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Needless to say, I am popping open a bottle of champagne. The 40th anniversary of the death of Che Guevara is a cause for celebration. Doing so, and on other days like this, are sure to keep you pretty drunk 365 days a year (all the more reason to do so). The biggest problem I have with this day though is that, for every one person like myself celebrating his death, there is at least one person out there celebrating his life. I divide us into three groups: people who knows the truth, idealist idiots who don't, and blind intellectuals. We all see a different side of who Che was, though obviously the latter two see simply half-truths.
The idealistic idiots are the college students who hang banners emblazoned with his face up in their dorm rooms, wear the t-shirts, and generally feed the ironic Che money making machine. I had a friend from college back in Boston who had one of those flags hanging above his bed. Underneath the caricature of Che were the words, "Hasta la victoria siempre." Very strange, given that he's a white, upper-class Bolivian guy, but nonetheless very idealistic and perhaps just not knowledgeable.
It really made me want to puke sometimes. Not only is Marxist revolutionary rhetoric nauseating to me, but to be so close to it makes me asthmatic.
I remember asking him about it. He did know the background of Che, as he well should, where most people did not. But fully knowing this, he said that he looked up to him not for what he was, but for what he represents. Notice the change from past tense to present -- what he was, but for what he represents today. And what does he represent? Fearlessness, bravery, a desire to change the world. These are the things every college kid, among others, sees in Che without bothering to look any further into his story. In reality, these are in many ways true. Yet it is not the whole truth, simply an exaggerated single side of this personality cult exaggerated by the marketing of his face.
The latter, the blind intellectual, is called so because he is a smart man who knows what he sees in front of him, but turns a blind eye to it perhaps unconsciously in favor of the better traits that he sees. The French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre once called Che "the most complete human being of our age." He was completely enamored of the Cuban revolution from the very beginning, and as history goes, fell in love with the intellect and actions of Che Guevara that so surpassed his own. The hundreds of executions committed alongside his brother in arms Raul Castro could be overlooked. In fact, they were not noteworthy, because they lacked the sparkle of his testaments, poetry, and words. Sartre latched on to one side of Che because that's the side he liked; his humanity, supposed desire for justice and equality for all, is hard to reconcile with his absolute disdain for black Cubans when considered. He had obviously never seen the writings where Che writes of his lust for blood either.
Just like anyone who believes in the promises of Marxism, Sartre was enamored by the words rather than the inherent contradictions present in the actions taken to achieve the ongoing victory. The blind intellectual sees a godlike figure where really there is a beast that can speak.
The truth about Che is more complicated than either of these views, but we cannot deny them completely. Even before he was put on t-shirts, the very base of his actions -- fighting for what he believed in, regardless of your agreement with it -- inspired people all over the world. And while he is not personally inspiring to me, I have met people working for democracy in their countries who are, in that very base amount, inspired simply by the bravery of fighting for ones beliefs rather than the beliefs Che actually had.
And even while the atrocities committed are well-known, some still to this day find beauty in his words. This essay I found on the internet is written by someone who, fully knowledgeable, is able to find beauty and truth in the words of a man he knows to have not lived up to them.
So who is Che Guevara? The question is almost pointless to answer, because regardless of the constant dissemination of whole information, people will continue to choose which pieces to filter out in order to fit their views regardless of the truth. One can can that he is a people person, a racist, a demagogue, an idealist, a revolutionary, a mass murderer, a poet, a beast, "the most complete human of our age," or a cold-hearted bastard. More than anything, though, the word that may best describe him is contradiction.
However, I cannot subscribe to such a soft word. While the latter two groups may see all of these good qualities as mitigating factors, a true humanist cannot mitigate the horrible things he did to others based on perceived personal good qualities. I will go with the phrase "racist demagogue mass murderer beast cold-hearted bastard." To me, this best describes the truth of the real Che Guevara, based not on any perceptions about him, but simply based on his lasting impact on other people and the world.
*****
- A lot more discussion today at The Belmont Club. Just scroll.
- Val Prieto obviously has tons worth scrolling as well.
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Comments
Artfldgr says:
All I can say to celebrate Che is "500 600" and glad that he was not killed in battle, but was captured, questioned, and then taken care of at the orders of the state he was fighting at the time.
I ride the NY subways most every day, and it never ceases to amaze me the symbols that we decide to wear. Its interesting how desensitized to the meanings of the symbols as if nothing is real and its just kitsch.
A swastika, which has a long history in carvings and such all over the world. However since National Socialists had played with it, this is a symbol that can have no other meaning and so is frowned by most. However, I can see several people in a year ride down the street using a German military helmet as their choice, and not realizing that that is as much symbolism as the swastika.
The truth is that the left, for all the presumed posing of intelligence of the intelligentsia, they are potemkin smarts. Posers. Intelligentsia are the smart just smart enough to pretend to be smarter. Repackaging ideas as Hayek comments.
They have been numbed to regarding symbols as having meaning since they have been taught ‘labels’ are bad.
In a sad way I understand it… they are not clinging to these things because they know the meaning or side with the visions or such.
What it is, is like someones eyesight failing..
The culture is fading… they put on symbols in some vague way to hang on to something. The weaker closer things like family, fealty, real friendships, etc.. are gone.. and the peaks left to grab onto are these very strong symbols of power and existence… after all, like some villain in a horror movie socialism rises from the undead over and over…
What else is there to hang on to in America? Baseball heroes? Cowboys? Will anyone hang on to the cowboy now that cowboys hung on to each other?
And with each version of their treasured childhoods re-imagined, to something twisted or perverted so its like giving salt water to a thirsty person… the only way not to be thirsty is to stop drinking.
They did not grow up watching movies of the meat grinder of the soviets, they think the worst was Hitler. I constantly see how little they know, and in how they reference the history that they are trying to use to affix some assignation (cant say label) to that damns it.
Take a look at our actors and famous… if Che were alive wouldn’t sean penn have him over for drinks? Maybe danny glover would come and then what? though do read the history of sean penns life. He got his ideas from there and the people he grew up with not only in the public eye but out of it. he knows which side HIS bread is buttered on. He knows that he is successful NOT because the American public liked him, but because socialists liked him and kept him dangled in front of the public so that THEY would like him.
Che is popular because of the work of socialists promoting him and telling HALF truths. Mao is also popular for much the same reason. America is unpopular for the same reason.
We will never fix things till we have a purge and our system is so denuded of public power we never will…ultimately I fear that in the long run, Aldous Huxley will be right and the future has to do with a jack boot holding the face to the floor forever.
Once there is no Sun, the moon will be the brightest thing in the sky…
We no longer know heroes from villains, saints from sinners… no longer can we see what is right or wrong.
Walk into any t-shirt store and read the shirts… while some are funny and cute, a whole majority of them are not so funny when one thinks that these are the ideas we want to walk around with. to express. To share.
When taken all together, the desease is deeper a malaise than promoting an image of a killer on a shirt… the deeper question is why would we want to wear someone elses image at all?
After all… individuals done serve men put up high… do they?
Lucien BONNET says:
RE:
Battleground Che
Filed under: Americas
---------------------
Thank you for welcoming me.
Lucien BONNET
SEE: "Bill A Ri And There Was Light!"
in http://www.contact-canadahaiti.ca
WESTERN POLICY VERSUS THE BLACKS
As indicated in our introduction, the mistrust existing between the West and the Negro world is to be encountered at all levels, especially the political level, and thus also the economic level. Westerners have been dominant and Blacks have been subject to their domination. This relationship is manifested in the case of Haiti, which we use as an example. In this context, we introduce an analysis of the political evolution of Haiti in relation to the West, plus a letter that was sent to the country’s leader, Jean Bertrand Aristide.
HAITI AT THE DAWN OF THE "STAR PEACE"
prison“Something must change here,” Pope John Paul II stated while visiting Haiti in March 1983. Certainly, the Holy Father was referring to the state of repression in that country, but he was doubtless also alluding to something vaster and deeper, a change of attitude on the part of the West toward the Negro world.
DUVALIER OR CÉDRAS: NOTHING MORE THAN DOCILE "TOOLS"
The White House announced the fall of both President Jean-Claude Duvalier and General Raoul Cédras before they even occurred. Does that not reveal foreknowledge of their downfall? Was it not a brutal way of telling the Haitian people that, like their ancestors, their future depends on their Western masters? Through its past and present actions, has not the United States always shown itself to be the only true master of that island, with the Duvaliers and other dictators being no more than Uncle Sam’s docile “tools?”
The problem of repressive regimes like those of the Duvaliers, Cédras, etc., is actually no more than the consequences of a vaster, much deeper problem which motivates the conscious and unconscious attitudes of the so-called Christian world in relation to the Black world.
On this topic, a French scholar, Roger Bastide, wrote: "The great Christian dichotomy is the one between black and white. White is supposed to express purity and black, evil. That means the opposition of Christ and Satan, spiritual and carnal life, good and evil, which finally amounts to that. opposition between whiteness and blackness which supersedes all the others. Even for the blind person who knows nothing but night’s darkness, words uttered or heard suffice to create the dance of devils, as they do for the sighted: "a black soul", "the blackness of an action", "dark deeds", "the innocent whiteness of the lily", "the candor of a child", 'to whitewash a crime", etc. These are not just nouns and adjectives."
Whiteness refers to light, the ascension into lightness, to untouched, immaculate snow, to the flight of the Holy Ghost’s doves, to clear transparency, while blackness remains the landscape of Hell, the color of the devil, the bowels of the earth, infernal lava. This word-idea association functions automatically, since our thought processes are so enslaved to our language, whenever a white man is in contact with a black man. Mario de Andrade justly denounced the evil effects of that Christian symbolism found at the source of color prejudice. In America, when a Negro is accepted, people say, "He’s black all right, but he has a white soul." [our translation] They say that in order to separate that man from the rest of his race.
Duvalier or Cédras may be gone, or on the way out, but the new Haitian regime will no doubt be just as repressive and corrupt, if it obeys a "master" who despises the black man. Only the true independence of this Caribbean country, fully assuming its identity, will allow the Haitian people to free itself from the yoke constituted by the master-slave relationship. Such an independence will not really be achieved without a fundamental change in the behavior of those who have the means of perpetuating their domination on the black world, for in our opinion, that’s where "something must change first."
THE WEST : SLAVE OF ANTI-NEGRO PREJUDICES
Today we are very familiar with the mechanisms the so-called Christian West has used to spread and justify anti-Negro prejudices. Numerous Western scholars have had the courage to denounce such behavior. Among those scholars, let us mention again the French anthropologist Roger Bastide, who explains how Christianity entails a certain “color” symbolism which, at first sight, appears harmless. Healsoemphasizes that thereis infinitely more in anti-Black racism than the effect of that symbolism. This is particularly true of its economic roots.
Thus, he writes:
"When some Christians wanted to justify slavery by explaining that the "blackness" of the skin was a punishment inflicted by God — the curse on Cain (the murderer of his brother), the curse on Ham (Noah’s son), who uncovered his father’s nakedness — they were using the symbolism of "blackness", but beyond that symbolism, they were inventing ethological tales destined to justify in their own eyes a system of production based on the exploitation of black workers imported from Africa." [our translation]
The fatal consequences of the anti-Black prejudices spread by so-called Christian civilization have been clearly demonstrated on the socio-political level: slavery, racial conflict, apartheid, etc. And the harmful, and even lethal, character of those prejudices is such that even the scientific realm, which one would have believed to be immune to this contamination, does not seem to have been spared.
VirginThis fact is all the more obvious in the realm of sciences considered to be exact, such as optics. Indeed, as soon as we start studying that branch of science, which has to do with light in all its aspects, we are faced with ambiguities, with vagueness, with doubtful, fanciful and even contradictory interpretations. The concept of "color" that stems from scientific experimentation is based on the demonstration in 1665 by the well-known English scientist Isaac Newton. This experiment consists in running a visible light ray called "white light" through a prism in a dark room, breaking down that light into a continuous spectrum encompassing all the colors. It is not difficult to discover that such an experiment and its consequences are far from being scientific or conclusive.
It should not be forgotten that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the best-known German writer and a highly respected scholar, fought a determined battle against what he called "Newton’s error". In his opinion, "That transparent lightness which shows itself in darkness is the proof of the law according to which light is nothing else than a mixture of light and darkness, assuming different degrees." [our translation] The famous American professor Carl Sagan is in complete agreement with Goethe. According to him, the darkness of space jealously hides incredible resources which would be beneficial to science. In state-of-the-art research (in astrophysics, for instance), he finds a set of anti-Black prejudices that, in his opinion, represent brakes on the pursuit of new discoveries in the Space Age.
He said:
"After Apollo, scientists were discouraged. Do you know why they were disheartened? Because the sky above the Moon is black. That made them depressed. Do you think this is a joke? Not at all. Scientists are more fragile than they look. But the sky on Mars is rose-colored and that gave them hope." [our translation]
Man running in spaceToday a few scholars, who have noticed "that dark light which falls from the stars", have suggested a redefinition of the word "light". That is to say, we must reject Newton’s Law of Colors. It is becoming more and more evident that, on the cosmic scale as well as the terrestrial plane, blackness is an integral part of color and light.
Thus we see that the anti-Black prejudices deeply anchored in Western culture seriously hinder the natural advancement of science. They constitute a practically insurmountable handicap in the relations between the West and the Black world. The true solution to the Haitian problem has to be a long-term one. The search for "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity", the source of truth and "light", requires constant efforts.
Lucien Bonnet
The above article was published in the Montreal daily newspaper Le Devoir on February 26, 1986, in the wake of Jean-Claude Duvalier’s downfall, and sent to Time magazine on October 12, 1994.
Artfldgr says:
Russian:
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/che/dead-che-2.gif is a better image for despotic people that sought to imprison and harm WHILE espousing all those things that you want to believe and follow him for.
actions speak louder than words, unless your a head in the clouds utopian leftist progressive... then you believe what your side SAYS and ignore what it DOES...
you dream of a vague future, not a real today. the people here know that you have ot pass through now to get to tomorrow, and vague talk will not get you there. we also know that the things that this type of people bring to the table to the NOWS that we all have to live through.
no one experienced the communist utopia, or the chinese ones, or the cuban ones, or the nazi ones, or the cambodian ones, or the whatever ones. nobody, ALL their NOWS were stolen and they were demolished with millions of futures ended in their nows for a group of people who NEVER INTENDED TO HELP THE LUMPEN PROLETARIAT.
Che was no different. he was captured in the forest, he did not die in battle. the CIA was their, but they dont go into a place and do what they want. depending on whats happening they either work for, or against. in the case of then they were working FOR the current regime and so had to follow the orders of that regime. which is why i put up 500 600... it was the radio order to kill che... 700 would have spared him. the order came from the government in power at that time.
to the other comments as to the CIA it shows remarkable naivette. that something that is an influence is omnipotent. that if they can help someone get in, that they can choose whomever they wish to put there. they basically provide a boost. not omnipotence. if they are against a regime, then they have to find locals that will fight and give them a boost to a competency they owuldnt have. knowlege and technique they may not have, etc. if they are for the current regime, then the leaders troops in certain operations (like that to eradicate che) get a boost of competency and information.
in both cases this situation is ultimately not controlled actually controlled by the CIA, but by the people who they find that they boost.
the difference is one of degree and culpability. remember its COVERT not OVERT.
its also naive to think that a modern state can exist and remain on any kind of footing if they "have" and they dont participate.
the truth is that those here who are siding with communism have no idea what its like. they dont believe that the horror stories are not only true, but the worst are still watered down. for every nasty story known, there is literally a 100 thousand murder stories unknown.
go here and see another image..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/03/world_parading_the_dead/html/3.stm
and it even captions the 'official story'.
Felix Rodriguez was the man who questioned che... and then took the radio order to eliminate him. he has an interesting history with some of the darkest operations (though never actually being as good or as much as soviets). he gave the order to kill che, but he was ordered to give that order 500 600
read this http://www.etimes.com.mx/spip.php?article4436&debut_articles=18
you might find it interesting (its in spanish though). thre is an english version around but i couldnt locate it.
in 1956 he leaves argentina, hooks up with castro... is part of the group that went to overthrow cuba..
In 1960 Guevara visited China and the Soviet Union. On his return he wrote two books Guerrilla Warfare and Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War. In these books he argued that it was possible to export Cuba's revolution to other South American countries. Guevara served as Minister for Industries (1961-65) but in April 1965 he resigned and become a guerrilla leader in Bolivia.
so he goes to the soviet union and learns and writes what? is that the che you remember?
he sits it out for 5 years in cuba and decided to relive his old victories by taking his soviet born support and then go attempt to take over south american countries, starting with bolivia, and make them communist.
to quote:
In 1967 David Morales recruited Félix Rodríguez to train and head a team that would attempt to catch Che Guevara. Guevara was attempting to persuade the tin-miners living in poverty to join his revolutionary army. When Guevara was captured, it was Rodriguez who interrogated him before he ordered his execution in October, 1967. Rodriguez still possesses Guevara’s Rolex watch that he took as a trophy.
actually he has a bit more than the watch..
so where is this che you think is so noble?
if you check it out this 'prolific writer' wrote most of his stuff AFTER that soviet union visit...
most of what we think of his romantic life as a revolutionary is self exposition and agrandizment wrapped in romanticism... he didnt live long enough after the adventures to have others tell the truth...
its like falstaff writes a story of his exploits and everyone falls for it.
"I have sworn before a picture of the old and mourned comrade Stalin that I won’t rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated"
i wonder if stalin showed him his gulags?
He argued strongly for centralized planning, and emphasized creation of the 'new socialist man'. In his famous article, 'Notes on Man and Socialism', he argued that "to build communism, you must build new men as well as the new economic base." The basis of revolutionary struggle is "the happiness of people," the the goal of socialism is the creation of more complete and more devoped human beings.
does that sound like a good man or like a copy of stalin and mao?
he liked Mao...
To test his revolutionary theories Guevara resigned from his post as a politician. He had published highly influential manuals Guerrilla Warfare (1961) and Guerrilla Warfare: A Method (1963), which were based on his own experiences and partly chairman Mao Zedong's writings. President John F. Kennedy had Guerrilla Warfare rapidly translated for him by the CIA. Guevara stated that revolution in Latin America must come through insurgent forces developed in rural areas with peasant support. The is no need for right precondition for revolution - guerrilla warfare can begin the activities.
note that in that history he didnt go into south america to oppose the americn cia operations and such...
it was his going in that then got the states in those countries to want to ask for help against some foreigner backed by the soviets to foment bloody revolution.
the US was on the side of bolivia.. no Che, no operation.. its like complaining that its suspicious that every time you see a fire there are firemen around...
Che went, he came, he saw, he lost.
hey.. check out what he did to help the civil war in the congo... nice stuff.. how many died and such?
and most of the romantic story of his death is now known to be fabrication to legend... he did not say the things he did... he thought he would not die and when told he was to said "it would have been better i died in battle".
not only are you guys siding with a tyrant and communist totalitarian, but your actually siding with a myth that never actually existed that way...
Russian says:
To: NothingBut Fax
About "realty check". It would be too time consuming to dig through the Internet doing the proposed homework. Could you kindly just make your point?
So far I checked the Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Cuba
and found this for Cuba:
Life expectancy at birth:
Total population: 77.41 years
Male: 75.11 years
Female: 79.85 years (2006 est.)
Infant mortality:
Total: 6.32 deaths/1,000 live births
Male: 6.99 deaths/1,000 live births
Female: 5.41 deaths/1,000 live births (2006 est.)
Which is V-E-E-E-R-Y G-O-O-D!
I guess, you want to prove that socialism as a doctrine is not concieved to bring a better life for millions of poor people?
You may be wrong.
This is the absolute socialist idea.
The problem is in the human nature.
Each individual wants to live better, get more than his neghbour, and the doctrine wants everybody to be kind of equal.
So the system has to hit every head that pops up over the established plane.
That is why (thank you, Artfldgr for the quotation), Che argued strongly for centralized planning, and emphasized creation of the 'new socialist man'. In his famous article, 'Notes on Man and Socialism', he argued that "to build communism, you must build new men as well as the new economic base." The basis of revolutionary struggle is "the happiness of people," the the goal of socialism is the creation of more complete and more devoped human beings.
Doesn't this quotation prove that Che had exactly the very same intentions I mentioned in my post?
And my favorite LA leader Hugo Chavez is saying similar things. Just look:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071009/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/venezuela_moral_crusade
The president (Chavez) has a long list of other "New Man" recommendations: don't douse foods with too much hot sauce, exercise regularly, eat low-cholesterol foods, respect speed limits. He also wants parents to stop buying Barbie dolls — and breast jobs — for their daughters.
"Now some say, 'When my daughter turns fifteen years old, we're going to give her phony breasts.' What a horrible thing! It's the latest degeneration," Chavez told one packed auditorium.
"Am I exaggerating?" he asked.
"No!" the crowd responded.
I agree 100%. Frankly, I do not like those fake breasts. Let them be natural. Small breasts have their own attractivness.
15 year old girls are cute without such a crippling stuff.
Anyway, you guys did not live under socialism in a communist country. You just read about GULAG, etc. Well, there was GULAG, true. I lived later, when GULAG was already closed. It was not that bad. There was certain charm in life under socialism (communism). Many former Eastern German still have the feeling thay call "ostalgy". They just miss their German Democratic Republic. They appreciate now many things they lost(same about me) that were not appreciated then.
Capitalism is not the paradize for everybody.
And if compare evil things that occured under capitalism and socialism it is still a question what system did worse.
Russians were not the right nation to implement the idea of communism. This nation is politically backward and not well organized for such a task. Germans could do better. I still belive that socialism can be benign, without GULAGs, and generally is not a bad idea. Kibutses in Israel worked pretty good.
Artfldgr Thanks for the post. This time I read through to the end. BBC had the article (Felix Rodriguez account) published in Russian, so I read it.
Your idea that Che got indoctrinated in the USSR is not right. He already was good in what he wrote about after visiting the USSR. Russian communism put working class in the avanguard of the socialist revolution. To delegate the leading role to peasantry was Mao's teaching.
I think, Che more was influenced by Mao.
Still his cause was noble. He sacrificed well paid job, the status he had, and his life to make the others people life better. He deserved his fame and all that T-shirt portraits.
He fought not with CIA, like you say but against the dictatorships that the USA supported. In fact, against the USA interests. That is why the folks on this page do not like him.
NothingButFax says:
The two points to be made about Castro/Che as alleged poster mummies for Socialism are 1) that they inherited a relatively well-off country, whose health, education, and income indicators were among the best in Latin America, and in some cases exceeded those in Europe. 2) Improvements in health/education under Castro, when compared to other countries in Latin America, or to Latin America as a whole, show that Cuba is not the only country who has progressed in both absolute and relative terms. In a number of indicators, Cuba has lagged behind Latin America.
It took Pinochet’s Chile 10 years to reduce IM from ~65 to below 20, from 1974 to 1984. It took Castro 20 years, from ~ 65 in 1959 to 19.6 in 1979. It took Costa Rica ~ 11 years from ~ 1975 to ~ 1986. Castro inherited a vastly superior medical system than did Pinochet- twice the number of MDs per inhabitant than Chile(100 MD / 100,000 inhabitants in 1957 compared to ~ 50 /100,000 inhabitants for Chile in ~ 1974). By that criteria, Pinochet’s Chile should have taken MORE time than Castro’s Cuba to reduce IM below 20, not LESS.
Conclusion: Pinochet’s Chile did a better job than Castro’s Cuba in reducing infant mortality, in spite of having fewer MDs per inhabitant.
Repeat:
Conclusion: Pinochet’s Chile did a better job than Castro’s Cuba in reducing infant mortality, in spite of having fewer MDs per inhabitant.
Repeat:
Conclusion: Pinochet’s Chile did a better job than Castro’s Cuba in reducing infant mortality, in spite of having fewer MDs per inhabitant.
In 1957, only Argentina, Uruguay and Hong Kong had fewer inhabitants per MD than Cuba in the third world. Many European countries in 1957 had fewer inhabitants per MD than Cuba did. “Cuba’s 128 physicians and dentists per 100,000 people in 1957 placed Cuba at the same level as the Netherlands, and ahead of the United Kingdom (122 per 100,000 people) and Finland (96).”
Cuba’s Infant Mortality of ~65 in the 1950’s was better than a number of European countries at time, including a number of Iron Curtain countries. Portugal’s was 88.
From World Bank Development Indicators, Latin America has reduced its infant mortality by 78/ 1000 births from 1960 to 2005. Cuba: 29 if we use 35 as IM for 1960 ( World Bank does), or ~60 if we use the ECLA figure. During this time Peru reduced its IM from 160 to 23; Chile from 118 to 8. The point is that progress is comparable
In 1959, Cuba had the highest number of TV sets per inhabitant in Latin America- in fact, fifth in the world. (Smith and Lorens) By comparison, in 2004, Cuba had 13 Internet users per1000 inhabitants, while Latin America had 117. THIS SHOWS THE SUPERIORITY OF SOCIALISM?. ( World Bank World Development Indicators)
I can go on, but will stop, and will make no further communications. You can go check the data.
Renaissance and Decay: a Comparison of Socioeconomic Indicators in Pre-Castro and Current-Day Cuba, Smith and Lorens, Cuba in Transition vol 8;
The Cuban Revolution and its Acolytes. By: Montaner, Carlos Alberto, Society, 01472011, Jul/Aug94, Vol. 31, Issue 5
Sources for Infant Mortality table: UN WHO for MDs, Statistical Abstract for Latin America, ECLA. SALA and other sources say that Cuba’s IM was 32 in the 1950s. ECLA has a 1955-60 average for IM of ~65, which is what I am using. I am doing this without going back to the library to check- I am in agreement here w you that hard copy is better than Internet for this data.
Also see Montaner’s Secret Report on the Cuban Revolution.
NothingButFax says:
But "better life for people" is not just the number of TV sets and cars per 1000 or number of Internet users. Though this may be a part of a good life too.
You obviously have Internet access. Would YOU be happy in a country that would effectively deny you Internet access such as Cuba? How happy can one be in a country like Cuba where individual initiative is squashed, like a cockroach, where passivity has become a survival mechanism and thus a cultural trait?
A prostitute can make more money than an ordinary computer engineer but can you say she has "a better life"? And is she happier with her job?
That is a good point. Socialist Cuba is most likely the country which has the biggest income differential between prostitutes and professionals, because prostitutes earn dollars, and professionals earn pesos.
“In Cuba, a prostitute can earn in a week the equivalent of a doctor's annual salary paid by the state in pesos.”
When capitalism is back in Cuba (and that will happen) some of these educated people will work at US brothels and selling stuff. They will sing less, though will have more cars.
Guess what? Socialist Cuba already has professionals working as prostitutes.
“ In Cuba, one would find that many of the ‘jineteras’ are young and most are of African descent. Some are medical students, some used to be professors or doctors.”
There was also plenty of singing in Cuba before 1959. Cuba has long been a country saturated with excellent music. That will not change in the next century.
Boldface are quotes from this article.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/develop/2003/0326cuba.htm
Medical insurance in the US is a problem, and I have no quick answers.
For the greater part of the last 25 years, I have been without medical insurance, and I have gotten along OK. I had a benign tumor the size of a grapefruit. The private hospital, founded by Jewish philanthropists, did not charge me (the gentile), and the MD with the Spanish surname charged me $1500 in current dollars for the operation, which took 4-5 hours, which is a bargain. So, even without medical insurance, things are not as bad as they seem.
It is interesting that Canadians, who have universal health coverage, often come to the US for medical care.
Here is an interesting take on the medical insurance issue.
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/health-million-uninsured-1850186-insurance-people
Cuba has fancy medical clinics for foreign patients and the nomenklatura. Ordinary Cubans are denied access to these clinics.
http://www.babalublog.com/
So it is an old question, what happiness (and a better life) is about.
There is no set answer, as you well know. I am reminded of the Declaration of Independence: “life liberty, and the PURSUIT of happiness.” As I see it, the role of government is to set a level playing field – have fair rules for all- and get out of the way. Extensive government intervention, while well-intentioned, is often medicine worse than the cure.
The welfare programs instituted in the 1960s had the unintended effect of keeping blacks in poverty. When welfare reform was instituted in the 1990s, contrary to what the doomsayers had said, employment went up and poverty went down among blacks.
Those who believe that government action is always benign should also recall that state governments in the South passed the Jim Crow racial segregation laws in the 1890s. The Civil Rights movement in the 1960s got rid of them, with intervention at the federal level.
There is a role for government re security, safety nets, infrastructure, education etc. The optimal level is debatable. To the extent that individual initiative in a positive direction is discouraged by government, there is too much government. It is no accident that the innovations in computers came from free enterprise countries.
Artfldgr says:
"Which is V-E-E-E-R-Y G-O-O-D!"
Not really, but that also depends on whether the numbers they publish are truthful. Once again, historically speaking socialist/communist countries are not ‘transparent’ and they produce numbers for the benefits externally. In case you didn’t notice, Russia kept all that hidden to the point of collapse.
"I guess, you want to prove that socialism as a doctrine is not conceived to bring a better life for millions of poor people? You may be wrong. This is the absolute socialist idea."
You’re funny... I want to prove that the poor know better than you do. They don’t fight to go to Cuba; they fight and risk their lives to get here!!! (or anywhere else that they can)
America has to build a fence and has to scoop boat loads of people and return them home because they want to come here in droves. By the millions... its not a fluke. This countries so bad that millions want to come here to be oppressed more than home!! Right? duh.
And you’re trying to make a case for Cuba?
here is why you’re blind. The poor don’t want to be “better taken care of”, they want a means to stop being poor!!!!!
“better taken care of” implies pets, slaves, and drought animals. Such sayings imply that they are not whole people but animals who cant take care of themselves.
No wonder they come to the US where they are FREE and NOT taken care of. Just like lions on the Serengeti, buffalo on the plains, dolphins in the ocean.
Most men who have experienced the deprivaiotn of “being taken care of” don’t want any part of it. Its only those who have lots that want one more thing. To not have to think so much so they can enjoy what they have, and that requires that they revert back to child hood where a parental system protects them feeds them and such.
Did you like childhoods restrictions and being told what to do? will you like it better when they say no more food? One has to have lots of productivity for that. And EVERY time, socialism stops that.
The united states is a country where the people who beg on the street have cell phones, smoke cigarettes, and are overweight. I can provide pictures. Though its interesting to see a beggar tell someone who is trying to be charitable to hold on as he answers his phone. (and not a disposable. Ever figure out what a car window washer can make in a day? more than you toiling at an average job!)
Want to compare that to a beggar in India or Pakistan? How about the old women in Russia and the old men who sit on the street selling small items to scrape a bit. Do they have cell phones while they beg?
That is why (thank you, Artfldgr for the quotation), Che argued strongly for centralized planning, and emphasized creation of the 'new socialist man'.
Your welcome sir if you liked it.
No sir. What Che wanted was a means of becoming powerful at all!! If he would have stayed on the path of his old life he would have ended up wealthy, but he wouldn’t have had power. Communis socialism and socialism in general is about power not about helping the poor. Since all it does is imprison them into their lot in life, and insure greater masses of them.
Also centralization has to throw away information to accomplish its job. So its fundamentally flawed as it throws away the information it needs to be productive.
Think about this.. you have 100 thousand people YOU have to take care of sir, how do you do it? do you interview them every week to see what their needs are or how they have changed? Do you start averaging them into groups, and of course using that as a means of restricting benefits?
Right now they are talking that for those who are smokers or fat, they don’t get medical care. That’s an improvement, right?
How would you handle the lives of that 100k? how would you fulfill their SPECIFIC needs?
But wait, there is more. since there is only one place to go to, that 100k turns into 100 thousand whiners who do nothing but try to figure out angles that unlocks some resources.
Instead of competing for resources by prodicing things, which they cant, since they don’t own anything, their only legal place for inventiveness is in the ideas that can convince others to give them some resources.
So like in bruce almighty, the leaders end up shutting off the sound and stop listening because there is no way to do so.
And can you explain to me how in such a system that’s centralized and has a total belief in what it does and no belief in what you as an individual say or need, one would exact change?
How does one tell the government no? that they will not move from their homes and into a work camp? Or from their homes in the city and into the rice fields?
This is the biggest reason that it breaks down… the state in a communist socialist system goes deaf to the people that it claims it whishes to help. Do you think the Russian people wanted gulags? Wanted to be slowly starved to death because they were better farmers than others? That they wanted state sanctioned euthanasia accomplished by not providing enough meds.
What you don’t get in your med thing is that if someone is refused medical care, and they die, they don’t get to be on the med stats that track those that die!!!
So guess how you get great numbers like that? You don’t treat the poor, and you don’t try to save premature babies and you doctor the records.
Every trick that bureaucracies use to hide, change, and play with the numbers rather than do the work becomes the norm since the state SEES through those reports and is blind otherwise. (just like you)
If you understand the purpose of the state for those that want to run it, then you would never say what you are saying.
"It is apprehended, not as a committee of citizens chosen to carry on the communal business of the whole population, but as a separate and autonomous corporation, mainly devoted to exploiting the population for the benefit of its own members. -Menken"
The intelligent man, when he pays taxes, certainly does not believe that he is making a prudent and productive investment of his money; on the contrary, he feels that he is being mulcted in an excessive amount for services that, in the main, are downright inimical to him. . . . He sees in even the most essential of them an agency for making it easier for the exploiters constituting the government to rob him. In these exploiters themselves he has no confidence whatever. He sees them as purely predatory and useless. . . . They constitute a power that stands over him constantly, ever alert for new chances to squeeze him. If they could do so safely, they would strip him to his hide. If they leave him anything at all, it is simply prudentially, as a farmer leaves a hen some of her eggs.
And that’s what socialism does… allow them to strip every OTHER man of EVERYTHING!!!
The purpose of which is to be able to have total freedom for the elite, with absolutely no means of the people to affect change, question what they do, punish, or revolt.
Life, liberty, dignity, means, respect, self worth, etc.
All gone
After all, if there is no property, aren’t you stripped down to your hide?
And isn’t the comfort of your hide dependent on the capricious whims of those who stripped the public but still retained control over those resources regardless.
"A government capable of doing anything for you is a state capable of doing anything to you"
An animal in a zoo has no property but is “taken care of”
An animal that works on a farm is “taken care of”, has free rationed medical, and such.
A horse on a farm is taken care of, but it doesn’t roam free… how can you take care of something that roams free? You cant. So they lock you down… how can their plans be effected if people move around outside of that plan.
More and more what they do is blame the people. And they get more and more draconian as the people don’t perform the way that they imagine. They then start trying to force them. and just like in the Stamford experiemtn, the jailers get crueler and crueler.
They put you away for 4 years in a gulag, re-education camp, etc (recent article shows that china still has them, and can put you away even if there is no law that says so. Right now they are putting a woman into jail for lying on the internet… no law against it, but they will lock her away anyway)
Pragmatism says that people die, and die when there is change, so its not a problem.
You can honestly sit there and claim that socialism is there to help the people, and yet Russia helped 26 million to be tortured to death slowly while they work to death… starved 10 million kulaks… starved millions more by administrative purpose or accident since there is no way to know. Then there is the two million people turned to fertilizer in the killing fields.
They are doing so much better now.. more than a quarter of a billion people, 100 million and more murdered, tortured, starved… more than 40 million abortions in the US alone…
And if you want to put blame for wars… well lets see… wwii, was because of Molotov ribbendorf… Vietnam was because of china… Korean war was because of china… most of the conflicts that the US has been in have been in some way a RESPONSE to some form of aggression that has ties to socialism.
Are you saying that the quarter billion people and their families and their posterity are better off now thanks to socialism? Are you saying that the people left alive are doing much better off too? In fact they are the worst off on the planet comparatively speaking!!!!
The sad thing Russian is that you will not ‘get it’ till its too late.
You cant change a pickle back into a cucumber… and communism is such a powerful power dialiectic that no state changes from it back to something else unless an outside state does it by removing the people and changing the structure. And even then it doesn’t happen without it falling back.
Because people like you cant start from a small premise and work it out. You cant explain how socialism can solve fundamental problems inherent in its structure that cause the same end result every time!!!!
Sweden is soon to fall… the benefits are the benefits of no control and eating yrou seed corn. Its like someone convinced people like you that there is no reason to listen to the conservative people who want to restrict you from eating the seed corn and feeling full!! If your with me, not only can you eat the food corn, but you can have some seed corn too.
Slowly, the production goes down… and there is not enough.. and so they decide by fiat who lives and dies, and they feel good because they are doing such important work….
They are humanists and they set themselves up as gods.. they will decide whether you live or die, and there is absolutely no place you can go to or escape to to avoid it. and with modern tech, they are much more efficient.
How many people out of the 100 million escaped from the gulags?
Bout 10 or 20… and that’s a high number reckoning!!!
100,000,000 and the country is younger than the united states by 100 years or more…
And it means nothing to someone like you who can ignore it, and claim “lets try that again”!
Idiot.
Artfldgr says:
A prostitute can make more money than an ordinary computer engineer but can you say she has "a better life"? And is she happier with her job?
That is a good point. Socialist Cuba is most likely the country which has the biggest income differential between prostitutes and professionals, because prostitutes earn dollars, and professionals earn pesos.
And may I add that there are a lot more women forced into prostitution as a means of getting more out of the system than the system will give them. with sex they can get a man to give them a share of his subsistence. And the old soviet laws insured that EARNING was a no no, but ‘gifts’ were ok. So the only people that really had a decent amount of stuff, were the leadership and party people, who got lots of things and stuff from the west. And all the poor women they enticed into a life of prostitution as they were the only source of gifts.
Prostituting oneself when some party member who had a rubber stamp in their hands happened how often? What if one of those people asked you to bend over? Note you might be begging for medicine for your child. No one has anything of value to offer those who have more from the state.. EXCEPT what their biology can provide.
So the men trade work, and trade doing dirty jobs without asking questions. And the women become prostitutes, not by choice, but by circumstance.
How many women in the US become prostitutes to get out of the country and get to Russia or cuba to live?
Ok.. how many young women in Russia become prostitutes for the siloviki and for the elite thugs that then shipt them to other countries and keep them prisoner so they can make money.
For those that say it’s the same here, I will point out the key difference. Here in the US and the West, there are ways out. Here the trade is persued by the state and is broken up. There it’s the members of the state that back it as one more money making power making situation.
They are totalitarians and authoritarians, they have more ability to stop such trade than any other state. They can just kill the people that do it and keep doing that and no one will stop them or do anything about it. they can do it outside their borders.
But they don’t because they make money that they can take from their enemies. And ultimately they do not look at it from the plight of the women, they look at it from the needs of the state, which are INFINITE. And the state rationalizes the whole sordid thing by making these women heroes of the motherland in their minds.
You can come here to NY and go to manhatten and if you pay attention you can figure out which clubs are run by the Russians. They are like fortresses compared to the others. They are in total lockdown… you go to a club like scores, and its all open. Girls leave get into cabs, go home, have lives, sometimes appear on daytime tv.
Go into one of the ones run by the Russians, and it’s a different thing. Usually they have the apartment building. One floor has the dancing, and the rest is to house the women. The doors are usually steel and solid with the drop bars, and you have to pass through several of them. they place is not bright and fun like scores is where there are bachelor parties and bachelorette parties.
The girls are prisoners… and they are the women who had no other way to make it in Russia and decided to let these asses tempt them past a certain line to which there is no return.
Nothing we can even do about it, since its state helped by such a state… the immigrants in the US are not stupid, they still get bothered by forces from back home. So they do what they did back home, that they are doing back home now. Keeping their head down, and voting for the current leader as good (which is why there is a 70% approval. Which is funny how leftists use that as if it means something, as if the thing is the same as in the west. It ISN’T, and projecting what your used to, the honesty your used to, the transparency your used to… doesn’t work when its that kind of system your looking at!)
So you can use that example of a prostitute being richer to realize that things are so bad that many women there are doing this to make things better.
And the reason they do that, is because they cant do better, like they can do here in the west.
Forced by circumstances, which is the complaint someone brought up with health care and the poor destitute 50 year olds… and no idea how most in the state take care of themselves when the thing they want is not here yet.. and then brings up bankruptcy..
Which is a screaming joke… why? Because they want a socialist system in which the premise no ownerhip of property… no savings… no money… and they think bankruptcy is bad.
The funny thing is that in the other system, since the people didn’t have money to take away that they saved from work, they handle it differently. They don’t give the care! They find some administrative and beuracratic way to have the ‘system’ take care of it.
Meanwhile, most would agree that its better to be bankrupt in the US and start over again, keeping your house, one car, a certain amount of savings, and such. which are all allowed under bankruptcy.. and even funnier, most are not chapter 13… but chapter 11, where they get the space to make a deal. I know.. I went bankrupt once. I went from being under crushing debt (thanks to a lunatic woman – eventually she robbed a bank years after we split), to a ZERO balance…
Right now the majority reading this are carrying a negative load and are complaining that the horror of having it turned to zero…
The point is that its better to be alive starting at zero, than it is to be dead, and not part of the medical statistic for the beuracracy… they break up the situation into parts so that the whole from consultation to end is not considered ‘treatment’. So the person who has to wait, then have their thing cancled, then wait, then dies. Is not tracked as dying from the PROCESS… but of natural causes.
By this fashion they can make the numbers really really good…
Heck, what would a hospitals stats be if every person that was really sick was told to go home and wait they are on the ‘list’?
Meanwhile, here you get treated and have to pay… oh horrors… there is no debtors prison, so they cant go after you if you cant pay and you didn’t steal.
It’s a total ignorance of the whole issue from medical to how we live to the economics.
Taking from the healthy young, to pay for the infirm, the broken, and such, increased the number of real broken and presumed broken in the population.
Taking from people who are financially competent and making better conditions arbitrarily for htose who are not allows those who are not to have more children while denying those who are better capable from having children.
Redistribution of wealth not only changes the current system to stagnation, but the very same forces that take the energy out of the system in the population, also changes our genetics and the very essences of who we are.
If they kill individuals, then who are left?
If they only kill individuals of the masses, but don’t do that for the elite, then what do you have?
If they promote the bad, and dispromote the good by changing the natural flow of benefit that guides our very genetics… then what do we eventually become?
Their two party system will eventually, the morloks and the eloi.
Look at America… Socialist programs are changing the very direction of social development from the time when George Seurate showed such civility in the park image… to today, when parks are not safe for adult or child.
The more socialism, the more backwards we become since it removes the pressures that insure we are what we are from generation to generation.
Right now in America… Darwinistcially. Ka she sha who has 8 kids at the states expense (your expense if your working for a living), is becoming the dominant subspecies. If Kenneth Chenault can be something because he works hard, but ka she sha can be more because she doesn’t work, who are we going to be in 1000 years?
It used to be the smarter more capable would have more and then have more kids, and so have more civility, and such in the population growing over time, because it was rewarded.
But today, what does socialism do to that reward system? It promotes the bad and the incompetent and lowers the number of the competent and able in the general population.
And what does that do about mobility for people from poor to middle class to elite?
Eventually if socialism continues, the population will decline, and then it will drastically change as it adjusts to the greater fecundity of the less able… and the greater fecundity of the smaller elite?
You will then have a genetic slave class who underperform because of their genetics.. and a genetic elite class who control everything by such.
This is what you get when you mix Marx, Darwin, Freud, and Hegel.
Glad I am not going to live that long to see what we will become if communism wins.
All one has to do is look who is ruling in these states, and trace back their families and such.. and you will see that a bunch of those people are not following the program that they made up for the rest of us.
Artfldgr says:
The difference between a free man and a slave can be defined in only one way completely that covers all the variations that have existed. A free man owns property and can choose to use it any way they want, and can choose what work they will do, and can wring from the world what risk will allow him. the slave owns no property, is taken care of by the owners doctors, is fed by the owner, housed by the owner. in exchange the slave provides work service of any capacity of any value, for only that amount which the owner allows them. At the heart of it, a free man can change his circumstances, and a slave has his circumstances dictated to him by they owner that takes care of them. – Artfldgr
Slavery is not defined by how bad the living conditions are. Harem girls lived much better than they would have outside on their owns, and had much. The greyhound at the knee of a lord also lives a happy life.
Its in the ability to choose… and the only way that ability is real is if you can fail..
I will give it writ small.
If I say you get a prize, then do the switchy thing behind my back, then ask you to select, you make a choice. And there is an outcome for that choice, and a reward for choosing right. the ability to fail creates the essence of free choice.
Ok.. we do the same game, I say there is a prize, and you win no matter what happens, as long as you choose. Now there is no difference of outcome in your choice, and yet you have to go through all the trouble anyway. There is no real choice there. And when you cant chose a different outcome, your not free.
If what happens doesn’t matter, and the outcome is all equal…
then we are no longer free, and there is no longer any reason to do anything, because there is no difference to the situation or outcome. Everything becomes tasteless and empty.
People will gamble at cards because the ability to lose is a reinforcement of freedom.
They can sit and play cards at home all day with no difference in outcome… billions are made by the gambling industry not because people win, not because they are all addicted, not because they are all stupid… but because they all live bland lives and have made it so safe that the outcomes are known.
The ability to go someplace and put something down of value that you own and lose it is a heady reaffirmation of freedom.
Without ownership, there is nothing to put down… there is no difference in outcome as there is nothing being put in to be taken out.
Its funny, but we all want to do better in life, and we look at the person who has more money as being more free… a total mistake because freedom is not defined by all the abilities you can choose from, but from the ability to choose at all.
There is no way to make us equal without taking our freedom away from us.
And I am referring to equal outcome (socialist and feminist stance), vs equal opportunity (freedom).
Equal outcome.
Doesn’t that sound like the thing above where you no longer have a state of freedom and no longer have a life that has feeling or taste to it.
I go in put 100 dollars down, I get 100 dollars back whether I pick the number or not (cant even call it win or lose can you?). Everyone else also has 100 dollars and they too get back 100 dollars if they get a number or not.
If the casinos did that… which would be an incredible higher pay out than usual for the gambelers and vacationers. Would they stay in business?
If life was like that…. Would you want to live?
We all have the same opinion, we all have the same outcomes from work, we all live in a place that is roughly the same side, and has no windows so we all have the same view.
Each night, they cook one kind of meal, because that way we all have the same food.
Since nutrition is the same for everyone as they grow up, those who would be tall are shorter because of denying nutrition makes one shorter. Those who are fat though are denied food by the state so that they are kept healthy. They get their cards stamped and they are weighed.. each night the state computers crunch the numbers and make sure that they are given exactly the amount of food they need to be healthy.
They try to protest but that’s not allowed… they say they are hungry and others aren’t and that is not equality, but the state says that feelings aren’t real, you cant measure them, and so they are not relevant.
All that is relevant is equality.
Except for the leaders who say who gets what….
People can die inside too… and this is how we are dying now…
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