Re: [tlug] OT: Does Jose support Fidel? (Was "Linux is Libertarian!")

[Raedwolf Summoner <raroofu@example.com>]

"Stephen J. Turnbull" wrote:

> From all I hear, though Cuba is an economic disaster, the average Jos?
> there does support Castro (Fidel, anyway). I've heard things are very
> different in the other places you mention, though I can't claim actual
> actual close acquaintances from any of them.

Carlos Franqui does mention that he always heard, "This wouldn't be happening if only Fidel knew about it." He himself thought it possible at first, then he says he realized that Fidel was just really good at ducking responsibility for his own policies. Early on, he did have a lot of support. Not later. Also, the western media does tend to cover him favorably. However, my good friends who are Cuban tell me quite a different story. One of them served as a minister in Fidel's government and left on good personal terms with Fidel. He told me that he went directly to Fidel and told him that he could no longer support the direction Fidel's government was going and wanted to leave. Since he was a friend of Fidel's and had participated in the revolution -- their [wealthy] families were pre-revolution neighbors -- Fidel simply asked him, "Are you going to criticize me after leaving?" My friend said no. Fidel said, OK, you can go. He now lives in NY. His accounts to me tally very closely with what Carlos Franqui had to say in his book Retrato de Familia con Fidel. (This book you can get in English, too, if it is still in print, as Family Portrait With Fidel. OK, I just checked on Amazon and actually found a good condition hardback for $12. Most of the books, even in paperback, were more.) Franqui was one of the heroes of the revolution, and as a critic of the totalitarian government that resulted was exiled to Europe. (The Wikipedia article does not do him justice. Not even close. You really need to read his book! A remarkably intelligent man.) He says that in the months following the revolution, the revolutionary heroes were so wildly popular that it would have been difficult to find any Cuban who did not support the revolution. Five years later, according to Franqui, you would have been extremely hard-pressed to find one who did. The heavy-handed totalitarianism makes it difficult to get accurate information, but the stories from the boat people who have fled and others make for some pretty grim pictures. My guess is that if the borders were open and the people had the means, 90% of the population would leave overnight. The left-media's love affair with Fidel and Che make it difficult to find the darker portraits. Most of the quotes of how good things are come from the communist "elite" (who, e.g., can actually go to real hospitals with real doctors among other things the rest of us take for granted). According to many who escaped Cuba, Che was a murdering thug who killed even children and pregnant women in startling numbers in the post-revolution "cleansing" with his own pistol. Franqui's portrait of Che is one of a piece of slime. Franqui continued his revolutionary fervor in Europe, despite the way things turned out in Cuba. I think he would agree with you that certainly in Cuba at least, communism has yet to be tried. My informants from Eastern Europe are not as close friends and necessarily the conversations have only been in English with them. But the stories seem eerily similar. I was visiting friends in Managua at one point during the anti-Somoza revolution there and had a few hair-raising experiences, and am aware of the same very heavy-handed totalitarianism that ensued. My friends there were supporters of the revolution, especially of the heroic La Prensa newspaper of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, and thoroughly disliked Somoza, though not as much as they eventually came to dislike Daniel Ortega. I used to have some copies of La Prensa that I picked up during the revolution with stories blanked out by the censors where Chamorro refused to fill the spaces with other articles, leaving these white patches throughout the paper. I eventually lost the papers in a move.

> Ah. Then let's not consider it a debate, call it a "lecture". There
> will be a quiz at the end of the period. ;-)

I love quizes. :)
 
> ROTFLMAO! No, it's a gnu, and it's a caricature of Stallman. If you
> don't know what Stallman looks like and can't find a photo online,
> he's a dead ringer for that Asahara dude of Aum Shinrikyo fame.

Yeah, I know what he looks like, and the Asahara comparison is close enough, though I wouldn't have thought of it. The Gnu, though, doesn't look like him at all to me. Maybe when he was younger?

> Ah, well at first I *was* just joking about the lecture, but this you
> should pay attention to. *Open source licenses and free software
> licenses are the same. There is no difference in their terms.* The
> license must provide "freedom as in freedom of speech". If it does,
> it is both open source and free software; if not, it is neither.

Really? I always thought that "free" software was the stuff you didn't have to pay for but couldn't mess with the code or pass along with any alterations or without attributional genuflections to the authors. The free-as-in-beer stuff. I see I have a lot to learn about the non-monopolistic software movement.

> The difference is that Free Software advocates believe that property
> in a non-rivalrous means of production is a sin, while (extreme) open
> source advocates believe it's a beggar-thy-neighbor-and-beggar-us-all
> policy (ie, stupid, not sinful). Thus free software advocates see
> free software licenses as a moral obligation. Open source moderates
> see open source as an important strategy, both for society and
> business, while not denying a role for proprietary products.

Thanks! I guess I had it backwards. I would personally lean toward the filosofia of open source as explained here.

> The more famous spokesmen for open source as a movement are folks like
> Eric Raymond and Russ Nelson. These are the apostates, the vanguard
> of corporate enslavement that Stallman likes to call "backsliders" and
> "enemies of freedom". These are the 2d Amendment-toting gun nuts and
> economic libertarians, too.

Sounds like my kinda people.

> Like the Communist Manifesto, the GNU Manifesto is a flawed gem of
> economic analysis. As a call to arms it's brilliant; as a program,
> it's at best vague and future development of its socialist ideas shows
> it to be more than a little perverse.

Thanks for an interesting review of the movement.
 
--Ralph Sumner

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