Communism // Current

Obama's dialogue with a Cuban blogger

Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez has developed quite a following in the US for her blog Generacion Y. Apparently now she can count President Obama among her fans. Sanchez managed to submit seven question to the President, which he answered this week and she posted on her blog. Obama congratulated her on her work:
"Your blog provides the world a unique window into the realities of daily life in Cuba. It is telling that the Internet has provided you and other courageous Cuban bloggers with an outlet to express yourself so freely, and I applaud your collective efforts to empower fellow Cubans to express themselves through the use of technology. The government and people of the United States join all of you in looking forward to the day all Cubans can freely express themselves in public without fear and without reprisals."

The questions focused on US-Cuba relations and the possibility of future dialogue. Obama kept the door open to dialogue with Cuba's government but said it would have to come with the chance to "create opportunities to advance the interests of the United States and the cause of freedom for the Cuban people." Sanchez also asked him specifically about the role of the internet in Cuban lives.

"QUESTION 6: YOU STRONGLY SUPPORT THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEW COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES. BUT, CUBANS CONTINUE TO HAVE LIMITED ACCESS TO THE INTERNET. HOW MUCH OF THIS IS DUE TO THE U.S. EMBARGO AND HOW MUCH OF IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CUBAN GOVERNMENT?

My administration has taken important steps to promote the free flow of information to and from the Cuban people particularly through new technologies. We have made possible greater telecommunications links to advance interaction between Cuban citizens and the outside world. This will increase the means through which Cubans on the island can communicate with each other and with persons outside of Cuba, for example, by expanding opportunities for fiber optic and satellite transmissions to and from Cuba. This will not happen overnight. Nor will it have its full effect without positive actions by the Cuban government. I understand the Cuban government has announced a plan to provide Cubans greater access to the Internet at post offices. I am following this development with interest and urge the government to allow its people to enjoy unrestricted access to the internet and to information. In addition, we welcome suggestions regarding areas in which we can further support the free flow of information within, from, and to Cuba."

FROM THE BLOG: http://blogs.current.com/news/2009/11/20/obamas-dialogue-with-a-cuban-blogger/

Vanguard's Adrian Baschuk was in Cuba earlier this year and though he was unable to meet with Yoani Sanchez, found that internet access for her, possibly Cuba's best-known blogger, was achieved by sneaking into hotels and uploading her posts.
http://current.com/groups/vanguard-cuba-revolution/

SOURCES:
http://www.desdecuba.com/generationy/?p=1179
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/11/19/obama_replies_to_cuban_bloggerCuban blogger Yoani Sanchez has developed quite a following in the US for her blog... more

afitzgerald
added this
1 day ago
|
1 comment

Romania, twenty years to forget

Only a month and it will be 20 years from the death penalty of Nicolae Ceausescu and... more

bibabiba
added this
2 days ago
|
0 comments

A Bong Fit for Mac Lovers

Honestly, we're surprised that this doesn't already exist: Tribudesign, a young... more

pjacobs51
added this
5 days ago
|
42 comments

Senate Bill would allow "mentally Incapacitated" vets to buy guns

Major Nidal Hasan, accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood Army base, has been... more

Vierotchka
added this
6 days ago
|
99 comments

China Censors Obama's Call to Lift Ban on Twitter, Airs Soap Opera Instead

President Barack Obama prodded China about Internet censorship and free speech, but... more

EmperorThan
added this
5 days ago
|
0 comments

Did Obama smuggle a little democracy into China?

I was watching Obama's town hall meeting with students in Shanghai last night. As he wrapped up his prepared remarks, stepped away from the podium, and began to explain the format of the town hall portion I realized that this might be absolutely foreign to many of these students. Here is a country's President, a very famous and powerful man, asking them to raise their hands and ask him a question. Whatever they asked him, he'd answer. We obviously take this sort of thing for granted - heck our most recent town halls seem to have devolved into purely shouting at our elected officials. But I couldn't shake the feeling that Obama, who was not joined on stage by any major Chinese official, had smuggled a little democracy into the PRC.

[Video is featured. This video of his introducing the concept is from CNN and their anchor, predictably, talks all over him, but you can hear the second half. If anyone can find a clean video - I'll replace this one with it.]

He also, and this was the headlining remark, asserted the American position that it's okay for everyone to use Twitter.

"President Barack Obama pointedly nudged China on Monday to stop censoring Internet access, offering an animated defense of the tool that helped him win the White House and suggesting Beijing need not fear a little criticism...."I think that the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes, because then citizens of countries around the world can hold their own governments accountable," Obama told students during his first-ever trip to China. "They can begin to think for themselves."

If the President's goal was to sneak a little democracy into the People's Republic, it seems to have not reached too many citizens. The event was not broadcast nationally - only on local Shanghai stations - and the live feed from the White House web site was reportedly choppy and hard to watch in China.

FROM THE BLOG: http://blogs.current.com/news/2009/11/16/did-obama-smuggle-a-little-democracy-into-china/

SOURCES: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/obama-holds-town-hall-chinese-students-introduces-us/story?id=9091246&page=2
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091116/ap_on_bi_ge/obama
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2009/11/15/live-blogging-obamas-shanghai-town-hall/I was watching Obama's town hall meeting with students in Shanghai last night. As he... more

afitzgerald
added this
6 days ago
|
17 comments

Saul Alinsky Politics Alive and Well in US Government

To know Alinsky is to know Obama

blogspression1
added this
7 days ago
|
0 comments

Generation Shift: From Berlin to China

For many of us, the fall of the Berlin Wall was something we never truly understood... more

NankinYP
added this
9 days ago
|
0 comments

Berlin, twenty years after the fall of the Wall

Twenty years ago the Berlin Wall fell and the world seemed to change. Today, Germany... more

bibabiba
added this
11 days ago
|
0 comments

Fall of the Berlin Wall - 20 years later

I actually don't remember where I was when I found out that the Berlin Wall fell... more

afitzgerald
added this
13 days ago
|
3 comments

The 11/9 Anniversary

Today, November 9, is the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Today is the real 9/11. This is not meant as a quibble about dates. Future historians will remember 9 November 1989 as far more significant than that terrifying day in September eight years ago. Countless long-forgotten events have been marked in headlines as the day we shall all remember. But nobody can doubt that the world changed on that wonderful night in Berlin.

When the Berlin Wall fell, communism died. Events have moved on fast since then. A new clash of civilisations – or in many ways an old one – began to surface. Now it is hard for anyone under about 40 to remember communism. To recap: it was that once idealistic, inspirational creed promising equality, freedom from exploitation and the creation of a new perfect humankind. The problem was that people had an annoying refusal to be perfected.

Almost always communism was imposed at the point of a gun and created labour camps and bread queues. The Stalins, Mao Zedongs and Pol Pots turned communism into the bloodiest social experiment of all time. History will mark 9 November 1989 as the day it was seen off as a miserable failure.

Again, we should try to look back. Less than a generation ago a third of our continent was under military occupation by a foreign superpower. The Soviet Union had around 750,000 troops stationed in central Europe. Hundreds of nuclear missiles were aimed at western cities, while the Nato countries had hundreds targeted at Budapest, Warsaw and so on. As easyJet and Ryanair take us on weekend breaks to Berlin or Bucharest, we should recall how unwelcoming and lugubrious these places were 20 years ago. Their people, imprisoned behind an iron curtain of electrified fences and minefields, were crying out to be free.

Then there was the wall in our heads, on both sides of the divide. For most of the four decades before 1989, communism was a real threat to our way of life. Two generations were brought up to fear the Soviet monolith. There were nuclear scares (the Cuban missile crisis) and the cold war fuelled proxy wars on other continents, such as Angola and the Soviet conflict in Afghanistan. Culturally, we were fed on spy thrillers and movies with the reds as the enemy.

All that changed in 1989. The collapse of communism inspired liberation elsewhere, most dramatically in South Africa, where apartheid could have survived longer. Nelson Mandela was released three months after the fall.

A downside to this story is that 9 November led directly to 11 September. The end of the cold war opened a door for Osama bin Laden. But Islamic fundamentalism is not a threat to western-style democracy as communism was. Obviously there will be converts, and all demographic graphs show that the number of Muslims will increase. But it is unlikely that Islam will appeal to the sort of western minds who were once attracted by socialist thinkers in the European intellectual tradition.

Terrorism is not a cause; it is a weapon, as Trotsky observed. Modern terrorist groups are a threat to many lives and will continue to be so. But to our way of life? Only if we choose to make it so. Outside the mind of an al-Qaida fanatic, it is fanciful to imagine that any day in London, Paris, Rome or Budapest imams will be in charge of governments sanctioning sharia law. In 1989, communist party apparatchiks ran a dozen now free European states, quite apart from the communist revolutions exported to the third world.

Last, but not least, 9 November was gloriously happy. Anything seemed possible that night. 11 September was a day that sparked panic and fear. I know which is a better 9/11 to remember.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/08/september-11-berlin-wall-communismToday, November 9, is the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.... more

pjacobs51
added this
13 days ago
|
2 comments

Actually, Free-Markets DON'T WORK, Survey says

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a new BBC poll has found widespread... more

asherp
added this
13 days ago
|
27 comments

Einstein: A Socialist?

A clear, concise and comprehensive case for socialism, written by Albert Einstein in 1949. He discusses our nature as both solitary and social beings, simultaneously conditioned by biological and cultural constitutions, and what this means for the individual's role in society. He then asks "how the structure of society and the cultural attitude of man should be changed in order to make human life as satisfying as possible." The final passages prove particularly poignant in presaging the greatest atrocities committed by Soviet tyranny. The challenge: How is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?

Part of the answer may reside in bypassing the power of large bureaucracies through a decentralized system of democratic planning directed by workers' and consumers' councils. Moreover, with today's information communication technology, the capacity for mass collaboration and self-government/self-management has never been more viable and effective. Your thoughts?

An Excerpt:

"The individual has become more conscious than ever of his dependence upon society. But he does not experience this dependence as a positive asset, as an organic tie, as a protective force, but rather as a threat to his natural rights, or even to his economic existence. Moreover, his position in society is such that the egotistical drives of his make-up are constantly being accentuated, while his social drives, which are by nature weaker, progressively deteriorate. All human beings, whatever their position in society, are suffering from this process of deterioration. Unknowingly prisoners of their own egotism, they feel insecure, lonely, and deprived of the naive, simple, and unsophisticated enjoyment of life. Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society.

The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor—not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules. In this respect, it is important to realize that the means of production—that is to say, the entire productive capacity that is needed for producing consumer goods as well as additional capital goods—may legally be, and for the most part are, the private property of individuals...

(The) crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society."A clear, concise and comprehensive case for socialism, written by Albert Einstein in... more

JMPxx85
added this
5 months ago
|
4 comments

How do I get my kids interested in comics? Devaluation (4 of 6)

~y2009m10d29-How-do-I-get-my-kids-interested-in-comics-Devaluation-4-of-6

WesleySmith
added this
24 days ago
|
2 comments

Two weeks later, Darsi Ferrer still on hunger strike

Cuban human rights activist Darsi Ferrer, imprisoned since July 21, is two weeks into... more

Zurama
added this
25 days ago
|
2 comments

The Modern World, via Cartoon

The classic struggle of management vs. worker. I am not a communist. I am more of a... more

vesher
added this
27 days ago
|
0 comments

Here Comes Obama

Here comes Obama care, through this national health "emergency". Never let an... more

blogspression1
added this
28 days ago
|
5 comments

Why Obama's lieutenants love Mao

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=113670

The left's long romance with tyranny and terror is manifesting itself in the Obama administration once again. Having experienced the high of putting $900 million of American taxpayers' money into Hamas' blood-soaked hands, some Obama advisers are now getting a new fix by offering thanks and praise to the late communist mass murderer Mao Zedong.

President Obama's White House communications director, Anita Dunn, recently praised Mao Zedong in a videotaped speech to high schoolers by calling him "one of the two people that I turn to most." When confronted on it, she said she was just joking. It remains a mystery what is laughable about extolling the greatest mass murderer in human history who slaughtered 70 million of his own people. In any case, Dunn was clearly not joking, as is evident in the detailed and earnest explanation she gave the high schoolers in her references to both Mao and Mother Teresa while emphasizing the importance of perseverance and choosing one's own path.

Dunn's veneration of Mao is shared by another Obama insider, "manufacturing czar" Ron Bloom, who, it appears, has been quoting the communist mass murderer with great approval. At a 2008 Union League Club meeting in New York, for instance, Bloom explained to his audience that:

"We know that the free market is nonsense. (…) We kind of agree with Mao that political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun."

And from the barrel of a gun Mao's political power did come indeed. Let's for a moment reflect on the crimes that Mao perpetrated:

After capturing power on Oct. 1, 1949, in the immediate post-revolutionary period alone, Mao murdered as many as 15 million Chinese citizens. In 1958, Mao launched the Great Leap Forward, an industrial and agricultural program intended to make China the world's largest steel and grain exporter. Involving demented economic schemes and brutal forced collectivization, the Great Leap was an unparalleled human disaster, exterminating approximately 38 million people through government-engineered famine.

Mao's starving victims were reduced to eating grass, dirt, leaves and tree bark in the attempt to survive. They picked through horse manure for undigested grains of wheat, or cow manure for worms. They also resorted to cannibalism, digging up freshly buried corpses. Mad from hunger, parents ate their own children – or swapped children with other parents in an attempt to ease the horror of the act. Children were also killed, boiled and used as fertilizer. Desperate villagers who abandoned their homes and traveled to other towns in search of food were mowed down by machine-gun fire.

This horrifying tragedy – the greatest famine in all human history – was created intentionally by Mao. While millions starved, plenty of food existed in state granaries. The army, however, guarded these granaries under strict order: "Absolutely no opening the granary door even if people are dying of starvation." In their biography, "Mao: The Unknown Story," authors Jung Chang and Jon Halliday conclude that if food had not been exported and instead had been distributed among the Chinese people, "very probably not a single person in China would have had to die of hunger."

In 1966, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, designed to purge the country of all dissent and bring it completely under the dictator's vicious rule. Millions of schoolchildren became the infamous Red Guards, whose task was to destroy anything connected to traditional culture and philosophy. As Paul Johnson put it, the Cultural Revolution became "a revolution of illiterates and semi-literates against intellectuals, the 'spectacle-wearers' as they were called. ... It was the greatest witch-hunt in history, which made the Zhdanov purges in post-war Russia seem almost trivial."http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=113670 The left's long romance... more