Cuba shit or wot?

I always enjoy your posts Joe, crack-fuelled or not

Sort out that keyboard quick though, I'm about to have a brain haemorrage from trying to read your posts.

I read on some Cuban website that Mr. Bush was planning to invade Cuba, anyone else heard that? I know he asked Blair to support it but THANKFULLY, he didnt. Bush still bombs Cuban planes out of the skies, too! Its pretty fucked. Uh, yea, but did anyone else see/hear anything about the new Cuban invasion? Ill see if I could find the article. Its very interesting! It also has about a 200 long list of the people killed by US gov since the Cuban Missile Crisis leading up to the present date! Pretty sick.

lol. I found the site anyway, check it out!

http://www.blackpoolandfyldecsc.org.uk/

Its got some SERIOUSLY fucking crazy stuff on their! But mainly, check out...

http://www.blackpoolandfyldecsc.org.uk/archive/ar314.html

Je Hill

Here's some

http://web.amnesty.org/report2003/cub-summary-eng

http://hrw.org/doc/?t=americas&c=cuba

Jason Cortez, as im sure you know, US arrests people freely and holds them in unhumane conditions, thanks to this new Patriot Act its happening more then ever! Also, US televises some Death Row executions, like Cuba. Everything that Cuba pretty much does happens in US aswell. Cuba gets MUCH more stick then it actually deserves, I think!

I've not been following this thread but here's my quick injection of common sense:

Fair point, but do we hold the US as some sort of example of the future socialist society. Of course we fucking don't. Yeah, Cuba gets shit for stuff that a lot of bourgeous capitalist democracies do (often from said democracies) and that's hypocritical. However, that's not a basis for support (critical or otherwise).

Oh, and you don't need to be telling anarchists about the similarities between 'Marxist' states and capitalist states.

Socialism will be free or it will not be at all

Joe

Toxictears we were not talking about the USA.

Ed

Hahaha! Yea, OK Ed, good point. We dont hold them as an example. I wasnt really trying to make them seem more of a "example", I was just trying to point out that USA bullies and highlights the things Cuba does and hides the exact same things in its own country. Im not saying butter wouldnt melt in Castros mouth, but as I said on my last post, I think Cuba gets much more bad publicity then it actually has or deserves.

But on a lighter note, you just gotta love them Cuban cars!

If the US was planning to invade Cuba i think it might have done so already, i mean honestly who would stop them. Anyway, i'm pretty sure it will just wait till Castro kicks the bucket, that way the 50% odd of cuba that hasn't been privatised already will be equally fucked over.

A few more years wait is hardly worth fighting a domestically unpopular war over, and doing so would clearly upset the US's advantage in NAFTA by causing all sorts of problems in US-mexican (on which i won't comment on here ) and US-south american relations. It seems clear that the US state has bigger fish to fry.

It did in 1961.

Your just stiuck in the cold war you are

Aye, great argument Joe. I take it all back. I'm convinced, Cuba genuinely is the blueprint for the future classless socialist society. My sincerest apologies to you, Fidel and the entire ideology of Marxist-Leninism.

If only you'd made that sort of rational argument at the beginning we could have saved all this time.

:red: Socialism will be bureaucratic and tyrannical or it will not be at all :red:

Joe, threatening people over the internet is not a good move. It doens't do much for the legetimacy of your argument. And if it carries on the last few pages of this thread are going to be snipped so it makes some sense again.

Typical Leninist bollocks. If I don't support Cuba then I must support Western capitalism Even if it was a move forward, it wasn't so significant a move as to warrant my actual support. I mean, did you support the West German state? I mean, it was obviously a move forward from Nazism (but nowhere near as developed as their 'brothers' across the border obviously). No, of course you didn't. Because it was just another example of class rule, statism and militarism.

Same with Cuba, it's just one fucking dictator replacing another. And again, I want to reiterate the brutality of the current dictatorship with one simple fact: The Cuban anarchist movement was amongst the strongest in Latin America and survived around a century of Machado and Batista dictatorships. Five months of Castro and the entire movement had been crushed.

And as for this:

What the fuck is this? A threat? Fuck sake, don't be a dick. You ain't got the KGB anymore love! Just you and the rest of your ageing CP fuckwits. Notice how every issue of the Morning Star has a dedication to some old subscriber who just kicked the bucket? What's your name again? Maybe I'll look out for it.

Well mate, in 1857 a mutualist society (based on Proudhon's ideas) was set up. Even though it was flawed in many, many ways (racially segregated etc), this was the base that the Cuban workers' movement would later grow from. Also, La Aurora was Cuba’s first workers’ newspaper and was based on Proudhon's ideas as were the first associations of tobacco workers, typographers, carpenters, day laborers and artisans as well as the creation of the first regional centers, secular schools, clinics, and workers’ mutual aid associations. Again, they weren't perfect, but they laid foundations that future workers would learn from and evolve the nature of their struggle (coz it's only from participation in struggle as workers that we can learn the skills necessary to carry out a revolution and run society for our own benefit. And it's the workers NOT some set of gobshite politicians who make a revolution).

In 1887, El Productor was not the first specifically anarchist newspaper to appear in Cuba, but it was the first one to really outline what a future movement and society could look like. It was published twice a week with high popularity amongst tobacco workers (but yeah, there's no real tobacco industry in Cuba is there ). Anarchists also had a massive role in organising strikes in the tobacco industry at the end of the 19th Century.

Anarchists had set up industrial networks, community centres and local outreach groups in nearly every sizeable town in Cuba and taken part in struggles against local capitalists and colonialists (Spanish and American). I highly recomend you read Cuban Anarchism: The History of a Movement by Frank Fernandez. Covers Cuban anarchism from 1865 to 2001 by a man actually involved in it (obviously not for all that time ) as a worker (a mechanical engineer, in fact).

Hmm, your argument seems a little bit Monty Python now Joe. "Yeah, but apart from the first workers' associations, revolutionary newspapers, regional centers, secular schools, clinics, and workers’ mutual aid associations...what have the Cuban anarchists ever done for us?"

That wasn't my question. My question was (and I quote) "did you support the West German state?" i.e. did you actively support the West German state coz "what would you prefer? Have the Nazis?!!"? Please answer the latter with expanded arguments and compare to the Cuban experience.

So much to laugh at here I don't know where to start! Firstly, I thought this thread was about Cuba not about 'revolutions' in the abstract. Secondly, no, I don't support 'revolutions' just because they're revolutions. While we're on the subject, I might as well say that I don't even support North Korea. Or Iran. Or Zimbabwe. Man, I'm just so counter-revolutionary Also, you spelt Van Halen wrong

Oh, and I think it's a bit of an understatement to describe Cuba as not ideal. I can just imagine all those illegal trade unionists in Cuba sitting around thinking "Well, you know what they say: Whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger".

Yeah, just like Che and his passion for the freedom of the wretched workers (except the blond ones in America). What next Joe, you're only arguin with me coz you're moved by feelings of great love? Where is the love Joe? Where is it? As Mao said, real love comes from the barrel of a gun

Editted to add: Cuban Anarchism is out of print at the moment but you can find it here -> http://www.illegalvoices.org/bookshelf/cuban_anarchism/

Didn't Mao say, 'Power comes from the barrel of a gun?

Also, maybe Joe means actual hard measurable things like life expectancy, infant mortality and literacy in terms of Cuba and who made what difference to the poor's conditions, rather than anecdotal stuff that is not empirical material evidence and that made any major across-the board impact? (not to disregard anarchist input to the workers' movement)