Cuba in Angola

[overseasorange2]

Originally Posted by utgibbs

What kind of freedom do you mean?

OH I get your point, I am moving Cuba up to #1 on my retirement destination I bet I could get a real bargain on a beachfront house.

[utgibbs]

Originally Posted by overseasorange2

OH I get your point, I am moving Cuba up to #1 on my retirement destination I bet I could get a real bargain on a beachfront house.

Ah, the Milton Friedman version: freedom is being able to choose the color tie you want...

I've always found that definition profoundly depressing. The freedom to buy cheap tat is a rather limited notion. And it certainly precludes a fraction of the US population which probably exceeds the total Cuban population.

Tourism dollars to Cuba have been funding the Revolution since 1990s....

[overseasorange2]

Originally Posted by utgibbs

Ah, the Milton Friedman version: freedom is being able to choose the color tie you want...

I've always found that definition profoundly depressing. The freedom to buy cheap tat is a rather limited notion. And it certainly precludes a fraction of the US population which probably exceeds the total Cuban population.

Tourism dollars to Cuba have been funding the Revolution since 1990s....

Your naivety astounds me. I used to think the picture in your avatar is your kids, but now I realize it's you and your sister. So, now I understand the nature of your posts.

[utgibbs]

Originally Posted by overseasorange2

Your naivety astounds me. I used to think the picture in your avatar is your kids, but now I realize it's you and your sister. So, now I understand the nature of your posts.

I'm not sure what you mean.

They are my kids, and do you think Cuba doesn't receive tourism dinero? Naivety could be believing the CIA story on Cuba, no? The gsvol photoshop version?

[MG1968]

naivete would be believing the Cuba of Michael Moore

[utgibbs]

Originally Posted by MG1968

naivete would be believing the Cuba of Michael Moore

I haven't even seen Sicko.

However, Michael tells a good story, and he's right far, far more than wrong.

And certainly less naive than, say, buying the CIA line or gsvol's.

[gsvol]

Hell Gibby, we wouldn't even have Castro to begin with except for CIA assistance!!

Pajamas Media First, They Came for the Labor Leaders in Cuba

......... a union protestor in Madison, Wisconsin, caught on camera saying he wants to vote for Castro and his clone, Che Guevara.
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Here’s a UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) report on Cuba circa 1957:

One feature of the Cuban social structure is a large middle class. Cuban workers are more unionized [proportional to the population] than U.S. workers. The average wage for an 8-hour day in Cuba in 1957 is higher than for workers in Belgium, Denmark, France and Germany. Cuban labor receives 66.6 per cent of gross national income. In the U.S. the figure is 70 per cent, in Switzerland 64 per cent. 44 per cent of Cubans are covered by Social legislation, a higher percentage than in the U.S.

In 1958, Cuba had a higher per capita income than Austria or Japan and Cuban industrial workers had the eighth-highest wages in the world. In the 1950s, Cuban stevedores earned more per hour than their counterparts in New Orleans and San Francisco.

Thousands of these took up arms against Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. The MRP (Movimiento Revolucionario del Pueblo) was among these Cuban resistance groups of mostly laborers.
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In a TV speech on June 26, 1961, when Che Guevara was Cuba’s “Minister of Industries,” he proclaimed: “The Cuban workers have to start being used to live in a collectivist regimen, and by no means can they go on strike!”

This “no strike” provision was unacceptable to Cuban laborers — many of whom took up arms in protest, along with Cuba’s enraged campesinos who rose in arms by the thousands when Castro and Che started stealing their land to build Soviet Kolkhozes.

This rebellion, involving ten times the number of rebels, ten times the number of casualties, and lasting twice as long as the puerile skirmish against Batista, found no reporter anywhere near Cuba’s hills. The Cuban campesinos’ bloody rebellion against Castro-Stalinism lasted from late 1959 to 1966. Tens of thousands of troops, scores of Soviet advisors, and squadrons of Soviet tanks, helicopters, and flame-throwers finally extinguished the lonely Cuban freedom-fight.
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According to the scholars and researchers at the Cuba Archive, the Castro regime’s total death toll — from torture, prison beatings, firing squads, machine gunning of escapees, drownings, etc. — approaches 100,000. Cuba’s population in 1960 was 6.4 million. According to the human rights group Freedom House, 500,000 Cubans (young and old, male and female) have passed through Castro’s prisons and forced-labor camps. This puts Castro and Che’s political incarceration rate right up there with their hero Stalin’s.
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Castro’s “nationalist” revolution saw many of Stalin’s own henchmen directing the murder, torture and destitution of millions of native Cubans.

Among the first to go were labor leaders.

Ortega murdered the president of the independent coffee growers union in Nicaragua first thing when he was seeking to establish a Stalinist state there.

[utgibbs]

Originally Posted by gsvol

Hell Gibby, we wouldn't even have Castro to begin with except for CIA assistance!!

Pajamas Media First, They Came for the Labor Leaders in Cuba



Ortega murdered the president of the independent coffee growers union in Nicaragua first thing when he was seeking to establish a Stalinist state there.

Have you read the Senate report on "Alleged Assassinations?" Great reading - details how Col Wimert pistol whipped General Viaux to get back the brick of CIA money in cling film after they assassinated General Schneider in Chile. The part on Cuba reads like Ian Flemming - I wish I could remember the contact's codename, but passing him the poison ball point pen was pure entertainment.

I take it you mean the farcical assassination attempts and the blockade have strengthened Castro's position.

True.

[gsvol]

Originally Posted by utgibbs

Have you read the Senate report on "Alleged Assassinations?" Great reading - details how Col Wimert pistol whipped General Viaux to get back the brick of CIA money in cling film after they assassinated General Schneider in Chile. The part on Cuba reads like Ian Flemming - I wish I could remember the contact's codename, but passing him the poison ball point pen was pure entertainment.

I take it you mean the farcical assassination attempts and the blockade have strengthened Castro's position.

True.

No I havn't read that. (Oh wait, I faintly recall something about that but was personally skeptical about some of the claims.)

Yes American policy has strengthened Castro in many ways but I was talking about CIA assistance to him prior to his capture of Havana.

During the height of his war with the MRP I was reading the daily CIA report and it hardly ever mentioned Vietnam at all but instead was mostly about Latin America and I don't recall even one mention of Cuba.

They may have mentioned it but if there was anything there it just glossed over the situation imo.

One would think a person in my position at the time would have been faintly aware there was a civil war raging in Cuba.

Another huge lie believed by most of the American public and referred to in the media was that the Contras, along with the CIA were trafficing drugs to fund their war.

Nothing could be farther from the truth, it was Ortega and the Sandnistas who were trafficing narcotics and also were cutting people's heads off in order to terrorize others to do their bidding.

[utgibbs]

Originally Posted by gsvol

No I havn't read that. (Oh wait, I faintly recall something about that but was personally skeptical about some of the claims.)

Yes American policy has strengthened Castro in many ways but I was talking about CIA assistance to him prior to his capture of Havana.

During the height of his war with the MRP I was reading the daily CIA report and it hardly ever mentioned Vietnam at all but instead was mostly about Latin America and I don't recall even one mention of Cuba.

They may have mentioned it but if there was anything there it just glossed over the situation imo.

One would think a person in my position at the time would have been faintly aware there was a civil war raging in Cuba.

Another huge lie believed by most of the American public and referred to in the media was that the Contras, along with the CIA were trafficing drugs to fund their war.

Nothing could be farther from the truth, it was Ortega and the Sandnistas who were trafficing narcotics and also were cutting people's heads off in order to terrorize others to do their bidding.

I suppose then there is no better argument for cutting the CIA and to cut spending by shaving 25% or more off the defense budget.

[gsvol]

Originally Posted by utgibbs

I suppose then there is no better argument for cutting the CIA and to cut spending by shaving 25% or more off the defense budget.

I'm not very impressed with the work of the CIA to say the least but don't favor cutting defense the way things are.