Report: Castro says Cuban model doesn't work

[Gunner]

Took him a long time to realize it.

Report: Castro says Cuban model doesn't work

*http://news.yahoo.com


By PAUL HAVEN, Associated Press Writer – Wed Sep 8, 3:18 pm ET
HAVANA – Fidel Castro told a visiting American journalist that Cuba's communist economic model doesn't work, a rare comment on domestic affairs from a man who has conspicuously steered clear of local issues since stepping down four years ago.
The fact that things are not working efficiently on this cash-strapped Caribbean island is hardly news. Fidel's brother Raul, the country's president, has said the same thing repeatedly. But the blunt assessment by the father of Cuba's 1959 revolution is sure to raise eyebrows.
Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine, asked if Cuba's economic system was still worth exporting to other countries, and Castro replied: "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore" Goldberg wrote Wednesday in a post on his Atlantic blog.
He said Castro made the comment casually over lunch following a long talk about the Middle East, and did not elaborate. The Cuban government had no immediate comment on Goldberg's account.
Since stepping down from power in 2006, the ex-president has focused almost entirely on international affairs and said very little about Cuba and its politics, perhaps to limit the perception he is stepping on his brother's toes.
Goldberg, who traveled to Cuba at Castro's invitation last week to discuss a recent Atlantic article he wrote about Iran's nuclear program, also reported on Tuesday that Castro questioned his own actions during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, including his recommendation to Soviet leaders that they use nuclear weapons against the United States.
Even after the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba has clung to its communist system.
The state controls well over 90 percent of the economy, paying workers salaries of about $20 a month in return for free health care and education, and nearly free transportation and housing. At least a portion of every citizen's food needs are sold to them through ration books at heavily subsidized prices.
President Raul Castro and others have instituted a series of limited economic reforms, and have warned Cubans that they need to start working harder and expecting less from the government. But the president has also made it clear he has no desire to depart from Cuba's socialist system or embrace capitalism.
Fidel Castro stepped down temporarily in July 2006 due to a serious illness that nearly killed him.
He resigned permanently two years later, but remains head of the Communist Party. After staying almost entirely out of the spotlight for four years, he re-emerged in July and now speaks frequently about international affairs. He has been warning for weeks of the threat of a nuclear war over Iran.
Castro's interview with Goldberg is the only one he has given to an American journalist since he left office.
___

 

[RunawaySlave]

I ain't believing nothing until I HEAR this interview. Dude can write anything and there's no one to dispute it

 

[Majestic Lion]

I ain't believing nothing until I HEAR this interview. Dude can write anything and there's no one to dispute it

It's misdirection. Castro said the Soviet model doesn't work. As usual, the square-peg-in-round-hole types are trying to force things into their worldview for self-justification purposes.

 

[QueEx]

It's misdirection. Castro said the Soviet model doesn't work. As usual, the square-peg-in-round-hole types are trying to force things into their worldview for self-justification purposes.

I googled "castro soviet model" and I didn't get a quote/hit along those lines.

But the actual article written by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic brings some clarity:

". . . striking was something he said at lunch on the day of our first meeting. We were seated around a smallish table; Castro, his wife, Dalia, his son; Antonio; Randy Alonso, a major figure in the government-run media; and Julia Sweig, the friend I brought with me to make sure, among other things, that I didn't say anything too stupid (Julia is a leading Latin American scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations).

. . . during the generally lighthearted conversation (we had just spent three hours talking about Iran and the Middle East), I asked him if he believed the Cuban model was still something worth exporting.

"The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore," he said.

This struck me as the mother of all Emily Litella moments. Did the leader of the Revolution just say, in essence, "Never mind"?

I asked Julia to interpret this stunning statement for me. She said, <SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">"He wasn't rejecting the ideas of the Revolution. I took it to be an acknowledgment that under 'the Cuban model' the state has much too big a role in the economic life of the country."</span>

One reason for the statement might be:

"Julia pointed out that one effect of such a sentiment might be to create space for his brother, Raul, who is now president, to enact the necessary reforms in the face of what will surely be push-back from orthodox communists within the Party and the bureaucracy.

Raul Castro is already loosening the state's hold on the economy. He recently announced, in fact, that small businesses can now operate and that foreign investors could now buy Cuban real estate.

(The joke of this new announcement, of course, is that Americans are not allowed to invest in Cuba, not because of Cuban policy, but because of American policy. In other words, Cuba is beginning to adopt the sort of economic ideas that America has long-demanded it adopt, but Americans are not allowed to participate in this free-market experiment because of our government's hypocritical and stupidly self-defeating embargo policy. We'll regret this, of course, when Cubans partner with Europeans and Brazilians to buy up all the best hotels)."

 

[QueEx]

<font size="3">

What may be more interesting is Castro's message to Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 'Stop Slandering the Jews':</font size>

Castro opened our initial meeting by telling me that he read the recent Atlantic article carefully, and that it confirmed his view that Israel and America were moving precipitously and gratuitously toward confrontation with Iran. This interpretation was not surprising, of course: Castro is the grandfather of global anti-Americanism, and he has been a severe critic of Israel. His message to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, he said, was simple: Israel will only have security if it gives up its nuclear arsenal, and the rest of the world's nuclear powers will only have security if they, too, give up their weapons. Global and simultaneous nuclear disarmament is, of course, a worthy goal, but it is not, in the short term, realistic.

Castro's message to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, was not so abstract, however. Over the course of this first, five-hour discussion, Castro repeatedly returned to his excoriation of anti-Semitism.

• He criticized Ahmadinejad for denying the Holocaust and explained why the Iranian government would better serve the cause of peace by acknowledging the "unique" history of anti-Semitism and trying to understand why Israelis fear for their existence.

• He began this discussion by describing his own, first encounters with anti-Semitism, as a small boy. "I remember when I was a boy - a long time ago - when I was five or six years old and I lived in the countryside," he said, "and I remember Good Friday. What was the atmosphere a child breathed? `Be quiet, God is dead.' God died every year between Thursday and Saturday of Holy Week, and it made a profound impression on everyone. What happened? They would say, `The Jews killed God.' They blamed the Jews for killing God! Do you realize this?"

• He went on, "Well, I didn't know what a Jew was. I knew of a bird that was a called a 'Jew,' and so for me the Jews were those birds. These birds had big noses. I don't even know why they were called that. That's what I remember. This is how ignorant the entire population was."

• He said <SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">the Iranian government should understand the consequences of theological anti-Semitism.</span> "This went on for maybe two thousand years," he said. "I don't think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews. I would say much more than the Muslims. They have been slandered much more than the Muslims because they are blamed and slandered for everything. No one blames the Muslims for anything."

• <SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">The Iranian government should understand that the Jews "were expelled from their land, persecuted and mistreated all over the world, as the ones who killed God. </span>

• <SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">In my judgment here's what happened to them: Reverse selection.</span> What's reverse selection? Over 2,000 years they were subjected to terrible persecution and then to the pogroms. One might have assumed that they would have disappeared; I think their culture and religion kept them together as a nation."

• He continued: <SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">"The Jews have lived an existence that is much harder than ours. There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust."</span> I asked him if he would tell Ahmadinejad what he was telling me. "I am saying this so you can communicate it," he answered.

<font size="3">Conflict between Israel and Iran</font size>

Castro went on to analyze the conflict between Israel and Iran. He said he understood Iranian fears of Israeli-American aggression and he added that, in his view, American sanctions and Israeli threats will not dissuade the Iranian leadership from pursuing nuclear weapons. "This problem is not going to get resolved, because the Iranians are not going to back down in the face of threats. That's my opinion," he said. He then noted that, unlike Cuba, Iran is a "profoundly religious country," and he said that religious leaders are less apt to compromise. He noted that even secular Cuba has resisted various American demands over the past 50 years.


<font size="3">Conflict between Iran & West; Escalate to Nuclear</font size>

We returned repeatedly in this first conversation to Castro's fear that a confrontation between the West and Iran could escalate into a nuclear conflict. "The Iranian capacity to inflict damage is not appreciated," he said. "Men think they can control themselves but Obama could overreact and a gradual escalation could become a nuclear war." I asked him if this fear was informed by his own experiences during the 1962 missile crisis, when the Soviet Union and the U.S. nearly went to war other over the presence of nuclear-tipped missiles in Cuba (missiles installed at the invitation, of course, of Fidel Castro). I mentioned to Castro the letter he wrote to Khruschev, the Soviet premier, at the height of the crisis, in which he recommended that the Soviets consider launching a nuclear strike against the U.S. if the Americans attack Cuba. "That would be the time to think about liquidating such a danger forever through a legal right of self-defense," Castro wrote at the time.


<font size="3">Asking Soviets to bomb U.S. "wasn't worth it"</font size>

I asked him, "At a certain point it seemed logical for you to recommend that the Soviets bomb the U.S. Does what you recommended still seem logical now?" He answered: "After I've seen what I've seen, and knowing what I know now, it wasn't worth it all."

I was surprised to hear Castro express such doubts about his own behavior in the missile crisis - and I was, I admit, also surprised to hear him express such sympathy for Jews, and for Israel's right to exist (which he endorsed unequivocally).


<font size="3">Why Castro; Why Now ?</font size>

After this first meeting, I asked Julia to explain the meaning of Castro's invitation to me, and of his message to Ahmadinejad. "Fidel is at an early stage of reinventing himself as a senior statesman, not as head of state, on the domestic stage, but primarily on the international stage, which has always been a priority for him," she said. "Matters of war, peace and international security are a central focus: Nuclear proliferation climate change, these are the major issues for him, and he's really just getting started, using any potential media platform to communicate his views. He has time on his hands now that he didn't expect to have. And he's revisiting history, and revisiting his own history."

 

[nittie]

What he's not saying bothers me a lot more than what he said.

 

[thoughtone]

You people haven't figured out by now to take a Gunner quote with a grain of salt?

 

[SPECTRE1]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/09/10/cuba.castro.communism/index.html?hpt=T2

Misinterpreted, what a surprise. America is pushing for elections, that would end communism. People greed would take over and vote for A political party pushing for capitalism, leaving everybody else out in the cold. Then american companies would like before, own everything, have people work for nothing.

Cuba would turn into Haiti if they used capitalism. The embargo was about ending communism to keep it spreading by making it appear unsuccessful and to push for elections knowing people would vote it down.

The capitalist system is not working here, when the government has to jump in and bail everybody out.

 

[QueEx]

<font size="4">
Fidel Castro says his comment on
Cuban model was misunderstood</font size>

CNN
Shasta Darlington
September 11, 2010


Havana, Cuba (CNN) -- Former Cuban President Fidel Castro said Friday that he was misinterpreted when he recently told an American journalist that the Cuban model no longer works.

In a speech at the University of Havana that was then broadcast on Cuban TV, Castro said he meant "exactly the opposite" of what was understood by Jeffrey Goldberg, who was interviewing him for The Atlantic.

According to Goldberg, when he asked Castro during an interview last week if the Cuban model could be exported, the 84-year-old former leader answered: "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore."

The comment was widely interpreted as Castro's admission that the Soviet-style economic model he introduced after his revolution no longer works.

Goldberg wrote on The Atlantic's blog that he turned to Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Affairs, who was present at the interview, "to interpret this stunning statement for me."

"She said, 'He wasn't rejecting the ideas of the revolution. I took it to be an acknowledgment that under "the Cuban model" the state has much too big a role in the economic life of the country,'" he wrote.​

<SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">On Friday, Castro said he was correctly quoted, but that, "in reality, my answer meant exactly the opposite of what both American journalists interpreted regarding the Cuban model."

"My idea, as the whole world knows, is that the capitalist system no longer works for the United States or the world," he said. "How could such a system work for a socialist country like Cuba?"</span>

Castro called Goldberg "a great journalist."

"He does not invent phrases, he transfers them and interprets them," he said. "I await with interest his extensive article."

He told an audience that included some of his former soldiers who were there to mark the publication of his 608-page autobiography that the capitalist system "leads from crisis to crisis, each one more serious."


http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/a.../index.html?hpt=T2#fbid=tmaayj-ub3Y&wom=false

 

[QueEx]

i asked julia to interpret this stunning statement for me. she said, <span style="background-color: #ffff00">"he wasn't rejecting the ideas of the revolution. i took it to be an acknowledgment that under 'the cuban model' the state has much too big a role in the economic life of the country."</span>

<span style="background-color: #ffff00">on friday, castro said he was correctly quoted, but that, "in reality, my answer meant exactly the opposite of what both american journalists interpreted regarding the cuban model."

"my idea, as the whole world knows, is that the capitalist system no longer works for the united states or the world," he said. "how could such a system work for a socialist country like cuba?"</span>

<font size="3">Fidel's original comment and his "interpretation" of that comment and Julia Sweig's interpretation of Fiden's comment are fairly close, although, the truth probably lies somewhere in between. I think Julia Sweig's analysis, however, is closest to the truth:
</font size>

"[the] . . . effect of such a sentiment might be to create space for his brother, Raul, who is now president, to enact the necessary reforms in the face of what will surely be push-back from orthodox communists within the Party and the bureaucracy.

<font size="3">Cuba's turn to capitalistic principles is in fact an acknowledgement that the Cuban-Soviet-Assisted Model has failed. In all likelihood, Cuba will for a long time retain aspects of its socialist model, as has China. Both systems are in flux, in both the movement is towards principles that are variants of capitalism - - BUT, at the same time, they both get to criticize the U.S. variant -- which is what both may one day look like.

Castro is probably right, capitalism, vel non, is not the answer. Capitalism, in its pure form is not practiced anywhere. The theory is practiced in various forms in various countries in the context of various regulatory schemes. In fact, one of the biggest struggles in the U.S. is over the right amount of regulation of the U.S. variant.
</font size>


QueEx

 

[QueEx]

Misinterpreted, what a surprise. America is pushing for elections, that would end communism. People greed would take over and vote for A political party pushing for capitalism, leaving everybody else out in the cold. Then american companies would like before, own everything, have people work for nothing.

So, they should retain a system that is failing them?

They should not change to fit their needs because you or someone in the communist party hierarchy want to argue who's right while the house is falling down around them ???

America is not the enemy, though there are enemies to American ideals within it.

Cuba would turn into Haiti if they used capitalism. The embargo was about ending communism to keep it spreading by making it appear unsuccessful and to push for elections knowing people would vote it down.

The capitalist system is not working here, when the government has to jump in and bail everybody out.

I would like to say more on this but I have to get ready for the big game today. I've got to check out of this hotel, fly home, get my game face & head (drank) on for some serious football this evening.

QueEx


P.S.

. . . AND, git my game shoes to kick some Nitany Lions ass back to Happy Valley Pennsylvania.

<font size="3">
Roll Tide

 

[Spectrum]

​

<font size="3">Fidel's original comment and his "interpretation" of that comment and Julia Sweig's interpretation of Fiden's comment are fairly close, although, the truth probably lies somewhere in between. I think Julia Sweig's analysis, however, is closest to the truth:
</font size>

​

<font size="3">Cuba's turn to capitalistic principles is in fact an acknowledgement that the Cuban-Soviet-Assisted Model has failed. In all likelihood, Cuba will for a long time retain aspects of its socialist model, as has China. Both systems are in flux, in both the movement is towards principles that are variants of capitalism - - BUT, at the same time, they both get to criticize the U.S. variant -- which is what both may one day look like.

Castro is probably right, capitalism, vel non, is not the answer. Capitalism, in its pure form is not practiced anywhere. The theory is practiced in various forms in various countries in the context of various regulatory schemes. In fact, one of the biggest struggles in the U.S. is over the right amount of regulation of the U.S. variant.
</font size>


QueEx

 

[QueEx]

Cuba to let Cubans travel freely

In this April 14, 2009 file photo, a woman is welcomed by
relatives after arriving from the U.S. at the Jose Marti
International Airport in Havana, Cuba. The Cuban govern-
ment announced Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2012, that it will no
longer require islanders to apply for an exit visa, eliminating
a much-loathed bureaucratic procedure that has been a
major impediment for many seeking to travel overseas. Photo:
Javier Galeano / AP


Associated Press
ANDREA RODRIGUEZ,
PETER ORSI
Tuesday, October 16, 2012

HAVANA (AP) — The Cuban government announced Tuesday that it will <SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">eliminate a half-century-old restriction that requires citizens to get an exit visa to leave the country</span>.

The decree that takes effect Jan. 14 will eliminate a much-loathed bureaucratic procedure that has kept many Cubans from traveling or moving abroad.

"These measures are truly substantial and profound," said Col. Lamberto Fraga, Cuba's deputy chief of immigration, at a morning news conference. "What we are doing is not just cosmetic."

Under the new measure announced in the Communist Party daily Granma, islanders will only have to show their passport and a visa from the country they are traveling to.

It is the most significant advance this year in President Raul Castro's five-year plan of reforms that has already seen the legalization of home and car sales and a big increase in the number of Cubans owning private businesses.

Migration is a highly politicized issue in Cuba and beyond its borders.

Under the "wet foot, dry foot" policy, the United States allows nearly all Cubans who reach its territory to remain. Granma published an editorial blaming the travel restrictions imposed in 1961 on U.S. attempts to topple the island's government, plant spies and recruit its best-educated citizens.

"It is because of this that any analysis of Cuba's problematic migration inevitably passes through the policy of hostility that the U.S. government has developed against the country for more than 50 years," the editorial said.​

It assured Cubans that the government recognizes their right to travel abroad and said the new measure is part of "an irreversible process of normalization of relations between emigrants and their homeland."

The decree still imposes limits on travel by many Cubans. People cannot obtain a passport or travel abroad without permission if they face criminal charges, if the trip affects national security or if their departure would affect efforts to keep qualified labor in the country.

Doctors, scientists, members of the military and others considered valuable parts of society currently face restrictions on travel to combat brain drain.

"The update to the migratory policy takes into account the right of the revolutionary State to defend itself from the interventionist and subversive plans of the U.S. government and its allies," the newspaper said. "Therefore, measures will remain to preserve the human capital created by the Revolution in the face of the theft of talent applied by the powerful."

On the streets of Havana, the news was met with a mixture of delight and astonishment. Officials over the years often spoke of their desire to lift the exit visa, but talk failed to turn into concrete change.

"No! Wow, how great!" said Mercedes Delgado, a 73-year-old retiree when told of the news that was announced overnight. "Citizens' rights are being restored."

"Look, I ask myself how far are we going to go with these changes. They have me a little confused because now all that was done during 50 years, it turns out we're changing it," said Maria Romero, a cleaning worker who was headed to her job Tuesday morning. "Everything they told us then, it wasn't true. I tell you, I don't understand anything."

Cuba-born U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen referred to the measure as "so-called reforms" that are "nothing more than Raul Castro's desperate attempts to fool the world into thinking that Cuba is changing.

"But anyone who knows anything about the communist 53- year-old Castro dictatorship knows that Cuba will only be free when the Castro family and its lackeys are no longer on the scene," the South Florida Republican said.

The Cuban government's decision to eliminate exit visas won't mean that Cubans can just get on a plane to the United States.

Kathleen Campbell Walker, an immigration lawyer in El Paso, Texas, said Cubans who fly to the United States are still required to get a State Department-issued visa. Homeland Security officials who review passenger lists for U.S.-bound flights are likely to order an airline to deny boarding to anyone who doesn't have that permission.

Cubans who do make it to the U.S., regardless of whether or not they have a visa, are generally admitted to the country.

"Our own visa requirements remain unchanged," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters Tuesday.

"We obviously welcome any reforms that'll allow Cubans to depart from and return to their country freely," said Nuland. "We remain committed to the migration accords under which our two countries support and promote safe, legal and orderly migration."

Under those 1994 accords between the two countries, Washington has encouraged Havana to take steps to prevent any future mass exodus.

Tomas Bilbao, executive director of the Washington-based Cuba Study Group, said he is cautiously optimistic that the move will reduce the isolation of the Cuban people and increase interaction between the U.S. and Cuban civil society.

"The important story is the Cuban government has taken a step that has long been demanded by the Cuban people," he said.

Omar Lopez, human rights director of the Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation, welcomed the elimination of the exit visas, but said it remained unclear whether the change will allow more Cubans to get passports.

"Now, Cubans don't have to pay and get a permit from Cuba to go as a tourist or a visitor, but they say that in order to get a passport you have to comply with some requirements of the law," Lopez said.

Dissident Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez expressed concern that officials might now control travel merely by denying passports.

Cuba has on occasion denied exit visas to government detractors when they sought to travel abroad, and Sanchez she has been turned down 20 times over the last five years.

"I have the suitcase ready to travel. ... Let's see if I get a flight for Jan. 14, 2013
​

http://www.chron.com/news/article/Govt-to-let-Cubans-travel-freely-3951550.php