Havana Split, from IBD
Havana Split
(my comments between parenthesis)
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 10/25/2006
Cuba: As Castro death rumors flare anew, the inevitable blather about "reform" of the country's ruined economy is back. But that isn't stopping the mainstream media from selling the idea that Cuba is indeed "reformable."
(at this point, some Cuban economists are already proposing a reform that will do away with Communism, as we all know it. The first hints were given in one of the Cuban official newspaper the other day, Juventud Rebelde, and no mentions to the "embargo" were made. Also, they took a blow to the official myth -so repeated by NYC economists- that Cuban economy has gone down the drains AFTER the Soviet Debacle, when the Soviet presence in Cuba was called precisely BECAUSE of the damage done to Cuban economy BEFOREHAND and the weaning of it from American sources. Of course they fail to mention that che huevera was instrumental to kill the vibrant economy of the country which was a capitalist power house in Latin America in just a mere 2 year period)
Reuters, for one, eagerly reports that Fidel Castro's designated successor, Raul Castro, 75, is now "debating" how to reform Cuba along the lines of China in the 1980s. Serious dictator that he is, the newly "pragmatic" Raul has appointed a university board to whip Cuba's rickety ship of state into shape.
(Reuters can't tell shit from shinola, or doctored photos from real ones)
Does "restructurazo" translate into "perestroika?" Never mind, because it's all rubbish. No one in Castro's communist political apparatus has any interest in reforming the economy in word or deed.
(This late attempt by Cuban economists to disassemble the crutched economic structures of comunism in their country is not by far the first)
Which is not to say new corruption crackdowns aren't taking place. And they might just have something to do with Castro's own pending demise. Venezuela's El Universal reported this week that Castro's trip to the ash heap of history may be near, as the maximum leader fell into a coma last week.
The rumor was given some credence when Brazil's president, Lula da Silva, accidentally referred to Castro as being dead and as Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez reportedly flew to Havana on Saturday, possibly to bid his master farewell.
Now Cuba's got crackdowns against corruption — everything from beer underpouring at the bars to gasoline-pump theft — in a supposed bid for "reform."
(our own KillCastro participated in the blackmarket blows to the tyranny during his last trips to Cuba, an influx of Cuban Americans into the island willing to participate into this chaos, and pumping dollars into the pockets of regular Cubans will do a lot of damage to the tyranny, plus the clear example of what freedom is all about that is conveyed by the visitors)
Problem is, it's not reform. There's no sudden change of government heart about ending the top-to-bottom corruption among Castro's successors. Nor is it a sign that Raul now has a free hand to "liberalize" now that his older brother isn't around to stop him.
(raul castro won't liberalize anything, stop the daydreaming already!)
It's a sign of something else — the often-misunderstood evidence of an internal power struggle at the top, explained Cuban writer Humberto Fontova, in a talk with IBD.
(At least the author is talking to Humberto Fontova!)
Fontova said Cuba has seen these crackdowns since at least 1965, with one notable wave in 1989, around the time the Soviet Union collapsed and Cuba lost its support from the USSR.
"A Cuban's got to know which party official is in favor within the regime. If your patron has fallen out of favor, it will be held against you." And you're likely to go down in a corruption crackdown.
The Cuban government's sudden bid to end 49 years of corruption echoes Mikhail Gorbachev's liquor-sales crackdown in the twilight years of the USSR. That, too, was part of a power struggle.
Much as Reuters would like to claim reform is possible in Cuba, it's not. The main problem is that Cuba is a communist regime. Not only are all the institutions that check and balance powers gone, replaced by a maximum leader, but also the collective mechanism of the market to set prices is gone. Corruption is all that's left.
(the only reform possible is a reform that starts with the demolition of communism as an economic base)
"Everyone steals in Cuba," Fontova said. "If they didn't, they would starve to death."
(sorry, this is an unfair generalization, Humberto, readers would put all Cubans in the same bag, and no, not all Cubans are thieves, there are a lot of good hearted honest Cubans who will take that country from the ashes to glory. Many of them are professionals who live in Cuba, who work for a free Cuba, and they will find your assertion offensive, even though there is a wide sector of the population who is engaged in black market practices, as you say, as their only means of survival)
Castro's system sets prices for everything. That includes the low wages of workers — about $30 a month for Cuban doctors, for example, to the near-nothing prices of basic commodities like gas and toilet paper. The regime touts the low prices as proof of its humanitarian instincts, but reality shows how little it values anything.
Underpaid workers steal and resell commodities because they're underpaid and alienated.
In shortage-plagued Cuba, half the nation's gasoline, for instance, is siphoned off into black markets by everyone who comes in contact with the production chain. Workers kick money to their higher-ups and desperately try to make a profit on it themselves.
"Cuba's economy was considered a basket case, even by communist standards," said Fontova, noting that even the Russians threw up their hands at what Castro had wrought.
But to call it "mismanagement" is a misnomer, Fontova added. Cuba was the only society that ever went from vibrant capitalism to wasteland communism without a war, he observed.
(Although it was not a formal, big powers at war kind of conflict - there was a war in Cuba, the first terrorist war in the world, which ended up with the big wigs of Cuban higher echelong of society, the captains of industry and the nation's economy buying the island from Batista the night of December 31 of 1958 and giving it to fidel castro, che guevara and their in-hand gang. In any case, the Cuban case is the one defined by the first time power transfer as a result of whole country being seized by terror kingpings who went ahead victorious because of the application of a method that is now a textbook example on how to wage a terror war and how to get society to surrender very quickly, including the techniques used to dupe the United States and the conspiracy with the liberal press, plus how to eliminate a large swatch of the population through executions, prison, and ultimately leave no other option but exile to the brightest minds of the country. Then , they kept the country under control through sheer terror, as a methodology of governance)
Unlike other communist leaders, the Castros "know full well they could not enjoy the power they have in the presence of any capitalist rivals. What they have accomplished in Cuba now is communism done by experts."
(that's why they had a busy shooting squad schedule in 1989 with the case Ochoa, they knew this officers would have driven to capitalism in no time)
Unlike what Reuters would have you think, to reform Cuba's communism would end it.
(I already said what I think of Reuters)
(my comments between parenthesis)
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 10/25/2006
Cuba: As Castro death rumors flare anew, the inevitable blather about "reform" of the country's ruined economy is back. But that isn't stopping the mainstream media from selling the idea that Cuba is indeed "reformable."
(at this point, some Cuban economists are already proposing a reform that will do away with Communism, as we all know it. The first hints were given in one of the Cuban official newspaper the other day, Juventud Rebelde, and no mentions to the "embargo" were made. Also, they took a blow to the official myth -so repeated by NYC economists- that Cuban economy has gone down the drains AFTER the Soviet Debacle, when the Soviet presence in Cuba was called precisely BECAUSE of the damage done to Cuban economy BEFOREHAND and the weaning of it from American sources. Of course they fail to mention that che huevera was instrumental to kill the vibrant economy of the country which was a capitalist power house in Latin America in just a mere 2 year period)
Reuters, for one, eagerly reports that Fidel Castro's designated successor, Raul Castro, 75, is now "debating" how to reform Cuba along the lines of China in the 1980s. Serious dictator that he is, the newly "pragmatic" Raul has appointed a university board to whip Cuba's rickety ship of state into shape.
(Reuters can't tell shit from shinola, or doctored photos from real ones)
Does "restructurazo" translate into "perestroika?" Never mind, because it's all rubbish. No one in Castro's communist political apparatus has any interest in reforming the economy in word or deed.
(This late attempt by Cuban economists to disassemble the crutched economic structures of comunism in their country is not by far the first)
Which is not to say new corruption crackdowns aren't taking place. And they might just have something to do with Castro's own pending demise. Venezuela's El Universal reported this week that Castro's trip to the ash heap of history may be near, as the maximum leader fell into a coma last week.
The rumor was given some credence when Brazil's president, Lula da Silva, accidentally referred to Castro as being dead and as Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez reportedly flew to Havana on Saturday, possibly to bid his master farewell.
Now Cuba's got crackdowns against corruption — everything from beer underpouring at the bars to gasoline-pump theft — in a supposed bid for "reform."
(our own KillCastro participated in the blackmarket blows to the tyranny during his last trips to Cuba, an influx of Cuban Americans into the island willing to participate into this chaos, and pumping dollars into the pockets of regular Cubans will do a lot of damage to the tyranny, plus the clear example of what freedom is all about that is conveyed by the visitors)
Problem is, it's not reform. There's no sudden change of government heart about ending the top-to-bottom corruption among Castro's successors. Nor is it a sign that Raul now has a free hand to "liberalize" now that his older brother isn't around to stop him.
(raul castro won't liberalize anything, stop the daydreaming already!)
It's a sign of something else — the often-misunderstood evidence of an internal power struggle at the top, explained Cuban writer Humberto Fontova, in a talk with IBD.
(At least the author is talking to Humberto Fontova!)
Fontova said Cuba has seen these crackdowns since at least 1965, with one notable wave in 1989, around the time the Soviet Union collapsed and Cuba lost its support from the USSR.
"A Cuban's got to know which party official is in favor within the regime. If your patron has fallen out of favor, it will be held against you." And you're likely to go down in a corruption crackdown.
The Cuban government's sudden bid to end 49 years of corruption echoes Mikhail Gorbachev's liquor-sales crackdown in the twilight years of the USSR. That, too, was part of a power struggle.
Much as Reuters would like to claim reform is possible in Cuba, it's not. The main problem is that Cuba is a communist regime. Not only are all the institutions that check and balance powers gone, replaced by a maximum leader, but also the collective mechanism of the market to set prices is gone. Corruption is all that's left.
(the only reform possible is a reform that starts with the demolition of communism as an economic base)
"Everyone steals in Cuba," Fontova said. "If they didn't, they would starve to death."
(sorry, this is an unfair generalization, Humberto, readers would put all Cubans in the same bag, and no, not all Cubans are thieves, there are a lot of good hearted honest Cubans who will take that country from the ashes to glory. Many of them are professionals who live in Cuba, who work for a free Cuba, and they will find your assertion offensive, even though there is a wide sector of the population who is engaged in black market practices, as you say, as their only means of survival)
Castro's system sets prices for everything. That includes the low wages of workers — about $30 a month for Cuban doctors, for example, to the near-nothing prices of basic commodities like gas and toilet paper. The regime touts the low prices as proof of its humanitarian instincts, but reality shows how little it values anything.
Underpaid workers steal and resell commodities because they're underpaid and alienated.
In shortage-plagued Cuba, half the nation's gasoline, for instance, is siphoned off into black markets by everyone who comes in contact with the production chain. Workers kick money to their higher-ups and desperately try to make a profit on it themselves.
"Cuba's economy was considered a basket case, even by communist standards," said Fontova, noting that even the Russians threw up their hands at what Castro had wrought.
But to call it "mismanagement" is a misnomer, Fontova added. Cuba was the only society that ever went from vibrant capitalism to wasteland communism without a war, he observed.
(Although it was not a formal, big powers at war kind of conflict - there was a war in Cuba, the first terrorist war in the world, which ended up with the big wigs of Cuban higher echelong of society, the captains of industry and the nation's economy buying the island from Batista the night of December 31 of 1958 and giving it to fidel castro, che guevara and their in-hand gang. In any case, the Cuban case is the one defined by the first time power transfer as a result of whole country being seized by terror kingpings who went ahead victorious because of the application of a method that is now a textbook example on how to wage a terror war and how to get society to surrender very quickly, including the techniques used to dupe the United States and the conspiracy with the liberal press, plus how to eliminate a large swatch of the population through executions, prison, and ultimately leave no other option but exile to the brightest minds of the country. Then , they kept the country under control through sheer terror, as a methodology of governance)
Unlike other communist leaders, the Castros "know full well they could not enjoy the power they have in the presence of any capitalist rivals. What they have accomplished in Cuba now is communism done by experts."
(that's why they had a busy shooting squad schedule in 1989 with the case Ochoa, they knew this officers would have driven to capitalism in no time)
Unlike what Reuters would have you think, to reform Cuba's communism would end it.
(I already said what I think of Reuters)
1 Comments:
MANY Cubans choose NOT to steal , I wish ALL of them stole something from the goverment , the god damn goverment wouldve been gone in 6 months.
These are the generalizations that come from not SEEING Cuba from within ( and Humberto man I RESPECT YOU TREMENDOUSLY ) but Not having walked in their shoes any generalities MUST be accompanied by SOME disclaimer.
IN FACT ....
On one of my trips I think that EVERYTHING I paid for was blackmarket stuff BUT . I was spending an afternoon at Marina Hemigway (actually taking pics of Yatchs with USA and Canadian flags - which our dear FBI gave two shits about) and as I was drinking mojitos I tipped the waitress like 2 bucks and she was looking at me like sayiing OH MY GOD YOU JUST FED MY FAMILY FOR A MONTH !
on her second trip bringing us drinks I gave her another two bucks and she REFUSED to take it .
"NO señor, eso es mucho no lo puedo acceptar"
Now I was totally confounded I begged her to take it and NO WAY she would NOT. She said "If you really want to help give it to the life guard he never gets any tips.
Now, was this young lady someone who we can say "steals" anything!
And that was not my only encounter with people who will NOT take advantage of the situation . they WILL fuck up the goverment if they can but branding them as thives is just unfair . I look at it more in terms of counterevolution.
they will screw the goverment ( like the life guard after I gave him the 2 bucks he brought me 4 FREE mojitos! with a VERY telling "wink"
Did he fuck ME ? nope he shoved it up the goverments ass.
There were tens of girls that I would meet who were totally appalled at the jineterismo . Girsl who could be making thousands if they decided to sell their bodies , girls whose parents were flat out against the system , but they had PRIDE and they had a religious uogring which had NOTHING to do with wearing expensive french perfume if it meant to fuck a stanger for dollars.
Those women would be whores anywhere. In fact the prostitution of young girls is a LOT more pervasive in Brazil than in Cuba.
In Brazil (at least Sao Paulo) it seems that all women between 17 and 21 ARE whores and the whole family knows it. The diference is that in Brazil they DO have choices so those who do it get paid VERY well ! In Cuba those who do it , get paid whatever it is they can get , but by NO means is the majority of young girls where as in Sao Paulo it seems to be ( again I am generalzing here so my disclaimer is - I dealt primarely with women at a trade show mostly models and the like - I do not know what simple factory workers do.
On my last trip to Cuba I stayed at a private home that had been built by an engineer and he had paid for EVERY FUCKING BRICK in that place , in fact it was so much money that some of his shortcuts where down right dangerous, BUT as he said it was my little business ( last I heard the goverment took it away from him) but he did buy $30,000 USD of materials to set his business during the short lived "opening" .
"I couldve done it for $10,000, but I just did NOT want to STEAL anything "
I told him I wish you WOULD'VE !
That is NOT how he was taught.
Generalaizing about Cuba is VERY dangerous , I have met RABID ñangaras who would wonder why the USA did not nuke afghanistan after 9/11 ! I have met dissidents who claim that KaSStro had done many good things (like what for example?) they would cite medical care ... then I would go into my speech about the fact that KaSStro has not built ONE single hospital in La Habana since his taking power.
I have taken people visting the USA to USA hospitals where is says that NOONE will be refused emergency health care , and they would take pictures of the sign and bring back to Kuba.
It is 12 million stories in 12 million heads and 12 million lifes with 12 million sets of loyalty , religion , patritism , honor etc.
We can NOT generalize about Cuba any more than we can about the USA.
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