BS: Canada falls off its high horse

Subject: RE: BS: Canada falls off its high horse
From: Sawzaw
Date: 20 Dec 09 - 08:40 AM

"The average Cuban was so much worse off under Batista"

Care to elaborate on that with some examples?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada falls off its high horse
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Dec 09 - 10:00 AM

There are lots of good books you can read about it, Sawzaw. I'll PM you some titles when I get home. (I'm visiting friends now.) Then again, you could just talk to the fine people I met in Cuba when I was there. They remember Batista, and they believe in Castro's revolution. One of them is named Freddy Gonzales. He's an English language interpreter for the Presbyterian church school in Cardenas. He came to Canada twice now...and he didn't sieze the opportunity to flee Cuba and take "refuge" here...so he obviously believes in Cuba and likes being there, even though he could easily earn 10 or 20 times the income in Canada that he does there. You have to wonder why? Well, I'll tell you why. He loves his country and believes in it, same as I do (I mean, I love my country, Canada, and I believe in it).

I know that there are some Cubans who hate Castro's revolution. A lot of them are in Florida, and you can talk to them all about it. The thing is, there are many Cubans who love Castro's revolution too. You can't understand why unless you ALSO talk to them...and that's something most Americans have never done and never even had the opportunity to.

You'd have to go there, meet those people, and hear their reasons for supporting Castro's revolution, and then you'd get the whole story.

I respect people on both sides of the Cuban argument...they all have their reasons...but you've got to listen to both sides to understand what the heck happened in that country in the last 50 or 60 years.

Castro could have been one of the best friends the USA ever had...but Washington decided to crush his revolution in the cradle, so he went to the Russians instead. That was Washington's BIG mistake, and they did it because a bunch of American businessmen and Mafia people got offended by Castro. They should have told them "Tough!" and done business with Castro from Day 1. They'd have had an ally in Cuba instead of an enemy.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada falls off its high horse
From: Sawzaw
Date: 20 Dec 09 - 05:05 PM

How much of Freddy Gonzales's property was seized by the Cuban Government?

How many of his relatives were murdered by Che?

If you would talk to the same people I have talked to that have been to the real Cuba you would realize that all that "Cuba is good" "US is bad" shit is part of the high horse that Canucks ride.

* Chief executioner for the Castro regime, responsible for the murder of thousands
* Was appointed Cuba's Minister of Economics in 1960; within months the Cuban peso was practically worthless.
* Was appointed Cuba's Minister of Industries in 1961; within a year a previously prosperous nation was rationing food, closing factories, and losing hundreds of thousands of its most productive citizens, who were happy to flee with only the clothes on their backs.

In August of 1960, a year and a half after Che Guevara entered Havana ahead of his "column" of "guerrillas," Time magazine featured the revolutionary comandante on its cover and crowned him the "Brains of the Cuban Revolution." (Fidel Castro was "the heart" and Raul Castro "the fist.")

"Wearing a smile of melancholy sweetness that many women find devastating," read the Time article, "Che guides Cuba with icy calculation, vast competence, high intelligence and a perceptive sense of humor."

"This is not a Communist Revolution in any sense of the term," The New York Times had declared a year earlier. "Fidel Castro is not only not a Communist, he is decidedly anti-Communist."

"It would be a great mistake," Walter Lippmann wrote in the Washington Post that same month, "even to intimate that Castro's Cuba has any real prospect of becoming a Soviet satellite."

A few months earlier the London Observer had observed: "Mr. Castro's bearded youthful figure has become a symbol of Latin America's rejection of brutality and lying. Every sign is that he will reject personal rule and violence."

Subject: RE: BS: Canada falls off its high horse
From: Sawzaw
Date: 20 Dec 09 - 05:29 PM

From A Canadian travel bureau website :

http://www.realcubaonline.com/help_hospitals.asp

YOU CAN HELP >> HOSPITALS

All public health units are in dire need of nearly everything.

The following is a general list:

    * MEDICATIONS - we can take in sample medications (doctors please talk to your suppliers) or larger quantities - the medication must be current when it enters the country. All medications are useful. No personal prescriptions please.
    * OVER THE COUNTER - Advil, Tylenol, Cold Medications, Cough Medications etc.
    * MEDICAL SUPPLIES - bandages, gloves, small equipment, stethoscopes, blood pressure cuffs etc. etc.
    * MEDICAL EQUIPMENT - EGC machines and the paper for them, any other equipment you can spare.

Please contact us and we can make arrangements for collection or for shipping to us.

Any traveler is allowed to carry in up to 10kgs of medications and medical supplies, but you must give up part of your luggage allowance or pay for the excess. It is advisable to have a contact at a clinic or hospital whom you can trust to make sure that the drugs enter the public health system and are not sold on the street.


You can help? Bullshite. Cuba is the one bragging about giving away free medical help for other poor countries but they don't have aspirin for their own people?

Radio Habana:

Cuba's medical assistance to Guatemala gives the vast majority of poor people in that Central American nation access to health care. Eleven years have passed since the first Cuban medical brigade arrived in the country -- following the devastating passage of Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

Cuban doctors and health care specialists, who usually work in the most remote corners of the Central American country, have already treated nearly 40 million people, providing medical assistance to those with serious economic limitations.

Guatemalan authorities have pointed out that since the arrival of Cuban doctors and medical personnel, the quality of health services in their country has improved greatly.

Unfucking believable. They neglect their own people so they can act like heros in other countries.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada falls off its high horse
From: bobad
Date: 20 Dec 09 - 06:49 PM

"Unfucking believable. They neglect their own people so they can act like heros in other countries."

Uh, does that remind you of some other country?

Subject: RE: BS: Canada falls off its high horse
From: Sawzaw
Date: 20 Dec 09 - 08:08 PM

If you are making a snotty comment about the USA, currently I don't feel neglected at all. I feel like I have been given every opportunity imaginable instead of being denied opportunities.

I feel like a lucky SOB and I feel sorry for people with a victim mentality who assign themselves to being poor neglected losers.

They can always emigrate to a communist country where they won't be so neglected.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada falls off its high horse
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Dec 09 - 09:11 PM

I don't know where your hatred of Castro's Cuba emanates from, Sawzaw, but it's misguided.

Not only do they help other Latin American countries with medical care, but they are the only country in the western hemisphere (Canada included) that provides free medical treatment of every kind to their people, free education right through university level, and even free veterinary care. That's right. Free.

The people who lost out in Castro's revolution were a bunch of American companies, the Mafia, and various Cubans who had jobs in that specific system and were cashing in on the status quo at that time. The people who gained were a much greater number of Cubans who got social services and a decent society around them for the first time in their lives.

Why do I not hear from you about the horrors that Batista visited upon ordinary Cubans? Why do I not hear from you about the thousands he had murdered and raped by his soldiers and police? Why do I not hear from you about all the young women who were forced into prostitution for the amusement of Mafiosos and rich tourists and visiting American businessmen?

Why? Do you think that Cuban history suddenly started with Fidel Castro, and that nothing that went before even matters?

Look, I've been there. They are healthier on average than us North Americans, they look better on average than us North Americans, they dress better when they go out in the evening than we do, they are more mature on average than North Americans, they're not fat and lazy, they put the North American population to shame in my opinion. And they have 1/20 of the material wealth we do. Maybe that's why they're so much more mature and have such a better social life and actually DO things like music and sports rather than just plunking down in front of their TV and watching someone else do it.

We live in the land of self-indulgence, Sawzaw. Cubans live in the land of courage. Better believe it. I love the people I met down there, and I'd rather die for them any day than die for the idiots who have tried to crush their revolution.

Subject: RE: BS: Canada falls off its high horse
From: Sawzaw
Date: 20 Dec 09 - 09:32 PM

I wouldn't sall facing reality a hatred LH.

"free medical treatment of every kind to their people"

Consisting of what LH?

http://cuba-blog.teresabevin.com/?p=103#comment-8059

So does North Korea where hundreds maybe thousands starve every day.

In an airless, dark hospital in North Korea a man with burns covering two-thirds of his body lay in the corner of a room. He had been hideously burned by molten iron and only a skin graft could save his life. The hospital had no technical equipment, bandages, scalpels, antibiotics or anesthesia to treat him. So the North Korean doctors and nurses gave the only treatment they had: their own skin. One by one they lined up to have portions of their skin removed with a razor blade to save this man's life.

Physician Norbert Vollertsen, a member of a German medical group working at this hospital, joined the line to donate skin -- which was removed without anesthesia. The patient survived with a combination of German and North Korean skin. By chance the North Korean media were present, recorded the event and, as a result, Vollertsen was awarded the Friendship Medal. He is one of only two foreigners ever to receive that high honor. Vollertsen also was given a VIP passport and a license to drive in the country, which is how this German doctor was able to see more of that closed, communist nation than any Westerner before him....

...The German doctor says he continues to hope that North Korea will have the same experience as his homeland, insisting: "It wasn't through diplomacy that East Germany crumbled; it was through brave men and women facing the truth about life there so that, one by one, citizens started to defect until soon there were hundreds and the Berlin Wall came down. That is the only way change can come to North Korea."..

Subject: RE: BS: Canada falls off its high horse
From: Sawzaw
Date: 21 Dec 09 - 12:00 AM

LH I can understand your blinding hatred for Batista. Do you have a score of deaths for Batista VS Castro?

I think Canada should adopt the polices of Castro's government and lock your ass up for going against your goverments policies and your views on people growing pot.

US rolls Batista under da bus:

On December 11, 1958, U.S. Ambassador Earl Smith visited Batista at his hacienda, "Kuquines". There Smith informed him that the United States could no longer support his regime. Batista asked if he could go to his house in Daytona Beach. The ambassador denied his request and suggested instead that he seek asylum in Spain.

On December 31, 1958, Batista raised a New Year's Eve toast to his cabinet members and senior military officers and told them hasta la vista. After seven years, Batista knew his presidency was over and fled the island in the early morning hours as rebel forces entered Havana.

Castro gets things straight:

In September 1960, Castro created Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, which implemented neighbhorhood spying in an effort to weed out "counter-revolutionary" activities.[Patriot act bad Castro good]

By the end of 1960, all opposition newspaper had been closed down and all radio and television stations were in state control, run under the Leninist principle of Democratic Centralism.[US media is under control of government which is bad But OK for Castro or Chavez] Moderates, teachers and professors were purged. [Kill em all let god sort them out] He was accused of keeping about 20,000 dissents held captive and tortured under inhuman prison conditions every year.[Guantanamo bad Castro good]

Groups such as homosexuals were locked up in concentration camps in the 1960s, where they were subject to medical-political "re-education".[Homophobia bad Castro good] Castro's admiring description of rural life in Cuba ("in the country, there are no homosexuals") reflected the idea of homosexuality as bourgeois decadence, and he denounced "maricones" (faggots) as "agents of imperialism".[Watch out Barney] Castro stated that "homosexuals should not be allowed in positions where they are able to exert influence upon young people"

Castro on whores:

Once known as "the brothel of the Caribbean" due to its reputation as a haven for rich Americans looking for sex, gambling and a swinging nightlife, Cuba drastically cleaned up society after Castro's 1959 revolution. [Old Havana bad Las Vegas good Reno good]


The EU on Cuba:

A whereas one of the main objectives of the European Union continues to be to uphold the universality and indivisibility of human rights — including civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights — as proclaimed by the 1993 World Conference in Vienna on human rights,
B. whereas the recent events in Cuba, such as the numerous arrests, imprisonments and severe sentences after summary trials affecting more than 70 dissidents and human rights activists, as well as the resumed use of the death penalty, have led the Commission to suspend the evaluation report on the Cuban request for accession to the Cotonou Agreement,
C. whereas the Government of Cuba from its side has decided to withdraw, for the second time, its request for accession to the Cotonou Agreement,
D. whereas the European Union has recently decided to limit bilateral high-level governmental visits; to reduce the profile of Member States' participation in cultural events; to invite Cuban dissidents to national day celebrations; and to proceed to the re-evaluation of its common position,

Cuba has one of the highest life expectancy rates in the region, with the average citizen living to 77.45 years old (just under the United States' 78.11 years) [proving Americans kill them selves at a fraster rate]

Challenges include relatively low pay of doctors (physicians are paid only 15 dollars a month), poor facilities, poor provision of equipment, and frequent absence of essential drugs.[Roger, tell me it ain't so] Cubans often rely on sociolismo and corruption.[US health care bad Cuba heajth care good]

A Canadian Medical Association Journal paper states that "The famine in Cuba during the Special Period was caused by political and economic factors similar to the ones that caused a famine in North Korea in the mid-1990s. Both countries were run by authoritarian regimes that denied ordinary people the food to which they were entitled when the public food distribution collapsed; priority was given to the elite classes and the military."[but the US is so much worse] The regime did not accept donations of food, medicines and cash from the US until 1993.[the US is so stingy and mean that way]

According to the UNAIDS report of 2003 there were an estimated 3,300 Cubans living with HIV/AIDS (approx 0.05% of the population). In the mid-1980s, when little was known about the virus, Cuba compulsorily tested thousands of its citizens for HIV. Those who tested positive were taken to Los Cocos and were not allowed to leave. [ Cuba good US bad because it lets those HIV folks run loose]

Subject: RE: BS: Canada falls off its high horse
From: Sawzaw
Date: 21 Dec 09 - 12:22 AM

Happy citizens of Cuba:

The New York Times

Like many prostitutes who ply their trade in the darkened bars and discos near Havana's tourist hotels, Maria says she does not go out every night. But whenever money gets tight and her 12-year-old son is hungry, she puts on a red miniskirt, puts rouge on her lips and heads for El Conejito bar, a thinly disguised rendezvous point.

"Most of the tourists come to look for girls, tobacco, you know, the things they cannot get in their country," she said. "They say the Cuban girls are very hot."

Maria, who is 36 and insisted that her last name not be published, said she worried about contracting AIDS and forced her clients to use condoms, every time. She is knowledgeable about the disease, having learned about it through the government's anti-AIDS program, and she was tested twice during a stint in jail last year for prostitution.

An arrest can mean a two-year prison term. But some women said they kept relationships with pimps to pay off the police.

For the most part, the women who work as prostitutes say they are looking to link up with someone who can take them out of Cuba, or provide them with a steady income. Many are part-time prostitutes, who go out only when their meager state salaries run out.

Hermita, 28, a secretary at a school who earns about $8 a month, was trolling for tourists near the Hotel Inglaterra in Old Havana on a recent evening. She has a 2-year-old daughter from a marriage that did not last, and she said she needed money for food, clothing and shoes.

Maria A., 23, said she gave up working as a hairdresser and started sleeping with tourists two years ago. She said she came close to striking it rich when an older Italian tourist had agreed to pay for an apartment for her. But they quarreled on a subsequent visit, she said, and now she is on the hunt again. In the meantime, she collects $40 to $70 a night from any tourist she can lure to a rooming house with which she has a mutually beneficial arrangement.

"Nobody does this because they like it," she said, drawing on a cigarette. "I would marry someone to get out."

What? Get out of Cuba? Why leave such a workers paradise, a garden of Eden for mankind, a Mecca of free health care?

Those poor overburdened Canadians should be leaving that icebound hellhole for good and emigrating there. They would never have to eat blubber, berries and dried caribou again. They could trade in their mukluks for flip flops. And no taxes!

¡Viva la Revolución!

Subject: RE: BS: Canada falls off its high horse
From: GUEST,999
Date: 21 Dec 09 - 01:44 AM

"The National Task Force on Prostitution suggests that over one million people in the US have worked as prostitutes in the United States, or about 1% of American women."

Maybe the US should fall off its high horse, too.