there were several consistent threads:
…. or words to that effect.
It was always implied that ordnance continued going to the Batista regime right to the end but it was not enough. Also implied was that there were quite a few Americans in civilian clothes operating there. Although I never spoke to any who openly claimed to have served on Cuban soil itself in the dying days of the Batista regime, some had quite a depth of very detailed knowledge.
Now you can dismiss all this as “merely anectdotal” or “oral history” or “the talk of Monday quarterbacks”. Suit yourself. Nobody is forcing you to either believe or doubt what I have put here. It’s your choice.
Batista’s military collapsed not because of a want of ordnance but because it was corrupt, poorly led and dispised by the bulk of the people of Cuba.
Very few Cubans raised a finger to attempt to prevent the collapse of the Batista regime.
The revolutionary forces rolled into Havana in the face of only token resistance.
Thus, the only alternative to massive military aid to Batista open to the Eisenhower regime was to send US troops into Cuba. This option was never seriously contemplated.
One of the reasons for this was that CIA Director Allen Dulles convinced his brother and possibly Eisenhower too that his CIA could do to Castro what they had done to Arbenz and to Mossadegh. This plan was the root stock of the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
Thus, complacency helps to explain why Eisenhower decided against open invasion and occupation of Cuba.
In a book that mainly focusses on the role of Herbert Matthews (“New York Times” correspondent who travelled secretly to the Sierra to interview Fidel not long after the “Grannie” had landed, it is said that
i) the urban Communist Party was suspicious of Fidel’s group for many months
ii) Fidel had no real links with the urban opposition to Batista (including non-Communists) at first
iii) Batista was undemocratic but Cuba waasn’t in any sense a “basket case” when Fidel landed.
The history mentioned by other posters is outlined too. Fidel shocks many US supporters (who loved the romantic image of the insurgents from the mountains) early on by sanctioning executions of opponents….
He lies about communist influence in his top leadership on a visit to USA (1959 at UN in NY). He fails to hold elections. Now you can put some of this down to Cold War pressures, but it’s foolish to IGNORE it. The events I’m referring to are BEFORE the Bay of Pigs invasion/fiasco.
There was a doco on SBS recently. There we see Fidel lying in the USA, on old B&W footage. He speaks in English and Spanish. His meaning is plain. Cuba has not at that stage had an invasion force land.
I can understand empathy, and I agree we need to consider his actions in the light of circumstances at the time. I believe the Castro critics on this thread have done so.
I can recall swallowing the Fidelista story: “Batista was corrupt, a US hireling, Havana was a US brothel, our industries were exploited, etc” back in the 60’s. But since then I’ve read a few books and revised my view.
And I still think there’s a good rule of thumb for democrats to employ: “IF THERE ARE NO ELECTIONS, ask WHY???”
**************
BTW: I didn’t mention Mugabe becauseI thought Fidel & Robert had similar body counts to be ashamed of ~ it was the typology of their political histories…. Fidel rides a wave of nationalism, then EXECUTES opponents soon after seizing power [Mugabe slaughtered his political rivals VERY early on], etc. Zimbabwe and Cuba both had thriving agriculure in the 1950’s, etc etc
cheerio
Katz [137]:
“Batista’s military collapsed not because of a want of ordnance but because it was corrupt, poorly led and dispised by the bulk of the people of Cuba.”
I think you’ll find that MANY Cubans who despised Batista did so because they wanted free elections. Those folk weren’t pining for socialism, they pined for democracy.
Fidel promised “elections”, and like a magician, he pulled out of his top hat {or beret}……
“socialism” !!!! KAPOW!
!Un milagro! – a miracle of political innovation.
When that kind of low stunt is pulled in Australia, we can VOTE the prick out. Or the free press and radio and TV hammer away at it. Democracy is a pathetic system, Katz, but by golly it looks pretty damn good compared with some of these other shonky capers.
Katzi @ [115]
“Ambi,
If those critics of Castro were running Cuba (or anything else for that matter) I’d take some notice of their preferences. But as far as I know, none of them run Cuba (or anything else).”
This is puzzling, Katz. By this reasoning, none of us should comment on Australian politics unless we’re IN GOVERNMENT somwhere in Australia. Similarly regarding US poltics, but for that you have to be a Republican Congresswoman. Ditto for UK politics, you must be a Labour MP. Tosh. Twaddle. Fiddlesticks!
On this basis academics can’t lecture on politics unless they’re moonlighting as MPs.
Oh, hang on….. it’s not that we can’t comment, it’s just that you’ll not “take notice” of our preferences….. Well that suits me, Katz. You don’t seem to be replying to the main points contra Castro raised here in any case. You ignore the critics (as is your right) and what the critics make of your opinions is entirely up to them. So if you’re steadfastly ignoring them would you mind not insulting them?
Thanks.
I recommend Hobsbawn’s The Age of Extremes on the Cold War period Katz. As Hobsbawn was a communist throught the period he has no interest in participating in the chest-beating that comes from the Right in those History War battles that have stemmed from the release of secret Soviet files that have indeed shown that the US had reason to fear communist subversion during the 1950s. Naturally of course the fact that the Sovs did infiltrate the US government does not exonerate US iniquities along the same lines. It just means that what we think of as paranoia might’ve actually made good sense at the time.
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Of course the Dulles brothers also had personal financial interest in the UFC and that’s a rub. This kind of conflict of interests is characteristic of just this kind of foreign policy adventurism. It continues to this day with Cheney and Halliburton for example.
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With proper distance and perhaps a cooling down of inter-ideological hostility we may get a clearer view of geopolitical processes in the Cold War era. It’s worth understanding that just about every third world agent viewed their situation in reference to two imperial competitors – the Sovs and the US – and simply tried to carve out the best deal they could given the situation.
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In Castro’s case it’s just boils down to the inevitable crash after the revolutionary high. Almost every revolution in history ends up with a period of terror followed by a dictatorship. Absolute power is very hard to give up. Firstly because it intoxicates and secondly because doing so often means one’s own life is forfeit.
Hobsbaw
nmOh picky picky picky
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One little difference in the place on the alphabet and you go and make a big deal out of it. Hobsbawm, Hobsbawn, Hobsbawl. What’s the bloody difference anyway? Just goes to show that these ivory tower University types have nothing better to do then pick away at trivialities while real people get on with the job.
Well said Adrien.
Let’s all agree to call him Hogspawn. That rolls easily off the tongue.
There’s a vast difference between spy vs spy, funding front organisations, etc., and threatening hot war.
Castro came to power with very little help from the Soviet Union. His was a ragtag army band that needed to be only slightly less shambolic than Batista’s and avoid annoying the people as much as Batista’s did.
This was a pretty easy task that Castro achieved.
By the late 1950s the Venona decrypts had exposed most illegals in the USA. The great days of Soviet infiltration of the highest echelons of western governments was almost over.
Beria knew all about the Venona project of course, notably from Donald Maclean, among others, and had plenty of time to begin a new strategy. But Beria did not survive the death of Stalin.
Khrushchev took a new path by turning Soviet energies towards mobilising People’s Liberation Movements throughout the Third World. The unaided success of Castro served as an inspiration for further adventures, which came in due course. Before this moment, for example, the Soviet Union didn’t think of helping the Viet Cong. The first AK-47s, for example, didn’t turn up in Vietnam until 1964.
What is remarkable about this period is how clumsy and reactive the US were in response to the Soviet Union, which itself could hardly be viewed as a paragon of efficiency.
I haven’t read Hobsbawm, but if he treats the late 1950s as if they were simply a repeat of the late 1940s, then he is committing anachronism.
However, from my reading, it is undoubtedly true that the Dulles brothers did not recognise that the nature of the Soviet threat changed radically from the late 1940s to the late 1950s.
“I haven’t read Hobsbawm, but if he treats the late 1950s as if they were simply a repeat of the late 1940s, then he is committing anachronism.”
I haven’t read this particular book, but Hobsbawm is generally pretty on the money IMHO.
I wouldn’t have bothered with the correction Adrien, only I’ve set you straight on this one before.
Try harder next time. Fail.
Hmmm – and I thought trying to score points based on typos or mis-spellings to be off-limits, but a check of the comments policy shows this is not so. I would still think it poor form.
“Try harder next time. Fail.”
Sounds like the note to myself I used to have taped to my refrigerator door.
He doesn’t. But as you indicate:
The situation might change but the people don’t. By the late 50s a lot of people were beginning to aclimatize to the resurgence of liberal-democracy as a system with a future and were more concerned about a nuclear war. There were still a lot of anti-communist warriors around and this would continue for decades. The reaction to Castro, like the treatment of Ho Chi Minh can be seen as an error of judgement made because of anti-communist feelings and the distortions they incurred.
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The way these people saw it was that there was a global competition for dominance and that played out in the form of alliances with various sections in the third world.
Aaawwww. And he was such a nice guy too.
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FDB – But you meally mouthed intellectuals think that advocate and avocat are different words for different things because of two measley letters. Pedants.
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I always make that mistake with Hobsbawo. Dunno why.
Avocaat.
Oh get fucked.
Katz [145] “The great days of Soviet infiltration of the highest echelons of western governments was almost over.”
oh yes, grand old days they were, let’s all have another g & t and whimper into our drinks with sweet nostalgia.
I think I may have spotted the base of Katz’s logic: the premise appears to be, that once a chap has seized power, he must be permitted to bloody well hang onto power for approx 50 years if he so wishes; using whatever means are to hand, this includes that wellknown weapon of self-defence, the nuclear armed missile.
Certain corollaries follow:
A. One must show empathy.
B. It is quite mistaken to exhibit ideational inflexibility when discussing a chap whose monomania and self-regard are limitless.
C. Especially if he has ever defied the US, more especially the Dulles brother {boo, hiss}
D. One is a fool to object to any of these: lack of elections, rural poverty, urban poverty, intellectual poverty, civic repression, robot-like mimicing of foreign prescriptions and proscriptions, international grandstanding.
And if one’s ragged-trousered philanthropist hero should send his troops to civil wars in Africa, much in the manner of 19th-century European Imperialists, one should show not only empathy, but grudging admiration.
Yanqui, no!
Cuba, si!
Two feet bad!
Four feet good!
Still and all, the Cuban people have had a lot of shit to put up with since 1960, from this little windbag tyrant.
But, Ambigulous, Katz has given us this treasured tool of “ideational flexibility”, an instrument which covers and conceals all depravity. We should thank him for it. And quote it to him in every post he makes. For this is his Gold Standard. That the lives and happiness of millions, for whom we are concerned, their right to quietly order their lives for the best outcome they can secure for themselves and their children and their hope that they can contribute in a small way to making this a better world through doing that, are but nothing compared to the right of some psychopathic megalomaniac to “self defence”. It is Katz’s genius that he has given us “ideational flexibility” which explains that the rights of the psychopath are greater than those of common decent people.
Since this is Katz’s special tool for us I shall look forward to wielding it with him at every opportunity.
I know that he would want me to do so.
I am still looking forward to his rigorous application of his unique insight which has given us the gift of “ideational flexibility” to explain why we should emphathise with Pol Pot in his slaughter of 1.7 million Cambodians and Kim Jong-Il in his enslavement of twenty plus million Koreans. I have already asked him to do this. He has not yet.
I am sure however that only temporarily has he been distracted from attending to these matters and as the sun rises tomorrow we shall find the compelling truths founded in the Eternal Truth of Ideational Flexibility which will leave us utterly convinced that genocide and mass oppression are always justified, provided that, no matter how circuitous and dishonest his argument is, and no matter how bereft of human feeling and decency it is, so long as he can contrive as the conclusion that the Americans are to blame (absolving perpetrators of mass murder of any moral agency or responsibility), that it is the One True Answer against which all of us who are encumbered by “Ideational Inflexibility” falter and must be found wanting.
For Katz is the cutting edge of intelligence, insight and compassion here at LP. Who are we to challenge his wisdom? We who stick to such prosaic and common standards such as democracy, human rights,the rule of law and simple common decency? We know nothing compared to his Great Insights. He is, indeed, a Second Lenin.
We must bow down before him. And accept that he will use the word “stipulate” even when he is utterly clueless as to its meaning. (He always does). For that is his Genius.
Everyone:
] points of view.
Thanks for all the thought-provoking [and memory-shaking
Now for today’s news –
In a country crying out for generational change, Cuba gets instead Fidel’s brother and then, to add insult to injury, a Vice-President who has one foot in the grave and nasty to boot.
Sounds like the starting gun for the Cuban Youth Revolution of 2008.
I’m just looking forward to the special edition commemorative El Presidente Morte 50-gauge Gran Coronas. Before CIA buys ‘em all up on eBay.
Oscar Wilde once opined that the only thing worse than when other people talking about you is when other people don’t talk about you.
I’d like to stipulate that GregM’s lucubrations may or may not be an exception to Oscar’s rule.
(I’m prepared to be flexible about this.)
GregM [153]
You have appreciated the Monumental Thought of Chairperson Katz much earlier than me. Your very fine prose poem will live in the Hearts of Toilers all, so long as the Flexibility of Katz strides the globe as the intellectual colossus he/she is.
Is the new edition of the Thoughts and Flexibility of Chairperson Katz being printed as we speak? Are Heroes of Printing Labour devoting themselves with 25 hour days, to accelerate its production so that clamouring Toilers can sooner feast on its richness? We can only hope so.
Let reactionaries scoff. Let the Cuban masses dance with joy that they have such a wise and benevolent friend in far-off Australia.
Note to Chairperson Katz: this is not confected outrage. It is as sincere in its admiration, as are your nods towards democracy and fair play.
Wow. Castro demonstrated that you can achieve some respectable infant mortality rates and health care while creating a personality cult to ensure ongoing public ’support’ (Kim!), murdering and torturing your political opponents, and basically keeping your country poor. Still, did I mention those infant mortality rates? Since when does the left set its sights so low?
BBB
A lot of fair criticisms of the Cuban regime here – wont quibble with them.
Ive never been there – but I have been to several central and latin american countries, and its only fair to place Cuba in that context.
basically, in Quatemala, for example, a lot of people live in garbage. I mean that literally – they live in rubbish tips. No health care, appalling education standards, many arent even literate in Spanish.
Central American “capitalism” has to be seen to be believed. There is no association whatsoever between the economic system and notions of “liberty” for a great many. Capital accumulation is a thuggish, mafia-style enterprise, a club for the few, defended by hired goons who will bash or kill you if you demand decent wages or a cut of the action.
There’s nothing particularly admirable about it. Having experience liberal democracy elsewhere wont really qualify you to lecture the latin american left, Im afraid.
That’s why, despite some obvious problems, Im excited by the newer left government of Venezuala, Bolivia, Uruguay, Brazil. There’s some crazy bullshit (particualry in venezuala) but also a lot of intereting democratic renewal ideas, eg participatory democracy in Brazilian state and local government, inclduing budget decisions.
Lefty E,
No disagreement on Brazil – it was good to see a smooth transition of government in South America under any circumstances and to see one across the political centre is even better. I trust it will move back and forth in the future.
Chavez, though, is as far left as any other tinpot dictator and the only thing keeping him afloat is oil revenue, which the management of his placemen and other sycophants is serving to destroy the medium-term viability of. The only thing keeping him from being as bad as Castro is that he has not (yet) managed to completely destroy the pre-existing institutions – but give him time.
The other two I do not know enough about to add worthwhile comment on.
Comparing Cuba, though, to these others is misleading (IMHO). In most HDI terms Cuba was way ahead of them in the 1950s and on levels comparable with much of the West – if not quite there. It had also had several reasonably smooth transitions of power prior to the Batista coup. The 1940 constitution had its issues, but on the whole it was a fully democratic constitution. There is no real reason why Cuba should not be as wealthy per capita as (say) the US – or, for that matter, Singapore (if you favour a more authoritarian government) or many others.
The fact that the Cuban people have not had that option is the real tragedy here.
Lefty E
You make some good points: it’s interesting to compare geographically adjacent nations with similar colonial heritages. I’ve not been to Cuba, but the two South American countries I visited last year had pockets (regions) of such abject poverty it’d make your hair stand on end. So there are huge tasks ahead for those peoples and governments.
The governments there can be quite flexible and pragmatic about these matters: what works better, what has (on balance) less satisfactory outcomes? Does collectivisation work well? If not, how to raise the agricultural outputs of small landholders? What export/import policies work? What of foreign investment?
I get the impression that – for whatever reasons – Latin America has had more than its fair share of populist windbags, timpot dictators, fraudsters, and military coups. How to develop the democratic spirit so these macho clowns don’t get away with holding power [let alone get away with murder]? I mean, a strong democratic process should WINNOW out the failures…. even if any such clown gets one term as el Presidente, that ahould be the MAX.
I really don’t see what the minutes of the last Howard cabinet meeting have to do with the matter at hand.
Well the sun has risen and set. But not a word from Katz applying “ideational flexibility” to empathetically explain the regimes of Pol Pot and Kim Jong-Il, even though they are prime candidates for the absolution that his profound insight gives them, just as he has bestowed it on Fidel Castro..
Have we found that Katz, friend of psychopaths and dictators, finds that these two characters are too repulsive even for his repellent doctrine? I think not.
I am sure that, the sun having set, when it rises again tomorrow Katz will be there to defend his unusual proposition and those two beneficiaries of it.
Otherwise, he knows, he will have exposed himself as not having the courage to defend his own opinions.
And we will rightfully draw our own conclusions from that.
He knows, too, from past experience, how difficult it is to run away from the facts (as he will recall on our discussions on the issues of Britain’s benign policies towards the Irish in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and Korea’s trade policy towards Japan before 1997. etc. etc LOL).
We can only await then the passing of the hours until Katz uses his special tool of “ideational flexibility” to defend Pol Pot and Kim Jong-Il, who have every much as a claim on it as Castro, or we can watch him run away again.
Y’see, GregM has provided another example of the mental schlerosis that right-minded folk find so enervating.
All my substantive comments about Castro revolved around two themes:
1. Comments about how the Eisenhower regime failed to stop Castro from rising to power. Here I was talking about the incompetence of the Eisenhower regime, not its evil nature. Poor old GregM appears to be incapable of distinguishing between charges of incompetence and accusations of evil.
2. Comments about how the Soviet Union (note, NOT Castro) used the opportunity provided by Castro to escalate and then redress the balance of terror in its favour at a pivotal moment in the Cold War. In that sense, Castro was merely an agent of the Soviet Union.
Out of these cautious and guarded comments of mine GregM stumbles into a quite inaccurate conclusion about my attitude to Leninist totalitarianism.
I suppose GregM believes he has his own reasons for drawing these conclusions, and also for his somewhat immoderate language.
Based on what Katz has posted on other threads which have discussed Leninist totalitarianism, and on a reading of what has been written here, I think I can say that:
1. GregM and, to a lesser extent, Ambigulous have misunderstood Katz’s attitude towards Leninist totalitarianism; however
2. Not all of Katz’s formulations on this thread have been conducive to avoiding such a misunderstanding.
As a general comment (and I’m not saying Katz falls into this category) over the years I have come across people on the Left who are by no means Stalinists or even Leninists, and who understand what was wrong with the former Soviet Union and Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and what is wrong with present-day China and North Korea, yet who are nonetheless prepared to cut quite a bit of slack for Castro’s Cuba. Having said that, those of us who want to see the development of a pluralist democracy in Cuba can’t overlook the role of misguided US policies in militating against such a development and in causing some (though not all) on the Left to make allowances for the undemocratic character of the current regime.
Delicately phrased Paul.
To the charge of provoking self-righteous outrage, I plead guilty, with the mitigating plea of amusement.
Thanks Paul,
I hope what you’ve said will clear the air.
Here is what Katz said, which really set my teeth on edge:
“Castro bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war?? Gimme a break. He exercised his sovereign right to arm his country as he saw fit.
The Khrushchev got rid of the Jupiter missiles in Turkey, got a guarantee of non-invasion of Cuba by the US.
And the KGB got rid of Khrushchev.
(And about 50 nukes remained in Cuba after the pull-back of the photographed ones.)
Not a bad result for 13 days’ work.”
*****************
I didn’t accuse Katz of Stalinism or Leninism. What worried me about the above, was its seeming indifference to the many millions of potentially incinerated or severely burned persons, in several nations (USSR, USA, Cuba, Europe) who “stood to lose” (let us say that very delicately) if the confrontation Castro helped to set up, had gone ballistic.
I don’t think GregM or I said Castro was its sole cause. And nowhere did I excuse President Kennedy (nor the USSR) from having a major role.
It’s just that I believe EVERY political actor must take responsibility for her/his own actions, no matter what the context, no matter that the Dulles brothers are horrible and overbearing, etc etc.
You promise elections, Se~or? Well, bloody well HOLD them! Otherwise persons all over the globe will see you for a fibber or worse. Prosperity for the workers, you say? Well, show us. It’s a simple enough test: actions speak louder than bombast. Empirical evidsence is more useful than ideological posturing.
I agree that Castro is in a different league from the Kim dynasty in DPRK and that elusive murderer Saloth Sar/Pol Pot. That, however, can never put Fidel ABOVE CRITICISM. Otherwise, every clown with a lower death toll than the Khmer Rouge would be just fine and dandy. Piffle.
cheerio
As a general comment (and I’m not saying Katz falls into this category) over the years I have come across people on the Left who are by no means Stalinists or even Leninists, and who understand what was wrong with the former Soviet Union and Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and what is wrong with present-day China and North Korea, yet who are nonetheless prepared to cut quite a bit of slack for Castro’s Cuba.
This is because Castro’s Cuba is an entirely different beast to Stalinist Russia. The regime has clearly done much damage to the rights of workers and minorities, and has never been democratic. It has nonetheless achieved some successes when compared to the rather grisly regional alternatives (think Haiti, Guatemala, or Castro’s predecessopr). Sadly, it seems we need to engage in a condemn-a-athon (http://decentpedia.blogspot.com/2007/08/will-you-condemn-thon.html) before we can arrive at any sensible reckoning of the facts.
The interesting thing about this discussion is that we haven’t really touched on the question of how democratic reform might be accomplished in Cuba. I don’t profess to have anywhere near a complete answer to this question, but if the examples of post-Franco Spain and the former Soviet Union and its neighbours are any kind of guide, it will entail an interaction between the activities of internal dissident and opposition movements and the initiatives of elements within the ruling party who are incined towards reform. It will also entail significnt external parties engaging sensibly with the reformers when they come to positions of leadership, much as the realist conservative foreign policy smarties in the Reagan and Bush I administrations engaged sensibly with Gorbachev and Shevardnadze in the 1980s and early 1990s.
If it were to be anything like post-Franco Spain, Castro would have had to have lined up his successor as Head of State decades ago, and had them waiting to take over upon his death. Spain was also quite different to any country with a ruling Party in that Franco’s Falange Española was actually quite politically weak, deliberately so.
In other words, Miami exiles, if you want in, choose your future King now.
One wonders how Katz can assert, with apparent sincerity, that ’sovereign’ rights can be seized by arms and then exercised, for some five decades, without reference to the people themselves. What breaks strongmen of the left are cut, eh? A proper democrat would never make such an error. Presumably the routine murder and torture of political opponents is another of Castro’s ‘rights’, the exercise of which Katz will defend on sovereignal grounds.
GregM, I recall Katz’ floundering on Korean economic development (let’s not rehash it here), and I can’t help but think that Katz would, if “ideational flexibility” permitted it, mount a strong case that the US trade embargo provided a fantastic opportunity for Castro to modernise and industrialise the Cuban economy, as Japan’s trade embargo apparently did for Korea’s.
BBB
Facts on the ground, Old Sport.
If such were to be the case, we wouldn’t recognise China, Pakistan, Iran, Pinochet’s Chile, most African governments, and most governments elsewhere else where the old sovereignty was overthrown by force of arms.
(As to the Korean issue, your recollection is incorrect. I proved that GregM’s assertion that the Korean miracle took place in the context of trade liberalism and open markets was risibly incorrect.
But I’m gratified that you do remember one occasion when I might have made a major factual error. So thanks for the compliment.
To the non-obsessive remainder of humanity, sorry for straying, finally and after much prompting, so very far OT.)
Hmmm, the supposed sovereignty of Fidel Castro and the murderous exercise of so-called ‘rights’ which allegedly attend it (at least conceptually) is rejected, and we get a ‘look-over-there’ about China and Chile. I can’t say I’m surprised. It’s always been difficult to defend the indefensible. As for Korea, I have attempted (it seems in vain) to keep it from this thread, and won’t follow you down the path that you have (rudely) tread, however I would add, in passing, that I recall your comments on that issue only vaguely. It was GregM’s contributions that I remember with such clarity and fondness. Be gratified, if you please.
BBB
Degustibus non disputandum est.
Ha ha, fair enough Katz. I had to look that up. I think there needs to be a space between ‘De’ and ‘gustibus’, though. Why, I do not know.
BBB
Katz [166]: “To the charge of provoking self-righteous outrage, I plead guilty, with the mitigating plea of amusement.”
Oh dear, so we were deigning to drop bon mots before the swine, in order to be delighted when the fools took it all so terribly seriously, and positively howled with outrage, were we, Katz??
Oscar Wilde you are not.
( symbols so we know you are just joshing…..
Please preface your future contributions on Castro, Pol Pot, or other dictators with a LIBERTARIAN HUMOUR WARNING, or sprinkle those cutesy little
or
or
Note to readers: on another post Katz describes Katz as a libertarian. We leave the discerning of the libertarian strands in Katz’s cogitations on Castro (above) as an exercise for the reader.
good luck!
Paul, I am sure that you have the best of intentions but you do Katz a grave dis-service when you write:
Certainly Katz does not fall into that category. He is, on the evidence of his own words, someone who cuts Castro quite a bit of slack and advances arguments for doing so, using his unique tool of ideational flexibility, which of necessity apply equally to the regimes of the not-lamented Pol Pot and every Stalinist’s pin-up boy Kim Jong-Il. When challenged on those arguments he re-asserts them, embellishes them and expands upon them. He advances no case from which we can discern that he distinguishes Castro’s rule over Cuba from that of Pol Pot over Cambodia or Kim the Lesser over benighted North Korea. We have no reason to believe other than that these are his deeply held and considered views.
As someone who prides himself as to the purity of his arguments and the consistency of his words we really should respect that he does hold the Westphalian view that he has advanced that those who seize power by violence and will not relinquish it to democratic order should be immune from criticism, as should everything they do to dispossess, enslave, oppress and even murder those who fall victim to their predations.
I know that Katz would rather be seen as sincere and consistent in his arguments, wherever they lead, than be compromised in them. We who are his interlocutors would expect nothing less of him.
So no, out of respect for Katz we must conclude that he is not, as he has elsewhere described himself, a Left libertarian but an unreconstructed Stalinist. To ask us to do otherwise is to ask us to question his sincerity and the purity of his arguments. We cannot do that for then we would think less of him. And we don’t want to do that.
While Ambigulous has a fixation with name-brand dictators, he has little understanding of the rarity that is the flower we call democracy – but which is more accurately known as great material wealth combined with decades of mass education.
Democracy does not grow on trees. Certainly not a tree that was sprouting anywhere near Cuba in the 1950s.
If you had to ‘ve lived under a dictator, I’d've choosed Castro before most others.
Go to India. Go to Cambodia. See what democracy means to those without great material wealth or the benefit of mass education.
Then reflect on just how ignorant your comment is. In the midst of poverty and without decades of mass education people cleave to democracy.
No, I will go on to explain this to you further. Australia led the world in democracy. It did so with its universal male suffrage legislation of the 1850s, a time not of great material wealth and twenty years before legislation was passed for mass education. Material wealth and mass education flowed from democracy, not the other way round.
In all the time that I have had the posts that appear at LP and have posted here I have never read one that comes close to the one I am responding to in its arrogance and its ignorance.
I would have thought that the natural instinct of social democrats and of those who are “left of centre” would always be towards democracy, based upon an intelligent understanding of its liberating effects. But from the post I am responding to it appears that this is not the case.
Democracy on it’s own isn’t enough, GregM. It brings many Indians very little. Less than 50 cents a day for 250 million of people. I’d have rather lived in non-democratic Beijing during the last 15 years than in “democratic” Uttar Pradesh.
Democracy is grand. But we still have to calibrate the lives of those who don’t live under it. It’s not just all equally bad.
Hence you don’t have to hate democracy to think Castro was a saint compared to Pol Pot.
Is today Beat Up On Katz Day here at LP?
While it is entertaining to watch Katz get gang-banged, I would caution participants that sexual violence is one of the no-no areas that will get a site black-listed by Senator Conroy.
Now, back to serious matters, if anyone’s still interested.
One of the major flaws of lefties is to assume that the US trade embargo has helped Fidel stay in power. Thus the US is at least partially to blame for this (as for everything else that’s wrong in the world).
But this assumption should not go unchallenged. An interesting recent article by the veteran peace activist Tom Hayden concludes that, in the case of modern Vietnam, the freeing up of trade has actually helped the Communist government hang on to power. He writes:
“The party introduced its drastic doi moi market policies in 1986, a “renovation” plan that opened doors to private foreign investment and a Gorbachev-style internal perestroika. An exhaustive European study concluded in 2006 that a remarkable result of the doi moi reforms has been “the absence of organized social opposition among workers, peasants and youth. They are generally content with their growing economic opportunities.”"
http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20080310&s=hayden
This might well be the case in Cuba too, if American sanctions were lifted. No one has yet explained how the ability to buy Levis and Quarter Pounders on the streets of Havana would translate into political reform.
I like Katz!
Kim, yes you like Katz.
It’s the arguments and attitudes of Katz on this thread that I oppose, not Katz the person.
wbb, look at poor people in Timor Leste, queuing for hours in the sun to cast a ballot. Your comment comes close to saying the wretched of the Earth must simply endure whatever loathsome garbage is flung at them.
I say, Batista evidently had masny faults… but the ragtag “army” of the Sierra promised elections (restoration of democracy) and didn’t deliver. There, I believe, it sowed the seeds of its every subsequent failure. And many miseries for the Cuban people.
Think f the many facets of democracy: mass ducation, free press, separation of powers, no coercion of population [except as legislated by a freely elected parliament], social welfare, competing political parties, lack of discrimination, checks on corruption, etc etc Poverty is not an absolute bar to these. As a democrat who enjoys the adsvantages of freedoms I want to see democracy – in its various forms – become as widespread as possible. Yes, it’s a fragile flower but I’m watering it every day. Are you?
You see, wbb, I think that poverty is likely to be REDUCED in the long term under a system of government that’s democratically accountable. Not a certain outcome, but more likely. So I don’t believe any society has to CHOOSE between poverty and democracy. They’re not stark alternatives. My empathy is for the poor bastards who suffer under dictatorships. Much as I know I should show ideational flexibility, I cannot find it in my heart to show empathy for dictators and their apologists, in whatever nation they live.
I guess there’s no accounting for how folks get their jollies.
For myself, I’d feel imperiled were my would-be assailants capable of achieving the slightest tumescence.
well, my aim was for above-the-belt, and I reckon those Russki nukes woulda given more bang for a young buck, than any blogger hereabouts.
Paulus, please try to keep calm. Katz’s opinions were opposed, from several angles. It’s the Cuban population that’s been stuffed around & rooted, not the very flexible and empathetic Katz. No-one I know has gone anywhere near him/her.
All together now, shake your booties and keep your ideations flexible!!
Empathetic. Empathetic. Empathetic.
Empathetic. Empathetic. Empathetic.
The Katzpaw of pause has a paucity;
for Fidel, has oodles of empathy;
pronounces, defames,
cajoles & proclaims:
“Ideational Flexibility”
[with apologies to everyone, most especially to Chairperson Katz]
hasta la vista
TRANSITION to democracy in Cuba.
A one-year program, including:
* exile to a country villa in Dalat (Viet Nam) for Fidel, Raul, and the top brass
* interim assembly to pass laws on free speech, free assembly, election procedures, new political parties
* truth and reconciliation commission to begin work
* “Cuba 2020″ gabfest attended by all non-Communist thinkers, toilers who missed out on a decent life, etc
* return to 1940 constitution as an interim framework
* dismantling of Neighbourhood Watch surveillance of citizens
* dismantlng of Fidel’s stage in central Havana
* UN to provide election observers
* negotiations on future status of Guantanamo territory
* negotiations on future of lands, buildings, houses expropriated by Fidel’s boys
* two free cigars for every tourist
* soup kitchens in major cities
* industrial and agricultural improvement programs funded by Western European nations and/or Australia
Dalat would be the perfect place for the Castro brothers’ exile/ retirement. It is, after all, the Vietnamese capital of taxidermy so when Fidel carks it skilled hands will be available to stuff him in accordance with glorious Communist tradition.
But that’s an argument in favour of tooth and claw capitalism as is currently practiced in communist China (the avarice of which would make a nineteenth century robber baron blush), not against democracy. Still I wonder if you would rather live in Beijing if you were one of the losers in China’s economic miracle, the hutong you live in being expropriated to feed Beijing’s transformation, with no compensation to you, nowhere for you to go and no recourse for you to an independent judicial system to enforce whatever paltry rights you might have. It gets very cold on the streets of Beijing in the depths of winter.
But let’s look at like with like comparisons: First, would you prefer to live in thriving, bustling Beijing or in thriving, bustling Mumbai both being transformed by the application of capitalist economics?
And at the other end of the scale would you prefer to be some landless peasant in Uttar Pradesh or some landless peasant in China who has to take work in one of the many illegal murderous Chinese coal mines in order to make enough to stay alive?
Paulus,
You have not really proved your point. Those damn stubbborn yanquis with their blockade and refusing to normalize relations with Cuba gave Castro a great PR weapon. Any worthwhile demagogue needs a great enemy to rant around. Remove the US and Castro would have lost a lot of his raison d’etre.
GregM @ 188
Thank you for the extra information: I had considered only that it is a) far from Cuba, b) in empathetic DRV, and c) rural retirement village territory.
It is of course up to the Cuban successors to decide whether they’ll allow the current “leadership” to slip away into exile, not me. As the Chairperson has so correctly asserted, we who are not running Cuba should not opine. Leave all that to Raul, no worries, she’ll be right mate.
How quaint the Communist leaders are: “gone to Lenin” or “gone to Marx” after one of their number carks it; embalming and display for veneration so the personality cult may glorify the inglorious for decades post mortem. It’s just so wonderful they abolished religion, don’t you think? It allows for so much more veneration of living humans, which has just GOT to be the way to go in this secular age!! My very word, we got rid of “the divine right of Kings” – what twaddle that hereditary rule was: nepotism on an abysmal scale.
These days you find that nepotism only here and there: Kim Il Sung/Kim Il Jong; Fidel Castro/Raul Castro; George Bush Sr/George W., Nehru/Mrs Gandhi/Rajiv/Sonia; Mao/Mrs Mao [failed]; Kim Il Beazeley (Sr, Jr); Frank Crean/Simon Crean; Benigno Aquino/Corazon Aquino; House of Saud ; …. with the Commies just as keen on the caper as the Western democrats.
cheerio