Cuba ... In *'s Sights?

[YDogg]

Just idle speculation. I wonder whether * would try to stir up trouble/conflict/etc with Cuba before he is out of office. To either make things difficult for *'s (hopefully Democratic) successor, or to try to show that he is "da man?"

[Stop_the_War]

1. After the Nazis...erm..Republicans invade a few more Arab nations

they will try something in Cuba.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Placebo]

3. I'd love to see Castro out and a democracy established in Cuba...

but I don't think Bush will push for it, nor do I think it can be accomplished through military force alone.

[Stop_the_War]

4. I'd love to see a democracy established HERE

[Mika]

7. WTF? "through military force alone"

What the hell are you talking about? You'd like to see Castro gone (despite the fact that a majority of Cubans might not agree) and that it will take more than military force? Sounds like a BushCrimeNazi Inc plan.. born in arrogance & ignorance.
:puke:




Cuba is democratic, just not an American style of democracy. Cuba's government is a democratically elected parliamentary system.

If Americans would pull their heads out of their asses and insist on their constitutional right to travel unfettered to Cuba then they could see this for themselves.


I've been in Cuba during an entire election season - campaigns to elections (with paper ballots, counted in public) to ratification elections that put candidates in their respective office.


http://www.poptel.org.uk/cuba-solidarity/democracy.htm

This system in Cuba is based upon universal adult suffrage for all those aged 16 and over. Nobody is excluded from voting, except convicted criminals or those who have left the country. Voter turnouts have usually been in the region of 95% of those eligible .

There are direct elections to municipal, provincial and national assemblies, the latter represent Cuba's parliament.

Electoral candidates are not chosen by small committees of political parties. No political party, including the Communist Party, is permitted to nominate or campaign for any given candidates.

--

Representative Fidel Castro was elected to the National Assembly as a representative of District #7 Santiago de Cuba.
He is one of the elected 607 representatives in the Cuban National Assembly. It is from that body that the head of state is nominated and then elected. Raul Castro, Carlos Large, and Ricardo Alarcon and others were among the nominated last year. President Castro has been elected to that position since 1976.

http://www.bartleby.com/65/do/Dorticos.html

Dorticós Torrado, Osvaldo

1919–83, president of Cuba (1959–76). A prosperous lawyer, he participated in Fidel Castro’s revolutionary movement and was imprisoned (1958). He escaped and fled to Mexico, returning to Cuba after Castro’s triumph (1959). As minister of laws (1959) he helped to formulate Cuban policies. He was appointed president in 1959. Intelligent and competent, he wielded considerable influence. In 1976 the Cuban government was reorganized, and Castro assumed the title of president; Dorticós was named a member of the council of state.

The Cuban government was reorganized (approved by popular vote) into a variant parliamentary system in 1976.

You can read a short version of the Cuban system here,
http://members.allstream.net/~dchris/CubaFAQDemocracy.html

Or a long and detailed version here,
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0968508405/qid=1053879619/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/102-8821757-1670550?v=glance&s=books

[Placebo]

9. Elections = Democracy?

Now who's repeating W administration talking points? :eyes:

Saddam was "elected" too you know.

The Cuban government intensified its ideological bombardment nationally and internationally and took a number of cruel steps against those who believe in democracy:

o It imprisoned dozens of activists as it had never done before.

o It took measures to block Cubans from Internet access.

o It attacked private-enterprise initiatives.

o It sharpened its harassment of journalists.

o It executed three desperate young men, making an example of the lengths to which it was willing to go.

o It refused to comply with a U.N. resolution that called for a human-rights monitor to visit Cuba.

o It vilified the heads of state of several democratic countries, deepening its dispute with the United States through attacks and counterattacks.

http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y04/jan04/21e8.htm

[Mika]

12. Cubanet? LOL

Cubanet is the NED USIA. :eyes: The Armstrong Williams' of "information" about Cuba.

Yes indeed, look who's repeating Bush's propaganda.

[Placebo]

13. It's from the Miami Herald...

if you've got a problem, take it up with them.

[Mika]

14. Miami Herald gets it from Otto Reich and Gary Jarmin

Miami Herald gets stories like this from El Herald (the spanish sister edition of the Herald) who gets stories from Cubanet in a fake RW news loop.

I live in Miami, I know how they operate here.


Meanwhile most of the story is inaccurate and outdated. For instance, the EU has fully normalized relations with Cuba, once they investigated the (not so) "independent journalists" operation conducted by the US in Cuba. Cubanet was the money operation, along with James Cason and the US interests section in Havana. Mix in propaganda from the Otto Reich department (via the Miami Herald - as he had done during the Contra operation) into the RW echo chamber and, viola.. they've got a case agin' Cuba. (Of course this requires gullibility by the average ignorant-of-Cuba reader.)

[Vogon_Glory]

8. Gee Dubya Wouldn't Like The Results of Free Cuban Elections

I'd favor truly free Cuban elections, but I rather doubt that either Buckaroo Bush or the old exile elite would be willing to accept the results. The reactionaries would still cry "Commie!" or "fraud!" and seek to undo the results by fair means or--more likely--foul.

I believe that while most Cubans are fed up with Marxist-style socialism as currently practiced in Cuba, they'd be utterly unwilling to restore the pre-1959 status quo and allow the pre-revolutionary elite to regain control of the old sugar plantations and ranches.

Moreover, I suspect that most Cubans living in Cuba, while not communists, are social democrats of one stripe or another. Considering what the right-wing Republican Party is trying to do to the very mild welfare state we have here in the US, I doubt that the Rulin' Dubya Posse or its Banana Republican allies would be willing the "Specter of Social Democracy" to continue in the Caribbean.

[Dave Reynolds]

5. Wasn't Cuba

recently stating something about oil under their territorial waters?

Makes them a target in Halliburton Crashcart's book.

[Vogon_Glory]

11. Cuba Does Have Oil

Cuba does have oil. There were pump jacks pumping away near Moron in 2003 and I've read that Brazilian oil companies were angling to do offshore drilling in Cuban waters. Oil drilling technology and expertise is sufficiently widespread these days that foreign oilmen can drill and there's little or nothing that the Rulin' Dubya Posse can do about it.

The problem I've heard concerning Cuban oil is that it's "sour," but then it's my understanding that a lot of the stuff pumped up in Venezuela is much the same way.

[BuyingThyme]

6. It's up to Putin

[cire4]

10. Bush has had Cuba in his sights for the past four years

From tightening travel restrictions, imposing the strictest economic sanctions, and waging viscious propaganda campaigns in Europe, Bush is determined to make sure the entire nation and its people suffers to the bone because he doesn't like the fact that one man is keeping American companies from profitting off the island.

[Ironpost]

15. The world will treat him like ( sorry to have to say this) a piece of shit

can't get away from him fast enough.

[martymar64]

16. Castro has outlasted ten US Presidents

He'll outlast the monkey in a man suit too.

[KharmaTrain]

17. What? And Ruin A Perfectly Good Black Market???

While they talk the talk, the GOOP walks a different one when it comes to Cuba...or the one they've always walked...they follow the money. They play up to the Otto Reich's and others in the anti-Castro Miami mafia for their money, then work under the table in multi-national ventures that get around the embargo. Cuba's a great place to money launder as the dollar is still the only currency. It's a haven for tons of profiteering...usually at the expense of the Cuban people.

[Mika]

18. Cuba switched convertable currency from the US $ to the Euro last year.

Of course, there is still the Cuban peso but foreign exchange must be done in euros now. That switch by the Cuban government really pisses off the Miamicubans who remit money to their families back in Cuba.

The dollar is no longer a convertable currency IN Cuba.

No more "dollar stores" in Cuba. They're now "Euro stores".

There were many DU threads on this transition last year.

:hi:

[UTUSN]

19. Shrub and His Flying Monkeys Would LOVE to Re-establish Mafia-Heaven

His "base" is the same all over--greedy, gluttonous robber barons--regardless of nationality. They would treat toppling Cuba as bigger than the implosion of the U.S.S.R. Then the Shrub high rollers would clean-UP, uh, "rebuild" it as a Disneyland for the rich and greedy. They would also re-install the wingnut, Fascist plantation owners. Perhaps the only upside is that those hardcore Exiles (as distinct from the 2nd and 3rd generations) would GET OUT OF HERE--hopefully starting with a-holes ROS-whatever-her-name, Mel MARTINEZ, and those a-holes who said they would refuse to enforce the Elian removal orders. But back to Shrub, it would be his crown baubel.