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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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If only. Deng Xiaopeng recognised that socialism is a completely daft way of running an economy so let entrepreneurial individualism rip. Result: China went from Maoist poverty to its current wow-wow condition in a single generation. He kept the communist governmental state apparat intact to make sure that China didn't get ripped in the process.
Raoul does not believe that socialism is a completely daft way of running an economy and Cuba is still mired in Castroite poverty. The only change is that detente with America means cruise ships now call. I will add some comments from the doc to give you a flavour of how much and in what unfortunate directions this had led the economy to, as you put it, 'spurt'. Raoul has kept the communist governmental state apparat to make sure that Cuba doesn't get ripped by people observing how ordinary tourist joes just like them seem to be able to afford pots and pans.
They (and Cuba-groupies everywhere) may eventually realise that while pots and pans were affected by the Yanqui Blockade, they were available from the other 201 countries in the world. Or they could have been made in Havana if the government would only let the Havanistas do it. But no, they are all too busy soldering the 1959 ones they were left with. Newer ones made in government factories aren't even worth soldering.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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I can't agree. In the olden days we had these things called planes and I shared a jet with the Cuban boxing team and Suzi Quatro. The Cubans were very polite and behaved impeccably. Suzi was a total prima donna all the flight. You can quote your fake doc all you like. Wiley knows that Cubans are nicer people, more courteous and better tailored. Much like the Brits......I shall suggest a trade deal to Boris forthwith.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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As a matter of fact this is more important than perhaps you realise. Cuba has been an accidental experiment in what might be called 'hippy commune culture'. That is where everybody is poor together but with a strong communal ethic that they are poor for a good reason. This promotes a much happier mien than does people either not being all poor together or being poor for a not very good reason. It is undeniable that the Cuban people are happier than they have any right to be.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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A small note on Castro-ite emigration policy. Socialist states have to limit their citizens travelling abroad because anybody with a marketable skill will likely stay abroad. Result: even more poverty at home. Cuba, being the only island socialist state in history, niftily put its own gloss on this by allowing criminals, the insane, the chronically sick, the elderly and (selected) malcontents to leave. Result: slightly less poverty at home.
America accepts these poisoned chalices for political reasons and it is not much of a solution for the average socialist state. When they can't help it, vide Venezuela, the publicity is terrible. Only the one socialist state with a twin happy to receive them, East Germany, was able to do this without attracting criticism. They were actually applauded for it! Ah, Ostpolitik, doncha miss it?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The acid test will be tonight when BBC2 starts its series entitled, in a telegraphed sort of way, Cuba: Castro vs the World. I suppose you could call it a perfect storm for the BBC2 generation: Glam Lefty vs The Man, but it will be interesting to see whether our national channel of record will manage to spot, for the inhabitants of Cuba as opposed to western groupies of Cuba, it is the world's most disastrous economic performer. By far.
If it does, the interest turns to whether it will say it's 100% down to the Yanqui Blockade or just 90% and maybe 10% down to the shortcomings of glam lefties. But just saying it sends something of a shiver down my soul because even 10% would mean that ten per cent of the world's worst performing economy is down to socialism. My friends and relations wouldn't be able to look me in the eye. They're demanding we should try 100% for our own economy.
PS Oddly, they have a direct comparison to help them out. Ireland's GNP today is on a par with our own but in 1959, the year Castro came to power, Ireland's GNP was on a par with Cuba's.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Well, it wasn't all bad, but pretty bad. How did it set the scene?
| Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and their small guerrilla army swept down from the Sierra Maestra mountains to defeat the US-backed Batista and his hated secret police |
Does it not occur to anyone that a US-backed anything isn't going to be overthrown by a small anything? And a secret police that can't round up a small guerrilla army isn't worth a great amount of hatred. Batista was an absolutely standard Latin America dictator. He had already been toppled once, he had an ordinary secret police (they are ordinarily hated or they're not doing their job properly) and he had the ordinary support that any Latin American government gets from America.
Actually, as tinpot dictators go, Batista (an ex-army sergeant) was pretty good, and Cuba by Latin American standards of the nineteen-fifties was prosperous, stable and not oppressively governed. But Cuban dictators -- like I say, especially Batista -- are prone to toppling and this one was toppled by, as it happens, that one. So how come you've managed your whole life to carry around the idea that Batista was uniquely awful and Castro was uniquely not-awful? Because Marxist dictators are uniquely brilliant in re-writing history. It is a religion of the book.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Under Batista, Cuba had been run as a playground for wealthy American tourists, for the benefit of big American corporations and the mafia |
Translate this into a neutral description of how a poor-to-middling third world country might best turn itself into a middling sort of developed country. What is Cuba's greatest asset? Being a sub-tropical island ninety miles from the world's richest country. So step one is certainly going to be tourism. In the nineteen-fifties that does mean tourists that can afford the air fare but 'wealthy'? They wish. For the benefit of big American corporations? They must mean Hilton and TWA. Who do you suppose builds and operates hotels and runs airlines?
As for the mafia ... well, a big part of getting the American tourist dollar is to offer legalised gambling and the mafia controlled the American gambling industry at this time. Are we going to slag off the Governor of Nevada for either not knowing or looking the other way? Organised crime always runs a legitimate business so far as the outside world is concerned. All this was happening in Spain and Greece (not to mention London and St Tropez re casinos) without requiring an Augean stables commentary from the Voice of Britain.
Oh, and by the way, like most tourism, this affects one tiny sliver of the country. I don't think the peasants in the Sierra Maestra were much moved by events on the Havana Strip. That's why poor countries lurve tourism -- it doesn't dislocate society in the way other rapid development models mostly do.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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There can be few depths American foreign policy has dredged that can quite match its dealings with Castroite Cuba. Which is saying something. The Americans, suffering from the twin peaks of believing America is best and having a strategic position far away from the worst, are always maladroit when they are not just being the World Bully.
So, Cuba has a new and apparently revolutionary regime. What to do? After the usual 'How dare you?' (Bay of Pigs) they have to co-exist. Cuba nationalises (i.e. confiscates) a whole string of US assets from sugar and oil refineries to hotels and casinos. What's the drill? Well, every sovereign nation has the right to do whatever it likes with things on its territory, so no law is being broken. Just as every sovereign nation has the right to try to get its money back if somebody half-inches its property. So what now?
Let's have a blockade. That'll make sure nobody gets their money back, the tea-leaf laughs all the way to the bank, and everyone will feel sorry for the criminal swine for ever and ever amen. Good first move.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| For three decades a tough American trade embargo had forced Cuba to depend on Soviet Russia ... when the Soviet Union fell apart, Moscow cut off support. BBC2 voice over |
Permit me to translate. For decades before Castro, Cuba had sold most of its sugar crop (in turn 90% of its exports) to America on a long term contract which was (usually) a bit above the world sugar price. Neither party needed to do this but both countries, for their own reasons, liked the stability. The contract was voided when Castro started expropriating US assets.
The Russians stepped in and contracted to buy the entire Cuban sugar crop at guaranteed higher than world prices. This did not necessarily suit either party. Cuba started to grow mountains of sugar whether it was appropriate to do so or not, whatever the cost of production in terms of the land or the people, because in the socialist way they could get a guaranteed price for everything they produced. But the money they got for all their frenzied efforts was, in the socialist way, 'soft' roubles which they could only spend on second rate stuff from COMECON countries. Nevertheless, they were hooked.
The Russians, as the world's biggest grower of sugar beet, had no use for Cuban sugar and had to resell what they could on the world market. But mostly they could only get rid of the mountains of cane sugar in barter trade deals with countries that were in such a bad way that getting soft roubles was better than nothing. The collateral damage was felt by all the third world (cane) sugar producers who had to compete with all this artificially cheap sugar sloshing about, not to mention the fact that America, hitherto the world's largest consumer of cane sugar by far, added sugar beet to its list of agricultural subsidies and was soon practically sugar self-sufficient.
Good first move.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The bit America never grasps is that foreign relations are about foreign relations. This has nothing to do with whether you approve or disapprove of any particular country -- you can be bombing the arse off them if you want -- as long as you are relating to them. But America has got it into its head that a fate worse than death for any country is to be ignored by America. "That'll larn 'em, make 'em change their ways. And if it don't, we'll ignore them twice as hard."
This fabulous contribution to diplomatic theory made its debut on the world stage with China in 1949. As soon as the Commies won, Britain, for example, immediately recognised 'Red' China. The British have a policy of recognising governments of countries. They're brought up on I-Spy Governments. "Look, there's one, over there." The Americans didn't recognise Red China with one of the upshots being that for twenty years. Taiwan had a veto in the United Nations. Lucky it wasn't Botswana really..
Yup, another first good move.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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As a revisionist historian I am naturally interested in other revisionist historians. As an Applied Epistemologist I know they won’t be. So when my new medium.com sent me this interview with James W. Loewen, apparently the famous author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, I got my hackles ready.
| We’re taught that Christopher Columbus discovered America. In fact, of course there were 100 million people living in the Americas when he got here. |
Hot off the presses.
| Secondly, there were many that came here before Columbus, like the Vikings or maybe others from different places. |
Yes, me old fruit, but none of the others led to anything. That's what counts in history. The Guinness Book of Records is something else.
| And third of all, this man who “discovered†America also started the transatlantic slave trade. And we forget about that when celebrating Columbus Day. |
I think I know what we’re in for.
| What are we taught about indigenous people in this country and what actually happened? Mostly we’re taught that there weren’t very many people here, and they kind of roamed. Actually, there were as many people living in the Americas, as there were living in Europe. Folks came in, burning their fields and forcing them to roam. |
This is what orthodoxy always means by revisionist history. Something maybe taught a hundred years ago and not believed by anyone for the last fifty years. You can see it most weeks on BBC4 when someone bursts in to say the Dark Ages weren’t dark or whatever. The irony is that they were. It is often the case that orthodoxy is too revisionist in the quest to be modish.
| What are we taught about our founding fathers? And tell us what reality is? We are not taught why some of our differences with England led to the revolution. Notably, George Washington wanted [Native American] land. And Great Britain was saying, “No, we’ve got this treaty line with the natives.†And that was one of the biggest single reasons, both for the American Revolution and then for the War of 1812. |
George III, the man who lost the British Empire over his concern for Red Indians. He must have been mad. 1812? This is so weird I'll have to look it up and get back to you.
| Anything else that you think is so blatantly misleading and history books don’t mention? Many Americans don’t understand what the nature of racial relations was in the period from ... |
That is not revisionist history, old chap, that’s people not knowing orthodox history. The clue is in the word 'many'. With proper revisionist history it tends to be 'any'.
| You believe there’s a reciprocal relationship between truth about the past and justice in the present. That’s my slogan. When we are able to face the past and tell the truth about even the bad things we’ve done, then that helps us be more open to change and to bring about justice in the present. |
No, poppet, that’s you deciding what is bad in the present. And you will find it won’t make a happeny's-worth of difference if you achieve it. The past may produce the present but studying it doesn't do much to change it. And if it does it may very well be in directions you will find most unpleasant.
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| Where do we go from here? Do you think this movement that we’re witnessing across the country will begin to focus on how history is taught? Well, it is already in the sense that it’s focusing on these Confederate monuments. |
Yep, that’s just about the size of it. https://medium.com/wake-up-call/the-biggest-lies-we-re-taught-about-u-s-history-b15f8f59f629
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Actually he doesn't mention the weirdest thing that all Americans believe as an article of faith re the Brits, "We saved your arses in both world wars." When you say, "Go on, remind me, we're not taught that in our history books," the answer tends to be somewhat spluttery.
My own greatest contribution to American revisionism in this sphere is to point out that America was irrelevant to the outcome of the Second World War. The Russians would have beaten both the Germans and the Japanese without breaking too much sweat if the Americans had stayed in their foxhole after Pearl Harbour.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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There is now a nasty Russian stomach bug going around.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I didn't believe it. The film showed him drinking the tea from a styrofoam cup which presumably meant he queued up and watched it being made. Nice detail about the wife not being allowed in because she hadn't brought her marriage certificate with her. (Subsequently was, according to Al-Jazeera, but the doctor she had brought along wasn't.)
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| The Tories' incompetence is obvious -- but do voters care? Andy Beckett Guardian |
This sums up the Left's dilemma. It's even worse in America where Trump is beyond incompetent but still has a shot at winning. Wassaprob?
Well, as Andy has divined, nobody in advanced democracies is interested in competence. Good grief, it's like moaning about Tesco running out of hamburgers and who's going to do that? The boy next door got a C rather than a B in his Cycling Proficiency, who gives a damn? No, what everyone is interested in these days is what the French call 'ton'. It may be trivially superficial but it's what life's all about when you really get down to it. Who you are. Who you think you are. Who you think you could be if only...
That's the essential appeal of populism. So until the Left realises that populism is a) here to stay and b) can be stolen without becoming fascist beasts, they will remain the party of protest (and severe rectitude). More along these important lines when I work it all out. Or someone else does, you never know. But while-u-wait, here's an example of Andy Beckett's sure finger on the popular pulse
| Meanwhile, supporters of the ambitious chancellor, Rishi Sunak, seemingly one of the government’s few capable figures, can suggest that he should replace Johnson sooner rather than later. |
Capable? The only thing he's ever done is deliver a budget that he knew was going to be ripped up as soon as he sat down. Plus he seems to be a complete git. So why would anyone prefer him to Boris who is sans-pareil in the git department?
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