IMO the answer to both of these questions is looking more and more like no. Socialism has brought great benefits to mankind the NHS is a good example, Cuba is another, does anyone still believe Cubans are no better off than when it was the rancid, debauched playground of American capitalist politicians / gangsters.
Capitalism by contrast is great at producing victims and losers, the casino economy, the devil take the hindmost. "You'll get pie in the sky when you die " so wrote the the socialist song writer Joe Hill member of the IWW the International Workers of the World, their song book carried the slogan " to fan the flames of discontent " American Copper mine owners had him framed for murder and executed by firing squad.
Fast forward and Bush tours South American countries to a chorus of boos and anti American demonstrations. Could it be that the left are fighting back ? America could, at one time do what they liked in Latin America including financing coupes and torture and all kinds of villainy, they still do this but people are resisting more and more.
You can't talk about this without mentioning Cuba though can you, recently elected as the leader of the non aligned movement of 118 countries while more recently still, the UN condemned the USA embargo by 183 to 4. Cuba now has official relations with 182 countries, they are exporting doctors to needy countries and importing thousands of medical students from these same countries and much more, I'm a member of a Cuban solidarity organisation and proud to be so, Fidel and his revolution make me proud to call myself a socialist, while Bush, Cheney etc make me ashamed to be a human being.
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Cuba is another, does anyone still believe Cubans are no better off than when it was the rancid, debauched playground of American capitalist politicians / gangsters.
What twaddle. How do you know that things wouldn't have evolved to a better state in Cuba today if the revolution had not occurred. You don't know.
You do know however that Cuba is a totalitarian non-democratic state. That you express solidarity with it, rather than the Cuban people, makes me ashamed to be a member of the same DEMOCRATIC party as you.
There are winners and losers in socialist Cuba. Try living there with HIV. Try being a democratic dissident.
You are a disgrace. You don't even have the excuse of being 18.
Anonymous Labour Party member throughly sick of so-called leftists getting wet dreams about strong men imposing the people's will - in the man of socialism and nationalism.
If the people of Cuba are so happy, why are they not allowed to express this by voting for Castro in free elections? Why are so many of them willing to risk everything in order to reach the coast of Florida?
Fidel Castro makes you proud to be a socialist? There have been no free elections in Cuba since the 1959 coup. Human Rights Watch has consistently highlighted abuses by the Castro regime.
The island's jails contain political prisoners. Journalists are arrested and beaten and trade unions suffer crackdowns. Freedom is just a dream in Cuba, not a reality.
Castro is an unreconstructed dictator in the same mould as Mugabe who clings to power through intimidation and repression. His actions destroy people's lives and deny them liberty, yet you square this as being an example of socialism. Political opposition is outlawed by the constitution. Is that part of the socialist utopia too?
Yet none of this makes you ashamed? In fact you say it makes you proud. I think you have some real issues.
Fucking hell, Terry. This is beyond fisking, it really is. How many political prisoners need to die in Cuba, how many people need to flee socialist countries to come to the free world?
As Churchill said, "The Chief problem with capitalism is the unequal distribution of benefits, the chief benefit of socialism is the equal distribution of misery."
You can believe that pulling those who have more than you down to your level makes you feel better, but it makes everyone poor.
If it were Pinochet, a dictator of equivalent nastiness we were discussing, you'd be spitting teeth. At least he left a country in decent shape - if you're going to break some eggs, at least have the decency to make the fucking omelette.
Face it, you have a disgusting, chippy "politics of envy" hatred for anyone better off than you, allied to a tribal loyalty to any nasty mass-murderer who mouths the platitudes of socialism.
Your post will provide an example to everyone who thinks the Labour party has changed from the party who did it's utmost to lose the cold war and have us singing "The Internationale" In Russian.
I think some of us attack dogs were getting bored. You've inspired me.
I hate everything you stand for terry, I like freedom, Efficient services (most of what I use is private). I like to be able to say what I think, something you deny to millions of Cubans. I like having disposable income to buy things I want rather than having most of my money going on bread, which is what happens in command economies. I like having leisure time I don’t have to spend listening to political commisars exhorting us to increased tractor production.
Bloody hell, I'm going to send a copy of this to Labour head office. Even they would be embarrassed by this!
The doctors love helping people outside Cuba which is why they are defecting left right and centre!
Have you ever BEEN to that glorious paradise? If so then perhaps you should have opened your eyes a bit whilst there!
£5 bet with the local Labour councillor and his LibDem wife up here that you don't publish this....
Winning and losing what?
You first of all equate a single man or collection of men with an entire economic system. This is wrong. You also use Bush to represent “capitalism” but there is probably not a single pure capitalist economy in the whole world. The US has forms of “social justice” that dilutes the capitalist ideology. It would be like Chirac being booed in Africa and claiming that this represents the fact that socialism is losing.
You claim that capitalism is great at producing victims and losers? Not as good as socialism. Stalin’s Russia witnessed massive internal deportation and industrial destruction of human life in a scale far in excess of Hitler’s Germany. Mao’s China destroyed up to 80 million lives and an entire ecosystem. Your own Cuba continues to destroy life and is the subject of numerous highly critical human rights reports. Even now Chavez’s Venezuela has inflation of 1594% with queues for the most basic of staples and the threat of massive starvation because he brought in soviet style price control.
You overlook the fact that the US “torture and coups” were because the US did not want soviet satellite states in its back yard. It has one and what happened in 1962? You neglect to record that Soviet money brought just as much torture and hardships to the region.
Is Cuba really importing students and exporting doctors Terry? Or are they maybe importing activists and exporting revolutionaries and you are buying one of the oldest Soviet propaganda lines in existence? If Cuba has such a good health system then how come Castro had to have specialist doctors flown in for his operation from Spain and then have his own medical staff botch his post-op care so that he was defecating into his own blood stream?
If Cuba now trades with 182 countries then why is it still so backwards? Why has it not progressed socially and economically? Why does Havana still look like the ‘50’s?
Cindy Sheehan can walk around Washington DC calling Bush a war criminal and claiming he is worse than Hitler. In the UK we can have men arrested go on television and claim we live in a police state and have people go on a weekly television program and claim the Iraq war was illegal. Answer me this Terry: If you have to constantly suppress all dissenting opinion within your country in the most brutal way possible then are you operating under the most benevolent system of government? And if not then do you deserve the support of other people?
Did you not have a go at me for presenting “conjecture dressed up as fact”?
I have looked up this Hill guy. There is strong suspicion that he was framed but no proof, and no proof of who was behind the framing.
So then the idea that he was framed is conjecture then? And your writing would seem to indicate that you would like us to accept it as fact?
Socialism certainly isn't winning...
Capitalism and the free market economies have allowed people to flourish - allowed people to develop skills and trade in them. Allowed them to feed and house their families without state involvement.
Socialism however, time and time again, keeps people poor and dependant on the state. But maybe that's what you want for people.
RFS - At last you've got something right even if you struggle to say it it properly, what you're trying to say is ' it depends on who you trust / believe.
angry steve - david - anon 1 - tony - anon 2 - max - anon 3. I refer all of you to my previous posts on Cuba and Capitalism, - anon - 2 was dropped because he is a foul mouthed coward.
A personal attack again instead of answering my questions.
RFS - You're 'at it' we've done this ad nauseam haven't we ?
"RFS - You're 'at it' we've done this ad nauseam haven't we ? "
Yes, but the reason we keep coming back to it is because you cannot back up your talking points with facts and when presented with overwhelming evidence against you start name-calling
RFS - You're arrogance is breathtaking, we've done this ad nauseam and you didn't get a result, so you want to go over and over it again, you're going no-where.
True, I should just accept that you would rather call people names than provide a counter-point to a commonly held belief.
I hope your constituents appreciate the work you do defending them when the come to cast their ballots in May.
RFS - You accuse me of calling people names.
Is it possible that there are two RFS's you and the crude foul mouthed thug who writes the RFS Web Site, name calling 'how are ye' get a grip !
"crude foul mouthed thug"
Dear oh dear, would you care to cut'n'paste some exampled of my foul mouth? Or maybe examples of my thuggish behavour?
Do I need o post the link to the standards report again?
RFS - You know I wouldn't print anything from your site I am happy to let people read it.
Would you like your wife and child to read it and the other sites that you link to ?
"Would you like your wife and child to read it and the other sites that you link to ? "
If you knew anything about me you would know the wife is not political and the kid is 16 months old.
Besides, I don't write anything I don't repeat in public so they would be surprised at nothing
RFS - Sunk to new depths here - you know I wasn't talking about politics don't you ? what a piece of work.
Cllr Terry Kelly said...
RFS - You accuse me of calling people names.
Is it possible that there are two RFS's you and the crude foul mouthed thug who writes the RFS Web Site, name calling 'how are ye' get a grip !
Evidence? I've read RFS's site for a while and have seen nothing, literally, even close to what you suggest here.
What sites and posts then? I have nothing to be ashamed of and that is what really hacks you off.
shotgun - This is not credible - I urge people to read his site and trawl through the past posts that he and his friends have written and see for themselves.
RFS - "What sites" let's put it to the test then.
I would be horrified if my wife and children and other relatives were to see what you and your friends have written.
You claim to be unconcerned, let me tell them then, your wife and family and relatives, I've saved plenty of it.
"I've saved plenty of it. "
And there we have the voice of paranoia.
A while ago I fluffed an article on flat tax and made a total tit of myself. When I discovered my mistake (through peer review) did I delete the article? No, I updated it to link to a second article explaining my error. The only article I ever removed was when I misunderstood a BBC article and launched a bizarre attack on the SNP for a tax plan no-one was suggesting. I replaced it with an apology (because I can admit when I am wrong)
And even then I did not really remove it, I simply used the HTML comment tags so anyone who viewed the page source would still see the article.
I would suggest that you claim the people I link to are my friends and that endorse their views? That cannot be right.
RFS - "paranoia" I hesitate to say this but we've been here before have we not ?
Are you prepared to do as I ask ?
I will reciprocate, I have no secrets, I'm not ashamed of anything I have done or said or written.
Cllr Terry Kelly said...
shotgun - This is not credible - I urge people to read his site and trawl through the past posts that he and his friends have written and see for themselves.
I have and see nothing.
Cut and paste some examples if you can.
"Are you prepared to do as I ask ?"
You mean put up a profile similar to yours in blogger? I am an Earth Horse to your water rat apparently if that is what you are asking.
RFS - "do as I ask" - I'll take that as a no shall I ?
You haven't learned from the last time.
Shotgun - If you can't find anything wrong then you have strange standards of decency.
Cllr Terry Kelly said...
Shotgun - If you can't find anything wrong then you have strange standards of decency.
If you can't give simple proof of your wild and unfounded accusations, especially for someone that purports to be a public servant, then you have much worse standards of decency.
It is wonderful beyond belief that there is a Socialist so thick as to compare America adversely with Cuba. How many Americans have lashed up makeshift rafts to get to Fidel's workers' paradise, Councillor?
I am beginning to think this site is a fake to discredit Labour. Surely even Labour's education policies could not produce such a cretin?
Tom Paine - It amazes me that there are capitalists so thick as to think that there is in fact an 'American dream'
I have lots of relatives in America who went there some 40 yrs. ago, lots of them still have things in common, they are still doing two jobs, they are terrified of getting sick, they are afraid to walk the streets of their city ( Chicago ) at night, some died in Vietnam and now they are scared again of Bush and the corporate gangsters who run the place.
You can keep it.
"I have lots of relatives in America who went there some 40 yrs. ago, lots of them still have things in common, they are still doing two jobs, they are terrified of getting sick, they are afraid to walk the streets of their city ( Chicago ) at night, some died in Vietnam and now they are scared again of Bush and the corporate gangsters who run the place. "
I would suggest that the important thing here is their location. Did they move to Chicago to work in the motor industry?
And how can you tell if they are scared of Bush given that they died in Vietnam?
RFS - 'motor industry' My first relatives went to Chicago approx. 19 25 and the last traunch about 45 yrs ago, not as far as I know to work in any specific industry.
"Scared of Bush" 'They' was meant to represent the whole family, was that bad grammar ? I suppose that would make my argument wrong then ?
Yeah I knew what you meant but could not resist the dig.
What do you think are at the root of Chicago's troubles that have resulted in your family fear of being out after dark?
RFS - "Chicago's troubles" ?Capitalism.
Care to elaborate on where Capitalism has caused Chicago's problems?
I'm curious to know how it is you justify standing at election afetr election under the banner of a party which clearly does not share your views on so many important issues, nuclear weapons, the war in Iraq, the Special Relationship, and so on. Tell me, why are you not an independent?
Jim
RFS - "Capitalism's problems" ? done that.
Jim - How can Tony Blair continue to be a Labour Prime Minister when I disagree with some of his policies ?
So does Tony Benn, Ken Livingstone, Michael Foot, and many others, it's called democracy !
I don't have a particular desire to wade into the morass of all your posts here, but there is one comment I feel must be made.
The IWW is the Industrial Workers of the World, not the International Workers of the World. Please, if you consider yourself a socialist, get it right.
zeus the moose - You are of course correct, laziness on my part I'm afraid - you will of course know that they are better known by a third name, 'the wobblies' the one big Union.
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