Cuba's Own Craigslist

Local papaer, Miami Times article Cuba's black market moves online with Revolico-com talks about the emerging internet marketplace in Havana. Taking the online classifieds concept pioneered by Craigslist to country with an onerous command economy, and very likely making it even more obsolete.

The article describes Mateo a home mechanics experience

One of his three kids, 23-year-old Manuel, wanted to join some friends on a trip to the north coast. For months, father and son tried to unload some expensive rims to raise money. Though Manuel thought they were worth 300 pesos — about $325 — no one was biting.

"Dad," Manuel finally said, "have you heard about Revolico?"

Revolico? In Cuban slang, it means "a mess." Mateo had no idea what his boy was talking about.

So Manuel took his father to the house of a friend, an engineer with spotty Internet access at home. They logged onto revolico.com and discovered a capitalist Valhalla. There was everything for sale: cars, tires, motorcycles, diapers, cell phones, laptops, massages, Chinese lessons.

Cuba: Has Castro Educated His People??

Education and The Cuban Revolution, educational paradise? Fraud?

First of all, well before Castro, Cuba had one of the most educated populations in Latin America at all levels, with literacy numbers at 1st world levels.

So Castro was hardly starting w/a population of illiterates. And thanks to his exiling a sizeable percentage of the population he has had a smaller number of kids to educate, (think in terms of freeing up resources - #'s of classrooms, teachers, budget per pupil)

That being said, what credit he is due, is in improving the education of the small percentage of the rural and urban poor who traditionally had little access to education.
And in a larger sense, increasing the quality and intensity of the education available to most Cubans. Ideology aside, there is something worth studying about how Cuba has managed to produce the numbers of university grads in technical fields it has produced. Students whose preparation in key subjects like math, started well in elementary schools. Their soviet-style sports and arts programs are first rate: Miami's Junior College chess team is tops in the US thanks to its Cubans. Listen to how well spoken "El Duque" Hernandez or other Cuban pro's are compared to other latin ballplayers.
And in general, their primary and secondary schools seem to do a pretty good job. I talk a lot to everyday Cubans educated on the island, some very recent arrivals. From kids to professors, they all come out with a high level of education, extremely well spoken, impecable Spanish grammar.

Then again all these achievements are wasted, due to the inherently irrational and perverse nature of Socialism/Collectivism. Castro educates his population, produces a huge number of professionals in valuable professions. But then your system underpays this valuable human capital. To the point where women doctors would rather prostitute themselves, engineers drive cabs, and technicians take a flimsy raft to Florida. All this human capital, leaves or produces little on the island. Joins the millions of Cubans - valuable human capital - who have added Billions to the US economy.

That is called stupid.

CUBA: New Evidence on East German Stasi - Cuba Links

Como Stasi?

Castro's Cuba was an eager adopter of anything Communist Block. Under Soviet "nation building", where everyone has the same system, and speaks the same version of Marxist-Leninist jargon, all sorts of practices transfered over quite easily. The Miami Herald finds, there is new evidence of how the most sinister aspects of Eastern Block rule made their way to Cuba.

Recently found East German documents show the tight relationship between Castro's Ministry of the Interior and the Stasi East German Secret police. Honnecker and Castro had a natural affinity, a relationship that lasted right up to the day the Wall fell. East Germany was a repressive bastion of orthodoxy till the bitter end, the dreaded Stasi with German efficiency kept the population in line. It is hardly surprising that Castro wanted his Interior Ministry patterned on the Eastern Blocks most dreaded secret police.

''East Germany had a major role in building up Cuban counterintelligence as well as its foreign intelligence services, providing training for decades . . . right up to the final days of East Germany,'' said Chris Simmon, a career U.S. counterintelligence officer and expert on Cuban intelligence.

Basically, Cuba's system of State Security was patterned closely on that of a system, who employed hundreds of thousands of informants to keep track on dissidents and everyday citizens.

''The repressive system that existed in East Germany . . . is the same one that exists today in Cuba,'' he says. ``What MININT learned from the Stasi has not been forgotten. On the contrary, [the strategies and techniques] are alive today despite the fall of the Berlin Wall.''

Amazing, Cuba is still a one party dictatorship ruled by the Communist Parts, and committed to Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy by its own admission. With a Stasi-trained secret police repressing its people, its hard to not call the place a totalitarian police state.

EVO WATCH: Morales Meets With Mr. Humanitarian" Castro

OH BROTHER

Noah Rudovsky / AP Photo

Bolivia's leader, who describes himself as "very much an admirer of Fidel" meets with his hero for nearly 3 hours. According to the Miami Herald Evo left the nearly 3 hour meeting feeling "very satisfied," after an "intense and productive" meeting Morales told state media before boarding his flight home Thursday night. He found the aged dictator "fairly recovered" from his health woes.

And what did the Marxist-Leninist tyrant and his eager coca-growing disciple talk about? Evo on Cuban TV, seen here in Miami on Jaime Bayly's TV show, and reported by the Nuevo Herald they talked about "advances in the integration....through the so-called "Bolivarian Alternative For The America's" Where Bolivia - whose trade with the island was worth about 10,000 dollars last year- and Cuba will become "solidarity" trade partners.
But above all and due to Castro's "preocupations with life and with humanity" they discussed "energy, about economic development of countries, about health, and above all,thinking about all of humanity, on the environment."

This is hilarious stuff. A leader of a democratic country jets off -hopefully on Chavez dime- to visit the longest running dictator of Latin America, who has pretty much ravaged his country economically. To talk about global warming, development, and healthcare. The only good advice Castro can give about 3rd World Development is to do completely opposite to what he did. You do not learn economics from Marxists, the only thing they know how to do is destroy them. And Bolivia's economy is based on gas, the only gas Castro knows about, is the one that rises up from his colostomy bag.