As of the last meeting of the U.N. General Assembly in 2009 to vote on the issue of the U.S. imposed trade embargo against Cuba, 187 countries have voted against it, while only 3 have voted in keeping it in place, the U.S., Israel, and the Palau islands.
"To reserve to the U.S. the faculty of deciding for themselves when independence in Cuba is menaced and when therefore they ought to intervene, to preserve it, is equivalent to delivering up the key of our house so that they can enter it at all hours when the desire takes them, day or night."
Cuban senator Juan Gualberto Gómez on the Platt Amendment. The Monroe Doctrine, created by and for the U.S., also gives itself the right to militarily intervene throughout Latin America at will.
U.S. Secretary of State James Blaine wrote in 1881 of Cuba: "that rich island, the key to the Gulf of Mexico, and the field for our most extended trade in the Western Hemisphere, is, though in the hands of Spain, a part of the American commercial system...If ever ceasing to be Spanish, Cuba must necessarily become American and not fall under any other European domination."
President Eisenhower's National Security Council discussing the Cuban trade embargo:
"The only predictable measure we have today to alienate internal support for the Revolution is through disillusionment and desperation, based on dissatisfaction and economic duress. Every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. Money and supplies must be denied to Cuba in order to decrease real wages, bring about hunger, desperation and the overthrow of government."
"I candidly confess, that I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of States. The control which, with Florida Point, this island would give us over the Gulf of Mexico, and the countries and isthmus bordering on it, as well as all those whose waters flow into it, would fill up the measure of our political well-being."
Operation Northwoods was proposed by the U.S. Joint Chiefs to inflict terrorism against it's own country in order to draw public and international opinion into a war with Cuba.
"The desired resultant from the execution of this plan would be to place the U.S. in the apparent position of suffering defenseable grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere."
It is an irony that these rugged individuals so loved individualism that they ganged up together to enslave black people, steal land from Mexico, and carry out an ethnic cleansing of the continent... before ganging up to abuse peoples of Central and South America and so on around the world. A nation of individuals saying, "I am an individual. Don't blame me for the collective crimes of this country."
Operation Condor was an intelligence-sharing network used by six South American dictators of the 70s and 80s to eliminate dissidents. The Terror Archives described the fates of thousands of Latin Americans who had been secretly kidnapped, tortured, and killed by the security services of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay, with possibly around 50,000 people murdered, 30,000 people disappeared and 400,000 people imprisoned.
To the U.S. national security apparatus--which fostered the new continent-wide security doctrine in its training centers, such as the Army School of the Americas in Panama--and most of the Latin American militaries, the Cold War represented World War III, the war of ideologies.
Security forces in Latin America classified and targeted persons on the basis of their political ideas rather than illegal acts. The regimes hunted down dissidents and leftists, union and peasant leaders, priests and nuns, intellectuals, students and teachers--not only guerrillas (who, under international law, are also entitled to due process).
U.S. Ambassador Robert White relates a conversation with Gen. Davalos, chief of staff of Paraguay's armed forces, who told him that the South American intelligence chiefs involved in Condor "keep in touch with one another through a U.S. communications installation in the Panama Canal Zone which covers all of Latin America". This installation is "employed to co-ordinate intelligence information among the southern cone countries".
So, lets imagine how the September 11th attacks could have been worse for example. Suppose that on 9/11, Al-Qaeda had bombed the White House and killed the President, instituted a murderous, brutal regime which killed maybe 50,000 to 100,000 people and tortured about 700,000, set up a major international terrorist center in Washington, which was overthrowing governments all over the world, and installing brutal vicious neo-Nazi dictatorships, assassinating people.
Suppose he called in a bunch of economists, lets call them the Kandahar Boys to run the American economy, who within a couple of years had driven the economy into one of the worst collapses of its history. That would have been worse than 9/11, right? But it did happen. And it happened on 9/11. That happened on September 11, 1973 in Chile, but not from our point of view, in fact, who even knows about it? Incidentally, just to finish, because we the U.S. were responsible for that one.
Through their aid in the overthrow of Allende and support of the Pinochet dictatorship, President Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, sent a clear signal to all of Latin America that anti-revolutionary régimes employing repression, even state terrorism, could count on the support of the U.S.
The U.S. government, in effect, gave a green light to Latin Americas right wing and armed forces to eradicate the Left. This Sept. 11 effect was soon felt around the hemisphere.
My vocabulary sometimes fails me. You're right, people don't mind as long as they can live comfortably. That Tiger Woods makes so much money is another issue. He just deals in a world of $. Just like pro football,basket,base,hockey,futbol... The people have decided that golf and tiger are worth that kind of money. What if the owners,agents,etc. kept all of the money that pro athletes earned and took home 50k instead of 25 mil while the former took the many millions? Now that would be wrong.
Clarification: what if Tiger took home e.g. $50k and his agent, manager, sponsors, got to keep the rest (the many millions)? Now that would be unfair wouldn't it?
Yeah, of course. Last time I checked golf was a leisurely game though, and making more in one day than people who work twice as hard do in a year is even more unfair. Same with movie stars and singers. Acting used to be a humble thing. Now they sell their image to whoever will pay the most because everyday people put them on a pedestal. We want them to entertain us and live out the lives some of us can only dream of.
Tupac said something like this in an interview once, and I echo the same thoughts:
It's nice that you have a hundred quadruple billion dollars, just please keep it to one house. You only need one house, and if you have two kids, then please keep it to two rooms. You don't need to have 5 houses or 50 rooms when you know there's somebody out there with no house and no rooms.
That 65 million dollars Woods spent on his last house could've been better used to fight poverty, AIDS, hunger, etc.
That people want to live vicariously through athletes and entertainers is another matter. The fact that it exists means that there's something to it. Tiger Woods stands out, I don't. I don't think you can blame him, though. We might be doing the same if we'd lead the life he's lead. People care about golf. He should be able to profit from it if he chooses. Teaching people not to value entertainment as much as global human rights is the way, blaming Tiger isn't. (Not that you were).
Let's put it this way. Some people will make a quadruple billion dollars while others who work just as hard make barely enough to feed themselves and that is a fact of life. I do not like it but will only say that I feel those with that much money should take it upon themselves to help ease the burden of those less fortunate, those dying of disease, of hunger, of poverty and misery, rather than superficial and material comforts spent lavishly on themselves.
"I spent 33 years in active military service and most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street."
"I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for U.S. sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American Fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see that Standard Oil went unmolested. Looking back, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
"The day is not far distant when three Stars and Stripes at three equidistant points will mark our territory; one at the North Pole, another at the Panama Canal, and the third at the South Pole. The whole hemisphere will be ours in fact as, by virtue of our superiority of race, it already is ours morally."
The Monroe Doctrine is a U.S. foreign policy closely linked with the notion of Manifest Destiny, in which they effectively own the western hemisphere and specifically Latin America, giving themselves the right to intervene militarily to protect national security, in other words, their foreign interests.
It is the same reason they have supported and put in place dictators and oppressive regimes under Jorge Videla, Augusto Pincohet, or Castillo Armas...to protect their assets and monopolies.
The U.S. is in no position to wax poetic about human rights violations and democracy in Cuba when they allow politcal asylum for people like Luis Posada, Orlando Bosch, and Michael Townley, all fitting under the common definiton of terrorists and with CIA-connections. The latter is hidden under the witness protection program. The former two for blowing up a Cuban airliner. All three have worked for Operation Condor, the network that killed and disappeared tens of thousands in Latin America.
On October 7th, Cuban President Osvaldo Dorticós spoke at the U.N. General Assembly: "If ... we are attacked, we will defend ourselves. I repeat, we have sufficient means with which to defend ourselves; we have indeed our inevitable weapons, the weapons, which we would have preferred not to acquire, and which we do not wish to employ".
Kennedys Nov. 20, 1962 prime-time TV news conference was the first confirmation. JFK declared that he would "give assurances against an invasion of Cuba" only when "adequate arrangments for [UN] verification had been established."
"If we wanted to invade Cuba...could we do so without the approval of the United Nations? JFK essentially said yes, that the U.S. "has the means as a sovereign power to defend itself...in a way consistent with our treaty obligations, including the U.S. Charter."
I told them what we'd been discussing and explained that it appeared to me that besides the Soviets sincere desire to prevent an attack against Cuba, a subject to which Khrushchev was very committed, they were hoping to improve the balance of strategic forces, given what the presence of their missiles in Cuba would mean it would be the equivalent of the window achieved by the U.S. through the presence of similar missiles in Turkey and Italy, which neighbored the Soviet Union.
The Operation Northwoods documents show that in 1962, the United States Joint Chiefs drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities, possible assassination of Cuban emigres, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, and blowing up a U.S. ship. The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Fidel Castro.
Frogstomp121, ive been seing you on many different boards, and let me say i am a fan of your philosophy on Che (no ass-kissing).
But about the impracticality of communism and/or socialism, you are correct. If man could somehow find a way to "inherently selfness and unmoved by material incentives and complete greed" as you said, then life would be almost perfect. BUT that's the thing, our human nature, ever since the dawn of time, is to compete for survival, to be better then the other person.
Like Martin Luther King Jr. said, "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar."
A nation that can cry more tears over a dead pop star than the billion people dying of starvation and poverty in Africa is one lacking in this concept. A person who helps through charity yet lives in more multi-million dollar homes than one can count is one lacking in this concept. A person who cannot feel empathy for every human life is lacking in this concept.
You make some good points, but I'm not sure that competition IS always the main underlying motivator. School, for example, is not based so much on individual competition as it is on compensation (grades). Competition obviously exists there but I think that we must not forget the role of compensation as a factor of motivation. Just as there are people who want to have more than their neighbors, there are many, many people who don't mind as long as they already have a lot themselves.
Some people just want to live comfortably. By that I guess they mean being able to pay the bills, food, shelter, and have some left for material pleasures.
I have a problem with those like Tiger Woods who are worth almost a billion dollars who decide they need 4 or 5 homes and 20 cars. I have a problem with those CEO's who live comfortably off the blood, sweat, and tears of cheap labor in foreign countries who live in slums and cannot afford a decent meal.
I actually agree with theoretical Communism to a point. the problem is that not everyone IS equal and as such should not be treated so. If you or I work our butts off for something it should be our reward. we can see this in such things as sports.DSome are good and some are not so not everyone should be pro.
I disagree with the work analogy. I have no desire to compete with anyone to "prove" my worth. I do not view life as survival of the fittest. I think that we are all in this together and we should all look out for one another, not compete.
As far as sports go, I am very competitive, yet I am above all just trying to have fun. I want to win as much as the next guy but if we don't than I will not lose any sleep over it.
If you do not agree with the work thing,what is it that you do with your paychecks (assuming you work)? You should practice what you preach and not be competitive.. you are not showing love for those that are less able than you. Whether or not you agree with survival of the fittest is inconsequential as it is the very way of nature.
It is the very way of nature because you assume it is. That statement is an opinion and is not unanimously supported by everyone in this world.
Also I use my paychecks to pay for a roof over my head, put food on the table, and pay my bills, like a necessary evil. There are more important things in life that money can't buy, like the tiring cliche says.
I am not competitve, practice what I preach, and love everybody. Why would you assume otherwise?
Not at all..It is that way because that IS HOW IT IS. The sky is not blue due to my opinion of its hue. Your opinion of natural selection is inconsequential as nature will chose the strong over the weak with or without your consent.
You do not need a home nor things that require bills. you chose them because of either ego or a societal push of "need".Things that Che would hate you for.Thusly you are not practing what you preach or rather what it is your hero Che stood for.
My hero? Once again you are assuming things based on your partial truths. I am simply unbiased and can look at both the good and bad in a person.
Wanting shelter and food are basic human needs. Che would hate me for that? I live in a capitalistic society. I have no other choice than to pay bills because that is the way things are done over here. I simply cannot walk 4 hours to work because I choose not to pay for my truck. Also I am sometimes guilty of using common sense.
An assumption based on your glorification of him. Didn't know it was a riddle of sorts.
Shelter can be made or found.you do not need to spend dirty capitalist money for a home. Food can be grown. Many in the USA have made the choice to do just these things.You chose to be a capitalist while praising a communist system.Yes he would hate you for these things. If you read a bit more on him you would already know this.
longue vie a la révolution cubaine!!quelle soit un modèle pour tout les pays qui veulent se sortir de se capitalisme financier immonde,qui détruit les hommes,la terre et sa nature...
Before the revolution Cuba was economic servant state of the US. The poverty that ran rampant their fueled wage slave industries from sugar to prostitution-(only viable because of tourists). Fidel is not perfect, but the conditions of poverty in Cuba have been eliminated; their is no wealth like that of upper-middle class america but no reservation, ghetto, immigrant or Katrina victim conditions exist either. Natural disaster preparation is great and every one has health care. Cuba is no USSR.
Brother are you serious? I have relatives in Cuba that have to raise livestock inside of their homes because the conditions are so bad. Nephews and neices that,when given a bag of M&Ms , eat only one a week because they never get candy or treats.you are correct in one aspect..No ghettos or middle class because you either are rich (part of the government) or very,very poor.discerning gheto from a normal home would be impossible. Fidel is a cancer to Cuba and its people.
I never said I thought socialism was the best type of government, nor capitalism. Nor did I ever say Cuba was perfect. In my opinion there will never be a utopian or even close to a perfect society because the world is too diverse and too opinionated. Everybody has their own idea of how things should work.
I do, however, think that people should be able to rise above the restricting confines of individualistic concerns to the selfess, broader concerns of mankind. I think people should be able to feel the pain and hurt of another person no matter who they are or where they live. I think that people should love unconditionally, that is to love without expecting anything in return. I think people like you should stop judging others based on an incomplete story.
Funny that you say that all the while judging me.Speaking of hypocrisy... You know me based on a couple of internet posts yet I am judging Che based on a life of murder and trying to force his perception of what is "right" for humanity on the masses through violence and fear. If we can not judge a man based on his actions ,we are not fit to make any choices at all.
My comment was towards justaman,Not you but since we are here... Socialism and communism are great in theory but impossibly impractical when applied. Have you ever lived in a country with either form of govt?
3.36 Camilo en accion.GRANDE CAMILO CIENFUEGOS¡¡¡¡
CienFuegosDeMexico75 1 year ago
Freiwilliges Engagement ist ein wahrer Ausdruck der kommunistischen Einstellung gegenüber Arbeit!
Volunteering is a true expression of communist attitude towards work!
El voluntariado es una verdadera expresión de la actitud comunista hacia el trabajo!
Frivilligt arbejde er det sande udtryk for kommunismens holdning til arbejde!
Ernesto Che Guevara
grummeper 1 year ago
Many Thanks!
grummeper 1 year ago
Long live Fidel
Neyitin 1 year ago
Long live socialist revolution!
ThePaintermanful 2 years ago
May Fidel Castro live for many more years to come!
AdamVikingen 2 years ago
As of the last meeting of the U.N. General Assembly in 2009 to vote on the issue of the U.S. imposed trade embargo against Cuba, 187 countries have voted against it, while only 3 have voted in keeping it in place, the U.S., Israel, and the Palau islands.
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
"To reserve to the U.S. the faculty of deciding for themselves when independence in Cuba is menaced and when therefore they ought to intervene, to preserve it, is equivalent to delivering up the key of our house so that they can enter it at all hours when the desire takes them, day or night."
Cuban senator Juan Gualberto Gómez on the Platt Amendment. The Monroe Doctrine, created by and for the U.S., also gives itself the right to militarily intervene throughout Latin America at will.
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
U.S. Secretary of State James Blaine wrote in 1881 of Cuba: "that rich island, the key to the Gulf of Mexico, and the field for our most extended trade in the Western Hemisphere, is, though in the hands of Spain, a part of the American commercial system...If ever ceasing to be Spanish, Cuba must necessarily become American and not fall under any other European domination."
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
President Eisenhower's National Security Council discussing the Cuban trade embargo:
"The only predictable measure we have today to alienate internal support for the Revolution is through disillusionment and desperation, based on dissatisfaction and economic duress. Every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. Money and supplies must be denied to Cuba in order to decrease real wages, bring about hunger, desperation and the overthrow of government."
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
"I candidly confess, that I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of States. The control which, with Florida Point, this island would give us over the Gulf of Mexico, and the countries and isthmus bordering on it, as well as all those whose waters flow into it, would fill up the measure of our political well-being."
Thomas Jefferson
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
Operation Northwoods was proposed by the U.S. Joint Chiefs to inflict terrorism against it's own country in order to draw public and international opinion into a war with Cuba.
"The desired resultant from the execution of this plan would be to place the U.S. in the apparent position of suffering defenseable grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere."
- From a declassified memo.
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
It is an irony that these rugged individuals so loved individualism that they ganged up together to enslave black people, steal land from Mexico, and carry out an ethnic cleansing of the continent... before ganging up to abuse peoples of Central and South America and so on around the world. A nation of individuals saying, "I am an individual. Don't blame me for the collective crimes of this country."
Howard Zinn on American individualism
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
Operation Condor was an intelligence-sharing network used by six South American dictators of the 70s and 80s to eliminate dissidents. The Terror Archives described the fates of thousands of Latin Americans who had been secretly kidnapped, tortured, and killed by the security services of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay, with possibly around 50,000 people murdered, 30,000 people disappeared and 400,000 people imprisoned.
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
To the U.S. national security apparatus--which fostered the new continent-wide security doctrine in its training centers, such as the Army School of the Americas in Panama--and most of the Latin American militaries, the Cold War represented World War III, the war of ideologies.
cont...
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
cont...
Security forces in Latin America classified and targeted persons on the basis of their political ideas rather than illegal acts. The regimes hunted down dissidents and leftists, union and peasant leaders, priests and nuns, intellectuals, students and teachers--not only guerrillas (who, under international law, are also entitled to due process).
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
Operation Condor:
U.S. Ambassador Robert White relates a conversation with Gen. Davalos, chief of staff of Paraguay's armed forces, who told him that the South American intelligence chiefs involved in Condor "keep in touch with one another through a U.S. communications installation in the Panama Canal Zone which covers all of Latin America". This installation is "employed to co-ordinate intelligence information among the southern cone countries".
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
So, lets imagine how the September 11th attacks could have been worse for example. Suppose that on 9/11, Al-Qaeda had bombed the White House and killed the President, instituted a murderous, brutal regime which killed maybe 50,000 to 100,000 people and tortured about 700,000, set up a major international terrorist center in Washington, which was overthrowing governments all over the world, and installing brutal vicious neo-Nazi dictatorships, assassinating people.
cont...
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
...cont
Suppose he called in a bunch of economists, lets call them the Kandahar Boys to run the American economy, who within a couple of years had driven the economy into one of the worst collapses of its history. That would have been worse than 9/11, right? But it did happen. And it happened on 9/11. That happened on September 11, 1973 in Chile, but not from our point of view, in fact, who even knows about it? Incidentally, just to finish, because we the U.S. were responsible for that one.
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
Through their aid in the overthrow of Allende and support of the Pinochet dictatorship, President Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, sent a clear signal to all of Latin America that anti-revolutionary régimes employing repression, even state terrorism, could count on the support of the U.S.
The U.S. government, in effect, gave a green light to Latin Americas right wing and armed forces to eradicate the Left. This Sept. 11 effect was soon felt around the hemisphere.
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
My vocabulary sometimes fails me. You're right, people don't mind as long as they can live comfortably. That Tiger Woods makes so much money is another issue. He just deals in a world of $. Just like pro football,basket,base,hockey,futbol... The people have decided that golf and tiger are worth that kind of money. What if the owners,agents,etc. kept all of the money that pro athletes earned and took home 50k instead of 25 mil while the former took the many millions? Now that would be wrong.
lorenzoferlinghetti 2 years ago
Clarification: what if Tiger took home e.g. $50k and his agent, manager, sponsors, got to keep the rest (the many millions)? Now that would be unfair wouldn't it?
lorenzoferlinghetti 2 years ago
Yeah, of course. Last time I checked golf was a leisurely game though, and making more in one day than people who work twice as hard do in a year is even more unfair. Same with movie stars and singers. Acting used to be a humble thing. Now they sell their image to whoever will pay the most because everyday people put them on a pedestal. We want them to entertain us and live out the lives some of us can only dream of.
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
Tupac said something like this in an interview once, and I echo the same thoughts:
It's nice that you have a hundred quadruple billion dollars, just please keep it to one house. You only need one house, and if you have two kids, then please keep it to two rooms. You don't need to have 5 houses or 50 rooms when you know there's somebody out there with no house and no rooms.
That 65 million dollars Woods spent on his last house could've been better used to fight poverty, AIDS, hunger, etc.
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
That people want to live vicariously through athletes and entertainers is another matter. The fact that it exists means that there's something to it. Tiger Woods stands out, I don't. I don't think you can blame him, though. We might be doing the same if we'd lead the life he's lead. People care about golf. He should be able to profit from it if he chooses. Teaching people not to value entertainment as much as global human rights is the way, blaming Tiger isn't. (Not that you were).
lorenzoferlinghetti 2 years ago
Let's put it this way. Some people will make a quadruple billion dollars while others who work just as hard make barely enough to feed themselves and that is a fact of life. I do not like it but will only say that I feel those with that much money should take it upon themselves to help ease the burden of those less fortunate, those dying of disease, of hunger, of poverty and misery, rather than superficial and material comforts spent lavishly on themselves.
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
"I spent 33 years in active military service and most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street."
cont...
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
...cont.
"I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for U.S. sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American Fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see that Standard Oil went unmolested. Looking back, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
General Smedley Butler
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
"The day is not far distant when three Stars and Stripes at three equidistant points will mark our territory; one at the North Pole, another at the Panama Canal, and the third at the South Pole. The whole hemisphere will be ours in fact as, by virtue of our superiority of race, it already is ours morally."
Howard Taft,
U.S. President
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
The Monroe Doctrine is a U.S. foreign policy closely linked with the notion of Manifest Destiny, in which they effectively own the western hemisphere and specifically Latin America, giving themselves the right to intervene militarily to protect national security, in other words, their foreign interests.
It is the same reason they have supported and put in place dictators and oppressive regimes under Jorge Videla, Augusto Pincohet, or Castillo Armas...to protect their assets and monopolies.
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
The U.S. is in no position to wax poetic about human rights violations and democracy in Cuba when they allow politcal asylum for people like Luis Posada, Orlando Bosch, and Michael Townley, all fitting under the common definiton of terrorists and with CIA-connections. The latter is hidden under the witness protection program. The former two for blowing up a Cuban airliner. All three have worked for Operation Condor, the network that killed and disappeared tens of thousands in Latin America.
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
On October 7th, Cuban President Osvaldo Dorticós spoke at the U.N. General Assembly: "If ... we are attacked, we will defend ourselves. I repeat, we have sufficient means with which to defend ourselves; we have indeed our inevitable weapons, the weapons, which we would have preferred not to acquire, and which we do not wish to employ".
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
Kennedys Nov. 20, 1962 prime-time TV news conference was the first confirmation. JFK declared that he would "give assurances against an invasion of Cuba" only when "adequate arrangments for [UN] verification had been established."
"If we wanted to invade Cuba...could we do so without the approval of the United Nations? JFK essentially said yes, that the U.S. "has the means as a sovereign power to defend itself...in a way consistent with our treaty obligations, including the U.S. Charter."
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
I told them what we'd been discussing and explained that it appeared to me that besides the Soviets sincere desire to prevent an attack against Cuba, a subject to which Khrushchev was very committed, they were hoping to improve the balance of strategic forces, given what the presence of their missiles in Cuba would mean it would be the equivalent of the window achieved by the U.S. through the presence of similar missiles in Turkey and Italy, which neighbored the Soviet Union.
Fidel Castro
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
The Operation Northwoods documents show that in 1962, the United States Joint Chiefs drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities, possible assassination of Cuban emigres, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, and blowing up a U.S. ship. The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Fidel Castro.
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
Frogstomp121, ive been seing you on many different boards, and let me say i am a fan of your philosophy on Che (no ass-kissing).
But about the impracticality of communism and/or socialism, you are correct. If man could somehow find a way to "inherently selfness and unmoved by material incentives and complete greed" as you said, then life would be almost perfect. BUT that's the thing, our human nature, ever since the dawn of time, is to compete for survival, to be better then the other person.
mexicalii7 2 years ago
They don't have social awareness.
Like Martin Luther King Jr. said, "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar."
A nation that can cry more tears over a dead pop star than the billion people dying of starvation and poverty in Africa is one lacking in this concept. A person who helps through charity yet lives in more multi-million dollar homes than one can count is one lacking in this concept. A person who cannot feel empathy for every human life is lacking in this concept.
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
You make some good points, but I'm not sure that competition IS always the main underlying motivator. School, for example, is not based so much on individual competition as it is on compensation (grades). Competition obviously exists there but I think that we must not forget the role of compensation as a factor of motivation. Just as there are people who want to have more than their neighbors, there are many, many people who don't mind as long as they already have a lot themselves.
lorenzoferlinghetti 2 years ago
Some people just want to live comfortably. By that I guess they mean being able to pay the bills, food, shelter, and have some left for material pleasures.
I have a problem with those like Tiger Woods who are worth almost a billion dollars who decide they need 4 or 5 homes and 20 cars. I have a problem with those CEO's who live comfortably off the blood, sweat, and tears of cheap labor in foreign countries who live in slums and cannot afford a decent meal.
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
I actually agree with theoretical Communism to a point. the problem is that not everyone IS equal and as such should not be treated so. If you or I work our butts off for something it should be our reward. we can see this in such things as sports.DSome are good and some are not so not everyone should be pro.
wrenchinthecogs 2 years ago
But not everyone feels that way.
I disagree with the work analogy. I have no desire to compete with anyone to "prove" my worth. I do not view life as survival of the fittest. I think that we are all in this together and we should all look out for one another, not compete.
As far as sports go, I am very competitive, yet I am above all just trying to have fun. I want to win as much as the next guy but if we don't than I will not lose any sleep over it.
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
If you do not agree with the work thing,what is it that you do with your paychecks (assuming you work)? You should practice what you preach and not be competitive.. you are not showing love for those that are less able than you. Whether or not you agree with survival of the fittest is inconsequential as it is the very way of nature.
wrenchinthecogs 2 years ago
It is the very way of nature because you assume it is. That statement is an opinion and is not unanimously supported by everyone in this world.
Also I use my paychecks to pay for a roof over my head, put food on the table, and pay my bills, like a necessary evil. There are more important things in life that money can't buy, like the tiring cliche says.
I am not competitve, practice what I preach, and love everybody. Why would you assume otherwise?
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
Not at all..It is that way because that IS HOW IT IS. The sky is not blue due to my opinion of its hue. Your opinion of natural selection is inconsequential as nature will chose the strong over the weak with or without your consent.
You do not need a home nor things that require bills. you chose them because of either ego or a societal push of "need".Things that Che would hate you for.Thusly you are not practing what you preach or rather what it is your hero Che stood for.
wrenchinthecogs 2 years ago
My hero? Once again you are assuming things based on your partial truths. I am simply unbiased and can look at both the good and bad in a person.
Wanting shelter and food are basic human needs. Che would hate me for that? I live in a capitalistic society. I have no other choice than to pay bills because that is the way things are done over here. I simply cannot walk 4 hours to work because I choose not to pay for my truck. Also I am sometimes guilty of using common sense.
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
An assumption based on your glorification of him. Didn't know it was a riddle of sorts.
Shelter can be made or found.you do not need to spend dirty capitalist money for a home. Food can be grown. Many in the USA have made the choice to do just these things.You chose to be a capitalist while praising a communist system.Yes he would hate you for these things. If you read a bit more on him you would already know this.
wrenchinthecogs 2 years ago
longue vie a la révolution cubaine!!quelle soit un modèle pour tout les pays qui veulent se sortir de se capitalisme financier immonde,qui détruit les hommes,la terre et sa nature...
landaruma 2 years ago
Before the revolution Cuba was economic servant state of the US. The poverty that ran rampant their fueled wage slave industries from sugar to prostitution-(only viable because of tourists). Fidel is not perfect, but the conditions of poverty in Cuba have been eliminated; their is no wealth like that of upper-middle class america but no reservation, ghetto, immigrant or Katrina victim conditions exist either. Natural disaster preparation is great and every one has health care. Cuba is no USSR.
justamanwithsomeword 2 years ago
Brother are you serious? I have relatives in Cuba that have to raise livestock inside of their homes because the conditions are so bad. Nephews and neices that,when given a bag of M&Ms , eat only one a week because they never get candy or treats.you are correct in one aspect..No ghettos or middle class because you either are rich (part of the government) or very,very poor.discerning gheto from a normal home would be impossible. Fidel is a cancer to Cuba and its people.
wrenchinthecogs 2 years ago
I never said I thought socialism was the best type of government, nor capitalism. Nor did I ever say Cuba was perfect. In my opinion there will never be a utopian or even close to a perfect society because the world is too diverse and too opinionated. Everybody has their own idea of how things should work.
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
I do, however, think that people should be able to rise above the restricting confines of individualistic concerns to the selfess, broader concerns of mankind. I think people should be able to feel the pain and hurt of another person no matter who they are or where they live. I think that people should love unconditionally, that is to love without expecting anything in return. I think people like you should stop judging others based on an incomplete story.
Frogstomp121 2 years ago
Funny that you say that all the while judging me.Speaking of hypocrisy... You know me based on a couple of internet posts yet I am judging Che based on a life of murder and trying to force his perception of what is "right" for humanity on the masses through violence and fear. If we can not judge a man based on his actions ,we are not fit to make any choices at all.
wrenchinthecogs 2 years ago
My comment was towards justaman,Not you but since we are here... Socialism and communism are great in theory but impossibly impractical when applied. Have you ever lived in a country with either form of govt?
wrenchinthecogs 2 years ago
Great Music!
lorenzoferlinghetti 3 years ago 2