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David Walters | 1 Aug 01:13
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Re: Irrational Exuberance

Walter:
"Is there something wrong with Brazil's progress?
Viva Lula! Viva Fidel! Viva Raul! Long Live the
Brazilian Workers Party! Viva Brazil!"

You do a huge disservice to the Cubans (and all the Big Names you like 
to shout) by associating Lula with the Cubans. I can't think of a more 
stupid combination than this in Latin America. In Haiti today, 
anti-occupation forces SHOOT Brazilian occupiers. No one in Haiti shouts 
"Long live Brazil!" unless they work for the US Embassy.

David

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glparramatta | 1 Aug 01:35
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Socialist Alternative gets the balance wrong on propaganda and action | Links

Reviewed by *Ben Courtice*

*/From Little Things Big Things Grow: strategies for building 
revolutionary socialist organisations/*, <http://links.org.au/>by Mick 
Armstrong, Socialist Alternative, 2007.

/As official politics continues to move to the right, a growing gulf is 
opening up between the hopes and aspirations of millions of working 
people and the agenda of the ruling capitalist establishment and its 
parties… Much of the time that disenchantment and discontent finds no 
outlet, but then it explodes in massive mobilisations like those against 
the outbreak of the Iraq war in 2003, or the repeated giant rallies 
against Howard’s WorkChoices/.[i]

Thus Mick Armstrong of Socialist Alternative[ii] sets the scene in the 
introduction to his survey of strategic considerations of how a 
socialist group should organise.

Full http://links.org.au/node/546

Subscribe free to /Links - International Journal of Socialist Renewal/ -
at http://www.feedblitz.com/f/?Sub=343373

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Mark Lause | 1 Aug 01:50
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Re: Irrational Exuberance

And a hearty boola, boola from me!

Now that I've given it, are we one step closer to socialism here.

Guess not.

ML

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Walter Lippmann | 1 Aug 02:27
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Cuba sanctions linked to obesity in Americans

Cuba sanctions linked to obesity in Americans

Voice of the People [letter to the editor]

What is the relationship between high fructose corn syrup and missiles in Cuba?

The movie “King Corn” was shown at the Saturday’s Child Open Mik Coffee House recently.
This movie is a documentary showing that the health of Americans is being compromised
by high fructose corn syrup. It has taken the place of cane sugar as a sweetener
in almost every product on the grocery shelves. If you don’t believe this, take 
the time to look at the ingredients of everything you buy. “Carbonated drinks are
liquid candy”, a statement made by the two young men who went to Iowa to grow an
acre of corn and follow the corn through its trip to your hamburgers by way of corn-fed
cattle and to the grocery shelves by way of high fructose corn syrup.

High fructose corn syrup is a cheap replacement for the cane sugar we use to import
from Cuba before “we” decided to create a hostile relationship with a country that
refuses to follow our example of a free and democratic society.

The movie documents the rise in obesity in America and the increased diabetes coincident
with the rise in the use of high fructose corn syrup. High fructose corn syrup has
no food value, does not give us increased energy and only adds empty fat-producing
calories.

If you feel alarmed by this situation, I suggest you call or write your congressmen
to resume our trade with Cuba and to return to our use of cane sugar. Becoming a
trading partner with Cuba again might also discourage Cuba from being a pawn in 
the endless games played by a few insane men in Washington, DC and the Kremlin who
are playing an endless game of placing long-range missiles on each other’s borders.
(Continue reading)

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Walter Lippmann | 1 Aug 02:39
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Re: Irrational Exuberance

(Will David Walters be writing to Machadito demanding that the 
Cuban CP stop consorting with the Brazilian Workers Party or
will David practice irrational exuberance in some other way?)
===================================================================

Cuban VP Receives Delegation of Brazilian Workers’ Party

HAVANA, Cuba, July 18 (acn) Cuba’s First Vice President Jose Ramon
Machado Ventura met on Thursday with a visiting delegation from the
Workers’ Party of Brazil (PT) that is led by its president, Ricardo
Berzoini.

The group is in Cuba at the invitation of the Cuban Communist Party
(PCC) and it also includes the PT’s General Secretary, Jose Eduardo
Cardozo, and its Secretary of Foreign Relations, Valter Pomar.

In their meeting, Berzoini – on behalf of PT members – congratulated
Cuba for the 50th anniversary of its Revolution and praised the
achievements of the Caribbean country in sectors such as education,
health, culture and sports. He also gave Machado Ventura a message of
support from Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

For his part, the Cuban VP thanked the PT for its solidarity with
Cuba and said that this visit is an important step towards the
strengthening of bilateral relations between the PT and the PCC.

Also present in the meeting was Fernando Remirez de Estenoz, head of
the Foreign Relations Department at the Central Committee of the PCC.

The PT delegation concludes its visit to Cuba on Friday after a
(Continue reading)

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David Walters | 1 Aug 02:46
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Re: Irrational Exuberance

Walter, the day the Cubans, any Cuban, utters something in support of 
the Brazilian occupation troops, do let us know. And I will *gladly* 
send off a letter if that is what you think is required. I doubt the 
Cuban CP is scoring many points now among militant workers in Brazil. 
Ah, but then it's 'real politik' yes?

So...do you think Haitians have the right to off Brazilian troops there? 
Are you willing to stand and shout like you do "Brazil and the US,  OUT 
of Haiti!"

David

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Walter Lippmann | 1 Aug 02:49
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Re: Irrational Exuberance

Cuba could not have survived had it not maintained its alliance
with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Cuba could have
done perfectly well had it thumbs its nose at the country with
which 90+ percent of its foreign trade was oriented and Soviet
leaders would have said and done nothing to the Cubans.

Anyone who has read Fidel's "endorsement", which characterized
the Soviet intervention as a violation of Czechoslovakian
sovereignty understands immediately why the Soviet Union was
unable to publish Fidel's "endorsement" in the Soviet press,
not to speak of in the Czechoslovakian media at the time.

Walter Lippmann
Los Angeles, California
====================================================================
SHANE MAGE asked:
Under "the exigency of realpolitik" Lenin and Trotsky signed the
Brest-Litovsk diktat. They gave no an iota of endorsement to
Austro/German imperial policies. On the contrary, their call for the
overthrow of both Kaisers only became stronger. And why wouldn't "the
exigency of realpolitik," on which the Brezhnev-Castro alliance was
based, have "necessitated" the Russian maintenance of that alliance
even if Castro had kept a cowardly silence instead of his degrading
endorsement?

=========================================
     WALTER LIPPMANN
     Los Angeles, California
     Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
     http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
(Continue reading)

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Walter Lippmann | 1 Aug 02:55
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Re: Irrational Exuberance

While I endeavor to follow the Cuban media closely, Cuban endorsement
of Brazilian occupation activities in Haiti seems to have eluded me.
Perhaps such documentation can be found in the archives of the media
of the Lambertists, the Grant-Woods outfit, or the Spartacist League?

My contact with militant Brazilian workers is largely limited to the
Internet, but I'm sure that in San Francisco, David Walters, who is
a fluent Brazilian speaker, must know how bad Cuba's standing today
is among the Brazilian proletariat.

Do I think Haitians have the right to self-defense? Gee, I wasn't
aware of anyone questioning the right to self-defense anywhere.
The question never occured to me. Why did it occur to David?

Walter Lippmann
Los Angeles, California
=====================================================================
DAVID WALTERS writes:
Walter, the day the Cubans, any Cuban, utters something in support of 
the Brazilian occupation troops, do let us know. And I will *gladly* 
send off a letter if that is what you think is required. I doubt the 
Cuban CP is scoring many points now among militant workers in Brazil. 
Ah, but then it's 'real politik' yes?

So...do you think Haitians have the right to off Brazilian troops there? 
Are you willing to stand and shout like you do "Brazil and the US,  OUT 
of Haiti!"

David
(Continue reading)

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David Walters | 1 Aug 03:44
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Re: Irrational Exuberance

Yeah, keep trying to find that document...on anything by the Cubans on 
the Brazilian army, lap-dogs to US imperialism in Haiti. Please do. I 
suspect, keeping, without knowing for sure, that Cubans keep close 
opinions on this, as they did with, say, some of the USSR's reactionary 
policies.

Your incessant Trot baiting notwithstanding, Walter, it would be good if 
you could actually respond to a question. Even your mentors, John Gates 
and Earl Browder, could do better I suspect. I don't remember them ever 
trying to "defend" Stalinism by their infantile Yankee baiting. Of 
course they had to run home (to Moscow) before answering any independent 
question since they had no independence on their own and allowed others 
to think for them. Sound familiar. Now, about those Brazilians...?

David

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Louis Proyect | 1 Aug 03:46
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At work in Nicaragua

(This comment from Charlie Rosenberg just showed up on my blog.)

I was one of a group of 15 or so Tecnica volunteers that arrived in 
Managua in early May of 1987.  I recall meeting a fellow (who I am 
still in touch with here in Boston) at the Ministry of 
Health  (MINSA) Apparatus Repair Shop where it had been arranged that 
I would work.  He was working on an EKG machine or something of the 
sort and I was supposed to be teaching folks how to run lathes and 
milling machines in the machine shop.  As it turned out, they had a 
pretty skilled group of folks there and there didn't seem to be 
anything for me to do.  Before I left I recall one small victory that 
I engineered. A young fellow had been trying to reproduce a high tech 
machined part that had been produced on some type of computer 
numerically control machine and it just wasn't going to be duplicated 
in this shop. He had been working on it for three weeks and it kept 
breaking as he tried to mill the thin slots in the piece. I asked 
what the part was used for and nobody knew (I wondered if we could 
make the design less complex).

So I wandered over to a different part of the compound and spoke to 
the people who had requested the part. They explained it was a 
coupling that was attached to a small motor on a machine used to mix 
dental fillings.  I sketched a simplified version of the part and 
went back to the shop where the same young fellow reproduced the 
coupling from my sketch in about 30 minutes. I was hoping they needed 
some more of these couplings but as it turned out, I was a one trick 
pony and that was my only victory at the repair shops. After that I 
hooked up with a Dutch mechanical engineer and a Guatemalan contract 
machine repairer who were traveling to some outlying towns to survey 
the needs of various institutions, mostly hospitals but we also went
(Continue reading)

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