A Letter From Castro.

[Jesus On Peyote]

May 30, 2007

Ideas cannot be killed

I am not the first person whose death George Bush has anticipated, nor will I be the last.

Fidel Castro

A few days ago, while analyzing the expenses involved in the construction of three submarines of the Astute series, I said that with this money "75,000 doctors could be trained to look after 150 million people, assuming that the cost of training a doctor would be one-third of what it costs in the United States." Now, along the lines of the same calculations, I wonder: how many doctors could be graduated with the one hundred billion dollars that Bush gets his hands on in just one year to keep on sowing grief in Iraqi and American homes. Answer: 999,990 doctors who could look after 2 billion people who today do not receive any medical care.

More than 600,000 people have lost their lives in Iraq and more than 2 million have been forced to emigrate since the American invasion began. In the United States, around 50 million people do not have medical insurance. The blind market laws govern how this vital service is provided, and prices make it inaccessible for many, even in the developed countries. Medical services feed into the gross domestic product of the United States, but they do not generate conscience for those providing them nor peace of mind for those who receive them.

The countries with less development and more diseases have the least number of medical doctors: one for every 5,000, 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 or more people. When new sexually transmitted diseases appear such as Aids, which in merely 20 years has killed millions of persons - while tens of millions are afflicted, among them many mothers and children, although palliative measures now exist - the price of medications per patient could add up to 5,000, 10,000 or up to 15,000 dollars each year. These are fantasy figures for the great majority of Third World countries where the few public hospitals are overflowing with the ill who die piled up like animals under the scourge of a sudden epidemic.

To reflect on these realities could help us to better understand the tragedy. It is not a matter of commercial advertising that costs so much money and technology. Add up the starvation afflicting hundreds of millions of human beings; add to that the idea of transforming food into fuels; look for a symbol and the answer will be George Bush.

When he was recently asked by an important personality about his Cuba policy, his answer was this: "I am a hard-line president and I am just waiting for Castro's demise." The wishes of such a powerful gentleman are no privilege. I am not the first nor will I be the last that Bush has ordered to be killed; nor one of those people who he intends to go on killing individually or en masse.

"Ideas cannot be killed," Sarría emphatically said. Sarría was the black lieutenant, a patrol leader in Batista's army who arrested us, after the attempt to seize the Moncada Garrison, while three of us slept in a small mountain hut, exhausted by the effort of breaking through the siege. The soldiers, fuelled by hatred and adrenalin, were aiming their weapons at me even before they had identified who I was. "Ideas cannot be killed," the black lieutenant kept on repeating, practically automatically and in a hushed voice.

I dedicate those excellent words to you, Mr Bush.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/fidel_..._be_killed.html

Something for the communist in us all

[apothecary]

Something for the communist in us all

lol, how about this then?

Polish man wakes up to find Communism gone

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200706/s1940859.htm

A 65-year-old railwayman who fell into a coma following an accident in communist Poland has regained consciousness 19 years later to find democracy and a market economy, Polish media report.

[Anodyne]

^^^

That was the plot of a movie called Goodbye Lenin!

[Jesus On Peyote]

Wow, what a time to get into a coma,

"When I went into a coma there was only tea and vinegar in the shops, meat was rationed and huge petrol queues were everywhere,"

[Anodyne]

Ah, I'd never actually seen it - just saw repeated ads for it on SBS, and thought it was a cool idea.

[simon_marklar]

hey castro, want to buy some antibiotics ? You can pay cuban prices, only $75 per packet. of two.

[Anodyne]

^^^

What?

[devance]

Fidel Castro is well known for the training of medical doctors.

So when he dies and his brother comes to power he will be frozen.

After many years he will be awakened and say what happened in the time I was gone to my brother[Cuba] and the president Chavez[Venezuela]

and the pig country U.S.A.

Superintelligent medical Cockroaches will then try to explain that they have repopulated the earth after a nuclear exchange and he has been recreated from preserved DNA.

[ThunderIdeal]

hah!

[simon_marklar]

^^^

What?

cuba might have doctors, but it has almost no antibiotics. even asprin is scarce over there!

if you go to cuba, the nice thing to do is take a truckload of aspin/antibiotics and give it to the people over there. thats pretty much the only way they can get them.

of course, this is due to the US embargo.

http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2294

its pretty sad really.

[Maturin]

cuba might have doctors, but it has almost no antibiotics. even asprin is scarce over there!

if you go to cuba, the nice thing to do is take a truckload of aspin/antibiotics and give it to the people over there. thats pretty much the only way they can get them.

of course, this is due to the US embargo.

http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2294

its pretty sad really.

Actually, the US embargo was altered to allow the sale of medicines for humanitarian reasons. From wikipedia:

"...the embargo was relaxed by the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act, which was passed by the Congress in October 2000 and signed by President Bill Clinton. The relaxation allowed the sale of agricultural goods and medicine to Cuba for humanitarian reasons."

Of course, it is lots more fun to bash America, rather than blame the shitty Cuban government. It's such a great political climate in Cuba that everyday hundreds of Americans risk their lives and that of their children by paddling across a dangerous ocean strait on anything that can float!!

And this is an embargo from the USA only...what about all the other countries selling medicine? Why not buy off them? Surely there are other countries that market aspirin and standard antibiotics?

The above link contained a link to http://www.cubasolidarity.net/aawh.html, a report written in 1997 - back when the embargo still included medicine. Maybe the journalist could have gotten a little more up-to-date? The web name "CubaSolidarity" is a bit of a give-away as to their political leanings. Anyways, there are plenty of opposing viewpoints, and in the spirit of balance, I present this one (again, biased in their political beliefs) :-

http://www.canf.org/Issues/medicalapartheid.htm

Here is a quote:

" A group of Cuban doctors recently arrived in the United States said they were "mystified" by claims in a recent report of the American Association for World Health (AAWH) that the United States embargo is to be blamed for the public health situation in the country.

According to these doctors, "we . . . can categorically and authoritatively state that our people's poor health care situation results from a dysfunctional and inhumane economic and political system, exacerbated by the regime to divert scarce resources to meet the needs of the regime's elite and foreign patients who bring hard currency." "

[Jesus On Peyote]

On another note they DO have one of the best healthcare systems in the world,same goes with homelessness, no one is honeless its all coverd by the gov,aaand one of the best literacy in S american ( and even probebly most of the southern states in america ).

i know it all may seem poor or "below western standards", but i think ( i cant be sure, n dont really want to debate the politics) overall its a decent system for the cubans living there. Most people live along the same lines in terms of living standards.

Alot of the Ecenomic problems they face are because of the us embargo but their not the only reason, there is some corruption like everywhere else. and of course if america wernt up there ass all the time by trying to kill him and take out his Communist Party, then maybe he wouldent have to spend as much on militery defence to protect themselfs from the US and thus,more money for social programs. its well known they (USA) want him gone, and just a few weeks ago they let a cuban TERRORIST free in miami. one of many anti Castro who are allowed to kill 74 people with a plane bomb and get away with it.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/042606.html ( there are heaps more refs on more cuban cia terrorists if yous check google)

And i wouldent believe all the anti cuban westen media stuff you herm, actually i would only believe like about 10% of it, if that.All the cuban dissidents living in miami, are well paid by the us goverment to help undermine cuban law and force democracy onto them, and all the efforts they put into the minds of their own people to try make em think they are the "bad guys"

And aint it funny (or infuriating) now the US congress are discussing the sanctions (parts of it) to allow US oil companies into cuba since the new finds :/

[simon_marklar]

Actually, the US embargo was altered to allow the sale of medicines for humanitarian reasons. From wikipedia:

"...the embargo was relaxed by the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act, which was passed by the Congress in October 2000 and signed by President Bill Clinton. The relaxation allowed the sale of agricultural goods and medicine to Cuba for humanitarian reasons."

Of course, it is lots more fun to bash America, rather than blame the shitty Cuban government. It's such a great political climate in Cuba that everyday hundreds of Americans risk their lives and that of their children by paddling across a dangerous ocean strait on anything that can float!!

And this is an embargo from the USA only...what about all the other countries selling medicine? Why not buy off them? Surely there are other countries that market aspirin and standard antibiotics?

ah cool, i was trying to find some reference to the embargo but could not find anything up to date... funnily enough my search terms did not bring back wikipedia. after 5 mins of reading about the lack of antibiotics being due to embargo's i deceided that it was pretty fucking sad for a country to stop selling medicines to another country because of (what i believe to be) petty disagreements. (i previously knew of the lack of antibiotics but not the cause)

you'll notice in my first post i was making fun of castro blaging on about how great his doctors are yet he has no antibiotics - its quite stupid to say "we have the best of X" when X is nothing without Y - which you have nothing of.

[mutant]

Fuck man, what is this avatar you have? I suppose you are greek from the "eleftheria i thanatos" in the signature - and live in Melbourne, right? Please explain this: haw can you be pro-communist and have such an avatar, a symbol of greek extreme nationalist fuckheads ? You [rightly so] bash the anti-cuban propaganda but you have digested all the anti-turkish propaganda of greek nationalism?

[if it all sounds ... grekk to you, explanation follows: the avatar depicts an eagle tearing a Turkish flag apart - in the background is the greek flag. yes, you guessed right, only the most extreme nationalists [from the extreme right to neo-nazis] would use such a symbol. Of course I cannot deny the possibility of extreme stupidity as well....

Well any comments, greekman from Melbourne?

[ThunderIdeal]

i've heard some really whack story about turkey invading crete a few decades back can anybody comment?

[apothecary]

TI, my advice is to look up the long standing (as in millenia long) fued between the Turks and the Greeks on your own time and not add any fuel to what I'm anticipating but hoping won't turn into a shitfight.

[Jesus On Peyote]

I will not get into specifics as there is much much history between greeks and turks which can be found all over the net, (wiki) shoes good timelines n events.

As for your "neo Nazisms", i can assure you, when someone yells FREEDOM OR DEATH (Eleftheria i thanatos), in the original statement came during an uprising in Greece, somewhere around the 300 (of 400) year mark of occupation by the turks of greek lands and has become a symbol of the "where not gonna take this shit no more" by the greeks towards the turks, and later evolved into the freedom or death that many speeches have followed by oppressed people fighting for their own justice. Dont get Freedom or death confused with Democracy or death.. Its freedom of OPPRESSION

There is no ultra nationalist or neo nazi shit connecting to it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleftheria_i_thanatos if you want to really know its meaning.. and as for my avitor, maybe ill get rid of it when Turkey steps out of Cyprus (modern day occupation of greek lands)

Oh and Thunder, the island your thinking about is Cyprus which they invaded in 1974 (with no international help,..As usual) not Crete.

On a side note, Mutant, If you are supposedly from greece as ur location suggests then you would know during the WW2,it was the communist party that destroyed (mostly) the nazi occupation, untill the democratic party saw them as a threat and started a civil war, even while our own country was being occupied by the Germans. So excuse me if i have a better view of communists over democracy. (as its become)

One more thing quickly (sorry for the long post guys) Seeing as i was born in Australia, (even if i was born in greece) most tensions between our peoples have calmed alot and i personally dont hate the turks as a people, (we DO have some shared culture) its the more recent aggression from them (The invading of Cyprus) that has heated the tension more in recent decades.

Im with Sina, dont want to start arguments, just posted a little history lesson seeing as u asked.

Altho i have to ask, are you really from greece or are you just trying to f me round?

[mutant]

Getting into net fights isn't not my thing either, so you can all relax - Sure I am from Greece.

I know greeks that live abroad tend to raise a somewhat more nationalist feeling towards their motherland and it's perfectly normal.

The 'freedom or death' thing is one thing and the depiction of the eagle tearing the turkish flag apart is another. Keep your avatar but please know that only openly fascist people or naive idiots wear this T-shirt in REAL Greece.

If you walked with such a T-shirt in Athens you could be bullied or challenged by left-wing or anarchoautonomous people - on the other hand if fascists saw you and talked to you and you told them you're a communist or philocommunist they would propably beat the shit out of you. For your information, if you decide to take a trip to you motherland ;) [ don't wear any fancy anti-turkish t-shirts]

No worries though, it was just.... a 23 year old, greek , Melbourne resident, into enthnobotanicals, with a fascist avatar and a pro-communist attitude!!! Fuck , I had to comment and see what response I would get.

Anyway, knock yourself out with any nationalistic cries. No problems. For your information, I come from a left-wing background, I have many many friends and acquaintances from extreme anarchoautonomists to parliamentary left wing. But most of my real friends like myself are not really into politics, at least in the traditional sense.

PS: Not only do we have some shared culture with Turkey, but many things in greek culture are turkish-oriented. Some of those are our traditional music roots, the hash culture, the 'greek' coffee, many words and so much more.

[Jesus On Peyote]

I agree with you, but i would hardly call my avatar a fascist statement and im kinda offended that having some pride for ones history would make me a fascist?, more of a political "disagreement/protest" of the occupation of Cyprus.

Are Iraqis who call for the US to leave fascists?

Im over the 400 year occupation which was centuries ago (we never got an apology/compo ) (one for the ozzies) , but Cyprus is a different story,its here and now and has to be resolved one way or another.

And i can assure you when i make my journey to greece one day i dont plan on being an anti Turkish dude,ill be too busy enjoying my homeland.

On another note, im guessing your from the mainland? Just wondering whats the general feeling about whats going on with cypress?

Anyway, no harm done.

Peace

[ThunderIdeal]

the island your thinking about is Cyprus which they invaded in 1974 (with no international help,..As usual) not Crete.

THANK YA JESUS!!

[mutant]

Well man, Cyprus wants to be autonomous, not greek. And they're not really greeks. It's a different country. They have bigger salaries, they speak a dialect [if they speak their stuff you cant understand anything], they got more luxury lives. I am not really sure about the turkish part though. It must be much poorer...

Cyprus people got privileges over greece [they enter greek universities very easily f.e.] - we don't have any such advantages - moreover some serve the obligatory army service there!!]

People in greece is really having looooooots of trouble to really care for cyprus. although, the cyprus election are just over, so it was a news for a couple of days.

I didn't say the symbol was really fascist-stuff, I just informed you who use it in here. What it stands for. You can use a swastika to provoke or to state whatever you want, but most will tkae it that you are a pro-hitler, neo-nazi bastard.

I am from Patras. south greece, mainland yeah.

[The Dude]

A Greek flag with that Eagle looking thing Ripping apart a Turkish flag underneath it has a pretty obvious symbolism. It's about as backwards as Feminists degrading men as a way to "balance" it out. I thought it's all about mutual respect not claiming superiority, through first symbols, then words then actions.

Any such symbol of superiority is sure to spur some trouble. And even if you are pro-peace.. the idea you believe in your countries superiority, and the depiction of your country ripping apart the others flag, will give most people the impression you'd be pro-war... only one way to rip a country in two.. and i dunno what else that flag symbolism could mean.

On the other hand, I love the swastika as a symbol.. of the sun, of the infinity of always coming around and around in its circular spinning form, also as a goodluck symbol. The Nazi connotations are just one, when it is a much more ancient occult symbol.

Your avatar however is much more explicit in its claim to national superiority over a specific other nation. More inciteful and going back to what I originally said, nothing to do with MUTUAL respect.

[edit] grammar/spelling

Edited March 2, 2008 by The Dude

[Fenris]

I was in Cyprus 8 years ago, I stayed there for a month house sitting about 30 min scooter ride from Larnaca. It was a nice place and I was surprised to see the Cypriot pound was of higher value than the English pound. The people I was looking after the house for had moved there to avoid tax as they were into big finance stuff. I had just finished delivering their 250K pound yacht...Nice.

Anyhow I was really surprised when i went to Nicosia and saw armed guards patrolling a no mans land between the Greek side and the Turkish side. The no go zone consisted of derelict businesses about 15 or 20 meters wide and fences on both sides. I thought it would have been really traumatic having a shop there and loosing your shop and livelihood over the troubles they had.

I got the impression it was kind of like Israel (which was where I had just been for a couple of months) with the larger more affluent side putting up large barriers against a disenfranchised and much less armed people. Bear in mind I don't know much of the history of the area other than reading Homers Odyssey that was just my opinion from visiting the place.

[Jesus On Peyote]

I think the autonomous move is the only option they have now since the occupation,theres no chance turky would want cyprus back in greek hands (think thats part of the turkish negotiations "stick points") ,though it once was.

cyprus was always a mixed with a turkish minority in which we lived peacefully, which is cool, but basing 30 000 + troops on the island tickles me the wrong way.

In the end the it will sort it self out. (hopefully with no bloodshed on either side)

Dude, i understand what your saying, i will change my avatar for the sake of the peace,even though i dont see it as a superiority thing, but then again im not the smartest cookie in the jar.

Mutant, My mum is from Patra and my dads from kalamata, southerners

Peace

[The Dude]

kalamata... good olives