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Lunatic quote of the day (to remove those Monday blues) Via Tim Worstall, this is far too good not to share:
Cuba for me is a bright flame in a dark world. I am fully aware that it is no utopia and that there are many shortages and imperfections but they have learnt many interesting lessons during the special period after the USSR collapse and so are building from a self sufficient standpoint. When one looks at the madness of the US and the EU where freeloader bankers run and ruin the economy, where corrupt central banks print more debt onto future generations and where all rationality and sustainability has left the room… Cuba is a beacon in front of all of this. I think the most humiliating lesson they have thought the world (And more importantly the US) is that you can provide free and excellent healthcare despite being bullied by exterior forces. Cuba is particularly interesting in the case of Greece with a similarly (but with no embargo!!!) crippled economy, they could really learn alot from Cuba who is also blighted by a heavy civil service.
I love the final sentence.
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I remember a gentleman in a local Conservative party discussion group (who claimed to be Scottish but has a badly concealed German accent) who was a great fan of Marxist Cuba – almost needless to say, the gentleman hated Israel.
Sometimes I think these people have escaped from an article written by the late “Peter Simple”.
The comments on bankers aren’t too far off though, and happy to see that the ‘corrupt central banks’ meme has caught on with a Guardian reader.
I’m amused to see a country where you have to be careful what you say, even in private, for fear of arrest, and a country whose current government was established by hunting down and killing everyone who even slightly disagreed, and whose policies to this day still inspire people to brave hundreds of miles of shark infested waters for the slim hope of getting to leave described as a “beacon” of anything.
Although perhaps his metaphor was more accurate than he intended. Beacons and lighthouses were created to show you where rocky reefs that would destroy you were. By that definition, sure, Cuba is a beacon. It shows the world what to avoid.
Some fun you can have with proggs of your acquaintance. When they wonder when the U.S. will ever soften its position towards Cuba–or “the Cuban people”, as they will likely phrase it–ask in return: When will Cuba’s communist rulers soften their position towards the Cuban people? And when they disparage Miami’s Cuban exile community as bitter clingers, ask in return: Name another aggrieved minority group–just one!–which you would advise that “that was a long time ago, get over it!”
Any regime that imprisons and executes librarians, as Cuba did even after the end of the Cold War, is evil.
… And yet no western progressives ever emigrate there.
. . . except to stay one step ahead of the Feds cf Joanne Chesimard (sp?). There’s a slogan they could make their own – Cuba – It’s better than Leavenworth!
llater,
llamas
If someone made remarks as divorced from reality as these in any context other than politics (or religion, now I think of it), it would be taken as a sign of mental illness.
Deserves our sympathy really, not derision.
…are we still talking about Cuba? I’m not entirely sure the basking sharks off Cornwall really pose that much of an actual threat do they?
Michael Totten recently visited the Cuban paradise, his observations make an interesting contrast to the above, which makes me think that the individual who wrote it was really taking the mickey. Surely this is the case?
Worstall makes an interesting response:
“No democracy, gross poverty, but free health care. I’m just wondering why this beats democracy, great wealth by historical standards, and not free health care?”
That Michael Totten piece on Havana was interesting. Havana must have been a great city before the revolution.
Health care: good, free, true – pick two. In the Cuban case – the latter two.
Ah, yes, some sympathised with these types in Russia, all the way to Kolyma and a new but often brief career as a gold miner.
Different type of sympathy, Mr Ed: Not as in ‘political sympathiser’, but as in compassion for the mentally unwell.
But it’s an interesting point – is there any other field with a lexicon so abundant with ambiguity as politics? ‘Liberal’ now means anything other; ‘right-wing’ will inevitably be taken to mean a system of government with more in common with Stalin’s Russia than Thatcher’s Britain; ‘anarchist’ denotes rioters in the West End over George Orwell; and so on.
I hope that the fetishisation of “health care” by the dying Boomers is their final poisoned gift.
Jason,
As much compassion for them as for malaria.
I have had personal experience of the Cuban health service as it exists for ordinary Cubans on more than one occasion. It is pretty awful. There are few drugs, no medical equipment beyond blood pressure measurement, and little expertise in most towns. Emergency treatment is pretty much non-existent except in the largest cities, so don’t get injured out in the sticks. There are regular rows about the appalling standards of emergency care: many people die unnecessarily. There was one incident recently when a man who needed a blood transfusion after being stabbed died because nobody could find the key to the fridge. Pulling political strings gets you moved up the list for chronic conditions. Bad sanitation means that the cholera outbreak rumbles on, but nobody knows how bad it is because they don’t trust the media. The one positive is that most health workers are well motivated by Cuban standards, not sure why, but more so than I see in Britain. Sure Hugo Chavez got good care in Cuba, and doubtless the Castro brothers do too, but those facilities are definitely not available for ordinary Cubans.
Shotover,
That sounds nothing like the UK and our glorious NHS., well not the cholera.
mike @ January 21, 2014 at 2:03 am:
That Michael Totten piece on Havana was interesting. Havana must have been a great city before the revolution.
This set of images suggests the difference. With Hong Kong for contrast.
Yes: Hong Kong is great, but I shudder to think what the CCP is going to do it over the coming decades. We can only imagine what Havana would have been like today had there been no revolution, or alternatively, what it could be like once again were the communist regime forcibly removed.
I do wonder if Hong Kong had a lucky escape from the Blair Terror by reverting to China under its fairly well-kept autonomy. It might have been required to adopt all sorts of further regulations under a Fat Pang/Blairmacht regime.
I went to HK in January ’97 and on the bus over a British bloke also a tourist pointed to a tunnel exit of a road from the New Territories and said ‘Come July, they’ll be coming through there in a horse and cart’, and I said ‘No they won’t, they’ll be in tanks.’. He did not reply. I was wrong, the PLA came in APCs instead and promptly headed for barracks.
This pre-Castro film on youtube blows me away. It’s a full length movie, and I admit I haven’t finished watching it all, but it still shocked me to see such a contrast.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14lm8Gip_04&feature=related