The inherent flaw of capitalism

[Little John]

Bleeding hell....

I didn't expect to come back and see this thread still going. Nice to see though. I guess I'd better back-track and read up all the contributions since I was last here.

[UndercoverElephant]

You can travel for 50 miles through non-mountain/forest terrain, and not see a single crop.

And what do you see instead? Desert? Scrub? Forest? How green is it?

Sounds like a natural wilderness to me, and if it isn't then you won't be able to grow much on it without irrigation anyway.

[emordnilap]

This may help us to decide how much weight to give to their opinions.

First hand experience has much to commend it but it's not everything. I tend not to travel very far - it's been several years since I went in a plane and I've never been outside Europe. I doubt I ever will.

There are many ways in which one can develop opinions about things we have never seen, nuclear war, Antarctica, Elvis Presley, shark-fin soup....

No, I've never been to Cuba and I don't see it through rose tinted specs. But there are useful things to learn from their experience.

Biff, I get your drift about being able to have opinions, but given that Cuba is so different to so many other places, it's difficult to understand what actually goes on there in people's lives without having been there. Mostly when people talk about Cuban experience they are referring to certain films, which in my view somewhat mis-represent the place. (Perhaps if you had been in East Germany/East Berlin before the wall came down or similar, that would begin to cover some of the issues on the ground.)

I too have never been to Cuba, nor travelled far within Europe and hope to never leave this island again.

Dervla Murphy, an Irish woman who has spent a long time in Cuba, has written some fascinating accounts of her time there (The Island That Dared) and has a love-hate relationship with the island - probably a good attitude to take with anywhere.

As for Castro, among the best books I've read about him, one is The Real Fidel Castro by Leycester Coltman, a factual history which almost achieves neutrality, leaning towards criticism.

In other words, the sources I prefer tend to show both sides; woodpecker's posts are particularly informative.

Whatever: any tiny nation that the US interferes with and oppresses has to be given the benefit of the doubt.

Furthermore, Cuba seems to be, in many respects (food, fuel, entitlements, health, jobs, money), what a more equal world would look like, so it's not so bad really.

[emordnilap]

Bleeding hell....

I didn't expect to come back and see this thread still going. Nice to see though. I guess I'd better back-track and read up all the contributions since I was last here.

I noticed you're back. Welcome, good to see you posting again.

[woodpecker]

You can travel for 50 miles through non-mountain/forest terrain, and not see a single crop.

And what do you see instead? Desert? Scrub? Forest? How green is it?

Sounds like a natural wilderness to me, and if it isn't then you won't be able to grow much on it without irrigation anyway.

Green. Pretty level coarse grassland, a few trees and shrubs here and there... Tumble-down army barracks and the odd abandoned dwelling or other small building. Not far from the island's - empty - arterial roads, so good communications. This looked like land that may well have been farmed pre-Castro. (The country used to have many cash-crop plantations - sugar, coffee, tobacco etc., and I think there's a lot less land under production of these that there used to be.)

When we had the long chat in the west, the guys took us on horseback across land that they had actually wanted to farm, that used to be farmed in the chap's father's time, but the government were asking a lot to lease it. So that was land that had been under production in the past.

[RogueMale]

What is "Mauerkrankheit" - a sort of nostalgia for the Wall? I think a lot of East Germans struggled in the transition from the nanny state to a Western society where you had (mostly) to look after yourself. It doesn't seem hard to us, but when you've never had to make decisions about your future, I can imagine it is traumatic.

More a feeling of being walled in: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14488681.

And don't forget, in addition to that, many people spied on their neighbours for the Stasi, and after the wall came down, ordinary people entered the Stasi headquarters and found out who was spying on whom.

I think there is something waiting in the wings but it won't deliver the goods.

What are you expecting to happen?

[kenneal - lagger]

I agree with what Woodpesker says about abandoned farm land. We were told most of it was old collective farms abandoned when Russia folded because they didn't have the fuel to run the tractors. Cuba once had the most mechanised and advanced farming in South America and sent most of the produce to Russia. Could be a good lesson for us post PO.

[woodpecker]

And Cuba used to produce 80% of the USA's sugar...

(I read somewhere once that agricultural pay in Cuba in the 1950s was higher than in countries such as France and Germany.)

I think 'previously farmed land' also explains the terrain: quite clear, flat land with bushes and young trees emerging as part of the natural cycle once the land stopped being farmed.

[woodpecker]

The inherent flaws in capitalism seem to be appearing in Spain. Here's a picture a Spanish friend of mine posted on facebook. I asked him what was going on as there seem to be a lot of people out for a walk and he replied:

"Hi Biff! The policies of the new government (right wing) are taken the people out to the streets: Cuttings on Education and Health, more taxes... Combined with the crisis -well, I guess an African child would laugh at our definition of crisis, but anyway...-, the situation is getting critical. In the province of Valencia, some days ago some students went to claim against the cuttings on Education and they were badly repressed by the Police. And corruption scandals too."

"No to corruption, Yes to education".
Well you can't argue with that!

Today's El Pais leads with
- son-in-law of the King being grilled for 22 in court in the massive and ongoing web of fraud and corruption scandals which he is involved in
- the on-going saga of the prosecution of judge Garzon and the 'crimes of Franco' affair (the whole battle over digging-up-of-the-mass-graves-of-those-executed, and dealing with those responsible) by the new (right-wing) government
- Spain's deficit now stands at 8.51%, as opposed to EU demand for 6% at this juncture.

My mum asked me on Sunday if I had thought about moving back to Spain (to be with her). She must be stark staring bonkers.

On public sector spending, Spain could do worse than start to pay public sector workers part-time salaries if they are only going to work part time. You currently have a ridiculous situation where, for example, office-based public sector workers stop work at 1pm or 2pm every day, and then go and work in some private business in the afternoons. So you're a tax inspector in the mornings, and a private financial advisor in the afternoons - and a very popular one at that, because you're an insider who knows how to fix things for your private clients at the Ministry.

[biffvernon]

And see http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/forum/vie ... hp?t=20244