Cuba’s Generation Y
In his excellent post ridiculing Sean Penn’s reverent account in The Nation of his recent meetings with Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Raul Castro in Cuba, Marc Cooper wrote:
For an infinitely more incisive and — I might say– a more morally elevated discussion of Cuba from a thoughtful and quite courageous Cuban writer, I refer you to the dazzling Generation Y blog from Havana-based Yoani Sanchez. Please check it out and make sure you cast a vote for her blog which is currently up for a Bobs award (Yoani has already won the coveted Ortega y Gasset prize — which is probably what keeps her out of jail). [Note: Yoani won the Bobs award, which I hope will provide her with additional protection from imprisonment.]
Here’s an excerpt of one of her recent postings titled “I’d Love to Choose.”. It cuts neatly, simply and cleanly like a blue-steel machete through the sort of drivel produced by Penn:
For weeks, there are words like “ballot box,” “votes,” and “candidates” that persecute us everywhere. First there were the elections in the United States and now the issue has been revived with what happened on Sunday in Venezuela. It’s as if at the end of the year everything conspires to remind us of our condition as non-electors, our limited experience in deciding who leads us.
You become accustomed to not being able to choose what to put in your mouth, under which creed they will educate your children, or to whom to open the door, but that resignation shatters when you see someone else vote. Because of this it has risen up, these days, the desire to fold the ballot, to push it into the slot and to know that with it goes my stentorian shout that demands: “to choose.”
To understand a part of what it’s like to live in Cuba, consider that it’s possible to gaze longingly from there at elections in Venezuela.
Yoani writes about her life in Cuba in what I can only assume (based on the English translations) is beautiful Spanish, and relies on volunteer translators to render it into other languages. She makes no effort to hide her identity, and in fact displays her state identity card. (See above.) The message to the authorities is: “You know who I am. If you want me, come and get me.”
Although her feelings about the regime are clear, she just as clearly loves Cuba– the land and its people, the rhythms of life there. In fact she left the country in 2002, only to return two years later.
Like virtually all Cubans, Yoani has no access to the internet at home. A Wall Street Journal piece about her last year described her blogging technique:
On a recent morning, Yoani Sánchez took a deep breath and gathered her nerve for an undercover mission: posting an Internet chronicle about life in Fidel Castro’s Cuba.
To get around Cuba’s restrictions on Web access, the waif-like 32-year-old posed as a tourist to slip into an Internet cafe in one of the city’s luxury hotels, which normally bar Cubans. Dressed in gray surf shorts, T-shirt and lime-green espadrilles, she strode toward a guard at the hotel’s threshold and flashed a wide smile. The guard, a towering man with a shaved head, stepped aside.
“I think I’m able to do this because I look so harmless,” says Ms. Sánchez, who says she is sometimes mistaken for a teenager. Once inside the cafe, she attached a flash memory drive to the hotel computer and, in quick, intense movements, uploaded her material. Time matters: The $3 she paid for a half-hour is nearly a week’s wage for many Cubans.
…..
The [blog's] name refers to a fad for names starting with “Y” that began in the 1960s. Cuba’s boxing team, for instance, has members named Yoandry, Yuciel, Yampier and Yordenis. Roughly between 25 and 40 today, people in this generation are the offspring of the revolutionaries. Weaned on Soviet cartoons and Communist slogans about a “luminous future,” they came of age amid shortages of food, clothing and soap as the economy crumbled.
Some in the Cuban exile community don’t entirely trust her, and suspect she is being used by the regime. She replies: “It’s funny, but it seems that the only way some people will believe I am authentic is if I am thrown in jail”– as other Cuban dissidents have been, and where some remain. Of course it probably helps to keep her free that her blog is unavailable in her homeland to all but the few Cubans with internet access.
In her low-key, understated prose, Yoani posts devastating first-hand accounts of the wretched conditions of daily life in Cuba, quietly puncturing the propaganda believed by many on the western Left.
Here she is on visiting a part of the country devastated by Hurricanes Gustav and Ike:
The two backpacks of medicine and clothes we’d gathered among friends turn out to be very limited for all the needs facing us. Food is scarce, especially, and ironically, that which comes from the furrows. Even the children, who normally pick out the pieces of cucumber from their plates, miss the peculiar flavor of this vegetable. The land delays its healing. The small independent farmer has seen increased pressure to sell his crop to the State rather than in the free markets, where he could reap greater profits. This generates disinterest in production, and empty stalls at the points of sale. Again, as in those years of adversity in the nineties, it’s necessary to leave the city to buy yucca, onions or a piece of pork.
Between Havana and Pinar del Río there are two police checkpoints choosing cars at random to verify no one is trafficking in milk, cheese or food. Like the sophisticated medical devices that look inside the human body, people have baptized these checkpoints “CAT scans.” In the stretches of highway without patrols, illegal vendors show their merchandise and hide themselves whenever a vehicle with official plates passes.
Although for the media the news of disaster is fading from view, in the lives of the victims it’s the lead story of every day. We have to avoid letting our tendency to forget cover up the situation, letting the triumphalism make us believe that everything’s already over, letting the avalanche of positive reports deceive us about the depths of the catastrophe. I remind everyone that we have to go to the affected areas, deliver aid directly, and record the testimonies there. The hurricane-force winds are still blowing in the lives of these people and will not diminish because we cover our ears.
Here she ruminates on a a billboard near her house:
On the left, below this billboard, you could see a woman who sells coffee at the corner of my house, who gets up at five to brew it and plays hide-and-seek with the police. The young man who left his studies and sews shoes at the workshop of his cousin, though the Sector Head considers him an habitual vagrant, a derelict, who refuses a job commensurate with his qualifications because he’s not politically correct. Many could be the tiny ant who carries no leaves in his hands… because the others are not only the workers, but also the authorities, the group of those who never get out of line.
And here she describes a visit to a hospital to see a friend’s mother. (It is obviously not one of the model hospitals to which foreigners and Cuban big shots are admitted.)
A bucket in one hand, a pillow under my arm, and a fan balanced on my hip. I enter the door of the oncology hospital and the backpack over my shoulder blocks the custodian from seeing my face. It’s of little importance because the man is used to the fact that the patients’ families must bring everything, so my Baroque structure of fans, bucket and pillowcase doesn’t surprise him. He doesn’t know it yet but, in a bag hanging off me somewhere, I’ve brought him an omelet sandwich so he’ll let me stay after visiting hours.
I come into the room and Mónica is holding the hand of her mother, whose face is increasingly haggard. She has cancer of the esophagus and there is little that can be done, although the woman still doesn’t know it. I’ve never understood doctors’ refusals to inform one, directly, how little time is left before the end; but I respect the decision of the family, although I don’t join in the lie that she will soon be well.
The room has a thin light and the air smells of pain. I begin to unpack what I’ve brought. I take out the little sack of detergent and the aromatic with which I’ll clean the bath; its aroma floods everything. With the bucket we can bathe the lady, using the cup to pour, because the water faucet doesn’t work. For the great scrubbing I brought a pair of yellow gloves, afraid of the germs that spread in a hospital. Mónica tells me to continue unpacking and I extract the package of food and a puree especially for the sick. The pillow has been a wonder and the set of clean sheets manages to cover the mattress, stained with successive effluvia.
The most welcome is the fan, which I connect to two peeled wires hanging from the wall. I continue to unpack and come to the little bag of medical supplies. I have obtained some needles appropriate for the IV, because the one in her arm is very thick and causes pain. I also bought some gauze and cotton on the black market. The most difficult thing—which cost me days and incredible swaps—is the suture thread for the surgery they are going to do tomorrow. I also brought a box of disposable syringes since she yells to high heaven when she sees the nurse with a glass one.
To distract her, I’ve come loaded with a radio, and a nearby patient has brought a television. My friend and her mom can watch the soap opera, while I look for the doctor and give him a gift sent by the sick woman’s husband. When bedtime comes a cockroach crosses the wall near the bed and I remember that I also brought some insect spray. In the backpack I still have some medicines and a little gift for the girl in the lab. I have money in my pocket, because ambulances are for the most critical cases and when they send her home, evicted, we will need to take a Panataxi.
In front of our bed there’s an old woman who eats the watery soup she’s been given by the hospital staff. Around her bed there’s no bag brought by her family and she doesn’t have a pillow for her head. I position the fan so that she will also get the cool air and talk about the arrival of another hurricane. Without her realizing it I touch the wood of the door frame, whether to expel the fear of disease or in horror at the conditions in the hospital, I don’t really know. A woman passes by shouting that she has bread and ham for sale for the visitors and I lock myself in the bathroom which smells like jasmine after my cleaning.
In his essay on Charles Dickens, George Orwell described him as someone “who fights in the open and is not frightened.” I think it’s a tribute he would have gladly paid to Yoani Sanchez.
Update: Yoani blogs with her usual eloquence and sharp wit about receiving an invitation to visit the Ministry of the Interior and about her and her husband’s encounter with the folks there. Needless to say, we will stand in solidarity with them come what may.
Comments
| 3 December 2008, 9:55 pm |
God bless her. Clearly, she is fifty times the man Sean Penn is.
BTW, here’s the unexpurgated Penn, before The Nation’s editors worked their kindness:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sean-penn/mountain-of-snakes_b_146765.html
| 3 December 2008, 10:07 pm |
Gene,
Shame on you!!!
Didn’t you know Castro’s Cuba is a worker’s paradise which has REAL freedom not that nasty ‘bourgeois’ freedoms.
This girl obviously is self-diluated with yankee imperalist propaganda.
*Even worse, some of our Chavez lovers on here will completely miss the sarcasm.
| 3 December 2008, 10:18 pm |
A friend of mine, who works in the airline industry, used to smuggle medical supplies into Cuba. So much for the ‘wonders’ of Castro’s health service.
| 3 December 2008, 10:31 pm |
I was in Cuba 10 years ago.. a bloody prison camp.
It makes me ill when I see Middle Class Guardianistas singing its praises.
The Guardian gave its self over to the dictator on his birthday.. just as they had to Stalin, while millions died in camps.
I know how these people live, I’ve seen it. Its poor, dirty, squalid and depressing.
Cuban girls will sell themselves to any Westerner for the price of a coffee and cake in Islington. And the Guardian thinks this is a workers’ paradise?
The people who support Cuba have no morals. They hate America, Hate Jews, Hate the West, Hate us. But they have no love for the poor Cubans.
One day I went to a restaurant, they had no food except watery soup.
That’s Socialism for you.
| 3 December 2008, 10:48 pm |
Stand by for Commissar Zin to tell us all Joani Sanchez is a CIA shill, and (from his position in the London barrios) that all is fine and wonderful in Fidel’s worker’s republic.
| 3 December 2008, 11:05 pm |
Two of my friends were married in the nineties so that they could buy the cake and beer that the ration market allowed for weddings. They were not a couple and had never exchanged more than a hug, but reselling the drinks and the sugary desert produced enough money to live for several months, each in his own place. Like them, a lot of people signed the marriage record in hopes of the desired products and the three honeymoon nights in a hotel, listed at great price on the black market.
With these examples around me, I took seriously the signing of the marriage contract. I lived for a lot of years under a consensual union without a trace of paper. Likewise, many of my acquaintances cohabit with a partner with whom they have never stepped foot in a notary’s office or gotten a certificate of their union. It’s not just a postmodern or irreverent trend, but a loss of the sense of the sanctity of marriage. Among the reasons for this fading sense is the absence of a family patrimony to be preserved with the signing of a contract. What difference would it make to a child to have legally married parents if they lack any assets for him to inherit, or any property that needs the oversight of laws.
Sean Penn needs a serious ass-kicking.
| 3 December 2008, 11:13 pm |
This woman is a CIA agent, okay? I’m smarter than all you cocksuckers, okay? I’m a genius at movies and a genius at politics, okay?
| 3 December 2008, 11:22 pm |
Penn’s article was sadly uncritical and remarkable for the questions it did not ask. I thought the ony good bit was when Raul admitted to back channel contact with the USA.
The thing about Cuba, and this doesn’t excuse the lack democracy and rights, is that they have avoided the crushing end of poverty of similarly poor countries. They also train lot of health care workers for such a poor country. Workers without equipped hospitals to work in to be sure.
Hopefully Obama will reverse those aspect of the embargo that he can and more contact can be made with Cuba.
| 4 December 2008, 12:04 am |
My prayers are with her and the rest of the Cubans. No doubt some will see hers as a pyrrhic victory, but just to bring news to the outside world de la vida cubana helps her cause immeasurably.
A couple of years ago, there was a documentary series on BBC World centred on Cuba; I don’t think anyone who saw any of the programmes could be under any illusions as to the nature of Castro’s legacy. It certainly opened my eyes.
Let’s Cuba falls under the media lens more often so that visions of a romantic communist idyll of yesteryear that so many have are shattered and reality bites.
| 4 December 2008, 12:15 am |
Hopefully Obama will reverse those aspect of the embargo that he can and more contact can be made with Cuba.
What difference would it make? Cuba used to be the richest of the Latin American countries, now it is crap. That is what happens when a self absorbed rich kid takes charge under the socialist rubric. Castro had no useful skills or knowledge, but he was loaded with slogans and the left wing wonder of himself.
| 4 December 2008, 12:25 am |
I would like to mention here my favorite post from Yoani:
Utopia imposed
I live in a utopia that is not mine. Before it, my grandparents crossed themselves and my parents gave their best years. Me, I took it on my shoulders without the power to shake it off. Some who don’t live it are trying to convince me – from a distance – that it must be preserved. But it drives one insane to live the fantasy of others, to be burdened with the weight of what others dreamt. Those who imposed on me – without asking – this mirage, I want to warn you, starting now, I do not think it will be passed on to my children.
Yoani Sánchez
| 4 December 2008, 12:32 am |
This is real courage. This is speaking truth to power.
| 4 December 2008, 1:21 am |
This is real courage. This is speaking truth to power.
Indeed!
| 4 December 2008, 4:11 am |
I’m with Andrew! For Shame!!! How DARE you immerse us in this running dog tripe! Un-mask your capitalist eyes and behold the glory that is the fruit of Fidel’s brilliant mind! Viva la revolucion!!
| 4 December 2008, 7:12 am |
I used to write about “Socialism” in Hungary from 1979 on and remember two jokes told then by Hungarians.
“What would happen if Socialism would be installed in the Sahara?”
“Sand would be lacking”
Another one. The best workers on state farms get a prize, a trip to London. Their guide takes them to Highgate cemetery to the grave of Karl Marx who is praised. The guide: “Any questions?”
One of the workers: “Was Karl Marx a doctor?”
The guide: “Of course he was…
worker: “Why did they not start to experiment with animals”
| 4 December 2008, 8:39 am |
tt,
“That’s Socialism for you.”
No, that’s gangster state-capitalism for you. There is money and markets in Cuiba, it isn’t, never has been, a socialist place, even remotely.
Just to hark on of one of my favourite achievements politically, but one of my articles was once translated into Spanish by an (albeit reformist) Cuban social-democrat opposition group - can be found
| 4 December 2008, 9:48 am |
“That’s Socialism for you.”
Yes, that’s Socialism - state controal, centralised power, and subjication of the citizen under the state. The worship of Statism, the power of the state to restrict freedom and Socialist ideals.
There is little money and few markets in Cuba, it has been and remains Socialist.
Actually I’d like to save the good people of this blog the price of a ticket to that Socialist Paradise.
Just go to any council estate in Britain, and voila! you are in Cuba.
See the degredation, drugs, hopelessness, poverty, the reliance of the State of sustenance, the anger and resentment. There you have it, you are in Cuba!
| 4 December 2008, 9:55 am |
What a crock of shit.
To get around Cuba’s restrictions on Web access, the waif-like 32-year-old posed as a tourist to slip into an Internet cafe in one of the city’s luxury hotels, which normally bar Cubans.
This is a blatant lie. The vast majority of people using hotel internet are Cubans. This lady lives in Havana, where she can walk into the lobby of any hotel, for example, the Nacional, the Golden Tulip, the Melia Cohiba, the Savilla, pay the fee and play on the internet for as long as she likes. The idea that she “posed as a tourist” is truly comical.
Dressed in gray surf shorts, T-shirt and lime-green espadrilles,
I must remember to dress like that next time I’m in Havana, just in case I get mistaken for a Cuban.
she strode toward a guard at the hotel’s threshold and flashed a wide smile. The guard, a towering man with a shaved head, stepped aside.
Oooh… a towering man with a shaved head. Barbara Cartland, you have a rival at last. Terrifying stuff, really chilling. And then… he stepped aside… proving that her cunning disguise and wide smile were the reason she was admitted.
“I think I’m able to do this because I look so harmless,” says Ms. Sánchez,
Um, no. You are able to do this because you paid the cashier three bucks. What a fucking bullshitter you are, Ms Y.
| 4 December 2008, 10:04 am |
And indeed, Commissar Zin appears, as if by magic.
Commissar Zin is of course, a merchant banker by trade. Funny that eh?
| 4 December 2008, 10:15 am |
It might be funnier if it were true, Mr Morongoth. A bit like Ms Y’s fairytales.
| 4 December 2008, 10:16 am |
Comrade Zin your cheque is in the mail.
| 4 December 2008, 10:17 am |
I thought he was in recruitment.
| 4 December 2008, 10:19 am |
I thought you were in Broadmoor
| 4 December 2008, 10:20 am |
I had to produce my passport every time I went to use the internet in Havana to prove that I was a foreigner - so the story does not seem that fanciful.
Do you think that Cubans should be able to freely choose their own government, Zin? Or do you think that you know better than them?
| 4 December 2008, 10:36 am |
I have never been asked to produce my passport, ever. And nor, according to Ms Y, has she. There are internet restrictions in Cuba - due to a lack of bandwidth, a problem exacerbated by the US economic blockade. The idea that the government is trying to stop people using the net because it doesn’t want them looking at blogs or the BBC is total bullshit. In fact, they are setting up a network of computer clubs and internet cafes to give people more access, and working on the bandwidth issue.
Also, if Ms Y wants to use the net, there are loads of people in Havana who are ‘hotwired’ to the net. It should take her between 10 seconds and one minute to find an internet connection. It’s one of the least difficult things to find in Havana.
As to your second question, yes. Do you think your system of massively unequal access to power, money and media is free? Your third question: no.
| 4 December 2008, 10:46 am |
tt,
socialism is about the abolition of the state, I’m afraid everything is market driven in Cuba, even though the markets might be state controlled, they are still markets. the Cuban revolution was never a socialist revolution.
Council estates in the UK were built by capitalists under capitalist governments. Cuba is a capitalist state, a national capitalist state.
| 4 December 2008, 10:54 am |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straight_Left
Straight Left was the name of a political group in Britain, and of a left-wing newspaper.
Straight Left was a political group consisting of members of the Communist Party of Great Britain who disagreed with the leadership’s policies. It was also the name of a monthly newspaper produced by the group. Though the origins of this faction within the CPGB go back earlier it emerged under this name in 1977.
The leading ideological force in the faction was Fergus Nicholson, who had previously worked as the CPGB’s student organiser. Unlike the leadership, they supported the Soviet interventions in Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan.
A group close to the original Straight Left Leadership, notably brothers Noah Tucker and Calvin Tucker, have carried on the political traditions of the group, by the publication of a well designed ‘ezine’ called ’21st Century Socialism”
| 4 December 2008, 10:56 am |
I think what is even more hilarious than Commissar Zin’s fevered and hysterical denounciations of anyone that doesn’t suck old Fidel’s cock or teat (delete as appopriate for your preference) is Red Deathy’s increasingly contortionist twisting over the term “socialism”. By the end of this thread he’ll have socialism defined purely as his own personal Idaho and every single little thing else that ever existed, from stalinism to Cheese will be defined as “capitalism”.
Zin and Deathy - truely the Hinge and Brackett of our Age.
| 4 December 2008, 10:58 am |
A group close to the original Straight Left Leadership, notably brothers Noah Tucker and Calvin Tucker, have carried on the political traditions of the group, by the publication of a well designed ‘ezine’ called ’21st Century Socialism”
Obviously I’m not as well-informed in far-left miscellenia as many of the folks here, but I’m quite amused by the Wikipedia categorisation of that article under the “Low-importance Political parties articles” category.
| 4 December 2008, 11:07 am |
Morgoth,
no, I’m stcking by the definition of socialism used by the likes of Karl Marx and William Morris, a stateless, classless, moneyless society based on the principles of from each according to their ability, to each according to their need, where the free development of each shall be the condition for the free development of all, and where the principle of the free association of producers attains. there is no freedom for the producers of Cuba, no free aossociation, not even free unions, it’s a state capitalist gangster dictatorship with nob relvenece to Socialism whatsoever.
The soviet union was a capitalist state, wage labour was employed with a view to producing goods for exchange to raise a profit, the same as happens in Cuba.
| 4 December 2008, 11:39 am |
Smoke much weed then, Deathy?
| 4 December 2008, 11:56 am |
>I have never been asked to produce my passport, ever. And nor, according to Ms Y, has she. There are internet restrictions in Cuba - due to a lack of bandwidth, a problem exacerbated by the US economic blockade. The idea that the government is trying to stop people using the net because it doesn’t want them looking at blogs or the BBC is total bullshit. In
When I was in CUba I spent a lot of time talking to the locals.
It was very sad, and they were very unhappy.
They told me that they weren’t allowed to use the internet. In our town, there was only one computer, at the town hall, and only foreigners were allowed to use it.
I could have, but it would have been very expensive.
They were so poor and desperate, that women would line up at night, trying to sell themselves to any foreigner they could find.. just to get money to live.
The men just wanted to get drunk, although sex might have been an option.
When I left Cuba, I landed in Mexico and breathed the free air of liberty, democracy and freedom.
Those who defend Cuba are no better than the Black Shirts who defended Hitler (although perhaps less well dressed).
| 4 December 2008, 12:36 pm |
So… someone who actually lives in Cuba, is Cuban, sees it all and suffers the deprivations of Socialism gone mad but who has the audacity to blog about it all is rounded on by the Zins of the world.
Oh well, a timely reminder to us all that a good socialist denies everything, especially the truth.
| 4 December 2008, 12:44 pm |
tt
I thought we were going to break the HP record and hit 50 posts before someone made a Hitler analogy, but then you had to go and ruin it. Shucks.
| 4 December 2008, 12:58 pm |
Those who defend Cuba are no better than the Black Shirts who defended Hitler (although perhaps less well dressed).
hear hear!
| 4 December 2008, 12:59 pm |
The great thing about being a Socialist in England is never having to worry about Cubans writing on blogs and disagreeing..
| 4 December 2008, 1:00 pm |
Hey tt - what about the health care - didn’t that make it all OK ?
| 4 December 2008, 1:02 pm |
tt,
it’s even easier being a Socialist in the UK when the Cubans agree with you in opposing the Castro brothers’ regime…
| 4 December 2008, 1:14 pm |
It doesn’t matter what Cubans think, they have no rights.
I went into a Cuban pharmacy.. what a joke, the shelves were mostly empty.
This is what the Left thinks is great.
| 4 December 2008, 1:23 pm |
I wonder if Zin is putting a word in with the appropriate authorities right now.
| 4 December 2008, 1:32 pm |
Careful, the next thing you know the idjuts at Glenn Greenwald, Salon, DKos and Huffington will declare you a neocon zionist warcriminal.
| 4 December 2008, 1:42 pm |
Also, if Ms Y wants to use the net, there are loads of people in Havana who are ‘hotwired’ to the net.
1. If you want connection to the net, you have to pay for it in dollars/convertible pesos, thus excluding most of the population.
2. You also need a government permit. Your email (if you do not have access to an international hotel or a government account, email is all you have) is, of course, monitored by the state.
3. If you don’t have access to an international hotel, you can always use one of the state internet centres, where you can surf an intranet of approved sites, providing you are registered and show identification.
4. Despite its celebratedly high levels of literacy, Cuba, according to its government statistics, has the lowest rate of internet connection in the Americas and the third lowest growth rate of internet users.
| 4 December 2008, 1:46 pm |
‘Zin and Deathy - truely the Hinge and Brackett of our Age.’
I disagree. Red Deathy is a genuine leftist who has his own views and principles - much as I disagree with them. But Zin is just a totalitarian gimp who will whore himself out to any anti-Western despot, just like other ex-’Straight Left’ scumbags (e.g. Shameless Milne).
| 4 December 2008, 1:56 pm |
Yes, it would seem some Leftists on here are much like right wing anarcho-libertarianism. It means never having to say your sorry. Because the excuse always is. “well…….that really isn’t……”
| 4 December 2008, 1:59 pm |
Andrew,
but if “it really isn’t” then it isn’t, and if you can at least point to some consistency in what you support and what you oppose, that helps. icnidentally, I’m not a leftist, I’m a socialist, they’re different - left wing, right wing, both parts of the same damn capitaklist bird…
| 4 December 2008, 2:13 pm |
Sackcloth and Ashes, yes, on reflection, I was too hard on Deathy. He’s an utter loon (aren’t we all?), but yes, he is basically honest and whatever he is, he is no apologetic for totalitarianism..
His favoured political systems would inevitably lead to totalitarianism. But that’s a different matter altogether.
So, Red Deathy, if you’re reading this, group hug?
Oh, Shameless was also Straight Left? Haha.
| 4 December 2008, 2:28 pm |
“See the degredation, drugs, hopelessness, poverty, the reliance of the State of sustenance, the anger and resentment” hey don’y you talk about Thornton Heath and South Norwood like that mate!
| 4 December 2008, 3:24 pm |
Stop press!!
Sorry to interrupt your arguing, but Yoani has just been obliged to drop by a Police Station for a cup of tea and a biscuit. Or brow-beating and threats, depending on your perspective.
| 4 December 2008, 3:32 pm |
“no, I’m stcking by the definition of socialism used by the likes of Karl Marx and William Morris, a stateless, classless, moneyless society based on the principles of from each according to their ability”
I suppose that it is understandable that so many think the phrase ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his need’ is fair and liberal-minded in some way beause it has a nice ring to it and fits on a t-shirt and all that, but a moment’s thought shows that it is an intrinsically despotic philosophy because it makes ‘need’ a political concept, to be decided by some agency outside the individual. If the agents of the state or commune or what have you get to decide what I need rather than me, then no real freedom is possible. Think you need to read political literature comrade? Pah! That is a bourgeois luxury! You say you ‘need’ to travel outside your city to meet friends? Counter-revolutionary individualism! From there to the ‘re-education’ camp is a short step, even for those blessed with having no money.
| 4 December 2008, 3:33 pm |
Thanks for the tip Zin.
| 4 December 2008, 3:35 pm |
Sorry to interrupt your arguing, but Yoani has just been obliged to drop by a Police Station for a cup of tea and a biscuit.
They probably want to talk to her about capping her bandwidth.
Right, Zin?
| 4 December 2008, 3:38 pm |
John,
no, because only I can know what I need, sometimes we do add “Self-defined abilities” and “self defined needs” to underline the point. It would hardly be the “emancipation of the working class” if we were to hand all power to a few officials. if we have the free association of producers, then necessarilly, people only work because they want to and understand it needs doing, and will only take what they need because taking more makes the work unnecessarilly hard. It has to be democratic or it is nothing - would you vote to repress yourself?
| 4 December 2008, 3:39 pm |
People like Zin and Red Deathy don’t really believe all that Marxist nonsense, anyway. If Zin really thought Cuba or Venezuelan were socialist and superior societies to the UK, he would simply hop on a plane to live there and play his part in constructing the new socialist utopia. He’d much rather be a wage-slave in good old capitalist Britain. Red Deathy has never seen a socialist society he liked, he’s just a prick tease for the revolution.
| 4 December 2008, 3:41 pm |
Guff Buster,
if I’ve never seen the working class emancipated, that’s because the emancipation of the working class has never happened. In’t logic brilliant? I am very clear in what I supposrt, not some vague word or sound bite, but a clearly worked out set of ideas, which I and many others consider to have nothing to do with state capitalst gangsterism…
| 4 December 2008, 3:41 pm |
It has to be democratic or it is nothing …
You’ve just contradicted yourself. Either it is up to the individual what constitutes a need for them, and nobody else’s business, or it is up to the collective (”democratic”).
| 4 December 2008, 3:44 pm |
if I’ve never seen the working class emancipated, that’s because the emancipation of the working class has never happened.
You’ve seen a century and a half of attempts, in countries right across the world, under a myriad of different social conditions. Every single attempt has failed, according to you. But you still believe it is possible, despite all the arguments to the contrary. When are you going to admit that yours is essentially a religious and millenial world-view, just as much faith-based as any believer in God and Heaven?
| 4 December 2008, 3:53 pm |
Democratic is self, to the extent that we vote for the general conditions we live in - would you vote to repress yourself and hand power over to a commissar? Surely you’d vote for the maximum freedom. Given the inviolability of the principle of the free association of producers, if you can’t force people to work, then what will be produced will only be what you want to produce.
The difference is between democracy between enemies - where you count out how many guns each side has and declare one the winner. And democracy between friends where you accept the majority vote because you want to stay together.
I’ve seen attempts at something, but lacking the basic premise that socialism requires people to understand and want it before it can work, they hardly count. If you knew how to fix a car, but watched people trying to use magic incantations to fix it, would you consider that to invalidate the possibility of the car being fixed.
| 4 December 2008, 4:27 pm |
Guff Buster @3:44 PM:
Pefectly put mate, but you’re wasting your time. Trying to instil such logic into the likes of Mr Deathy is like arguing with a die-hard creationist. The reasoning centre in the brain has been irreversibly corrupted by the ideological virus.
| 4 December 2008, 4:33 pm |
Just read that link about how Yoani has been hauled in and accused of “counter-revolutionary” activity or something.
Zin - what is your view on that ?
| 4 December 2008, 4:45 pm |
Zin,
You talk alot of smack from the myopic periphery, guy. But, seriously, let me ask you, Which way do the rafts go?
| 4 December 2008, 5:02 pm |
Zin - what is your view on that ?
Indeed, Zin, do speak up. You’re not backward in coming forward whenever ole Fidel is discussed.
Come how, share your thoughts on this incident.
| 4 December 2008, 5:04 pm |
Indeed speak now or forever hold your peace (on this blog anyway, cos we sure aren’t going to allow you to forget it.)
| 4 December 2008, 6:03 pm |
excellent blog, great that you posted on it. she’s really brave.
| 4 December 2008, 8:12 pm |
She is indeed. She could teach that stukach Zin a thing or two about courage - if he’s in any mood to listen.
| 4 December 2008, 8:16 pm |
Oh, Zinnikins…. cat got your tongue?
| 4 December 2008, 8:26 pm |
Omri: “Oh, Zinnikins …cat got your tongue?”
Evidently, yes!
Yoani and her husband are incredibly brave. God Bless them and Protect them.
| 4 December 2008, 9:05 pm |
I suspect Zin is engaged in an effort to turn up some bit of information which he will try to use to discredit Yoani Sanchez.
Let’s see what he comes up with.
| 4 December 2008, 9:42 pm |
Zin is such a sterotype far-leftist who always comes to the defense of anti-Western leaders particularly Comrades Fidel and Chavez with knee-jerk predictability no matter what the circumstances that I wonder if he is a real person and not some straw man somebody has made up. Think about it; Zin often comes out with such ridiculus statements that it discredits his own side. He is such a perfect foil that it is possible that Zin is just a fake person made up to discredit the far left.
| 4 December 2008, 10:02 pm |
Its true he often comes back a day or two later with the official answer from venezuelanalysis or whatever, pretending that he knew it all along and had just been ignoring the question because it wasn’t worthy.
Really is interesting that he is carrying on a tradition that started with supporting the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
| 5 December 2008, 1:28 am |
My Cubana spouse reports that Cubans cannot go into a hotel and use the internet. Cubans recently ( last spring?) were finally allowed to stay in hotels such as Zin names so maybe enforcement is more lax than I recall. When I was there Cubans were not allowed in. I was unable to go beyond the lobby with my wife for example.
Some people with access “sublet” internet connections for neighbours but by and large the only internet access Cubans would have is to the national intranet - email but no web- through the remaining cafe’s that Raul didn’t close. At rates roughly like 1/7 the monthly wage per hour.
| 5 December 2008, 1:38 am |
My Cubana spouse reports that Cubans cannot go into a hotel and use the internet
I suppose Yoani does a pretty good impersonation of a tourist. I read somewhere else that she speaks German, and uses that to create the impression of being a foreigner.
| 5 December 2008, 2:33 am |
Ack. Ve Germans vill not stand for being told vhere ve cannot go!
(Something like that suppose would do the job)
| 5 December 2008, 9:22 am |
‘I suspect Zin is engaged in an effort to turn up some bit of information which he will try to use to discredit Yoani Sanchez.
Let’s see what he comes up with.’
I bet you that if that little shit had the chance to peach on her to the DGI he’d do it.
| 5 December 2008, 10:27 am |
I bet you that if that little shit had the chance to peach on her to the DGI he’d do it.
He probably already has.
| 6 December 2008, 12:23 am |
It seems brave Comrade Zin has followed King Arthur’s (Graham Chapman) advice in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” and has
“Run Away! Run Away!”
| 5 January 2009, 4:42 pm |
PARABÉNS. Continua assim. Vamos tirar cuba desse marasmo, mas comum socialismo mais justo, não podemos deixar o capital nos escravizar. Abraços.
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