Cuba's army.

Why was the Soviet Union our enemy to begin with? Because America didn't like its' form of government. America decided Communism was bad for America.

The whole missle deal? Again, Castro didn't just randomly pick the US as a country to attack. He had reasons for it. We may not have agreed with those reasons but they were reasons nonetheless. The Japanese didn't agree with the US's reasons to nuke two cities but the US still had its' reasons, no? :D
 
Redworm,
Go back and read Marx. Pay close attention to the parts about communism spreading throughout the globe by violent revolution. The soviets were our enemies just because we just decided arbitrarily not to like them? Hardly. When were you born, kid? It turns my stomach to read you try to scrub the blame from the communist system. By your deluded rationale a dictatorship is perfectly fine just as long as the dictator is a nice guy. Just like communism that absurd blathering is based on the insane and contrary notion that everyone is going to play nicely and work in everyone else's best interest. Yeah, buddy, just like everyone in New Orleans right now is playing nicely and helping each other, cooperating with the authorities to make everything run smoothly, preserve people's lives and property. WAKE UP!!!

My mother's side of the family is from Cuba. She escaped in 1962 because she worked for the economic minister and the silly guy criticized the fact that Castro had his goons going through the houses and bank accounts of anyone who had money and 'confiscating it for the betterment of the Revolution'... stealing anything that wasn't nailed down and taking revenge wholesale. The minister got declared persona non grata and had to go into hiding and escape the country. Since she was associated with him, mom had to as well.
Cuba is a festering dungheap because nearly all the highly-educated, mostly-Spanish-descended population with money fled the country early on. Castro hitched his star to the Soviets, who went belly up and can no longer subsidize his mess. Now he relies on the Europeans who trade freely with him and the gobs of currency sent back by expatriots. You're kidding yourself if you think the American trade embargo is the cause of Cuba's misery. Cuba recieves hundreds of millions of dollars each year from Cuban exhiles sending $ back to their families still trapped there. Were it not for that the island would had gone over the edge years ago.
Right now my grandmother gets about two hours of electricity a day. Welcome to the Workers' Paradise! :mad:
 
Our present policy on Castro is based on Cuban votes in Florida.

Everyone is too blind to see that if ya want to get rid of him, open up the country to US $$$..wont take long for the people to rise and dump him

And before anyone raises it, I am probably the most virulent anti communist on this Board

WildtimeschangeAlaska
 
Our present policy on Castro is based on Cuban votes in Florida.
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+1 on that - although I still think there is a mixture of folks - some who want that important Cuban exile vote in the big delegate swing state FL, and some who are just hard line ideological, and who do it on abstract principle, without thinking through the consequences and effectiveness.

There is nothing wrong with criticizing policies that you believe are incorrect. In fact, as an American citizen, I would argue that it's your duty to do so. If everyone were silenced on the things that were done wrong, then it would not be possible to correct anything.

A salient quote from Honest Abe:
I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.
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And one from Thomas Jefferson:
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent
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When were you born, kid? It turns my stomach to read you try to scrub the blame from the communist system. By your deluded rationale a dictatorship is perfectly fine just as long as the dictator is a nice guy.
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1983

Communism in of itself is not the cause of problems, just like democracy is of itself is not the solution for problems. Communism does not require a dictator and Marx's teachings are not the final authority on the issue. The basis behind communism is communal ownership, not dictatorship.

I never said the embargo is the cause of Cuba's problems. But to deny that it has had a negative impact is ridiculous.
 
"America decided Communism was bad for America."

And the rest of the world. Most sane people feel that way - notice the steady decline in the number of communist countries.

Now that the Russia is no more, they are unable to provide the billions of dollars per year that kept Cuba afloat. Why blame U.S. trade sanctions, blame the failure of the Russians to honor their obligations.

Why should the U.S. reward Cuba with most favored trade status? Are they going to return the property they confiscated, the factories and homes and such? Are they going to compensate the families of those killed in Castro's name? Are they going to compensate the tortured?

The fault of the U.S.? Bah!

John
 
christ....

Again, I did not say it's the US's fault. I did, however, state the undeniable fact that the sanctions have most certainly and without a doubt had a negative effect on Cuban economy. That's the reason the US instituted the ebargo in the first place, because it would do just that.


Communism is not bad for the rest of the world. Corrupt dictators in charge of communist countries are. Look, I wouldn't like to live in a country with communal ownership of everything. But some people would! Some people would love to live like that and they'd do so in peace if given the chance.

An honest communist government is possible in theory but will never be put in practice because Americans have vilified it.
 
Until a communist society actually lives up to what it is supposed to be, then it is a bad thing. I think it has proven itself to be bad for the citizens of the countries in every circumstance that it was tried.

What's the count at? 100 million citizens killed by communist governments in the past century.
 
So since our government isn't up to the standard most of us would like it to be...is democracy bad? :confused:

Just because communism hasn't been put in place by a benevolent group doesn't mean it can't be done. Socialism has worked, communism can too.

100 million citizens killed by corrupt communist governments. Blaming communism for those deaths is akin to what people say about guns. The fault lies in the people that abuse communism, not in the theory itself.


edit: of course I could be wrong though...just my two cents
 
Redworm: Well, I will agree with you - it's largely an academic debate at this point, but I also don't think Communism is inherently good or evil any more than Captalism is.

As a criticism to Communism in the abstract though (regardless of who is doing the leading), I think that centralized economic planning and adminstration of production and distribution are inherently inefficient, and prone to difficulties. The task of having adequate information and the intellectual ability to do that planning in a large nation is beyond the capacity of people to do well. The decentralized "organized chaos" of Capitalism uses a highly distributed system of control that is more tractible to implement - you place a much lower burden on intellectual capacity and knowledge, because noone needs to see and know everything. That is something that I think was proven by experiment in the former Soviet Union and in China.

As a benefit of Communism, if you look in the former Soviet Union or China, there is no doubt that people were much more secure economically than they are now. The sort of Darwinian framework of Capitalism is great for the young, the strong, the clearminded, and the aggressors. There really are no provisions in it for those who might come in second though.
 
there is no doubt that people were much more secure economically than they are now.
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The most perfect communism ever is in North Korea. And they're eating each other. My ex-girlfriend escaped from the old Soviet Union, she stood in line for 3 hours for a few potatoes. As was mentioned, well over 100 million people were murdered by their communist overlords. I guess being dead means you're "secure economically".

Communism is inherently evil, because it strips people of all their rights, and makes them disposable worker-drones for the state. You don't belong to you, you belong to the state, you are a slave.

If slavery isn't evil, then nothing is.
 
Evil and slavery

Well, my wife was from Ukraine - she lived in 14 places across the former Soviet Union, so she got a pretty good sampling of Soviet life in numerous countries (her father is a cardiologist and was a colonel in the army there when younger, so they moved around a lot when she was young (army brat)). I've been to Ukraine as well as Russia and spoken with many people there, and know their history reasonably well.

I never heard of her describing the people there as living in slavery, nor have I ever heard anyone else make that statement who lived there. Waiting in line for potatoes isn't the definition of slavery. Now, you don't need to tell either me or her (that's for sure) that there were difficulties and problems in the old ways. She avoided joining the Pioneers when she was younger because she wasn't hot on it (and this wasn't without it's risks), and her Dad quit both the military and the Communist party (riskier yet) at the very time when he was offered a plum job in Moscow, on principle. Neither one of them are any great fan of Communism - they rather courageously tried to get out of the system during the Soviet period without even leaving. But they don't make up lies about it either.

You need to be honest - everyone wasn't living in slavery there. Just a rediculous statement. And in the time of Soviet rule, everyone was assured of a job, and everyone's pension was assured as well. Nowadays, unemployment is skyhigh, and even many people who do have jobs for the government/military are not paid, or paid only sporadically and partially. Pensioners don't receive their checks or recieve short checks. That's what I am talking about when I mean security. From those Chinese that I have spoken with, that same kind of transition has occured.

It's one thing to honestly point out the what's wrong in a society, but one shouldn't feel obligated to ignore what's right, or to pretend everything is better now. Nothing wrong with that in my book, anyway. Don't try to twist my words around and say I am saying that life was better there than it is here, or that it was Utopia - I am saying nothing of the kind. I know all about the KGB, the Gulags, and a whole lot more... I have read about them, been there several times, and talked openly with many of the people who still live there. They have had the chance to experience life in the Communist system and in Capitalist system. All I can say is, I hope things get better there - everything is broken now. The old system, with all it's problems, at least *was* a system and worked reasonably well. Today, everything is broken. Everyone is out of work, the old factories are idle, crime is rampant and corruption is oppressive.
 
Communism is inherently evil, because it strips people of all their rights, and makes them disposable worker-drones for the state. You don't belong to you, you belong to the state, you are a slave.
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Out of curiosity...if a person chooses that existence, how can it be evil? To deprive someone of the choice to live in a communist society violates their freedoms, no?


ooooooooh conundrum
 
I find it truly amazing that there are still people on this planet who will defend communism. Amazing.

If someone is so wrongheaded, so delusional, so rediculous, to actually think that there was, is, or ever will be, even one redeeming facet to communism, then any words of mine cannot pierce the darkness of their ignorance.

All I can offer is pity.
 
Well I could easily say the same about being so narrow minded that you refuse to see a different point of view.

You want one redeeming facet? In theory, everyone shares and gets along. In theory there's no crime because everything is owned by everyone and there's no need for crime. In theory everyone is equal and treated fairly.

But it's all in theory because due to some bad eggs communism isn't allowed to be practiced by good people. Now you have to admit that your own views on communism are quite biased from what you've told us of your mother's family and your ex.

Pity all you want but it still doesn't make you right.
 
If an *adult's* experience, travels, readings, knowledge and interactions are so small, if their curiousity is so small that they never question, if their belief is so great that they simply swallow political idealogy as gospel, then in that same generous spirit you offered up, I can feel nothing but pity. ;)

I thought that way too when I was 10 - I grew up, learned things, traveled, spoke to people. There's no way that I'd want to move to Ukraine or Russia, but it's Capitalist now, and I still would never move there. :D If you want to pursue a kind of religious extremism against a political philosophy, I am sure that there's not a thing in the world that I could say that would change your entrenched notions. You'd have to experience things for yourself.
 
If you can see good in a theory that murdered 100+ million human souls to acheve it's utopian goals, and failed completely and utterly to reach them causing untold poverty and misery, then what more can I say to show the true evil of communism?

History has already judged, only ignorance of that history can explain any defense of it.
 
So, in theory my communist neighbor can come over to my house and eat my food if he's hungry because it's not actually my house or my food? And that sounds good? Actually, I kinda live like that now. My welfare-leech neighbor not only gets a portion of my paycheck every month to pay for his food and section 8 housing, but he feels that my yard tools are available for his use whenever he sees fit. Sorry, based on my personal experience with communism, I'll stick with anarchy.
 
A theory can murder 100 million people the same way a gun can kill a person all by its' lonesome.

History doesn't judge, btw. People do.
 
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