Tema: Report: Castro says Cuban model doesn't work

The extravagant passion of Progressives with Castro’s regime doesn’t make sense. This has been going on for five decades. There are megalomaniacs, like in Castro’s case, who can charm an audience, but that doesn't explain why the charm doesn't wear off when the spell is replaced by reality. Progressives depict themselves as champions of freedom and defenders of the oppressed. Yet they seem to have developed a fondness for a cruel and oppressive dictatorships like that of Castro.

Look to me that many on the left have a visceral distain for their own country, the US. Over the last fifty years the left has fought a culture war against the very country that nurtured freedom and fought for the oppressed. The Cuban people won't experience real freedom until they are freed from the monarchival dictatorship of the Castro brothers’ regime.

Castroism has not only failed, it has destroyed the hopes and dreams of three generations. It has set back the clock of development in Cuba to the extent that it has become a third world nation. A one promising country has become a decaying society and a constant reminder of the total failure of the corrupt Castros’ military dictatorship. Castro himself has admitted that “The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore.”

The Soviet Empire collapsed because communism creates a system that is unable to change. It is dogmatic as a religion, unquestionable loyalty to the state. A political dogma running berserk. It is about power and total control at the hands of the most ruthless.

The Castroit regime is a dismal failure no withstanding the bailout it received from the former Soviet Union at the tune of 5 billion a year for 30 years and nowadays the one it receive from Chavez Venezuela. What happened to the billions of dollars that the regime received? It went into Fidel Castro, aka the International Panhandler, money pit.

What happened to the Castro health care and education systems so much praised by the Left?
The report “The health Status of Newly Arrived Refugee Children in Miami-Dade County, Florida” (http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/content/full/93/2/286?ijkey=7b4f34ed11ce265b8f815c2a9405124f4f3f8a5b&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha) published in The American Journal of Public Health,
February 2003, Vol. 93, No. 2, found that a recent Pan American HealthOrganization report estimated that iron-deficiency anemia affects40% to 50% of Cuban children aged 1 to 3 years, 31 per cent of all Cuban refugee children had intestinal parasites, 21 per cent had lead poisoning and all had higher than normal levels of disease.

The Granma newspaper explained that Havana, a city of 2.2 million people needs 2.054 primary teachers 4.396 in secondary, 927 in vocational technical schools and 1.199 in community college. (http://www.elnuevoherald.com/2008/11/01/313197/la-habana-tiene-deficit-de-mas.html)

These posts are cover now by “teachers in training” [students] and other teachers the paper said, adding that the Provincial Department of Education attributed the deficit “to the exodus, the inactivity and low levels of registration in the teaching profession.”
In the educational sector, presented as one of the achievements of the revolution between 17 to 30% of the students resigns before graduating.

Due to the collectivized agricultural system and the regime unwillingness to liberalize the economy, gross incompetence and negligence, food shortages are a major problem in Cuba.

During a speech to the Party Assembly of the City of Havana at the beginning of July, 2002, Castro made reference to the “more than 4,500 emergent teachers graduated working in the schools with his corresponding tutors; 86, 000 youngsters, who neither were studying nor working, incorporated into the Schools for All-Encompassing Development.” [1]

What were these many young people doing that they were not in school, which is tuition-free, when the state acknowledges that they were not in the labor force? This suggests deeper causes among which the highlights are the dollarization of the economy, tourism, and the lack of values.

[1] Reynold Rassi and Alberto Núñez, 2002, “Para este país no hay nada imposible: Presidió Fidel la Asamblea de Balance,” Granma, July 8, 2002.

The regime remind students and parents how grateful they should be to the Revolution for the “free” education they are receiving. Until recently it was mandatory for all Cuban children over the age of 12 to remain on the schools in the countryside for ten months, and allowed to come home only one night per week. Away from all parental supervision the children suffer from venereal disease, as well as teenage pregnancy, which inevitably end in forced abortion.

The Education in Cuba is under the absolute control of the Communist party, and begin in elementary school with the so-called "Cumulative School File." This file measures the "revolutionary integration" of the student and his family. This file documents whether or not the child and family participate in mass demonstrations, or whether they belong to a church or religious group. His university options will depend on what that file says. If he does not conform to the regime indoctrination, he will be denied access to the university. The new Minister of Higher Education of Cuba, Miguel Diaz-Canel, ratified the historic slogan that says: “The University is only for the Revolutionaries.” (http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=12571)

The Cuban education which tries to create “the new man” is the most cruel and pitiless ever seen before in any civilized country. The family, relegated to a second place, suffers and remains silent when seeing its transformed son/daughter, where its native control on them, has been seized in the name of the party. What is education for if it turns into a weapon of mass indoctrination?

The apologists of the Castro brothers’ regime blame the US embargo for the island economic problems. But they fail to understand that theirs argument supports free market. Free flowing trade between countries benefits countries economic prospects, as free flowing internal trade does.

The failures of the socialist system in Cuba are very obvious. Cuban refugees risk their lives trying to get to Florida in makeshifts boats to get to the “evil empire” instead of remaining in the “workers’ paradise” in the island of Dr. Castro. Castros’ regime fails because it destroys the human spirit, just ask the Cuban leaving the island in rafts and home make boats.

Capitalism has brought a renaissance of freedom and liberty. It nurture the human spirit and human creativity. Trough incentives it promotes hard work and efficiency.The basic difference between socialism and capitalism is that capitalism works.

Cuba to take a different road
http://www.day.kiev.ua/317036
Attempting reforms with capitalist methods

By Yurii RAIKHEL
November 17, 2010

66-3-1.jpghttp://www.day.kiev.ua/img/317027/66-3-1.jpg
UNDER BATISTA’S DICTATORSHIP (1958), CUBA
WAS AHEAD OF SPAIN’S PER CAPITA INCOME.
THERE WERE 200,000 CARS. TODAY, THERE ARE
100,000, INCLUDING 75,000 BATISTA SURVIVORS

Cuba, the second-last Leninist-Stalinist socialist paradise on earth, is in its death throes, with the all but dead economy desperately in need of modernization. This is something even the Castro brothers, still in power, are aware of.

As soon as Raul Castro took office he started talking about the need to reform. There being a difference between words and deeds, he found himself faced with countless internal and external problems, with his older brother remaining the main enemy of any reforms. Even though Fidel Castro had formally distanced himself from governance, he remained General Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba. On his website he theorized about the need to keep fighting American imperialism and defended Cuba’s command economy as a necessary aspect of this struggle. Fidel openly opposed Raul as the latter spoke about the necessity of reforms. This family squabble led to the postponing of the next Communist Party Congress, scheduled for 2008, without explanations. The obvious result of this confrontation was the slow but sure elbowing out of Fidel’s ranking companeros. This process took quite some time, but then it was decided to schedule the next congress for April 2011, although the Party Charter reads that these congresses must be convened every five years. The last one took place in 1997.

Raul Castro has consistently shown an interest in the Chinese experience of socialist economic transformation. He started by taking small steps, probably because his hands were tied. For example, Cubans were eventually allowed to buy mobile phones, computers, DVDs, pressure cookers, and Internet access, even thought the Cuban in the street would first step into a store selling such goods feeling as though s/he were exploring an exclusive exhibit. In a country with an average monthly salary being the equivalent of 12 to 20 dollars, all such gadgets looked out of this world. However, the situation changed before long — in first place owing to remittances from emigre relatives in the United States, the country that is constantly cursed and condemned all over Cuba.

Politics came next. In the summer of 2010, with intercession on the part of the Roman Catholic Church, 50 political prisoners were released under the condition that they leave the “Island of Freedom” forthwith (they were given political asylum in Spain). The Cuban government says there are no political prisoners left, although human rights champions insist there are actually 200 still being held in jail. That may well be the case, but it means that their time is still to come, and that their fate depends on Cuba’s home policy.

There are many ways to pretend you’re doing fine while feeling lousy, knowing that things will get worse. In the end, though, people will notice. Raul Castro had known that the situation in Cuba left much to be desired, mildly speaking, before he took over Fidel’s post. Yet when he did, the truth nevertheless shocked him. He discovered that there were factories and whole industries that were unmanned, that the accounting and progress reports submitted by practically all government-run structures weren’t worth even looking through — with all statistics falsified to please everyone “upstairs” — just a heap of sheets good enough for starting a hundred campfires. Raul further learned that his older brother had allowed a thoroughly corrupt system to envelop Cuba during the 50 years of his rule; that this system embraced all walks of life, all the way from top to bottom; that corruption was rampant on all levels (except the army, then under Raul Castro’s command), and that it had reached “critical proportions.” The vertical of dictatorial power existed only for the opponents but by no means impeded total corruption. On the contrary, it facilitated bribe-giving and taking, as well as embezzlement. There was nothing the controlling authorities and special services could do about this, simply because they were part of this system.

Something had to be done about the situation, and even Fidel Castro was aware of this. In an interview with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg (September 8, 2010), he said: “The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore.” Two days later, CNN quoted him as saying at the University of Havana (a speech later broadcast on Cuban television) that he meant “exactly the opposite” of what was understood by Goldberg. He later said he had been quoted correctly, but that, “in reality, my answer meant exactly the opposite of what both American journalists interpreted regarding the Cuban model. My idea, as the whole world knows, is that the capitalist system no longer works for the United States or the world… How could such a system work for a socialist country like Cuba?” A ridiculous statement, considering the way the Cuban government would act afterward.

Cuba’s official periodical, Gaceta Oficial, publishes legislative acts and regulations binding on business activities within the country, including tax rates, penalties, samples of forms required for business paperwork. The current government plans to liquidate some 500,000 posts in the state-run institutions. Another half a million bureaucratic jobs will be lost in the next couple of years. About five million people are employed in the Cuban public/state sector, hence the need for reductions.

Ranking bureaucrats subject to these reductions can be offered other jobs within this sector or “find jobs in the non-public sector.” Those being relieved of their public sector posts are given government subsidies. Gaceta Oficial has a list of 178 lines of business Cubans can undertake, at their risk, including 83 that provide for manpower employment. Thousands of Cubans are standing in lines to the city councils to receive authorizations to start in business.

Such economic reforms will rest on a political foundation. “We have decided to hold the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party in the second half of April 2011; it will pass fundamental resolutions aimed at upgrading the economic model,” Raul Castro declared after meeting with the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Cuba’s leading official newspaper Granma carried the Guidelines of the Economic and Social Policy of the Party, including key ideological postulates reading that socialism is the sole principle of the new Cuban economic policy because only socialism can overcome the hardships and preserve the gains of the revolution. As it is, Cuba and its ruling Communist Party are in for a number of substantial changes.

First, the next congress will take place come what may, simply because the current situation in Cuba cannot last any longer. The new economic conditions demand an appropriate political response, the more so that the dismissal of so many functionaries and the de facto prohibition of ration cards will inevitably cause social tensions. A number of experts (Cuban ones included) feel rather skeptical about the forthcoming upgrading. Their attitude is summed up by the following statement: “The miserable private sector is incapable of employing all of those relieved of their posts/jobs. Cuba is in for a course of shock treatment that may well turn out worse than that sustained by Russia in 1992, considering that the majority of the Cuban population is below the poverty line.” Whether the party and the bureaucratic machine will cope with this problem is anyone’s guess.

Second, it is a short trip from Cuba to Florida, with its Cuban diaspora which hates the current Cuban regime. This diaspora’s economic and political influence on Cuba is bound to increase, which is a strong and dangerous challenge to the current regime. Until now this influence has been kept under control using clandestine agencies, but now this kind of control is bound to contradict the economic liberalization plans of the new class of owners which is being formed — it will be obliterated in the process.

Third, the Cuban political leadership is faced with the complex problem of continuity. The Cuban dissident [exiled – Ed.] author, Carlos Alberto Montaner, believes that his home country is entering a defidelization phase, which is very interesting, considering that Fidel is still alive, and that he is directly involved in this process. There is no way Cuba can copy the Chinese experience, because the Cuban ruling tandem doesn’t have the main resource: time. Fidel will be 84 in the summer of 2011, and his brother will be 79. Although Raul looks full of life, his regular abuse of 12-year-old Chivas Regal is having its effect on his system. In other words, top-level cadre changes are inevitable and the next Cuban Communist Party Congress will have to deal with this problem.

Interesting article from the Ukrainian point of view on recent Cuban news. Look that Yurii Raikhel knows a few things about Cuban Communism.

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Premature thanks in Cuba
The myth of Raul the Reformer
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/nov/24/premature-thanks-in-cuba/

By Daniel Allott
The Washington Times, November 24, 2010
It has been more than four years since Raul Castro assumed the duties of the presidency of Cuba and more than 2 1/2 years since he officially took over for his older brother, Fidel.

In that time, words like "pragmatic," "practical" and "reformer" have often been attached to Raul as a way of contrasting his governing philosophy with his brother's and to signal that major political and economic reforms may be imminent.

But a sober analysis suggests that meaningful change has not occurred. In fact, given the conclusions of several reports on human rights in Cuba, and based on our conversations with dozens of Cuba experts and Cubans both inside and outside Cuba, it is clear that the regime's tyranny is as entrenched as ever.

The Raul-as-reformer narrative began when he announced modest economic changes early in his reign. These included privatizing some farmland, denationalizing small beauty parlors and taxi-driving enterprises and loosening restrictions on the use of cell phones and other electronics.

Then, in July, the Cuban government announced that it would release the remaining 52 political prisoners it had imprisoned during the "Black Spring," a mass arrest of nonviolent activists in March 2003. As of Nov. 12, 39 prisoners had been released and exiled to Spain.

In September, the Cuban labor federation announced a government plan to fire more than 500,000 state employees between October and March. It would mark the biggest shift of jobs from the public to the private sector in nearly 50 years.

All of this has convinced many of the major players in Cuba's relationship with the outside world that Raul is someone they can work with.

Even before the recent changes, President Obama talked about forging "a new beginning" with Cuba. After a July meeting with Raul in Havana, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos proclaimed the opening of "a new phase in Cuba" and insisted "there is no longer any reason to maintain the [European Union's] Common Position on Cuba," which calls for normalizing relations with the regime once progress is made on human rights and democracy issues.

Even the beleaguered Cuban Catholic Church - whose leaders were given the cold shoulder by Fidel, who preferred to negotiate directly with the Vatican on church matters - sees an opening. Cardinal Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino, Archbishop of Havana, announced a "magnificent beginning" to a new relationship with the regime after talks with Raul last spring.

Journalists, too, see change they can believe in with Raul. The prisoner releases prompted Newsweek's Patrick Symmes to write, "A half century of repression [in Cuba] appears to be ending."
Such claims are contradicted by the findings of numerous human rights groups. In a November 2009 study titled "New Castro, Same Cuba: Political Prisoners in the Post-Fidel Era," Human Rights Watch documented more than 40 cases of Cubans imprisoned for "dangerousness" under a Cuban law that allows authorities to imprison persons they suspect might commit a crime in the future.

Scores of other Cubans have been sentenced under Raul for violating laws that criminalize free expression and association. Cubans have been imprisoned for failing to attend government rallies, for not belonging to official party organizations and even for being unemployed.

Non-Cubans are not immune to such treatment. One of this piece's authors, Jordan Allott, was detained briefly and interrogated by Cuban police during a trip across Cuba in 2009 merely for asking a couple of Cubans to talk about the Cuban Revolution on a street in Camaguey.

American contractor Alan Gross has been imprisoned in Cuba for nearly a year. He is accused of trying to provide unauthorized satellite Internet connections to Cuba's tiny Jewish community.

In its report, Human Rights Watch concluded that rather than dismantle Fidel's "system of abusive laws and institutions," Raul "has kept it firmly in place and fully active."

Freedom House's 2010 Freedom in the World survey again designated Cuba as the sole "not free" country in the Americas. It also placed Cuba among its "worst of the worst" countries, which kept it on the shortlist of "the world's most repressive regimes."

In an October 2009 report, the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor rebuked Cuba for its lack of religious freedom. "The Government continued to exert control over all aspects of societal life, including religious expression," the report stated. Violations of religious freedom included efforts to control and monitor religious activities and fines against unregistered religious groups.

The Cuban government continues to be one of the few in the world that prohibit the International Committee of the Red Cross access to their prisons. The condition of those prisons was highlighted in February with the hunger-strike death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo. Zapata, imprisoned for nonviolent political activism, undertook the strike to protest prison conditions. The international outcry after his death was partially responsible for prompting the regime to agree to release prisoners willing to be exiled.

The continued mistreatment of nonviolent political activists comes as no surprise to those who remember Raul as the official who oversaw thousands of executions of political prisoners in the early years of the revolution.

As with most tyrants, the Castros are skilled at sending mixed signals about their intentions. It was months into the revolution before many democrats realized that Fidel's repeated declarations that his revolution was informed not by Marxism but by democratic and Christian principles were lies.

Last year, the Cuban government invited Manfred Novak, the United Nations' special investigator on torture, to inspect Cuba's prisons. The invitation drew praise from the international community. But the government rescinded the invitation last month, stating that an outside investigation was not needed.
In spring, Raul was lauded for agreeing to end persecution of the Ladies in White, a group of wives, mothers and other female relatives of Cuban political prisoners who were being harassed, beaten and prevented by government security agents from making their weekly peaceful protests.

But the government resumed its harassment in August. It deployed large mobs to intimidate Reina Luisa Tamayo, mother of deceased hunger striker Zapata, preventing her from marching and attending Mass.

Even the prisoner releases are less than they appear. The Cuban government pledged to release all its political prisoners without any conditions by Nov. 7. But that deadline has passed, and 13 prisoners who refuse to be exiled from the island remain incarcerated.

Last month, Berta Soler of the Ladies in White accused the government of "applying psychological pressure to those remaining in prison because they want to see them out of the country."

The prisoner releases and economic changes are not meaningful and lasting steps toward reform. Instead, they are short-term measures designed to extract economic concessions from the United States and Europe.

As Susan Kaufman Purcell, director of the Center for Hemispheric Policy at the University of Miami, put it to us in an interview, "It's wrong to think that [Cuba is] now on this one-way road toward openness and democracy. That's not the case at all. Cuba needs something. What the regime is hoping for is to get some economic help."

Cuba's economy is in abysmal shape. Food production has slowed, and tourism, foreign remittances and subsidies from Venezuela have plunged with the global economy.

The Cuban government is laying off 500,000 workers not because it wants to move toward a free-market capitalist system. It is doing so because it can no longer afford to pay those workers' monthly $20 wages.

Similarly, the regime is exiling some of its political prisoners not because it suddenly has seen the light on human rights and democracy. Rather, it's exiling them because it's desperate for America and the EU to relax economic sanctions, which both have made conditional principally on the release of political prisoners.

The Castro brothers are experts at easing their grip on Cuba just enough and just long enough to get what they want. On many occasions throughout the Castro regime's 51 years, it has freed or exiled political prisoners or made other "reforms" only to reverse course once it got what it needed.
Ms. Kaufman Purcell says, "The way [authoritarian regimes] often work is that when things get bad, when there's a lot of external pressure, what happens is that they release [prisoners], and at some point they get new ones."

Armando Valladares, a Cuban-born former political prisoner and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, told us, "The liberation of groups of political prisoners is a frequent practice in Cuba. It has happened many times for the revolution's interests. [The prisoner releases] absolutely should not be interpreted ... as a change in the tyranny's repressive structure."
After foreign aid from the Soviet Union was cut off with the fall of communism in the early 1990s, the Cuban government loosened controls on private enterprise, allowing 200,000 workers to earn money as street vendors and taxi drivers. But as soon as the economy recovered, many of the new businesses were shut down.

When the government wanted some good publicity ahead of Pope John Paul II's visit in 1998, it released 300 political prisoners. As soon as the press attention subsided, the prisons were filled again with political opponents.

If fundamental political and economic reforms are to be made in Cuba, the government's repressive legal system and security apparatus must be dismantled. That didn't happen for more than four decades under Fidel. And it's not happening under Raul.

Daniel Allott is senior writer at American Values and a Washington fellow at the National Review Institute. He also is associate producer of "Oscar's Cuba," a documentary film about Cuban prisoner of conscience Dr. Oscar Biscet. Jordan Allott is director and executive producer of "Oscar's Cuba."

Excellent article by Daniel Allot. The Mainstream Media just repeat the Castro brothers' press releases about so-called reforms and changes in Cuba without meaningful commentary. In order to change things in the island is absolutely necessary to remove the Castro brothers from power and dismantle their totalitarian and repressive state apparatus. Castros’ tyrannical dynasty has been in power for 51 years and has no intention of relinquish it. It seems that the most expedite way to remove them from power is by force. The Cuban in the island and abroad should start working in that approach, organize and rally the people around it. The opportunity is knocking on the door; the time is ripe to do so.

Cuban Capital Facing “Critical” Water Shortage
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=384732&CategoryId=14510

January 22, 2011

HAVANA – The supply of potable water in the Cuban capital has reached its most critical state in the last 50 years, with more than 100,000 people dependent on tanker trucks for water and with sources of supply ready to collapse, Communist Party daily Granma said Friday.

The Havana water system loses 70 percent of the water pumped for consumers before it gets to them, the newspaper said.

Almost half of Havana’s more than 2 million inhabitants have suffered from serious problems in the basic water-supply system, while some 110,000 people are wholly dependent on deliveries of water by tanker trucks, according to official data cited by Granma.

The paper said that there has been a “notable drop” in accumulated volumes in aquifers and reservoirs due to the drought over the past two years and the poor functioning of an aqueduct “that has deteriorated over time.”

“In a more subtle way than hurricanes, this hydrological drought, together with the poor state of some 2,194 kilometers (1,363 miles) of pipelines, almost 71 percent, and other infrastructure problems, is also damaging the nation’s economy,” Granma said.

Once again the call was made to “stop the waste” in homes and businesses, and said that among the most wasteful were state institutions.

“Because of how serious the situation is, the possibility of cutting off service to those who consume more than planned is being evaluated,” Granma said.

To ease the situation, the government plans to construct several pipelines to improve water delivery, install valves, drill wells, restore pipelines that are in a poor state of repair, and eliminate leaks in water pumps and large aqueducts. EFE

According to the regime the water distribution system is in serious problem, unable to satisfy the needs of the population. For the last 51 years no significant investments have been made in the water distribution system. I wonder if the regime at this point in time would be able to “eased the situation.”

The daily life of the Cuban people is becoming more and more difficult. Shortages of food, electricity and water, compound with a decrease of basic services provided by the regime, are creating conditions for a social unrest.

Leaked cable: Cuba a nation on the take
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/01/22/2029383/leaked-cable-cuba-a-nation-on.html

A leaked 2006 diplomatic cable paints Cuba as rife with corruption.
By JUAN O. TAMAYO

jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com
January 23, 2011

Corruption in Cuba is so widespread, from the street to a defense minister, that the island has become ``a nation on the take,'' according to a dispatch from U.S. diplomats in Havana.
``Because most Cubans work for the state, the entire system -- from petty officials to Castro's closest advisors -- is rife with corrupt practices,'' the 2006 cable says.

``Corruption and thievery have become one and the same. Corrupt practices also include bribery, misuse of state resources and accounting shenanigans,'' the dispatch noted before adding, ``Cuba has become a state on the take.''

A SYSTEM THREAT

Some Cuban government officials and supporters have warned in the past year that the spreading crookedness is a serious threat to the survival of the communist system, and one even called it the most dangerous ``counterrevolution.''

Civil Aviation Institute President Rogelio Acevedo was fired last year amid an investigation into massive fraud at the state-owned airline Cubana de Aviacion. And Pedro Alvarez, former head of the state agency that handled billions of dollars in agricultural imports, was reported to have defected recently rather than face state corruption investigators.

The dispatch, made available by WikiLeaks and first published by Spain's El Pais newspaper, gave a broad view of the corruption phenomenon but provided few hard examples.

It was signed by Michael Parmley, then head of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana, though it was not clear whether he wrote it.

Not everyone in Cuba is corrupt, the dispatch noted. Accidentally offering a bribe to ``a clean official -- or worse, a strident revolutionary -- could result in disaster.''

But corruption was widespread and expanding in 2006, despite a crackdown by Cuban ruler Fidel Castro, because of the ``economic desperation combined with totalitarian control,'' according to the report.

Bribes are common in getting around the controls, the cable noted, adding that several hundred dollars are usually required to grease the wheels on an illegal state deal.

Bribes also get good jobs, with a position at a gasoline station worth thousands of dollars -- because of the access to gasoline that can be sold on the black market -- and a tourism job with access to hard currency tips going for hundreds.

Police officers pull over drivers and ask for money for their ``sick child,'' and construction materials are regularly siphoned off government channels and sold on the black market.

A Cuban man told a U.S. diplomat that the government ``can't build anything because it is simply impossible to collect enough supplies in one place,'' according to the cable.

And a Cuban woman reported she had a tooth capped at a black market dental clinic staffed by health ministry dentists and outfitted with equipment stolen from the state, it added.

Some state shops are run by ``mafias,'' the dispatch stated, noting that one manager of a bread distribution center put so many friends in key jobs that he eventually controlled an entire chain of state bakeries.

Even the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, which are supposed to watch out for crimes, distribute items such as TV sets based on the recipients' revolutionary credentials and their ability to pay bribes.

BEYOND THE STREET

The corruption is not just a street-level phenomenon, the cable explained, but extends to managers of state enterprises and to middle- and high-ranking officials of the government.

A Swiss businessman told a U.S. diplomat that Cuban managers take kickbacks for awarding large contracts to foreign companies and then deposit the money in banks abroad, according to the cable.

``Just like everywhere in the world, a million-dollar contract gets you $100,000 in the bank,'' the dispatch quoted the businessman as saying.

Above the state enterprise managers ``stand Castro's cadres of régíme faithfuls, some of whom are widely rumored to be corrupt,'' according to the cable. It listed one example as Army Gen. Julio Casas Reguerio, who succeeded Raul Castro as minister of defense when he replaced brother Fidel at the head of the government, but gave no details.

Another example was Otto Rivero, leader of a group close to Fidel and known as the ``Battle of Ideas.'' The dispatch noted that group members were rumored to be ``making off with food and television sets'' set aside for the propaganda campaign on behalf of five Cuban spies in U.S. jails.

The dispatch also mentioned a tourism minister fired in 2004 -- Ibraham Ferradaz. He was the second consecutive tourism chief dismissed amid reports of corruption.

Cuba's official media seldom reports on corruption scandals and senior officials caught with their hands on the till seldom go to jail. They are usually fired and ordered to stay home in what's known as ``Plan Payama.''

What, there is corruption in the Castros regime? A regime leads by an egocentric and narcissistic consummate liar, who for the last 53 years in power has spread guerrilla war throughout the hemisphere, and has accumulated a personal fortune of more than $1.2 billion is in reality corrupt?
Nothing new here, the practice of corruption and stealing date back to 1957 since the so call “revolutionaries” were in the Sierra Maestra.

This type of widespread corruption under the Castros regime is a carbon copy of the one that existed in the Soviet Union. When the end of the system was evident, nothing could be accomplished without kickbacks to senior officials in the government and dealing in the black market.

Cuban communist party expels intellectual for exposing corruption
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/02/cuba-communist-corruption-censorship

Prominent intellectual Esteban Morales published article criticising unnamed high-ranking officials

Rory Carroll
The Guardian, Friday 2 July 2010 15.28 EDT

Cuba's communist party has reportedly expelled a prominent intellectual for blowing the whistle on high-level corruption.

Esteban Morales is said to have been "separated from the ranks" of the party over a bombshell article, which accused senior officials of looting the state before it crumbled.

The Playa Municipal branch of the party has stripped Morales of his membership and the historian, a frequent commentator on state television, has disappeared from public view, the Havana Times reported.

Morales broke taboos with an article in April that criticised unnamed, greedy apparatchiks. "It has become evident that there are people in government and state positions who are preparing a financial assault for when the revolution falls," he wrote on the website of the state National Artists and Writers Union of Cuba.

He claimed in the article that corruption from within threatened to destroy the 50-year-old communist state. "Others likely have everything ready to produce the transfer of state property into private hands, like what happened in the former Soviet Union."

The article quickly vanished from the site, but was copied and circulated among intellectuals and analysts.

"To publish an attack on high-level corruption on a state-controlled website was fairly amazing," said one European diplomat.

Rumours of a corruption scandal involving Havana airport have been circulating for months. Rogelio Acevedo, the civil aviation minister, and Jorge Luis Sierra Cruz, the transport minister, have been fired. In addition to this, dozens of airport employees have been arrested, amid claims that state aircraft were used for private gain

Castro brothers’ dictatorship has systematized corruption, and it has become the main problem of the regime. Due to the concentration of political power and economic control into the hands of the military apparatus, inefficiencies in resource allocation lead to consumer-good shortages and black-market activities.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s compounded by five decades of tyrannical rule in the island, made the promise of material prosperity unattainable. Corruption became paramount and many Cubans became proficient at trading on the black market whatever they could steal from the regime.

The level of deprivation now is similar to the special period of the 90s. Seem that the Castros regime officials have taken capitalism on as a way to increase their personal income, while the rest of the population survives on a meager ration book and whatever they can steal from their state jobs. Look that as long as the Castro brothers are in power there is no chance of reverse this trend.

Where the $150 billion have gone? For five decades the billions in loans from the former Soviet Union to the European Union to Venezuela, have gone to the corrupt regime of the Castro brothers and their military elite, helping them to keep the Cuban people under their control. A national debt that will take Cubans generations to pay off. Cuba, as the rest of the already gone communist governments, should serve as a reminder to the rest of us that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

This is the result of 53 years of total control by a corrupt and brutal military dictatorship over the Cuban people. This is the legacy of Fidel Castro, the International Panhandler, and his brother Raul.

One of the Castros’ regime greatest evil is the lies that those forced to live under its rule have been forced to swallow. For more than five decades the people have been forced to march in support of the regime, to denounce the evil capitalist system, to spy and denounce their relatives and friends, more than two million people gone into exile, 100,000 perished trying to escape crossing the shark invested water of the Florida Straight on makeshift rafts in search of freedom.

Communism doesn’t work. It is a system mostly based on hate and class envy. Most of the time those who reach the top posts in the system are not the most qualified, but those who support the crooked methods of the system. In order to succeed people need incentives, success should not be punished. Their main concern isn’t progress, but the retention of power at any cost. In Castros’ regime those people willing to inform on their neighbors and own families are rewarded with small handouts.