CUBAN DEMOCRACY

"Some ideas are so ridiculous that only an intellectual could believe them."
-George Orwell

Recently a man named Tim Anderson wrote an article about Cuba. Tim is a lecturer at the School of Political Economy, Sydney University and is a member of the Committee of Management of AID/WATCH which brags of having Noam Chomsky on the advisory board (his position is called "intellectual").

Tim wrote all about how Cuba is a Democracy and the United States is not. It was a glowing exposition on the glories and beauty of the Cuban government and how rotten, corrupt, and horrid the United States is:

In an age of propaganda and pseudo-democracy, the strongest opponents of imperial power are subject to the most ferocious attacks. One result of this is that many of the firmly held opinions about democracy in Cuba and in the United States of America bear an inverse relationship to relevant knowledge. As the Canadian scientist William Osler said, “the greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism”.

I certainly cannot argue with that final statement. All of the pieces are in place here: propaganda, pseudo-democracy, and opponents of imperial power. If you've experienced the joys of talking to a hard left Chomskyite, you already know what is coming.

In representative democracy, Cuba is clearly ahead. Cubans have open elections for their National Assembly (as well as their provincial and local assemblies); this assembly then elects the ministers, including a president of the Council of Ministers.

Yes, Cuba has elections. It elected Fidel Castro by a gigantic majority every time. Just like Saddam Hussein won by 99% of the vote in Iraq just before being invaded. Zimbabwe and other nations have elections, too. Every single election watching organization on earth condemns these "elections" as plainly being a sham, as obvious and inescapably rigged. Tim Anderson, however, apparently knows better.

In the US, there is a directly elected Congress and a president indirectly elected through electoral colleges. This president of state then appoints ministers. Yet a majority of the elected US Congress cannot block many presidential “prerogatives”, including the waging of war.

The attempt here is to compare the US Constitution with the Cuban constitution. Like most constitutions (such as the one the USSR had), the Cuban constitution has all manner of wonderful provisions such as guarantees for free speech. The question is not "what does the document say" but rather "does anyone obey or pay it heed?"

It is true that the separation of powers act provides for the President, Congress, and Supreme Court to have different powers that the other branches cannot interfere with. In the case of waging war, Congress alone has the power to declare war officially, but the President has the power to use the military as he sees fit to deal with threats to the United States. This was done deliberately by the founding fathers for a good reason:

Of all the cares or concerns of government, the direction of war most peculiarly demands those qualities which distinguish the exercise of power by a single hand. The direction of war implies the direction of the common strength; and the power of directing and employing the common strength, forms a usual and essential part in the definition of the executive authority.
-Federalist Papers 74 (James Hamilton)

Another reason is revealed by the next statement by Mr Anderson.

So even when the majority of the population and the majority of the Congress oppose a war, the president can still wage it. In the US, then, the elected assembly does not really rule.

Putting aside how silly it is to claim the elected assembly has no power because they do not directly control the military, the reason the Executive branch controls the military is simple: popularity does not indicate right or wrong. If a job needs doing and is the right thing to do, it is irrelevant what public opinion polls state about that action. Not that I'd expect a relativist like Mr Anderson to grasp that concept. What is amusing is that apparently this fellow believes that the President is not elected, and that it is only democracy if the "elected assembly" is in total and unchecked, unquestioned power.

In Cuba, the Constitution (Art 12) repudiates wars of aggression and conquest, and all ministers are accountable to the elected National Assembly. The president of Cuba’s Council of Ministers (falsely called a “dictator” by the imperial US president) is not above the National Assembly and has no power to “veto” a law passed by his country’s National Assembly. In the US, the president can and does veto Congressional laws.

Here we come to the sad part. I don't know if Mr Anderson is unaware of how Cuba runs or if he's aware and doesn't care. Fidel Castro (now Raoul Castro) held absolute power. The assembly had only the power he allowed it. Here's where the rubber hits the road: Fidel Castro controls the military and the police in Cuba as well.

Further, the proposition that a veto negates the power of the congress seems to indicate that the problem Mr Anderson is not with a lack of Democracy but any power at all by the President. What, precisely, is the executive department to do if the President cannot reject bills, cannot control the military, and cannot question Congress? Should congress have no checks or balances, in his opinion?

In the US, eligibility for election to office depends on subscription to one of two giant parties and substantial corporate sponsorship.

In Cuba, there are no electoral parties and there is no corporate sponsorship. The Cuban Communist Party is constitutionally recognised to promote socialist debate and policy, but has no electoral role. Citizens need not be CCP members to be elected, and many are not. National Assembly members (whether they belong to the CCP or not) do not represent any party, but rather their constituencies. The Cuban system bans foreign powers from funding electoral representatives or parties. The US Government, accustomed to foreign intervention, claims this law is “undemocratic”.

Did you catch that? Cuba has no parties... except the Cuban Communist Party. The party has no electoral role... but most of the people in the Assembly are CCP members. The last part is especially cryptic: when has the US Government (assuming this body of various people has a single voice) ever claim that prohibiting foreign parties from funding parties is undemocratic? It is illegal in the United States as well, despite the clear implication otherwise by Mr Anderson.

In the US, millions of people are excluded from voting, either because they have some criminal conviction or they belong to one or other group of second class citizens (for example, Puerto Ricans, who pay tax but have no representative in Congress).

In Cuba, very few are excluded from voting, and well over 90 per cent of the adult population (those over 16 years of age) actually do vote at each election. In the US, voter participation is often around 50 per cent.

Yes, felons, non-citizens, and members of countries that refuse to become states by their own vote cannot vote in the general elections. In Cuba and in the United States, these characteristics are both shared. The fact that this fellow thinks that the voter turnout in a dictatorship is a genuine, actual number is hilarious, to put it mildly.

While there are constitutional civil rights in both countries, these rights are stronger under the Cuban system. Cuban citizens have the constitutional right to employment, food, free education, free health care, housing (including family inheritance), political participation, freedom of expression, personal property and freedom of religion. The Cuban state is constitutionally bound to guarantee these rights.

Indeed, the constitution of Cuba does guarantee these rights, as has that of many a tyranny in the past. The question, again, is whether or not they actually enjoy the exercise of these rights or not. In the case of Cuba, they do not. Cubans do not have free expression, personal property or freedom of religion. The health care is technically free, and so is the food, but as we'll see later, this is not exactly superior to the United States. Nor does it reflect in any slightest way upon the concept of democracy or liberty.

By the constitution, no-one in Cuba can be imprisoned without proper charges, a trial, and the right to a defence (Art 59). Cuba’s “political prisoners” are those who have been convicted of taking money to help overthrow the constitutional system.

By contrast, in the US, thousands of people are held without charge or trial, including several hundred in the illegally occupied section of Cuba, at Guantanamo Bay. The rate of imprisonment in the US, which has more than two million prisoners, is far higher than in Cuba (or indeed any other country). African-Americans are massively over-represented in US jails. Prisoners in the US lose many of their civil rights; prisoners in Cuba keep most of their civil rights.

The fact that thousands of Cubans are in fact imprisoned without any charges, let alone "proper" charges, whatever that means - let alone trial or a defense of any kind seems to elude this man. He describes every single political prisoner as people who were paid to overthrow the regime. Tell that to the ministers who questioned the actions of the government, the citizens who tried to flee the country to America, the people who dared to have a satellite dish or radio tuned to a station that Fidel didn't care for and on and on. Tell that to the people facing actual, real torture in Cuba just miles from Guantanamo Bay which many people released from describe as better than their homes. Again, is he unaware of these people or does he know and simply not care about the truth? Which is worse?

Further, consider this: organizations such as International A.N.S.W.E.R. are funded by foreign bodies and seek to overthrow the government of the United States. In the United States, this is defended by the "right to free speech" he mocks below, they can and do express such ideas freely, without being imprisoned. That's how a real democracy works, ideas can be spoken and printed that the government does not care for.

Institutionalised racial discrimination persisted in the US well into the 1960s. Even today, the gap between formal and effective rights is very great in the US, because there are so few social guarantees.

Cuba, on the other hand, has made great efforts to overcome the denial of effective rights on racial grounds.

This actually made me laugh out loud, literally. First he points out that the US ended the institutionalized racial discrimination in the 1960s, then he says in attempt to contrast that Cuba "has made great efforts" to end denial of rights on racial grounds. The basis for this? The term "social guarantees" which translates as "socialist programs to give things to people." What is amusing is that he claims such guarantees are needed in a nation in which he admits "has permanent wealth." The United States has enjoyed constant comfort, wealth, and growth almost a century, with even low points such as the 1970s with significantly greater economic status than Cuba's best, under Castro, that is.

In the US “freedom of speech” means that a handful of private corporations dominate the mass media.

Other than the Government-owned and run public broadcasting and the thousands of small independent papers run by college students and people putting out their own weekly or daily paper. And the internet. Brush all those aside, please. Also notice, the idea of freedom of speech is considered so laughable he puts it in quotes, as if it's not a real freedom.

In Cuba, the media (television, radio, magazines, newspapers) are all run by public bodies or community organisations. No private individual or investment group can capture or dominate public debate in Cuba. Nor is there mind numbing, commercial advertising.

No advertising other than the government's pro-Castro cheerleading. The saddest part here is that he's attempting to portray the absolute dictatorship controlling every single word that is broadcast from Cuba as being run by "public bodies and community organizations." Yes, Pravda and TASS was run by similar bodies. None of that evil private ownership for Mr Anderson! It's only Democracy if the people have no control over the press or media.

Cuba does not use state power to intervene in the affairs of others or to push international propaganda, but rather sends doctors to more than 60 countries to assist communities which have no medical services. This internationalism, recognised by the World Health Organization, contrasts with US interventionism.

Putting aside the fact that Cuba doesn't have the power or money to engage in much adventurism overseas, Fidel has actually in the past tried to destabilize governments, encourage Marxism, and support men like Venezuela's dictator Hugo Chávez. The United States, naturally, donates nothing to the WHO nor sends doctors to anywhere, particularly after disasters. Just ask the victims of the Tsunami a few years back - or any other worldwide disaster in the last century.

Cuba’s human rights record is far better than that of the US.

What is amusing here is that Anderson actually quotes Amnesty International here as proof of this absurd claim. The fact that Amnesty International has condemned Fidel Castro's brutal regime for four straight decades, citing civil rights violations, human rights degredations, injustice, imprisonment merely because of dissent and murder of Cubans fleeing the island simply seems to elude Mr Anderson. Again.

At this point, Mr Anderson seems to have abandoned the entire thesis of proving Cuba is a paradise of Democratic wonder compared to the United States. The entire concept of democracy is all but forgotten in a series of praises for Cuba and attacks on the United States.

The problem is, he starts with a quizzical basis for this line of argument. He presumes any statement of condemnation of Cuba by the United States is a lie, propaganda, and based entirely in fantasy. In turn, he presumes every single statement the Cuban government makes about the conditions of Cubans and the status of the island is indisputable fact. For instance:

Cuba’s Centre for National Sex Education (CENESEX) since 1989 has pushed sexual tolerance, including acceptance of and support for trans-sexuals. Effective education campaigns and testing has meant that Cuba has the lowest HIV infection rate in the Caribbean region, lower than the US. Since 2001 every HIV positive Cuban has had free access to highly active anti retroviral treatment (HAART). The US has developed strong HIV-AIDS programs, as a result of pressure group lobbying, but access to health services is not guaranteed.

Actually, every doctor and medical care provider in the United States is required to render health care to anyone that needs it by law. However, notice the presumption here: Cuba says there's low HIV, therefore there is. Cuba says anyone who has HIV gets free anti AIDS medicine and treatments, therefore it's true. He then goes into an attack on actual Cubans who fled the regime and have experienced it first hand. They, naturally, could not possibly be right or know anything about what is really going on in the Island.

Now, I'm willing to say that the US Government probably lies or exaggerates about some topics. Is it so unreasonable to say that the Cuban government might be as well? Particularly given the tales told by people who've fled the country and the desperate attempts of people to escape? Couldn't at least some of the things the Cuban Government claims about this paradise be suspect at least?

US backed, Cuban exile “pro-democracy” activists are mostly terrorists, as far as Cubans are concerned. For example in March 2007 the Madrid Municipal Government awarded Cuban exile Carlos Alberto Montaner the “Tolerance Prize” for his writings on Cuba. Yet Montaner is a European-resident fugitive from Cuban justice who has been on the CIA payroll for many years. He is wanted in Cuba for bombings carried out in Cuba, many years ago, and has close links to the Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), which openly backs terrorist attacks on Cuba.

Even the Spanish government is in on the CIA's devious tactic to destroy the paradise that Fidel Castro has created in Cuba! I'm fascinated that Mr Anderson is so familiar with the payment activities of the CIA, but then, I'm sure he was personally assured by the Cuban Government that these facts were all so. And the Communist government in Cuba never lies.

Then he attempts to prove that Cuba is a bastion of freedom by pointing out that there is actually an activist in Cuba who has not yet been arrested!

The Cuban Government has not moved against the celebrated “pro democracy” activist Osvaldo Payá, who was awarded the Andrei Sakharov Prize in 2002 for “Freedom of Thought” following his creation of the “Varela Project”, essentially a petition for small business rights. However Cuban television in December 2005 pointed out that Payá was receiving $1,000 a session for his classes on managing a US-backed “transition” in Cuba, held at the US Office of Interests in Havana. This is a clear breach of Cuban law, but Payá has not been arrested.

Truly, this is the gold standard for freedom. Note: Osvaldo Payá is of course not to be trusted since he promotes regime change in Cuba and thus his calls for the people to be allowed to vote on topics that will extend to them the rights that Americans enjoy are to be disregarded.

In 2005 Australian journalist Paul McGeough feted another CANF and Miami-backed “pro-democracy” activist, Raul Rivero. McGeough asserted that Rivero’s arrest in 2003 “revived memories of the worst Soviet human rights abuses” and claimed that “Rivero's crime was twofold - possession of a typewriter, and a will to dream”. McGeough did not point out that Rivero was convicted of receiving money from the US Office of Interests and the CANF, as part of quite explicit plans to overthrow the constitution and install a foreign-backed regime. Such activity is a crime in every country.

Every country... except the United States, where it happens regularly. The fact that the Cuban government says these things are true means that they objectively are true because the Cuban government would never lie. And the press freedom in Cuba is terrific, just ask Mr Anderson. His criteria?

The US government funds a number of “civil society”, “pro-democracy” and human rights groups, to support the US image of the world. For example, the France-based group Reporters without Borders, backed by the US National Endowment for Democracy, portrays Cuba as the single worst violator of “press freedom” in the Americas. However the International News Safety Institute notes that while no journalists were killed carrying out their work in Cuba over 1996-2006, 21 were killed in the USA, most of them murdered. (Let’s put to one side the 72 others killed in Colombia, 31 in Mexico, 27 in Brazil, 16 in Peru, 13 in Guatemala, and so on.)

None of them were killed by the government. Thus the standard for freedom: the government didn't murder any journalists and one activist has never been jailed. Ironically, that standard of freedom is even more true in the United States. Mr Anderson tries to take up the theme of Democracy again here:

On participatory democracy, the US has very poor credentials. Economic policy is regarded either as “technical”, to be managed by experts, or a province of the private corporations that dominate US social and political life. Consequently there are few debates or participatory initiatives on issues of major public concern, such as health care, access to education and military spending.

Now, to most people, participatory democracy means "voting" which Cuban subjects are unable to engage in except in a mockery of an election. To Mr Anderson, poor participatory democracy means "private citizens are in control of economy!" The horror. The fact that he admits that congress is, in fact, elected by the people and makes decisions on many of these issues simply is irrelevant. Because the president has veto power!

In Cuba, by contrast, there are substantial debates on public policy issues, through the elected assemblies and social organisations. For example, in Cuba’s economic crisis of the 1990s, 18 months were spent debating the introduction of major economic changes such as introducing regulated foreign investment, the development of mass tourism, adjustments to services and taxes, preservation of free health care and education.

How unlike the United States, where congress never meets every single year to discuss economics, taxes, health care, education and many other topics. The difference being that the citizens of the US have input and control over the process by the press, by regular free elections, and by letters and open dissent. You know, like a democracy. Mr Anderson tries to pretend that congress has nothing to do with these elements but even he, I suspect, is not fooled.

In the US, “structural adjustment” was a formula developed by the private banks, adopted at home and enforced in debtor countries. This “technical” formula, comprising privatisation, high interest rates, cuts to social services, user pays regimes, privileges for private investors and exporters, is presented as a “fait accompli”. There is no public inclusion in a policy debate, so communities are forced to react defensively to this “technical” economic policy.

And here we come to the final argument, his attempt to nail the coffin shut on the idea of the US as a democracy. The US goes to war!

There is one final, important reason why the US cannot be a democracy. An imperial ambition drives it to dominate, invade and exploit the resources of other countries. US “defence forces” are almost exclusively deployed abroad and current US “national security” policy contemplates pre-emptive military strikes on more than sixty countries.

How this negates the possibility that the United States is a democracy he does not really ever explain. The fact that people reelected the President in 2004 by the largest popular vote in the history of the nation after a war was started is irrelevant. The US is engaged in imperialism, and as Gore Vidal says, "no imperial project can be mounted in a genuine democracy, or a genuine republic."

Apparently Rome, Greece, and every other democracy and republic in the history of the world were not actually democracies or republics. Because they went to war. And engaging in any military exercise that benefits the nation is "imperialism" by the Vidal and Chomsky lexicon. Never mind that to the rest of the world an empire is a deliberate attempt to conquer and subjugate other nations, making colonies and satellite nations of these sovereign territories. The US has only done this in the 19th century and has no desire to engage in anything of the sort ever again. As Colin Powell put it:

"We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years and we've done this as recently as the last year in Afghanistan and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in"

As opposed to the brutal imperialist United States, clearly no democracy, the freedom loving communist democracy Cuba has never sent troops into other nations. Honest.

Cuba, on the other hand, has never invaded another country. It has only used its defence forces to defend its own people or to support others under attack, such as defending the Angolan and Namibian people from the apartheid South African army, in the 1980s.

Well, OK so they did send troops but it wasn't technically an invasion and, why, that's the test of imperialism! Just ask the French who suffered the brutal invasion of US troops on D-Day and suffer under the imperial American government ever since. Angola, after all, wanted Cuban mercenaries to sweep into the nation and destabilize it while trying to overthrow the government and place communists in charge. That's not imperialism, ala Anderson.

And you knew the end was coming: Cuba has the best health care on the planet, the finest medical facilities and doctors in the history of the world.

Cuba has used its world class health sector to assist other countries. While the US sends thousands of troops to other countries, Cuba sends thousands of doctors. Further, more than 20,000 foreign students are studying medicine in Cuba, on fully-funded Cuban scholarships. This includes nearly 100 US students. This is one more reason why, if the word is to have any meaning, Cuba is a democracy and the US is not.

Yes, the fine medical facilities of Cuba, so capable they flew in European experts to care for Fidel Castro. Just ask Cubans what they think of this health care system. It's such a great place that doctors are fleeing Cuba. If the number of foreign students (from China, Venezuela and other communist nations) is the test of how great an education system is, what does Mr Anderson think of the 500,000+ students from other nations that are studying in the United States? I didn't include the children who fled Cuba in bathtubs, welded-up cars, and cardboard boxes to the US and are now in our schools.

Want to know what Cuba is like? Ask a Cuban. You can find many in Florida, but they are scattered around the United States. Make sure you give them room to spit when you mention Fidel Castro. Check out blogs like Babalu and The Real Cuba. They'll tell you of an island that rations water so heavily that in some areas the people cannot flush their toilets without using up too much, so they crap in plastic bags and throw them out the window. An island where the police bludgeon you for associating with the wrong people. An island where tourists stay at palaces and enjoy the finest health care but the people wait in line for a dirty needle and not enough antibiotics. An island where Fidel proudly and publicly proclaimed he was giving every family a free rice cooker, then fined anyone who hadn't paid for theirs yet. An island with real gulags, not the ones Senator Durbin declared he found at Guantanamo.

Like the news from Iraq, if you ask actual people from the area, you'll get a different tale than what you get from the hard left activists. Imagine that.

Hat tip to Babalu Blog for tipping me off to this story

*UPDATE: Commenter Manuel A. Tellechea at Babalu Blog noted this about the Cuban Constitution, a facet that Mr Anderson did not pass on:

ARTICLE 62. None of the freedoms granted to citizens may be exercised against the provisions of the Constitution and the laws, nor against the existence and objectives of the socialist State, nor against the Cuban people's decision to construct socialism and communism. Violation of this principle is punishable.

Two things stand out: first, the government is presumed to grant freedoms rather than guarantee rights - that language is from the founding fathers and philosophers like Locke, not Marx. In other words, the rights are not considered an inalienable part of the people, they are given to the people by the government. Second, and most critical for the article at hand: anything that interferes with communism negates these freedoms. And this is the escape clause: in the interests of the one-party state, all the rights the constitution guarantees are negated by this clause. Which, uncoincidentally, is exactly what happens in Cuba.

Fisking, Anderson, Cuba, Democracy