Santo Culto writes:
Castro clan OBVIOUSLY live very well if compared with 90% of Cuban population. If the ”socialism” of Castro Brothers were good, they don’t need use censorship to shut up, jail and torture dissidents.
If Soviet Union were much better than US, living standard would be superior in a different way.
Robert, you are rich??
Sure the Castros live somewhat better than the rest of the population, but so what? The matter is the ratios. The Castros live, what? 4-5 times better than the rest of the people? And how is it under capitalism? The rich have, what? 800 times more money than your average person? It’s a matter of degree.
The Castros do not live high off the hog. Castro has not personally profited off the revolution nor has he enriched himself. Most of the sane anti-Castro people will admit this.
There is no torture of dissidents or prisoners in Cuba, unlike in the rest of Latin America. Everybody is a critic or a dissident in Cuba if you mean criticizing the regime. Go to Cuba sometime and walk around with some people. People criticize the regime all day long every day over there. It’s isn’t even really illegal because everybody does it.
There is a famous woman blogger, Yoani Sanchez, who writes a very nasty dissident blog that is read by many people all over the world. The regime even lets her leave the country and go to nasty anti-Cuban government conferences in Spain and the US, where she gives some pretty hardcore speeches. The regime doesn’t like her, but they don’t do much of anything to her. They might grab her once in a while and put her in jail overnight for 12 hours and then release her, things like that. Minor harassment.
The dissidents who get locked up are calling for the overthrow of the government and the system and replacing it with something else. You can’t do that in Cuba. That’s illegal.
There are not that many dissidents in Cuba. There are ~250 active dissident organizations in Cuba at any given time, but most of them only have a few members. The regime does not do a lot to most of them. They round some of them up once in a while, and throw them in jail for 2-3 weeks, but then they let them out and they go right back to their dissident activities. The truth is that most Cubans can’t stand the dissidents and consider them to be traitors. They have no support inside the country.
The US set up a radio station called Radio Marti to pump US propaganda into Cuba. The Cuban government jammed it right away, but you can often get the signal anyway. A lot of Cubans listen to Radio Marti, but no one listens to the anti-Cuban government propaganda on there. They only listen to the baseball games.
Political scientists at Cuban universities are publishing articles in journals talking about new political models, including things like allowing other leftwing parties. Nobody is putting them in jail for that. But that would have to be carefully monitored so the capitalists overseas did not abuse it.
There is a great big debate within the party right now about whether to go to more of a Chinese or Vietnamese model, like the “Chinese road to socialism.” It is quite a heated debate, and no one has gone to jail yet.
If the Cubans gave up on the censorship, the capitalists would flood that place with capitalist propaganda 24-7. The whole population would be drowning in it.
Elections are competitive. Various party members actually campaign against each other. There are town hall debates held all over Cuba. Major policy changes are made with citizen input. Some major changes to the Labor Code were written up following meetings with citizens all over Cuba to get their input on what sort of changes they wanted.
Personally, I think Cuban elections are far more democratic than these pitiful money-based elections we have here in the US. The notion that this money-based political system is democratic in any way, shape or form is some sort of a sick joke.
