That Cuban literacy rate Bernie loves to talk about.
This is a few years old (hat tip: Instapundit) and was written about a statement of Obama’s. But it applies quite nicely to Bernie’s praise of the Cuban literacy program under Castro as well:
But there’s nothing “extraordinary” about the Cuban educational system. Children are taught by poorly-paid teachers in dilapidated schools. Cuba has made less educational progress than most Latin American countries over the last 60 years. According to UNESCO, Cuba had about the same literacy rate as Costa Rica and Chile in 1950 (close to 80%). And it has almost the same literacy rate as they do today (close to 100%). Meanwhile, Latin American countries that were largely illiterate in 1950 — like Peru, Brazil, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic — are largely literate today, closing much of the gap with Cuba. El Salvador had a less than 40% literacy rate in 1950, but has an 88% literacy rate today. Brazil and Peru had a less than 50% literacy rate in 1950, but today, Peru has a 94.5% literacy rate, and Brazil a 92.6% literacy rate. The Dominican Republic’s rate rose from a little over 40% to 91.8%. While Cuba made substantial progress in reducing illiteracy in Castro’s first years in power, its educational system has stagnated since, even as much of Latin America improved. Educational attainment is particularly lackluster among Afro-Cubans, judging from a recent New York Times story.
Please read the whole thing.
But Bernie (and Obama before him) counts on people just nodding and saying, “Gee, he’s got a point.” And he counts on the MSM backing him up if he ends up becoming the Democratic nominee. What else can they do?
A lot of people who emigrated here from Cuba know better (or whose parents did). One of those long-ago emigrants – and current US citizen and author – tells her story here:
See, despite your claims, senator, that it was Castro who started a literacy program in Cuba, a common and often-repeated lie, the girl’s [“the girl” is the author, Fabiola Santiago] mother worked in a literacy program in the countryside after graduation from a teacher’s college in the early 1950s.
Teachers had to do so to earn their spot in a city classroom…
Yes, by the time she leaves Cuba in 1969, this girl knows that the Cuban education system is dogmatic and abusive to innocent children who are ostracized for their parents’ beliefs.
Her parents’ heart-wrenching decision to leave it all behind and start a new life in Miami, saves her from worse. After their 12th birthdays, her friends have to enroll in la escuela al campo. They have to leave their home and their parents to live in barracks in the countryside and work in agricultural fields.
More at the link.
Sanders isn’t stupid. He may be “sincere,” but he’s either lying through his teeth or he doesn’t want to look at the truth. He’s been that way his whole life, and it’s only in the last few years that it seems to really really be paying off for him. Finally, starting in 2016 and continuing through now, the voting public contains enough people schooled in leftist propaganda but innocent of any personal experience of living in a leftist regime to make him a very real contender for the highest office in the land.
I think you are slightly overestimating Sanders’ popularity, His support among young liberals is for real but his standing is more that he’s been allowed to go through about one and a quarter nomination campaigns with virtually NO pushback either from other candidates or the media.
It’s not going to be enough to just yell “socialism” but this Cuba stuff is just the tip of the iceberg. Wait until the Trump campaign starts in on Israel, There is a deep vein on anti-Zionism on the Left that the media and most Democrats are entirely in denial about,
Mike
Sanders is evil. Angry and evil.
Look at the other Dem candidates: they are all angry. Buttigieg and Klobuchar less so, but their modulated tones merely disguise their anger and revulsion with the status quo, which they all wish to destroy forever.
I wish Bloomberg had been smarter, because he is not Democrat-crazy. Yes, smarter, at least smart enough to study his adversaries instead of thinking that outspending them with his vacuous commercials was a solution. The arrogance of $ billions!
What is particularly bothersome is that many of the Democrats’ voters don’t realize how poorly black Cubans have been treated by the Castro regime compared to Cubans of more Spanish ancestry.
MBunge: ” His support among young liberals is for real…”
Take a look at this from campus reform this morning
https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=14435
First the students are told about a candidate who says not everything is bad with a repressive, human rights violating regime. Of course, all of them guess it was Trump who made that statement. Then when told it was Bernie talking about Cuba, they start spinning as to how he is right and we need to acknowledge there are good things about these dictatorships. These kids are hopeless.
Bernie lived in a commune for a time but was kicked out because he was lazy and refused to do the work required. He is a communist. Terrible for our country.
All great nations are eventually destroyed from within, beginning with the Roman republic.
It usually happens rapidly.
See Venezuela, the most prosperous, most democratic country until Hugo Chavez came along, becoming El Presidente in 1999. The incubation to descent into hell took only ten years, would have happened sooner if the price of oil had fallen sooner.
In the event Democrats take the White House and the Senate while holding the House, America’s descent will resemble Venezuela’s in speed and slope, never to recover. Executive Orders? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!
I wonder why no one asks St. Bernie about Cuban intervention in Angola and how that worked out for the fine people living there?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_intervention_in_Angola
Sanders isn’t stupid. He may be “sincere,” but he’s either lying through his teeth or he doesn’t want to look at the truth. He’s been that way his whole life, and it’s only in the last few years that it seems to really really be paying off for him.
He’s stupide de la maniere de Peter Beinart. It should have occurred to the thickest skull 19 years ago that the Arab political leadership on the West Bank and in Gaza and in the UNRWA camps had no interest in a settlement with Israel. If anyone had the slightest doubt about that, the response of the local Arabs to the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and the reaction of Mahmoud Abbas to Ehud Olmert’s proffer in 2008 should have been lesson enough. Examining public opinion surveys taken since 2003 should be lesson enough. The 2006 elections on the West Bank and Gaza should have been lesson enough. Now, Sanders tells us he wants to sluice more aid to the ‘suffering Palestinians’ when about one-half of the gross domestic income of Gaza is attributable to UNRWA spending. He doesn’t have any conception that goods and services have to be produced which requires your labor force have human capital. He thinks ‘resources’ are hoarded by Scrooge McDuck characters. (To be fair, Beinart may not be so foolish on this last point).
As for Cuba, it’s an odd country in that all prices in Cuba are administered prices, so the conventional measures of standard of living – which rely local prices to gauge – are invalid. You could look at a rank-ordering of Latin American countries according to nominal gdp per capita, as these use exchange rates and international prices. Per the Maddison project, the level of affluence in Cuba in 1926 was such that it ranked 3d in Latin America among those countries for which they have sufficient data; ranking higher were Argentina and Uruguay. In 1956, they ranked 6th, behind Argentina, Uruguay, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and Chile. Maddison had insufficent data for an assessment of Puerto Rico ca. 1926; the Venezuela data for 1956 is anomalous due to the country enjoying a natural resource bonanza. A rank-ordering of gdp per capita (nominal) assessed in 2018 puts Cuba in 10th place (out of 20).
As for literacy rates, every country in Latin America assessed in the last decade bar Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua has a literacy rate in excess of 98% among it’s population between 15 and 25. Those for the other three are 96%, 94%, and 91% respectively. As for the whole population over 15, every country bar Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador has a literacy rate of in excess of 92%. As for the others, the rates are 87%, 81%, 82%, and 88% respectively.
As for life expectancy at birth, it exceeds 70 in all Latin American countries assessed in recent years and exceeds 75 in all but 8 countries (Venezuela, Paraguay, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and the Dominican Republic. It is currenlty 76 in Cuba.
See Venezuela, the most prosperous, most democratic country until Hugo Chavez came along, becoming El Presidente in 1999.
Hugo Chavez came along after 20+ years of gross economic mismanagement. See Mark Falcoff’s writings on Venezuela ca. 1999. His view was that Venezuelans were going to have to learn the hard way that a country’s wealth was not in natural resource endowments, but in its human capital.
Art:
You and I seem to be head-butting rather often. I sometimes read and shrug your remarks off without response.
But this time I must ask you to cite facts, not opinions, of Mark Falcoff’s, since I do not know who the H he is and what he wrote in 1999 as Chavez ascended.
I do believe Venezuelans have learned a lot “the hard way” since 1999, thanks to the Bolivarian BS and their leaders’ imitation of Fidel.
Detail out some of the “20+ years of gross economic mismanagement” pre-Chavez and compare to the economic management of the now 20+ years of Chavez/Maduro. Do edify, please.
I spent eight months in Cuba back in about ’98. Let me tell you something about Cuban “literacy”. The average Cuban with no higher education than the equivalent of high school can only use three verb tenses: Present, Past, and Present Progressive (in place of the Future tense). And I am speaking of spoken language, not just written language. They do not use the Co-Preterite, Conditional, or Passive tenses. At the time, my Spanish was Beginner Level. One man told me that I spoke Spanish better than he did. When I questioned him about that statement, he assured me that he was serious and that it was because of my mastery of the more complex verb conjugations. He admitted that my vocabulary and pronunciation were lacking, but that anyone who could use the more complex tenses was assumed to be university educated.
Also, literacy statistics are usually based on UN data, and these are all largely self-reported. So, is Cuba lying about their literacy rates? I don’t know. I know that the average Cuban’s spelling is atrocious. I know that their grammar and pronunciation is that of ignorant peasants.
But I DO know for sure another thing they lie about. Cuba claims to have eradicated Malaria. That is a lie. A doctor I met there showed me a copy of the reprimand letter he got for failing to diagnose a case of Malaria.
In 2015, Cuba ranked first in literacy in Latin America, at 99.7% While this figure is debatable- consider the incidence of mental retardation- Cuba’s literacy is high.
What Bernie and friends have neglected to mention in praising Castro’s literacy programs is that all of Latin America has made good progress in increasing literacy. Of 20 Latin American countries, Cuba ranks 16th out of 20 in increasing literacy from 1960-2015. Why does Bernie ignore those 15 Latin American countries that increased literacy more than Cuba? Inquiring minds want to know. 🙂
This data makes two points about Cuba that are often ignored.First, literacy conditions in Cuba were among the best in Latin America when Castro took power in 1959. Cuba ranked 5th in literacy in Latin America in both 1950 and 1960 (78% and 79%.) . Thus Cuba had less ground to make up in increasing literacy, so its lower increase in literacy doesn’t mean poor progress. Second, while Cuba has made progress in increasing literacy since 1959-60, so have other countries.
Increase in literacy % from 1960-2015
Bolivia 51.1
Haiti 44.7
Honduras 44.4
Guatemala 44.1
El Salvador 39.6
Nicaragua 35.5
Peru 34.4
Venezuela 33.4
Brazil 32.6
Mexico 29.5
Ecuador 29.5
Dominican Republic 28.5
Colombia 24.6
Paraguay 22.5
Panama 22.0
Cuba 20.7
Costa Rica 14.6
Chile 12.6
Uruguay 9.4
Argentina 6.7
https://ourworldindata.org/literacy
But this time I must ask you to cite facts, not opinions,
Thanks for the attitude. Just so pleasant. Mark Falcoff is a historian who, in addition to his academic work, has been associated with AEI. He was at one time a contributor to The American Spectator. He’s a Latin American specialist, though he’s tended to concentrate on Argentina in his scholarly work.
—
Gross domestic product per capita in constant dollars declined by 19% over the period running from 1970 to 1999. That’s three lost decades. You’d be hard put to find a country which hadn’t torn itself apart in warfare which had worse economic performance. The World Bank in 1990 introduced the purchasing-power-parity measure of gross domestic product per capita. Again, gross domestic product per capita (PPP) declined by 2% during the period running from 1990 to 1999.
The country’s GDP deflator – a measure of inflation – fluctuated wildly over the period running from 1970 to 1987. There were a series of stabilization programs, so some years it was bad and some years it wasn’t. After 1986, the lowest annual increase recorded was 19%. The best you could say is that there were some Latin American countries whose prices were much more unstable.
The country made only modest progress in diversifying its export mix. In 1970, about 97% of its export revenue was attributable to fuel and mineral exports. In 1999, that same figure was 85%; in 1970, about 26% of it’s gross domestic product was attributable to fuel and mineral exports; in 1999, the figure was about 18%. Real GDP attributable to sources other than fuel and mineral exports did grow during this 29 year period of time, at a modest rate of 2.1% per year; Venezuela’s population was growing at a rate of 2.5% per year during that time period.
The country’s employment-to-population ratio stood at 0.548 in 1999. The ratio for youth (between their 15th and 25th birthday) stood at 0.356. For an ordinary occidental country, those ratios would commonly stand around 0.60 and 0.45.
I’ve previously commented here how much I despise the geee oh peee and its relentless incompetence. Its continuous failure to expose the endless vile lies leftists foreign and domestic have told about places such as Cuba, Vietnam, and Venezuela is one big honking reason why.
No one should ever be able to claim that the state of present-day Cuba is anything other than a catastrophic disaster without generating an immediate and hostile response from anyone who has to hear it.
That millions somehow believe Cuba to be a paradise is a shameful failure of the American educational system, which is of course controlled by leftists, which of course has occurred without objection from the non-leftist political party, the aforementioned gop.
A long time ago, in a book about the Civil War, I read it stated that the South would never understand how much the North crucified its conscience to tolerate slavery. I think of that, when I see nonsense such as that continually spouted by Sanders. Sane people today are continually expected and demanded to accept the most insane nonsense from the left as abject truth, because shut up.
I strongly suspect that a yuuge factor in the takeover of the GOP by Trump was that normal people got tired of crucifying their consciences to tolerate all this, including the numb acquiescence to it by their party establishment.
A reckoning is coming. Sanders- an evil man, as I noted here when he had his heart attack- has attained such prominence that there must be such.
The schemes of the left have reached such grandiosity that it cannot be otherwise.
Ask a Castro fan if Cuba’s Life Expectancy of 78.7 years -3.5 years greater than Latin America’s Life Expectancy of 75.2 years(2015-2020)- indicates that the Castro regime has done a good job for the people of Cuba.
7 will get you 11 that the Castro fan will reply, “YES!”
Then point out to the Castro fan that in the 1950s, Cuba’s Life Expectancy was 8 years greater than Latin America’s Life Expectancy. Ask the Castro fan if THAT indicates that Batista was doing a good job for the people of Cuba.
There are two points to make. First, Castro inherited a country that was relatively well off. While he inherited a country with problems, he didn’t inherit a s*&%hole. Secondly, while Cuba has made improvements in the last 60 years, so has the rest of Latin America.
1950_1955 Life Expectancy
Cuba 59.4
Latin America 51.1
1955_1960 Life Expectancy
Cuba 62.3
Latin America 54.0
http://interwp.cepal.org/sisgen/ConsultaIntegrada.asp?idIndicador=38&idioma=i
“In 2015, Cuba ranked first in literacy in Latin America, at 99.7% While this figure is debatable- consider the incidence of mental retardation- Cuba’s literacy is high. ”
How do you know this? Because the leftists who control Cuba tell you this?
Why would you believe them?
Remember, when leftists take over a country, a mass exodus invariably follows. I note Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela as examples.
Why would anyone believe they’re making anything better when that happens? How bad to events on the ground have to be to cause, again, a mass exodus.
Summing up, leftists take control. Millions flee, and myriad others are killed. Then, we’re told everything gets better, even more awesome.
Meanwhile, in this very thread, we have the example of someone who reports widespread ignorance in the communist paradise of Cuba.
How gullible are you? Would you like to buy my bridge?
Gringo
Xennady in reply
What part of “this figure is debatable” do you not understand? Inquiring minds want to know. 🙂
Why did you have NO comment about my pointing out that Cuba ranked 16th out of 20 in Latin America in increase in literacy from 1960-2015? Just wondering. 🙂
Have read any of Carlos Alberto Montaner’s books on Cuba? I have .Or Armando Valladares’ autobiography? Or Jose Luis Llovio-Menendez’s autobiography? I have. The latter two have been on my bookshelves for decades- the former autographed.
Andate.
Neo
Sanders isn’t stupid. He may be “sincere,” but he’s either lying through his teeth or he doesn’t want to look at the truth.
Fool or knave? I don’t know. But I would LOVE to question him about his half-century of statements on Latin America.
Fool or knave? I suspect a bit of both.
Knave: Bernie’s denouncing Evo Morales’s resignation as a coup, while saying nothing about the reason for his resignation: Evo was caught “red-handed” committing massive electoral fraud.
Fool: In a 1985 video about his visit to Nicaragua, Sanders says that Nicaraguans are pro-American- they like baseball (true)- and that Reagan’s policy was pushing Nicaragua towards the Soviet Union. The historical record indicates that the Sandinistas were supporters of Soviet imperialism well before Reagan got elected.
There was the March 1980 joint statement of the FLSN-CPSU which “resolutely condemned” those who didn’t like the “progressive transformations” the Soviet army was bringing to Afghanistan with its recent invasion of 100k troops. The March 1980 joint statement hadn’t gotten a lot of publicity by 1985. I found out about it in the Central American Crisis Reader, published in 1987. ( I later found it in Congressional Record, Pravda and in microfilm of Barricada, the Sandinista newspaper.)
A lot of the material indicating the Sandinistas supported Soviet imperialism never got translated into English. Consider Carlos Fonseca’s pamphlet, “Un Nicaraguense en Moscu” (Nicaraguan in Moscow.) Fonseca was one of the three founders of the FALN/Sandinista Front. “Un Nicaraguense en Moscu” relates his visit to Moscow for an international youth festival in 1957. He wrote that there is freedom of religion in the Soviet Union,and that it was false to say that the Soviet Union was ruled by tyrants. Fonseca wrote that a Hungarian told him- doubt that was an “accidental” meeting- that Hungarians were grateful for the Soviets crushing the “criminal Fascists” behind the failed 1956 Hungarian Revolution. While Central American Crisis Reader indicates that Fonseca showed “credulous admiration” for the USSR in his pamphlet, it doesn’t go into detail. “Un Nicaraguense en Moscu” is readily downloaded, but in Spanish.
Polish national Roberto Czarkowski’s book De Polonia a Nicaragua was published in Costa Rica in 1984. He wrote about his imprisonment in Nicaragua. In 1982 he entered Nicaragua by a land border. He was immediately arrested, on suspicion of belonging to Solidarity. He endured five months in Nicaraguan jails before he was released. This book was never translated into Spanish.
So, I would give Bernie a “knave”/ignoramus for his claiming that Regan was pushing the Sandinistas into the arms of the Soviets.
Regarding his claims for Castro, I would call him ignorant/knave, though Neo’s “he doesn’t want to look at the truth” also fits rather well. For example, I very much doubt that Bernie is aware that Pinochet had a better record than Castro in reducing Infant Mortality. In addition, I very much doubt that Bernie ever pounded the stacks or the Internet to discover that- though the evidence was there 30 years ago. Bernie just accepted on faith what he read in Monthly Review or The Nation.
I neglected to mention that Robert Czarkowski had acquired a valid tourist visa for entry into Nicaragua. So, his tourist visa and passport should have enabled him to enter Nicaragua without being arrested.
neo,
“Sanders isn’t stupid. He may be “sincere,” but he’s either lying through his teeth or he doesn’t want to look at the truth.”
Sanders cannot be sincere if he’s “lying through his teeth” because to lie is to “knowingly tell an untruth”.
Isn’t willful blindness i.e. not wanting to look at the truth, a form of lying to oneself? In which case, by definition sincerity is lacking as arguably, sincerity’s primary component is truthfulness to reality.
“This above all: to thine own self be true
And it must follow, as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man/Farewell, my blessing season this in thee!”
Kate,
Democrat voters do not want to know “how poorly black Cubans have been treated by the Castro regime compared to Cubans of more Spanish ancestry.” A key aspect to indoctrination is that any data that conflicts with the narrative is automatically rejected. See the “liberal reset button” theory.
physicsguy,
“when told it was Bernie talking about Cuba, they start spinning as to how he is right and we need to acknowledge there are good things about these dictatorships.”
“man is not a rational animal, man is a rationalizing animal.” – SciFi ‘Grandmaster’ R. A. Heinlein
Cicero,
“In the event Democrats take the White House and the Senate while holding the House, America’s descent will resemble Venezuela’s in speed and slope, never to recover.”
Not so. That is because in order to engineer America’s collapse, the democrats MUST disarm the American public. To use an appropriate colloquial expression, “that dog don’t/won’t hunt”.
What those on the left fail to grasp is that “inalienable rights” CANNOT be ‘voted away’. They think that with enough votes they can amend the Constitution, enabling them to rescind our inalienable rights.
They utterly fail to grasp the difference between democracy and liberty. Which arguably is why they ignorantly and invariably assume that America is a democracy, rather than a republic. Benjamin Franklin most succinctly expressed that difference; “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.”
I predict that their failure to grasp the difference will prove to be a fatal mistake.
Xennady,
“I strongly suspect that a yuuge factor in the takeover of the GOP by Trump was that normal people got tired of crucifying their consciences to tolerate all this, including the numb acquiescence to it by their party establishment.”
The takeover of the GOP (such as it is) by Trump is easily explained; Trump was the first candidate to “tell it like it is” he didn’t spin, he didn’t equivocate and he said what enough Americans know to be true. Finally, someone running for President with the resources to give the finger to the establishment’s big donor class… pointed out that the ’emperor’ had no clothes on.
And yes, one way or another a huge reckoning is coming because the left won’t stop.
In Trump’s coming debate and then in political ads, I’d love to see Trump ask, “when leftists take over a country, a mass exodus invariably follows. I note Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela as examples.
Why would anyone believe they’re making anything better when that happens? How bad do events on the ground have to be to cause, again, a mass exodus?”
An incessant drumbeat with that question would be devastating.
Doc Zero hits the defects of socialism HARD in this essay.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1232315204207165440.html
Dennis Prager hits the Left hard in this post.
https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/25/why-the-left-calls-good-people-racist/
David Harsanyi hits Sanders’ supporters hard.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/bernie-sanders-praise-fidel-castro-why-it-matters/#slide-1
Revealing is not the same as litigating, as if that were somehow a bad thing, which it is not.
I voted for McCain as the only alternative to Obama, but I was pretty much a NeverMaverick holding my nose. He especially lost me with his “nobody cares about some old washed up terrorist” when he didn’t want to “litigate” Obama’s circle of old friends, although they were part of the very few pieces of information we had about his politics and ideology.
I cared a LOT that Obama was buddies with Bill Ayers.
Is Geraghty giving the Democrats advice on stopping Sanders because he wants Trump defeated?
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/what-if-the-establishment-democrats-played-hardball/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=fifteenth
“Is Geraghty giving the Democrats advice on stopping Sanders because he wants Trump defeated?”
The idea that a bunch of endorsements would stop Bernie is truly idiotic.
Mike
Paul Mirengoff hits old, out-of-date communists here, after some interesting personal history.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/02/why-did-sanders-cling-to-failing-communist-regimes-decades-longer-than-other-leftists.php
Art Deco:
Thanks for the numbers, which I cannot now verify.
I found Falcoff on the AEI website.
Here is part of what he wrote in 2000, a year after Chavez came to power: “[The Venezuelan economic] system has been in crisis for many years [sic], because of a decade-long drop in the world price of oil, the country’s principal export. The crisis has been greatly aggravated by deep-seated habits of political corruption and government inefficiency. Today more than 80 percent of Venezuelans—citizens of what used to be regarded as the wealthiest country in Latin America—languish in poverty.”
In Wikipedia, a sometimes dubious source, I read that in Venezuela “The 1980s oil glut led to an external debt crisis and a long-running economic crisis, which saw inflation peak at 100% in 1996 and poverty rates rise to 66% in 1995[15] as (by 1998) per capita GDP fell to the same level as 1963, down a third from its 1978 peak.[16] The 1990s also saw Venezuela experience a major banking crisis in 1994.
“The recovery of oil prices after 2001 boosted the Venezuelan economy and facilitated social spending.” (perhaps a Chavezista wrote this).
Clearly things have gone to hell since and remain so for Venezuelans. >2 million have fled the country.
Venezuela cannot control the price of the oil it sells, even at wholly-owned Citgo, where I never gas up..
Sanders is a knave. If Bloomberg offered him $100,000,000 to drop out he would take the bait. Off shore accounts of course.
“Why did you have NO comment about my pointing out that Cuba ranked 16th out of 20 in Latin America in increase in literacy from 1960-2015? Just wondering. ?”
Leftists lie. Believe nothing they say, absolutely nothing.
NOTHING. If they tell you they’re 16 out 20 in literacy, then likely literacy has utterly collapsed, as Roy Nathanson noted above.
“Have read any of Carlos Alberto Montaner’s books on Cuba?”
Of course not. What are these books going to teach me about this topic that 100 million dead haven’t already?
“In Trump’s coming debate and then in political ads, I’d love to see Trump ask, “when leftists take over a country, a mass exodus invariably follows. I note Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela as examples.”
Me too.
But why hasn’t the GOP already been doing so for decades?
Hmmm…
To paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke, the hallmark of the GOP is incompetence so thorough as to be indistinguishable from malice.
Thanks for the numbers, which I cannot now verify.
The World Bank publishes interactive data.
https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/dataset/world-development-indicators
“[The Venezuelan economic] system has been in crisis for many years [sic], because of a decade-long drop in the world price of oil, the country’s principal export.
As noted above, per capita product outside of the extractive industries also declined. Wasn’t just changes in the terms of trade. Venezuela’s elites made a hash of everything. Falcoff provided one case report at the time, of a quondam international beauty queen who’d made a name for herself as mayor of a suburb of Caracas; by Falcoff’s account, she prospered politically by seeing to it that municipal employees actually picked up garbage and hauled it to landfills.
AesopFan,
Doc Zero states, “Socialism IS authoritarianism.”
I agree and the reason why Socialism evolves into authoritarianism is because it’s inherently unsustainable (ah the irony) as it rejects basic aspects of human nature AND key operative principles that govern the external reality within which we all exist.
Doc Zero then states, “They don’t tell you it’s one man, one vote, one time, no going back ever.”
That’s Communism and Islam not socialism. And while as Lenin stated, “The goal of socialism is communism”… Denmark, Sweden and Brexit demonstrate that restrictions can be put upon socialism. Of course the EU’s plans to create an army will at some point prevent its members from exiting the EU.
“I cared a LOT that Obama was buddies with Bill Ayers.”
I as well but his support for infanticide led me to conclude that he fits the “banality of evil” categorization.
Xennady,
The GOPe’s decades long failure to respond effectively has several motivations, incompetence is just one of them. Greed and collaboration are two others and then there’s civility and tolerance of disagreement. Many in the GOP clung to the perception that the democrat leadership still embraced Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s aphorism that, “Politics stops at the water’s edge”. Obama, Pelosi and now this crowd of leftist clowns have ended that for all but the pundits whose income depends upon ‘tolerant civility’.
Several points.
1)Apparently you have reading comprehension problems, because what I wrote was “16th out of 20 in increasing literacy,” which is not the same as what you wrote: “16th out of 20 in literacy.” It isn’t a bad idea to pause and think before you submit a comment. 🙂
For example, consider Bolivia. In 2015, Bolivia’s literacy rate of 95.1% ranked 8th in Latin America. Bolivia’s increase in literacy, going from 16% in 1960 to 95.1 % in 2015, an increase of 51.1%, ranks 1st in Latin America. “Literacy” and “increasing literacy” are not the same.
2) “Leftists lie…If they tell you they’re 16 out 20 in literacy…” The data I got didn’t come from Bernie Sanders or his lefty friends, but from Our World in Data: Literacy. Moreover, the data points out that, contrary to the Bernie Sanders/lefty narrative that Castro did a GREAT job in increasing literacy in Cuba, Cuba actually ranked 16th out of 20 in Latin America from 1960-2015. Not exactly an endorsement of Castro.
If you want to remain ignorant, that is your choice. Montaner’s Secret Report on the Cuban Revolution was an eye-opener for me. I have also worked with Cubans. From my experience with a Cuban refugee, I would concur with Ray Nathanson’s describing Cuban education as being of low quality.
I wouldn’t so readily discount trying to find out more about Cuba, if you are going to comment on Cuba. Digging into various online databases, such as FAO Stats and World Bank, yielded some useful tidbits of information for me. Ex.: had Cuba’s milk production increased as much from 1961 to present as did Latin America, Cuba’s milk production would be nearly three times what it is now. Ex: Cuba’s per capita Agricultural production has declined about 30% from 1961 to present. (Marabú bush took over abandoned sugar cane lands.) Ex.: In the 16 years of Pinochet’s regime, it had a better record in reducing Infant Mortality than did Castro in his first 16 years or the first 16 years for which there is such data. (Granted, that IM information was available 30 years ago.)
As I previously pointed out, Cuba’s claimed literacy rate of 99.7% is at best debatable- though it is probably somewhere in the 90s, given that 16 out of 20 Latin American countries had literacy of 92% or better in 2015. In terms of best attacking the lefties on the literacy issue, it is more productive to point out that Cuba’s INCREASE in literacy, via those vaunted “literacy programs,” is unimpressive compared with the rest of Latin America.
Your heart is in the right place, but I would advise you to pause and reflect before mounting your horse and dashing off madly in all directions.
Ciao.
It would be helpful to inform the reader of the specific standard that is applied in declaring a citizen of a country to be literate.
Roy Nathanson’s description of the average Cuban citizen’s literacy leads me to conclude that they are not in fact literate. Nor is it just Cuba, various reports make evident that many of our own young are functionally illiterate, such as many of the “dreamers”.
“Study: Nearly 25 Percent of DACA Illegal Aliens Are ‘Functionally Illiterate’ in English”
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/01/02/study-nearly-25-percent-of-daca-illegal-aliens-are-functionally-illiterate-in-english/
Nor is it just DACAs;
The Left has so much to answer for that it’s literally incalculable.
Presume for a moment that Cuba’s benefits aren’t overstated.
Presume, for the sake of argument, that there’s near-universal literacy, and that this was somehow achieved by means of the decisions the government made — the torture chambers, the jailing and slaying of dissidents, etc. — rather than in spite of them.
And presume, for the sake of argument, that they could’ve achieved this hypothetical high literacy without being externally propped up by the USSR at various points in various ways.
Presume all that.
Isn’t it odd that free-market, free-speech, multi-party-system countries also regularly achieve near-universal literacy, WITHOUT all the nasty totalitarian violence, or support from external patron-states?
Why choose a system that requires so much bloodshed in pursuit of a putatively civilized outcome, when you can achieve equal or better outcomes without employing mass-murder?
In actuality, the presumed high Cuban literacy has a high dose of Potemkin Village Syndrome. But even if that weren’t the case, the contrast between the U.S.’s hard-to-suppress influx of refugees and migrant workers, legal and otherwise, and the Cubans boating their way off the island on the carcasses of 1950’s-era automobiles, tells you all you need to know.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume that the Communist government of Cuba has increased literacy.
First, when level of “literacy” are we talking about? (As I have read, in Communist China the aim was to enable people to be just “literate” enough to read Communist propaganda, but not anything more sophisticated).
The next question is just what can and do these newly literate Cubans read?
Do they have access to, and get to read all the things that are available from the rest of the world, or do they only get to read what the regime permits them to read–things like Communist posters, slogans, and propaganda publications?
P.S.–Another frequent claim, especially from Lefty visitors to Cuba, has been that the Cuban Communist regime has greatly improved health care in that Country; the same claim that used to be made by the Communist regime of the old U.S.S.R., and was–“barefoot doctors” anyone?–and is today made by China.
However, I remember a few photos of a Cuban hospital smuggled out a few years ago that ended up on the Internet–there were no supplies, the hospital was a run down wreck, and filthy to boot.
Gringo, I agree we’re on the same side and I respect your knowledge.
However, you don’t need to be an architect to notice that a building is burning down, nor is it helpful to sign up for architecture school once you see the flames.
The fire needs to get put out.
I know fully enough about communism, Cuba, and the left. Further research would only enrage me, as well as turn my stomach.
The key take away about Sanders and his idiotic touting of a literacy program is that he needs to explain the mass murder and starvation, not be allowed blather on about statistics.
He can’t, so he changes the subject. Evil, he is.
He can’t, so he changes the subject. Evil, he is.
I think doofus is more likely. This is recycled Paul Sweezy.
“The GOPe’s decades long failure to respond effectively has several motivations, incompetence is just one of them. Greed and collaboration are two others and then there’s civility and tolerance of disagreement.”
No doubt, but I’m trying to keep my plaints against the GOP brief, figuring yet more elaboration about how and why the party has failed so thoroughly would be even more tedious.
“I think doofus is more likely.”
I disagree, obviously.
He hasn’t managed to notice the murderous evil of the Cuban regime in the decades since it was established. From what I’ve read, he’s never managed to notice the monstrous evil of the Soviet Empire either, despite its collapse and exposure decades ago.
Why not, exactly? What’s keeping the wool over his eyes? Was he at his lake house that doesn’t have cable, so he missed that story?
No, bovine excrement. He thinks if you want to make omelets you need to break eggs, and if you get bogged down in explaining away the mass graves and poverty of the everyday folk you’ll never get to that awesome meal you know so well you deserve.
Evil.
“The Left has so much to answer for that it’s literally incalculable.” – Geoffrey
And it seems to be all by malice; the stupidity part is the only thing saving us right now.
“The Left has so much to answer for that it’s literally incalculable.” – Geoffrey
And it seems to be all by malice; the stupidity part is the only thing saving us right now.
Ever notice that when one of the dictators around the world has major health problems they almost always fly to some country in the West for treatment, places like Switzerland, Germany, and elsewhere?
Here are some pictures illustrating what health care for ordinary Cubans looks like.
See https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/02/marxist-bernie-sanders-promotes-cuban-health-care-filthy-institutions-not-even-pigs-would-enter-with-photos/
Thank you, Snow on Pine, for visual evidence of Cuba’s two-tier medical system. If only Michael Moore could experience it! 🙂
Continuing in the picture is worth a thousand words department, here is the first in a series of photos on the decrepitude of Havana’s buildings. Havana is Collapsing – A Photo Essay, Part 1 of 4. I am reminded of photos of GDR-era East Berlin, which at least had the excuse that the Allies had bombed it into oblivion. For Havana, in effect, the Castro brothers bombed it into oblivion.
When you lose CNN —-
https://www.dailywire.com/news/cnn-commentator-who-escaped-socialism-torches-bernie-there-is-no-fing-bright-side
Tells you all you need to know about Democrats in Congress.
https://dailycaller.com/2020/02/27/democrats-block-sanders-castro-resolution/
Here’ a close analytical look at Cuban health care statistics at
https://academic.oup.com/heapol/article/33/6/755/5035051
Tells you all you need to know about Democrats in Congress.
The culture of the Democratic Party is a function of the moral fashions of gentry liberals. On the faculty, it is status lowering to make explicit reference to the crimes of Communist regimes and Communist movements. Thinking Communism horrid is characteristic of ordinary people. What is the function of intellectuals, but to tell us that things are not as ordinary people see them?
In my limited experience, partisan Democrats who dislike Sanders avoid any references to his known affection for Trotskyist literature and his late Soviet political tourism. Or, not so late Soviet. His brief sojourn in Israel in 1963 was spent at a kibbutz run by the United Workers Party (aka Mapam). Mapam’s general line evolved some over the years of it’s existence. At the time of their formation, they differed from the Communist Party in their ardent Zionism. After about 1955, their Soviet sympathies gradually dissipated; they were still quite Red in 1963.