Hasta la victoria siempre!
by Scoop Shachtman, 19 February 2008
There are, of course, valid reasons for expressing concern about what follows Castro’s regime; while at the same time welcoming any increase in civil liberties and moves towards democracy. However there are also likely to be adolescent student types. Crooked Timber is a blog written by intellectuals, for intellectuals, which deals with the crucial issues of the day. Like Liberal Conspiracy, but with the added academic rigour and piercing insight that one might expect of its posters, their blog reaches heights other left wing blogs can only dream of. However, their new excursion into satirical writing is a welcome foray.
So let’s hear it for universal literacy and decent standards of health care. Let’s hear it for the Cubans who help defeat the South Africans and their allies in Angola and thereby prepared the end of apartheid. Let’s hear it for the middle-aged Cuban construction workers who held off the US forces for a while on Grenada. Let’s hear it for Elian Gonzalez. Let’s hear it for 49 years of defiance in the face of the US blockade. Hasta la victoria siempre!
Tuesday 19 February 2008 at 23:14
My comrade the Jewish Charles Atlas reports from Havana:
http://tinyurl.com/3xck7h
Castro Don’t surf.
Tuesday 19 February 2008 at 23:26
I get sick to my back teeth of this shit about ‘universal health care/literacy’, ‘best in the third world’ crappola. It implies that freedom and universal healthcare and the like are in competition with each other — hint — THEY FUCKING AREN”T!!!
An intellectual whose head isn’t planted firmly in his anus — an example:
Tuesday 19 February 2008 at 23:30
what Will said
Tuesday 19 February 2008 at 23:37
Vaguely off topic, but to accompany Amartya Sen, liberals (pting!) should read John Ralston Saul, who as liberals go (ptooh!) is a top bloke.
Tuesday 19 February 2008 at 23:46
What I thought was objectionable about the US position was the way in which they attempted to coerce other countries into boycotting Cuba. (Jesse-Helms? Anyone know?) But still, soft liberal support for Stalinism in the sun makes me want to vomit. If our government squeezed our democratic freedoms even to a tenth of what Cubans have endured, Bertram and the rest of them would be shrieking the loudest. They’d do this because they would still be allowed to - a point that seems to have passed them by. Particularly nauseating is this shite about how fabulous their education system is. I know a lot of teachers who come out with this crud. I really think they should be ashamed of themselves. What exactly is the fucking point of having fabulous literacy rates if having attained them, people can’t read what they want? What do these pampered lefties think education is for, exactly? So as to praise fucking Castro more lyrically?
Actually, even though he’s been denied the marvelous benefits of the Cuban education system, Mr Bertram still manages to wax lyrical:
Still, I’m reminded of A.J.P. Taylor writing somewhere or other (reference please, dear readers?) that what the capitalists and their lackeys really really hated about Soviet Russia was not its tyrannical nature but the fact that there was a whole chunk of the earth’s surface where they were no longer able to operate. Ditto Cuba, for a much smaller chunk.
Reminded of A.J.P. Taylor: were you, were you really? This man is in possession of weapons-grade toss-pottery. Btw, I’m not a capitalist - on account of not owning the means of production and shit like that.
Tuesday 19 February 2008 at 23:54
What Shuggy said — but — there was indeed a lot of filth that didn’t like Soviet Russia/China (and Cuba for that matter) *solely* because it closed off markets for them — plenty made efforts to overcome that handicap of course (Kissinger et al — those of the ‘realist school’ — the scum of the earth and that).
Wednesday 20 February 2008 at 0:24
Helms-Burton, I think, Shug. But one can obviously be anti-blockade and anti-Castro (I know, because I am).
Crooked Timber’s post - which I really think must have been written with tongue planted firmly in cheek, please God - has one wonderful line which ought to be quoted in perpetuity: “of course, Castro ran a dictatorship that has, since 1959, committed its fair share of crimes, repressions, denials of democratic rights etc.”
That little Latin abbreviation is doing one hell of a lot of work in that sentence.
[This cunt is banned from here — he is full of shit and is a tory scumbag — he can go comment at HP Sauce as much as he likes — maybe he will do so and complain like a whining bitch over there — or maybe do a post at his own hovel — whatever — a hapless individual is indeed the terror of our time and this particular cunt is an example of that — fuck off drivel merchant].
Wednesday 20 February 2008 at 0:35
Not nearly as much work as it has done in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Honduras and elswhere.
[And Eugenides should not be able to see his keyboard for the haar]
Wednesday 20 February 2008 at 0:41
Are they capitalist nations Hak?
Oh — on checking — yes they are. The periphery of capitalism mind — but that’s how the system works — some win and some lose.
Fuck off Eugenides. You’re a prick and a Tory. I don’t know why some fuckers put up with you and your drivel.
Wednesday 20 February 2008 at 0:47
Ah yes, capitalism–the liberatory system which frees nearly 20 million human beings from their lives of daily drudgery every year.
Wednesday 20 February 2008 at 0:51
The top post at Eugenides is instructive of the little Engerlanndder mindset also. What a cunt.
The EU… danger danger! Lights a flashing!
Stupid and ignorant filth — he doesn’t even get what the Kosova flag represents — what a fucking tosspot.
Don’t respond Eugenides — cos I’ll fucking delete your Tory arse.
I know that will upset you - that’s why I’ll do it — bloggertarain scum.
Wednesday 20 February 2008 at 2:45
Is this one of them threads that descends into abuse and shit like that?
Okay here goes…
No. It fucking isn’t (or shouldn’t). Not if I have my way it won’t be…
It’s one of them threads that political standpoints and the people who adhere to them hold forth (except Tories and filth like that who are banned and that).
If I was to sum up what happened (the Cuban Revolution), I would shit on those who conclude that it was somehow a result of a backward society, that form of society; a distorted form of the sensibilities of the populace in accordance with a regimented, totalitarian mentality (they who hold to that position are racists - plain and simple). Nor was it all a vapid, empty scene before some fucker with a megaphone and beard came along in a self-conscious ‘modernist’ revolutionary fashion.
Sometimes, formulaic, sometimes superficial, sometimes mechanical, and sometimes repetitive in a fetishistic sense, the Cuban revolution was like most others — Liberatory (is that a word?) in essence. kicking out scumbags and kicking scumbags in the bollox. All as it should be. We should have more of that sort of thing.
Hate the enemy not the people. Let this be the motto.
Internationalism, solidarity and fuck the enemy! I piss on haughty attitudes from a great height! Tories amongst them (especially British Tory filth — my own personal enemy).
Wednesday 20 February 2008 at 21:58
“The Cuban revolution was” 50 years ago, “we should have more of that sort thing.”
Wednesday 20 February 2008 at 22:16
kicking out scumbags and kicking scumbags in the bollox. … “We should have more of that sort of thing.”
Thursday 21 February 2008 at 0:10
Leave politics stagnant for 20 years get scum on top. We on the outside see red, green, yellow, blue, white or black scum - some of us like a colour, others hate. But those inside looking up see the brown of scumbag arseholes.
Thursday 21 February 2008 at 0:22
errr aye. whatever.
Thursday 21 February 2008 at 0:56
Cuba - nice place to visit.
Thursday 21 February 2008 at 1:03
Actually — it is.
Thursday 21 February 2008 at 1:40
Just to clear up a few points of fact:
There is no American “blockade” of Cuba. There is a partial US embargo, but it doesn’t stop US companies from selling millions of dollars of products to Cuba every year.
And Helms-Burton is not enforced.
Both the so-called “blockade” and the Helms-Burton thing are used by apologists for the regime to excuse the economic devastation caused by collectivism.
Thursday 21 February 2008 at 3:07
Fun fact:
Canada is Cuba’s third largest trading partner. China first, Venezuela second.
Canada has maintained friendly diplomatic relations with Cuba for 32 years now. It sometimes pisses off the Yanks, but we’ve managed to keep at it anyway.
At former PM Trudeau’s huge funeral in Montreal a couple of years back, the foreign statesman cheered the loudest was Castro. He walked out among the crowds, without bodyguards, and was embraced by the people on the streets.
But here’s what I don’t know.
Apart from the the trickle-down economic benefits to ordinary Cubans (not just tourism, but the coffee co-op kind; I grew up buying bags of the best Cuban coffee and our few American visitors were always shocked and delighted; and the school visits - all our local schools are always hauling hordes of kids down there), and the benefit from direct aid (Cuba is literally crawling with Canadian cows; almost ran over one once in the mountains east of Havana): What’s so great about the Canadian policy of “engagement,” in the long term context of the Cuban struggle for a better life and greater liberty?
Sorry for the ridiculously long sentence, but I honestly don’t know.
Don’t know this, either:
If the Yanks - larger than Canada economically by an order of magnitude or four - had more pro-actively engaged Cuba (not just the U.S. government but decent American people), would that have pushed the revolution backwards, or forwards?
I suspect forwards, standard of living and human liberty - wise.
Thursday 21 February 2008 at 8:22
Thankfully, US government interference in Latin America–on behalf of American corporate interests, or financing and training death squads–has ensured that countless factory and agricultural workers will never have to suffer the devastation caused by collectivism.
Thursday 21 February 2008 at 11:49
Bertram’s Cuba post reminded me of dsquared’s 2005 response to Mugabe’s slum clearances:
“if you don’t have slum clearances, you have slums and that under whatever name, slum clearance programs have been part of development since the invention of the city. The point here is that there is a worldwide and structural problem which won’t be helped by pretending that the only thing wrong with African cities is that the bogeyman Mugabe is being a bastard because he is evil.”
http://timworstall.typepad.com/timworstall/2005/07/thank_god_for_p.html