Viva la revolucion! Cuba's 50th anniversary (cont'd.)

And here are some not-so complimentary photos of the land of the free in all its glory. Observe the photo entitled,"Child growing up in a ditch in Florida" The grinding poverty and despair in many parts of America is depressing when you think about it. U.S. government statistics estimate 35 million or more Americans are food insecure. That's more than three times the population of Cuba in America being denied the basic human right to food. And keep in mind that this is the oppressive country our stooges have tied Canada's economic wagon to over the years. 

I have friends and relatives who've driven through some parts of Ohio, Kentucky, and the Ozarks and observed poverty like they've never seen it before.

I've lived and worked in remote northern regions of Northern Ontario and the two provinces either side of it. And after 42 consecutive years of political conservatism in Ontario, and 50 in all, I can say for sure that there are still thirdworld conditions strewn throughout very many parts of it. This is the legacy of the mining barons who left the country long ago and taken the profits extracted from the ground with them. Ghost towns are what are left, and health statistics and poverty across Northern Canada have been compared to what exists in countries like Bangladesh and Kazhakstan. And I think it would boggle the mind if we knew just how many Americans and Canadians are without a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of.

Educational Achievements in Contemporary Cuba

Quote:

Cuba's achievements in the field of education have been widely recognized by both critics and supporters of the Cuban Revolution. Since 1959, support for education at all levels—pre-school, primary, secondary, post-secondary, and adult—has been one of the highest priorities of the Cuban government. A 1998 UNESCO assessment of educational achievement in Latin America rated Cuban students far above their peers in other nations in the region -- Harvard Graduate School of Education

Meningitis B: Cuba's Got the Vaccine—Why Don't We?

by Robert Fortner, MD

Quote:

A vaccine with proven effectiveness against Meningitis B was developed in Cuba in the 1980s. Since then, 55 million doses have been administered in Cuba and other countries.  But not in the U.S.,where outbreaks still kill children. Dr. Robert Fortner, MD, wanted to find out why…

Cuba Ailing? Not Its Biomedical Industry Yale

Quote:

One does not frequently hear of Cuba when discussing today's integrating global economy. Cuba appears isolated, politically and economically, mainly due to trade restrictions placed on it by the US in the 1960's. No wonder, says the author of this Straits Times article, the world is surprised to learn of Cuba's flourishing biotech industry which has contributed much to the field of biotechnology and medicine. Since its establishment in the mid-1980's, the Cuban biotech sector has developed a meningitis B vaccine, and today exports the world's most effective hepatitis B vaccine to more than 30 countries. Recently, it developed the first synthetic vaccine for the prevention of pneumonia and meningitis, which is much cheaper than what is offered by Western pharmaceutical companies. Poised to provide anti-cancer therapies to the European market by 2008, Cuba is also eagerly looking to enter the western market, and many observers are cheering it on.

Yes, Cuba's healthcare is first world - and it's despite the blockade

The shortage of life-saving drugs makes the island's achievements all the more impressive

The Cuban Paradox 

Harvard School of Public Health

Quote:

Socio-economic development is typically measured by health indicators such as infant mortality and life expectancy at birth. However, in Cuba, a nation beset by severely limited resources and political tensions both internal and external, these health markers are essentially the same as those in the United States and other parts of the industrialized world. Cuba also boasts the highest rate of public health service in Latin America and has one of the highest physician-to-population ratios in the world. Alone remarkable for a developing country, these feats are even more extraordinary considering the context of a US embargo that's been in effect since 1961. Because its access to traditional sources of financing is seriously hindered by the sanctions, which until recently included all food and medicine, Cuba has received little foreign and humanitarian aid to maintain the vitality of its national programs. And herein lies the paradox of Cuba's health care system: because Cuba has so few resources, prevention has become the only affordable means of keeping its population healthy.

"I find Cuba's system to be very inspiring because it is so public health focused," says Tracy Rabin, who has made the Cuba trip twice. She traveled the first time as a student in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases; this year she participated as a research associate and program manager for the Program on Ethical Issues in International Health Research in the Department of Population and International Health. Her impressions are not an illusion: despite the economic difficulties of recent years, spending on public health in Cuba has increased steadily, which reflects the political will to maintain successes achieved in this area. An August 1960 law established the Ministry of Public Health as the highest authority responsible for health care. The same year, the Rural Social Medical Service was created, allowing Cuba to place doctors and nurses in the country's remotest areas to bring medical attention to inhabitants there.

Viva La Revolucion!

Quote:

Food insecure—At times during the year, these households were uncertain of having, or unable to acquire, enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food. Food-insecure households include those with low food security and very low food security.

• 11.1 percent (13.0 million) of U.S. households were food insecure at some time during 2007.
• Essentially unchanged from 10.9 percent in 2006.

Low food security—These food-insecure households obtained enough food to avoid substantially disrupting their eating patterns or reducing food intake by using a variety of coping strategies, such as eating less varied diets, participating in Federal food assistance programs, or getting emergency food from community food pantries.

• 7.0 percent (8.3 million) of U.S. households had low food security in 2007.
• Essentially unchanged from 6.9 percent in 2006.

 

Food insecurity does not even mean a family went hungry a single day of the year. It means that the family made food substitutions or received aid from government or private organizations. Under US definition, almost every Cuban but the elite are food insecure.

BTW, since Fidel brought up hunger maybe the Cubans should have stuck with Batista becuase Castro even admited that hunger did not exist in Cuba before the the Revolution:

Quote:

Castro himself admitted that while there was poverty, there was no economic crisis and no hunger in Cuba before the Revolution. (See Maurice Halperin: The Rise and Fall of Fidel Castro, University of California, 1972, pgs. 24, 25, 37

 http://www.cubaverdad.net/revolution.htm

Who is Maurice Halperin?

Quote:

Maurice Halperin, the now 88-year old first visited Cuba in 1935 and then was deported by the Bautista government, then he returned later as an adviser for the Castro government. Halperin gives a great insight into his view of Cuba of the past and the present.

http://www.cubaverdad.net/references/halperin.htm

Kindrid wrote:

The pictures of poverty in Haiti and Guatemala are irrelevant because Cuba did not have that level of poverty before the Revolution.

More baloney. In Batista's time, they had like one or two hospitals for the rich and a handful of public schools. The U.S.-backed mafia regime in  Havana created a secret police "BRAC" on the CIA's suggestion that leftists were inciting rebellion among Cuba's young people and rural campesinos living in poverty. Tuberculosis was a problem among young Cubans, and the repressive mafia regime had no intention whatsoever of eradicating TB or poverty or low levels of literacy on the island.

Rural Cubans received about a fourth grade education - now they are able to go to university for free.  That's just not true in the U.S. sponsored shitholes in Central America and Haiti even today.

 And it's why African-American and Hispanic-American students unable to access the handful of mainly white medical colleges in America are applying for Cuban scholarships - six years of free medical school training in Cuba at no charge to U.S. plutocracy or American taxpayers. The only stipulation is that graduates return to the U.S. and practice in underserviced and non-serviced regions of America, many of which are without municipal governments and basic utilities let alone public health clinics since the Reagan-Crazy George I era.

Quote:

"If the poor in Britain or the United States turned out and voted for people who represented their interests, it would be a real democratic revolution," Benn said. "So they don't want it to happen, so [they are] keeping people hopeless and pessimistic.

"See, I think there are two ways in which people are controlled: first of all, frighten people, and secondly, demoralize them.... An educated, healthy, and confident nation is harder to govern, and I think there's an element in the thinking of some people - we don't want people to be educated, healthy, and confident because they would get out of control." Sir Tony Benn

interesting piece in le Monde about how Obama's impact is playing out in Havana, esp. the rapid rise of an African American politician, unheard of  in Cuba where Blacks remain virtually invisible at the upper echelons of government and the military:

http://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/2009/01/02/l-election-de-m-obama-ravive-le-debat-racial-a-la-havane_1137178_0.html

Summary paragraph:

Les partisans du régime associent encore la "manipulation du thème racial" à la "subversion contre-révolutionnaire". Esteban Morales Dominguez, professeur à l'université de La Havane, reconnaît que le long "silence" officiel, fondé sur la croyance que l'égalitarisme "réglerait les problèmes", "oubliait les terribles séquelles" héritées du passé. M. Morales pense néanmoins que "les Noirs sont chaque jour plus nombreux au pouvoir" et que "le reste se règle avec le temps". Une affirmation optimiste, alors qu'au bout d'un demi-siècle, seul Esteban Lazo partage le sommet du pouvoir, que le bureau politique compte 5 Noirs sur 24 membres, le Conseil d'Etat un tiers de Noirs et métis, et le Parlement cubain 19 % d'élus noirs.

or roughly:

Supporters of the régime still associate the "manipulation of the race  theme" with "counter-revolutionary subversion ". Esteban Morales Dominguez, a professor at the University of Havana, admitted that the long official "silence", based on the belief that egalitarianism "would settle the problem", "forgot the terrible inheritance" of the past.

Mr. Morales holds nonetheless that "Blacks in power are becoming more numerous all the time" and that "the rest will be resolved over time". An optimistic assertion, given that after half a century only Esteban Lazo has reached the top of the political pyramid while the Politburo has only 5 Blacks among its 24 members, the Council of State is just one third Black and Mestizo, and 19 per cent of members of parliament are Black deputies.

...........

Wesen ist was Gewesen ist

Quote:

More baloney. In Batista's time, they had like one or two hospitals for the rich and a handful of public schools.

Ah, not true.

Quote:

By 1952, Cuba, as a republic, having rapidly advanced became number three in standard of living in Latin America. The Cuban workers were the third best paid in the world, and had advanced legal and social laws protecting them. Cuba had an extensive public education system open to all. In 1940, there were 30,000 primary classrooms with more than 34,000 teachers and an enrollment of 1,300,000 students, and more than 1,000 private schools of all denominations with more than 200,000 students. Cuba had an extensive system of HMOs dating from the prior century that flourished in republican times, that were extremely efficient and inexpensive, as well as free medical care for the poor at government hospitals.

http://www.amigospais-guaracabuya.org/oagaq001.php

so:  faced with a difficult or uncomfortable fact, change the subject;

 conditions are difficult for many African Americans, BUT the US elected a black president, with no similar role on the horizon for Black Cubans

 maybe there are cultural conditions (ex. the old opposition betweem "Gallegos" and "Negritos" in Cuba) that formal egalitariansim does not affect 

as they say on term papers: compare and contrast

Cubans do not reject the idea that there is racism in their country. Not like apartheid America still refuses to come to terms with in their own country. Racism exists in every country - that is a fact. But it's been said by leftists that Obama is just another cosmetic leader for the vicious empire. Like every other cosmetic leader of the American plutocracy, Obama's presidential candidacy and campaign was supported and funded

by billionaires and Wall Street types. It's not a democratic selection process by any means. His transition team was filled with hawks. Obama will maintain a revolving door between Wall Street and Washington. The same crooks responsible for this neoliberalized deregulation-induced collapse in U.S. banking and finance will be the same people responsible for fixing it. The foxes already have chicken feathers stuck between their fangs. The lizard people needed to put a human face on their continuing fascist agenda.

The largest threat to basic human rights in this hemisphere is the USSA. In fact, the largest threat to basic human rights on the island of Cuba is the US military and largest incarcerated population, an illegal gulag for torture and basic human rights violations at Guantanamo Bay. What we have today is the American inquisition to prop up a phony war on terror around the world. We know who the real terrorists are and representing the most serious threat to human rights. And it isnt Cuba, that long-time socialist thorn in the side of the vicious empire. Socialism in Cuba will outlast Obama and any more fake cosmetic leaders they might create as the sun sets on neoliberal capitalism.

My sources are impeccable. I've cited Harvard and Yale and Stanford U's, all American sources as well as some Canadian ones. GlobalResearch.ca is run by Professor Chossudovsky of Ottawa U and host of a number of independent Canadian and American academics and journalists. Kindred, you're so full of shit that your eyes must be a deep brown by now. ciao muchacha

Kindrid wrote:

We get the same pattern from the Castro apologists and supporters:

1. Mention anything bad about Cuba and bring up the United States.
2. Make irrelevant comparisons to other nations
3. Batista was bad so anything Cuba does now is fine

 

It's just that the typical Cuba pundits also happen to be prolific apologists for the vicious empire when probed a little too much on their second-hand opinions. And like yourself, they tend to point to the reams of disinformation emanating from the U.S. and funded by rightist  whacko extremists and lunatic right-wing fringe in general. The pre-packaged smelly bullshit wafting over the border from the US is not so unlike our own CD Howe and right-wing Vancouver make believe think tank publications except with a lot more money behind them. They have whole Joe Goebbels-like industries and governmental departments dedicated to propagandizing the public when not waging economic and other warfare against tiny Cuba as but one example of how they operate 

Oh, this paragraph is a good one from the article:

Quote:

 The European Union recently dispatched anthropologists to study racism in Cuba. Their findings were shocking: Not only was racism alive and well in the workers’ paradise, but it was systemic and institutional. Blacks were systematically excluded from positions that involved coming in contact with foreign tourists (where they could earn tips in hard currencies), they were relegated to poor housing, complained of the longest waits for healthcare, were excluded from managerial positions, received the lowest remittances from relatives abroad, and were five times more likely to be imprisoned.

http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=7b4ef8e52790034e043a37d170243f0f

Quote:

And Chile is still a shithole ruled by US-backed elites and former Pinochet fascists representing the rich.

It is not a shithole. I have talked to plenty of travelers that spent months traveling throughout Latin America. When they reach Chile it is like leaving the developing world. It is like they are back in Western Europe.  You are aware that the current President of Chile is Michelle Bachelet was tortured under the Pinochet regime?

BTW, referring to an entire ethnic community as worms is racist and offensive.  

In a free society people have the freedom to act irresponsible. That leads to increased health problems and increased infant mortality.Cuba also has a higher rate of deaths during pregnancy and a high suicide rate. Funny, how some only want to highlight the positive.

Quote:

Mexico will be sending thousands of their military people to the US school of the Americas for training in the black art of torture and terrorism to be used against their own people when called upon by their US-backed stooge leaders.

It is no longer called the School of America’s. It is now called The  Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC).Allegation of torture stem from a single pamphlet around 30 year ago that instructed soldiers on interrogation techniques for insurgents. That pamphlet has not been used  for decades. Today, the school emphasis human rights and trains officers from the Western Hemisphere in professionalism. Having a professional military schooled in human rights is a benefit for all nations. WHINSEC is a good program.

Quote:

Democracy, Ethics and Human Rights Program.  The Democracy, Ethics and Human Rights Program in the Institute fulfills the congressionally-mandated mission of promoting understanding and respect for democratic values and institutions, human rights, the rule of law, due process and civilian control of a nation’s armed forces.  A comprehensive three-hour class provides an overview of U.S. democracy and the traditions, customs and practices common to most U.S. citizens.  A minimum of eight hours of training in the Human Rights Class creates a culture of respect for human rights.  Offered at the beginning of each course, these classes demonstrate how deeply embedded U.S. values, respect for the rule of law and our constitutional structure have maintained a strong democracy and uninterrupted civilian control of the military throughout our history.  At the opening of the course, the commandant specifically addresses the need for ethical behavior, and during each course, the institute chaplain presents a two-hour class on ethics.

https://www.infantry.army.mil/WHINSEC/democracy.asp?id=95

That sounds like warmed over cold war era bullshit to me. What's your source on this damning information, the Miami Herald?

They used to say the same things about Sweden, beginning from a time when Sweden was among the first countries to actually report detailed health statistics.

I've never observed such a concerted effort to disinform babblers about Cuba and quoting so many flakey and highly questionable news sources. Youve posted so much smelly bullshit about CUba that I think you're beginning to believe it yourself.

Cueball wrote:

From reading this interview with Lyndie England, I don't even get the sense that the US Army teaches ethics to its own personnel, and I'd hate to think how that translates into Spanish...

Now I know where he learned to use adverbs...

Go post at the star or something....

Quote:

said were pulled from use in 1991 by
then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. He determined that the language
violated U.S. policy. At the time, the Pentagon conducted a review of
the training materials and reported the findings to Congress in closed
briefings.

Kindrid] </p> <p> [quote wrote:

So, from your own source the problem went away in 1991.

What do you think?

COLOMBIAN ARMY COMMANDERS FIRED FOR KILLINGS RECEIVED U.S. TRAINING AND ASSISTANCE 2008

PRISONER ABUSE: PATTERNS FROM THE PAST

Quote:

Washington D.C. May 12, 2004: CIA interrogation manuals written in the 1960s and 1980s described "coercive techniques" such as those used to mistreat detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, according to the declassified documents posted today by the National Security Archive. The Archive also posted a secret 1992 report written for then Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney warning that U.S. Army intelligence manuals that incorporated the earlier work of the CIA for training Latin American military officers in interrogation and counterintelligence techniques contained "offensive and objectionable material" that "undermines U.S. credibility, and could result in significant embarrassment."

What credibility would Lon Cheney Jr be talking about? You see, this is how far out of touch these jokers have become, like Cheney who's been in there like a dirty shirt and with various designated embedded bureaucratic roles since the 1970's.

Quote:

Do you have a shred of evidence that the problem continued? Do you realize the entire program was changed years ago?

 Also, it is ridiculous to compare the acts of a few low ranking soldiers to the training at a highly professional school reserved for officers.

Is this an act? I dont believe someone could be this "naive" all on your own. Youre so naive that I suspect youre actually twins, Kindrid I & II? Can your mama tell yez apart?  

old_bolshie wrote:

Quote:

Chile is still a shithole ruled by US-backed elites and former Pinochet fascists representing the rich.

More Bee Ess from someone who's never been to South America-in fact Chile is a prosperous place and Michelle Bachelet is a darling of leftists everyhwere being a former political prisoner of the Pinochet regime.

What an incredible memory you have of the fascist years. Good for you, ol' Bullshie. Now picture a number of that old fascist bastard's henchmen and bureaucrats who were in place at the time of desaparecidos are still there in the background, and those rich to whom the national income was shovelled to in the Chile con Friedman years still in control of too much of the economy. Pinochet should have been strung up by his nuts, and sometime later, lined up against a cement wall at dawn no blindfold.

Fidel wrote:

Here, read this. It's difficult to keep up with how little you know about everything in general. Silly ol' bullshie.

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Can't stay organised can't spell because either!!

Here is the actual link to the article from July '08

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jul2008/chil-j08.shtml