You can look at any existing socialist country - if you don’t want to call them socialist, call them whatever you want. Post capitalist- whatever, I don’t care. Call them camels or window shades, it doesn’t matter as long as we know the countries we’re talking about. If you look at any one of those countries, you can evaluate them in several ways. One is comparing them to what they had before, and that to me is what’s very compelling. That’s what so compelling about Cuba, for instance. When I was in Cuba I was up in the Escambia, which is like the Appalachia of Cuba, very rugged mountains with people who were poor, or they were. And I said to this campesino, I said, “Do you like Fidel?” and he said “Si si, with all my soul.” I remember this gesture, with all our souls. I said “Why?” and he pointed to this clinic right up on the hill which we had visited. He said, “Look at that.” He said “Before the revolution, we never saw a doctor. If someone was seriously ill, it would take twenty people to carry that person, it’d go day and night. It would take two days to get to the hospital. First because it was far away and second because you couldn’t go straight, you couldn’t cross the latifundia lands, the boss would kill you. So, you had to go like this, and often when we got to the hospital, the person might be dead by the time we got there. Now we have this clinic up here with a full-time doctor. And today in Cuba when you become a doctor you got to spend two years out in the country, that’s your dedication to the people. And a dentist that comes one day a week. And for serious things, we’re not more than 20 minutes away from a larger hospital. That’s in the Escambia. So that’s freedom. We’re freer today, we have more life.” And I talked to a guy in Havana who says to me “All I used to see here in Havana, you call this drab and dull, we see it as a cleaner city. It’s true, the paint is peeling off the walls, but you don’t see kids begging in the streets anymore and you don’t see prostitutes.” Prostitution used to be one of the biggest industries. And today this man is going to night school. He said “I could read! I can read, do you know what it means to be able to read? Do you know what it means to be able not to read?” I remember when I gave my book to my father. I dedicated a book of mine to him, “Power and the Powerless” to my father, I said “To my father with my love,” I gave him a copy of the book, he opened it up and looked at it. He had only gone to the seventh grade, he was the son of an immigrant, a working-class Italian. He opens the book and he starts looking through it, and he gets misty-eyed, very misty-eyed. And I thought it was because he was so touched that his son had dedicated a book to him. That wasn’t the reason. He looks up to me and he says ‘I can’t read this, kid” I said “That’s okay dad, neither can the students, don’t worry about that. I mean I wrote it for you, it’s your book and you don’t have to read it. It’s a very complicated book, an academic book. He says, “I can’t read this book.” And the defeat. The defeat that man felt. That’s what illiteracy is about, that’s what the joy of literacy programs is. That’s why you have people in Nicaragua walking proud now for the first time. They were treated like animals before, they weren’t allowed to read, they weren’t taught to read. So, you compare a country from what it came from, with all it’s imperfections. And those who demand instant perfection the day after the revolution, they go up and say “Are there civil liberties for the fascists? Are they gonna be allowed their newspapers and their radio programs, are they gonna be able to keep all their farms? The passion that some of our liberals feel, the day after the revolution, the passion and concern they feel for the fascists, the civil rights and civil liberties of those fascists who are dumping and destroying and murdering people before. Now the revolution has gotta be perfect, it’s gotta be flawless. Well that isn’t my criteria, my criteria is what happens to those people who couldn’t read? What happens to those babies that couldn’t eat, that died of hunger? And that’s why I support revolution. The revolution that feeds the children gets my support. Not blindly, not unqualified. And the Reaganite government that tries to stop that kind of process, that tries to keep those people in poverty and illiteracy and hunger, that gets my undiluted animosity and opposition. :speech-l:
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The DPRK was completely destroyed after the Korean War, China and the Soviets helped rebuild most of it. Cuba had gained control of the country with most of the large cities as they were, these evolved from the colonial cities so there will be old decaying building, most of latin america is like this. This is a picture of downtown Havana.
Yeah what a stupid post, lets not pull pictures from East Palestine or Detroit and compare them to Havana now
you can even take pictures from the financial capital of empire nyc and they look like a horrible place to live compared to havana. in one of these pics, the only green in sight is on the wall of a building! and in the other pic you get a bunch of shitty trees and grass on the median and a single row of trees on the sidewalk. in havana, the densest parts of the city have green everywhere
in nyc, the residential buildings are relatively short. while the skyscrapers are all office space. havana is able to conserve space by having those giant residential buildings to minimize sprawl. also all their buildings are beautiful and unique, while the nyc architecture is just depressing
Also like, just psychically, I would rather be in a dense and ornate downtown that happens to be dirty than a wide open and plain soviet style downtown that happens to be pristine. Much respect to DPRK, the Soviet Union and the city of Stockholm but that kind of urban planning makes me feel weird.
You claim that one country is better than another, and yet consider this high level aerial shot of the main city center relative to that low-level shot of an alley way between small buildings.
Really makes you think.
why is this the argument that gets brought up? that was the one in which he was the most right.
what was libsocs take on that? wasnt that abt hasan dating paris jackson?
Because he was doing it over a 19 year old dating a 24 year old or something. Like yes big age gaps cause problems and can be predatory, but that was seemingly not the case there
DPRK: Neighbor is China
Cuba: Neighbor is USA
This lady is still wrong.
Who could’ve imagined that American economic warfare would be more deleterious when used against a country 250 miles from the U.S, with no powerful friends nearby, than against a country that borders China and Russia.
