Turkeys Lobbying For Santa

Why is it that trade unions lobby politicians on behalf of spies from a regime that bans independent trade unions?

Comment That Will Shortly Be Deleted.

Over at Comment is Free the former paid KGB agent of influence, Richard Gott writes:

Everyone who lives in Cuba and those who follow Cuban affairs closely know that the existing economic model has not been working well.

To which I have replied:

Why are the cheques bouncing?

Cuban Cuts

It must be hard for the TUC and Labour Party to argue that public sector cuts are proof of the coalition government's right wing ideological zeal, when even the Cuban government are instituting major public spending cuts.

Union Leader Celebrates Banning Of Unions.

Tony Woodley, the buffoonish leader of the UNITE union is holidaying in Cuba, supposedly to celebrate 51 years of Castro's seizure of power. Although I suppose he could be sampling the underage prostitutes and cigars instead. This is causing some problems with the efforts to resolve the planned BA strikes that are coming up.

Perhaps we can learn from Cuba though- and ban Trade Unions like UNITE so they can't disrupt everyone's travel arrangements. In fact we could really be like Cuba and ban travel all together.

Finally here is a picture of Mr Woodley demonstrating his Castro style tolerence for a free press:

Shameless Bilge.

Shameless Milne decides to apply his vast intellect and deep understanding of world affairs to Latin America. Joy.

I would have just commented at the Grauniad's site but as is traditional they are furiously censoring criticism of Milne but instead I'll do a partial fisking here.

On 9 October 1967, Che Guevara faced a shaking sergeant Mario Teran, ordered to murder him by the Bolivian president and CIA, and declared: "Shoot, coward, you're only going to kill a man." The climax of Stephen Soderbergh's two-part epic, Che, in real life this final act of heroic defiance marked the defeat of multiple attempts to spread the Cuban revolution to the rest of Latin America.

Actually his last words were "Don't shoot. I am Che Guevara. I am worth more to you alive than dead"

But 40 years later, the long-retired executioner, now a reviled old man

Reviled by whom? Certainly not the Bolivian peasants who were only too glad to help get rid of the T-Shirt salesman.

Teran was treated as part of a programme which has seen 1.4 million free eye operations carried out by Cuban doctors in 33 countries across Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa. It is an emblem both of the humanity of Fidel Castro and Guevara's legacy, but also of the transformation of Latin America which has made such extraordinary co-operation possible.

You know if I wanted to highlight the "humanity of Fidel Castro" I'd keep quiet about his involvement in Africa.

The seeds of this Latin American rebirth were sown half a century ago in Cuba. But it is also more directly rooted in the region's disastrous experience of neoliberalism, first implemented by the bloody Pinochet regime in the 1970s

The Pinochet regime was bloody, although considerably less so than Castro's regime. Secondly if 'neoliberalism' is so disastrous how come Chile is so much wealthier than the rest of Latin America now? Back in the 1950s Cuba was richer than Chile so if you want to compare their current status we can see which philosophy works best.

Cuba, famous for first world health and education standards - with better infant mortality rates than the US - in an economically blockaded developing country.

Cuba's literacy rates and infant mortality figures were always very good long before the arrival of Castro. In fact before Castro Cuba's infant mortality figures were the 12th best in the world compared to around 30th best today. Does Shameless want to guess as to who established Cuba's education system?

Less well known is the country's success in diversifying its economy since the collapse of the Soviet Union

That's a nice euphemism for promoting child sex tourism.

I must admit I'm a little bit surprised that Seamus Milne is such a avid fan of 'Che'. What on earth can he see to admire in an over privileged and somewhat dim radical who used the poor as an excuse for promoting his extremist ideas....

The Courage Of Their Convictions

Useful idiots, except without the useful part.

Quote Of The Day.

It is the 50th anniversary of Castro's seizing of power in Cuba, so naturally the Guardian is publishing lots of celebratory articles (mostly repeating the same lies and propaganda that the regime has been pumping out for 5 decades). In the comments to one such article a Guardianista addresses the inconvenient fact that Cubans are effectively imprsioned on the island:

Here's one aspect of this. Cubans have free education and medical care. The illiteracy rate is one of the lowest in the world. Also, many people have govt. related jobs.

Imagine if the States had the same thing. And then suddenly huge numbers of people who received this emigrated. How would the govt. react? Would they say so long? Would they make it hard to leave? Would they say, ungrateful ____. After all we did for you and THIS is how you thank us?

Castro Myths.

Just one more for the time being. When discussing Cuba there are two kinds of people who annoy me, those who are outright apologists for the regime and those who acknowledge the lack of democracy but make various attempts to mitigate it in some way. The first type are generally recognised as fools and lowlifes so I won't spend any time on them. The second type need to be considered.

In fact the second type can be further subdivided into two types those who go for "Yes Castro has problems but...." who are basically trying to excuse tyranny and those who go for the "Cuba has accomplished many good things but what about..." approach which is made by well intentioned democratically minded people but is still too kind to the Maximum Leader.

There are three big myths about Castro that have to be confronted, that Cuba has made tremendous advances in health and education, that Castro's predecessor Batista was a US puppet who was only opposed by Castro and that the USA has spent the last half century trying to kill Fidel Castro and overthrow his regime.

Myth One, Cuba's fantastic record on health and education.

As the normally reliably left wing US economist Brad Delong points out Cuba's purported high standards of living is only good when you compare it to countries that were far poorer than Cuba fifty years ago, when Cuba is compared to countries that it was level with fifty years ago like Spain or Ireland its standards are dismal.

Before Castro came to power Cuba had the 13th best infant mortality figures in the world, today it ranks somewhere between 25 to 30 on that list. It invested a higher proportion of its wealth on education than any other country in Latin America. Cuba's health and education system have gone backwards relative to the rest of humanity under communist misrule.

Myth Two, Batista was a brutal US backed puppet and Castro was the only alternative.

Hint to leftists, the USA doesn't usually impose arms embargoes on client states! Furthermore it doesn't condemn regimes it supports for rigging elections. In reality the Batista was a populist thug whose supporters included the Cuban communist party. Furthermore the USA generally backed his legitimate democratic opponent Carlos Marquez-Sterling whom the US embassy believed had won the 1958 election. Cuba had a viable democratic alternative.

Myth Three, Cuba has been under seige from the USA for the last 50 years.

Nope, as part of the deal that ended the Cuban Missile Crisis the USA agreed not to overthrow Fidel Castro. The USA has not been a threat to Castro for about 45 years.

Update: Exiled Cuban academic Humerto Fontova demolishes some more myths of the Castro apologists here.

Organic Vegetables & Dancing,

With the retirement of Fidel Castro it's time to consider the age old question, what is the best part about living under a bloodthirsty and repressive dictator? It could be the dancing as Craig David suggests:

"I had lots of misconceptions about it being a communist country and all that. It's true that they're not as privy as we are with inventions, food and so on. But they make up for it with incredible dancing."

Or it could be the organic gardening the BBC presenter Monty Don argues, as the Castro Solidarity Campaign puts it:

Monty Don, one of the main presenters of BBC television’s Gardeners World, had nothing but praise for Cuba’s organiponicos.

The gardening-guru filmed in Havana for his new series ‘Around the World in 80 Gardens’, recently aired on BBC2.

Speaking about Cuba’s example for an online interview this month, he said: “Climate change will force us to be far more radical about our food production….The organiponicos of Cuba are a positive, heartening solution.”

Incidentally Monty Don elsewhere demands that everyone start buying local produce in order to save the environment yet sees nothing wrong with flying himself around the world to look at plants!

The Big Vote.

With everyone paying so much attention to the US presidential primaries another knife edge election is happening that will keep us all glued to our seats. The Cuba Solidarity Campaign enthusiastically declares:

More than 8.4 million Cubans are expected to participate in the January 20 general elections to elect the delegates to provincial assemblies and the members of the National Assembly (Parliament), said the National Electoral Commission (CEN)President

A dynamic test run last Sunday across the island showed that the infrastructure is in place and ready for the elections to take place in all 38,353 electoral colleges of the country, said Reus.

There are 614 candidates running for Parliament, of which 46.3 percent were elected by local communities, 99 percent have high school diplomas or higher, 63.22 percent are first time nominees, and 56 percent of the candidates were born after 1959.

That's one pretty impressive election yet it has received scant coverage over here despite the fact that it appears to refute the general idea of Cuba as some sort of dictatorship. Is there anything that the Cuba Solidarity Campaign has failed to mention I wonder? The BBC reports:

Polls have closed in Cuba where people have been voting to choose members of a new National Assembly or parliament.

Only one person is standing per seat, including ailing leader Fidel Castro, even though he has not been seen in public for almost a year-and-a-half.

I guess the CSC had to omit that trivial detail for reasons of space.

'Argentine Born Hero'

What BBC Bias? Oh that BBC Bias:

The memory of Latin American Marxist revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara is being honoured in Cuba 40 years after his capture and summary execution.

About 10,000 people are attending a ceremony at his mausoleum in Santa Clara, the town where he once fought a battle during Cuba's revolution.

Raul Castro, brother of ailing Cuban leader Fidel, is at the event.

Other commemorations are being held in Bolivia and Venezuela, countries where the Argentine-born hero was active.

Che Guevara was a psychopathic mass murderer whose greatest joy was executing defenceless peasants. When he justifiably received the treatment he had meted out to so many others he squirmed and begged to be spared because he was special, "Do not shoot! I am Che Guevara and worth more to you alive than dead." Some hero.

In the Guardian Richard Gott, who was formerly a paid KGB agent and is currently a Hugo Chavez groupie, writes that Guevara " He was a certainly a great and impressive figure, someone who clearly secured loyalty and affection from those he worked with", not really, even Fidel Castro thought that he was such a tosser that he made sure that he got sent off to Bolivia to be killed. Possibly Castro's first and last good decision.

Mass Murderers & The Guardian.

What is it with the Guardian and bearded mass murderers? Following on from Gerry Adams and Osama Bin Laden they now print one of Fidel Castro's rambling monologues as an article. Needless to say the comment thread is soon filled with totalitarian groupies. 'Ideas cannot be killed' declares Castro, no but dissidents can be.

Gastro Gets Castro.

Seeing as Cuban thug in chief Fidel Castro is dying of some intestinal disease, it is no longer accurate to say I hate his guts, because his guts are giving him the unpleasant death he deserves. The Independent declares:

Adios Castro? Fears grow for veteran leader's health

Replace 'Fears' with 'Hopes' and the headline will be more accurate. The man has always attracted a curiously witless set of groupies devoid of anything approaching normal human decency and compassion as this remark to a woman whose father was murdered by Castro, Bonnie Anderson, by the former CNN president Rick Kaplan:

I know he killed your dad, but he's still a good guy in my book.