SANTO DOMINGO.- President Leonel Fernandez guaranteed Thursday that Dominican Republic won’t suffer from the food crisis that currently affects many parts of the world and announced incentives for farmers, one of the industries that’ll most benefit from the measures.
In a speech the Head of State said luckyly, in Dominican Republic’s case there’s neither scarcity in supplies nor production. "Here there’s no lack of products, instead it’s about an increase in production costs which leads to higher consumer prices."
In that regard the chief executive said farmers must lower production costs and at the same time increase their capacity to produce the main family food staples, and to accomplish it, the Government will incorporate 500,000 tareas (around 315 million square meters) of State-owned lands in short term, joint venture or lease contract, whose production contributes to meet the population’s food demand and feed for livestock, as well as to expand exports.
In addition, to intensify the process to get titles for state lands, especially those of the Agrarian Reform, and to develop cooperatives or associations of small and medium producers so they can access financing and technology.
Another measure Fernandez announced is to bolster the research system and technological innovations to increase productivity and reduce unit costs.
He said the use of biotechnology will be increased in production, farming as well as in the agro-industrial processes, which imply using genetically modified seeds to raise yields and crop quality.
He also affirmed that the incorporation of aggregate value will be increased for primary production.
From: Cuba, it is a secret the censors are looking for me
Why cant they have this kind of production in the workers paradise on that other island
Written by: Belial, 18 Jul 2008 12:13 PM
From: United States, Texas
p. 1 of 2
"Here there’s no lack of products, instead it’s about an increase in production costs which leads to higher consumer prices," the DT quotes LF.
0000
But higher consumer prices translates into a lack of products for consumers.
Yes, in the past, the problem was NOT so much production, but just distribution of products as the 42 percent poverty rate attests. The higher consumer prices increase the poverty rate that persists in alleged "abundance." Today, the DR must improve the system of distribution include all consumers and increase production of food aimed for malnourished domestic market and new foreign markets, especially Venezuela where ample cash awaits.
After LF's talk last night, there can be little doubt that LF knows this and wants to do something about it.
CON'T
Written by: Belial, 18 Jul 2008 12:32 PM
From: United States, Texas
p. 2 of 2
"The chief executive said farmers must lower production costs and at the same time increase their capacity to produce the main family food staples ... the Government will incorporate 500,000 tareas (around 315 million square meters) of State-owned lands, joint venture or lease contract, whose production contributes to meet the population’s food demand and feed for livestock, as well as to expand exports," DT reports.
LF hit the nail on the head.
(1) "Food staples" ... not just the dressings for the rich capitalist countries.
(2) "lower production costs," productivity thing.
(3) Additional "315 million square meters" of farm lands. That makes a big difference.
(4) "Joint venture or lease contract." Doesn't identify the class -- bourgeois, middle class, or proletariat -- which takes extra land. Most likely, bourgeoisie farmers.
(5) "to meet the population’s food demand, feed livestock, as well as to expand exports."
The poor population included.
Written by: rym87, 18 Jul 2008 12:34 PM
From: United States, Ithaca, NY
The problem with this is that the crisis is now and not 2-3 years from now. Increasing food production and innovating to reduce costs will take a few to several years, so such measures will not do anything in the short-term. What the President has proposed is something that should've been done a while ago to ensure stronger resistance to international spikes in food prices and input costs. While this is the right step anyways at this point, it shows that governments typically react to crises as they come rather than think about the future or act early according to anticipation. The agriculture sector is one that has to be consistently sustained and supported, not left alone as food prices abroad fall. It's the only sector where protective policies are justified because food is one of the essential things to quality of life.
Written by: Belial, 18 Jul 2008 12:43 PM
From: United States, Texas
(5) "to meet the population’s food demand, feed livestock, as well as to expand exports."
In the past and present, the DR seems more concerned about feed for livestock than food for the poor layers of society. Of course, the US market for DR food exports was a jealous God.
Hopefully, things will change.
The only weakness in LF's plan is "(4) "Joint venture or lease contract." where everything is loaded in favor of the bourgeois farmers and the capacity of the proletarians to produce enormous mass of food themselves in urban farms is ignored.
From: Cuba, it is a secret the censors are looking for me
would you like to change Belial to the wonderful system they use in cuba where the farmers are not even allowed to own their tools...Belial you should go to cuba because they could use the excessive amount of fertilizer you throw off when you spew
Written by: Belial, 18 Jul 2008 1:01 PM
From: United States, Texas
"The problem with this is that the crisis is now and not 2-3 years from now. Increasing food production and innovating to reduce costs will take a few to several years, so such measures will not do anything in the short-term."
0000
Rym87, good post.
It's amusing to look at time. The crisis is now and was back then.
The poorest layers of the Dominican working class [a lot of people] or, in short, the poor have been in a serious gastro crisis for some time.
Nobody cared whether these people lived or died. And still don't.
What's new is the gastro crisis is spreading from the poor and perennially starving to higher layers of the working class and depressing the gastro consumption of lower layers and even middle layers of the middle class.
LF's plan is designed to leave the poor hungry and restore the standard of living of aristocracy of labor and the bottom of the middle class.
But the poor are watching, sulking, and waiting for a chance to eat.
From: Cuba, it is a secret the censors are looking for me
But the poor are watching, sulking, and waiting for a chance to eat....In cuba where the farmers are not even allowed to own their own tools....Belial you should goto the workers paradise they could use a good source of fertilizer and shoot it out faster than they could shovel it with state owned shovels
Written by: Belial, 18 Jul 2008 1:15 PM
From: United States, Texas
"What the President has proposed is something that should've been done a while ago to ensure stronger resistance to international spikes in food prices and input costs," Rym87 properly sticks with the time side of the issue.
0000
Yes, Rym87, but if something was done back then, it would have put food in the mouths of the poor, something less than a priority.
The others were full. They were fat, sweating and uncaring gluttons unable to rise from the table.
So, they didn't do it, but they, like you say, should have.
They didn't do it because they were too "innocent" about the malice of US and other imperialists, coldbloodedly diverting a third of the world's corn crop from food consumption to fuel production.
They never imagined that the imperialists, in a malnourished world, could be so bestial and degenerate.
The reality still hasn't sunk in. But the gastro crisis is very enlightening.
Written by: Belial, 18 Jul 2008 1:21 PM
From: United States, Texas
"But the poor are watching, sulking, and waiting for a chance to eat....In cuba where the farmers are not even allowed to own their own tools....Belial you should goto the workers paradise they could use a good source of fertilizer and shoot it out faster than they could shovel it with state owned shovels" GC vomits.
oooo
GC, why do you interminably re-introduce the same old lies and rubbish.
Can't you find new lies and rubbish to introduce?
And, on another matter, can't you find a spot with more privacy to perform your excretory activities.
Evidently, you believe the performance here of you excretory activites entertains us.
But neither the sight nor the smell of these activities is in any way amusing.
The proper place to perform these activities is the desk of George W, Bush if you can find a clean spot.
Reportedly, Mr. Bush often dines at his desk. Perhaps he will invite you to a "White" House dinner.
From: Cuba, it is a secret the censors are looking for me
The key to the incentive structure for all agricultural producers in Cuba is the amount of product they are required to deliver to the state, which in turn determines the amount of product they can sell for profit on the open market. Will the state tilt this ratio in favor of farmers and cooperatives, and thereby increase their incentive to produce and their chance to earn higher incomes? And regarding the new municipal-level offices of the agriculture ministry, how much autonomy will these offices have, and what kinds of decisions will they make?
From: Cuba, it is a secret the censors are looking for me
But Cuba produces far below its potential, many of the larger farm cooperatives have never turned a profit, and Cuba’s annual food import bill is now about $1.6 billion. Raul Castro has focused on agriculture – he settled debts to producers and raised prices paid to producers for milk and beef, and he called for broader changes in his speech last July.......The end is near Marxism fails again
Written by: Belial, 18 Jul 2008 1:50 PM
From: United States, Texas
LF hands the bourgeois farmer first shot and chief role in dealing with the growing food crisis.
In a neo-liberal and laissez faire capitalist economy, he had little choice.
Big state farms and proletarian coops, more under his control, would have been a better choice.
But that may not be do-able at this time.
If LF had tried something like this, boureois dogs would stop wagging their tails, bark, growl, howl, and show their hideous teeth, as saliva drops profusely. Then bite.
LF would have become food for the dogs.
Written by: Belial, 18 Jul 2008 2:00 PM
From: United States, Texas
"The key to the incentive structure for all agricultural producers in Cuba is the amount of product they are required to deliver to the state, which in turn determines the amount of product they can sell for profit on the open market. Will the state tilt this ratio in favor of farmers and cooperatives, and thereby increase their incentive to produce and their chance to earn higher incomes? And regarding the new municipal-level offices of the agriculture ministry, how much autonomy will these offices have, and what kinds of decisions will they make?" GC deposits.
oooo
GC, you should deposit or ... better still ... serve these excretions at the desk or table of George W. Bush, your God, because they are his favorite cuisine.
Don't forget to say grace.
From: Cuba, it is a secret the censors are looking for me
Many of the policy changes made so far under Raul Castro involve public investment (the new bus fleet), ending nuisance regulations (pharmacies), or allowing Cubans to buy things previously off-limits (cell phones, hotels, computers, dvd’s). I don’t scoff at these changes, but they are not big economic policy measures geared to generating increased output, jobs, and incomes.
Agriculture seems to be a different story, where the “structural” changes called for by Raul Castro may indeed come into being.
From: Cuba, it is a secret the censors are looking for me
Yes they are ready to admit they were fools and slaves to marxism and now even Rat faced Raul Realizes the error of his ways
Written by: Belial, 18 Jul 2008 8:07 PM
From: United States, Texas
"Many of the policy changes made so far under Raul Castro involve public investment (the new bus fleet), ending nuisance regulations (pharmacies), or allowing Cubans to buy things previously off-limits (cell phones, hotels, computers, dvd’s). I don’t scoff at these changes, but they are not big economic policy measures geared to generating increased output, jobs, and incomes."
oooo
You forgot to say grace, but did you enjoy your meal?
After you ate your full, did you climb up on G. W. Bush's desk and resturned the food you ate.
If so, you can expect another White House dinner invitation is less than two weeks.
From: Cuba, it is a secret the censors are looking for me
kaput......... finito
Written by: Escott, 19 Jul 2008 12:09 PM
From: Dominican Republic, Cabrera and Sosua a 2 days a month for payday
Unlike Belial and many people that post I own a small farm. I bought it in October when I sold my small farm of 6 years. I just finished a 12000 Gallon water storage cistern and a building along with 1000's of ft of stone walls.
I have been producing in quantity Tomatoes, peanuts, ochra, black beans, peppers, Chinola, melons, Watermelon, corn, squash, batata already. I have coming in in the next month probably 20,000 lbs of Yuca and as much Juan Duli as I can pick. In 8 months I will have a Lot of Yautia, plantano, bananas, guayaba, oranges, limons and more..
Too bad posters have no clue as to how fast the land produce. When I purchased the land in October it was an overgrown pasture and looked like crap. It took months just to get in shape.
I have goats and sheep and had many born on the farm already and many due soon.
I wonder which classification belial would classify me as since he has to put a nasty classification even on moderately successful
From: Afghanistan, BAF
congrats escott, people do not realize how much you can grow in a tropical enviroment as opposed to back home where weather is always a gamble. looking forward to getting started myself.
Written by: Belial, 19 Jul 2008 6:43 PM
From: United States, Texas
"I wonder which classification belial would classify me as since he has to put a nasty classification even on moderately successful"
oooo
I believe what you described ... and a lot more ... is within the reach of any proletarian farmer with proletarian entrepreneurial spirit within a socialist climate.
I wouldn't be surprised if the production and productivity of proletarian Cuban farmers matches or exceeds what you say you're doing.
I note you are reticent about marketing, especially in regard to pricing in the food crisis, a topic which everyone, here, will love to listen to.
From: Cuba, it is a secret the censors are looking for me
The announcement on Friday acknowledged the horrible struggle that the country was facing in feeding itself. “For various reasons, there is a considerable percentage of state land sitting vacant, so it must be handed over to individuals or groups as owners or users in an effort to increase production of food and reduce imports,” the government decree said.Raul realizes the people are being ground down by inefficient and dumbass socialist protocol
From: Cuba, it is a secret the censors are looking for me
President Raúl Castro continued his rollout of changes in Cuba on Friday with the start of a plan to boost the island’s sluggish food production by granting private farmers access to up to 99 acres of unused stolen government land.
Cuba stole land from most large-scale farmers after the 1959 revolution; the latest announcement in the Communist Party newspaper Granma stopped well short of a return to pre-revolution private enterprise.
From: Cuba, it is a secret the censors are looking for me
Mr. Castro took over provisionally for his ailing brother, Fidel, in July 2006.just a little nepotism But he has begun putting his own stamp on the country only since February, when he formally became the second president of Cuba in the last half century good argument for term limits. In recent months, he has allowed Cubans with enough money to buy cellphones and computers and the marvellous rice cookers, which had previously been restricted. He has allowed them to rent cars and visit tourist hotels and opened up the possibility of private taxis.for neurosurgeons who drive them And he has taken the limits off state salaries, allowing for productivity bonuses.in practically worthless Cuban pesos
Where he has stood firm is on political dissent, continuing his brother’s insistence that overt criticism of the system and government amounted to disloyalty.and the dissenters would be shot or worse be forced to listen to old Fidel speeches
Written by: Belial, 19 Jul 2008 7:09 PM
From: United States, Texas
"Yes they are ready to admit they were fools and slaves to marxism and now even Rat faced Raul Realizes the error of his ways," GC babbles stupidly.
oooo
You of course mean the "error" giving the Cuban people the highest standard of living in LA/C if you deign to use housing, nutrition, education, and health care as the chief indicators of living standards for poor countries, whether capitalist or socialist.
If giving Cuban people the highest standard of living in the region is an "error," nobody in Cuba ... except imperiailist mercenaries running in and out of the US Interest Section in Havana with their pockes bulging with dollars ... wants this "error" corrected.
From: Cuba, it is a secret the censors are looking for me
Raul also advises glorious news from our brothers in Zimbabwe. After Comrade Mugabe took the main means of agriculture and production away from the hated evil White Christian Male and redistributed them to the poor suffering hard working native population of Zimbabwe, glorious things have been happening! It is proof positive how the evil hated white kapitalist pig dog christian male scum have oppressed peoples for far too long, and how once liberated from this oppression, they can achieve more and be better workers and citizens than the evil hated white kapitalist pig dog chirstian scum.
Written by: Belial, 19 Jul 2008 7:30 PM
From: United States, Texas
"But he has begun putting his own stamp on the country only since February," GC flies like angel out of the gate of Hell.
oooo
Good old Raul.
He knows what a special period is and means.
He knows how to endure one.
Cuba is spending too much on food and energy.
Some measures that appeared in the special period will temporarily return.
Aren't your attentions, GC, misplaced?
GC can't see the whole financial system of US captialism is infested by insolvent companies, banks. and firms, including most of the industry leaders. If the US finanical system collapses, the US capitalism collapses. If US capitalism collapse, the ripples will spread worldwide, including to the DR.
While US capitlalism veers toward collapse, you, GC, mastubate yourself violently, using fantasies about a counter-revolution in Cuba to excite your lust for yourself.
Aren't your attentions misplaced?
From: Afghanistan, BAF
I miss the cold war , at least we got to ferret the communist out and ruin their lives at home or slaughter their filthy kind for sport overseas.... Ahh sweet Nastalgia
From: Cuba, it is a secret the censors are looking for me
The chicken choker accuses me of self abuse....How dare he.....we have not seen babbling belial shooting of his mouth today about collapsing oil prices ...he must be very depressed ...but then think how the quarter wit hugo feels ...he will lose all his new friends...they wont need him anymore....it is the used condom treatment again for him
From: Cuba, it is a secret the censors are looking for me
Pappy ..you know what they say about Nostalgia ?..............It aint what it used to be
Written by: Belial, 19 Jul 2008 8:08 PM
From: United States, Texas
Two big differences exist between the special period which was in large part was a food-energy crisis and the current food and energy crises in Cuba.
(1) The stunningly successful urban farms by which the workers largely feed themselves.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/20....B-FEA-GEN-Cuba-Farming-Havana.phpThe urban farms began during the special period, but they didn't grow into a stunning success until later.
"WHAT: How does Havana feed its population? What strategies and models have been implemented? And how is the non-profit sector supporting the efforts to increase food security? With a population of 2.4 million people, Havana is providing for its citizens by growing 54% of its food supply in the city limits. Urban agriculture takes many forms in Havana patio gardens, school gardens, organoponicos and cooperatives."
http://pollenatrix.blogspot.com/2004_01_01_pollenatrix_archive.htmlOnly philistines, like the dense GC, underestimate the city farms.
Written by: Belial, 19 Jul 2008 8:12 PM
From: United States, Texas
(2) The alliance between Cuba and Venezuela in energy and other spheres.
From: Cuba, it is a secret the censors are looking for me
they will be circling the collective drain together....ha ha
From: Cuba, it is a secret the censors are looking for me
Raul and Hugo together like a couple of old queens ...going down on the sinking ship ...and god only knows what else
Written by: Belial, 19 Jul 2008 8:38 PM
From: United States, Texas
"By the end of 2000, food availability in Cuba reached daily levels of 2600 calories and more than 68 grams of protein (the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) considers 2400 calories and 72 grams of protein per day to be sufficient)."
http://www.cubaagriculture.com/agriculture-today.htmToday, 8 years later, Cuba is far above the minimum FAO recommended allowance for calories and protein. No other LA/C countries equals or exceeds Cuba's outstanding performance in the UN nutrition indices.
But many other LA/C countries are falling further and further short of the minimum caloric and protein allowances, even before the current food crisis.
But pro-bourgeois slime and capitalist trash still recommend that Cuba abandon its successful socialist policies in food and nutrition and adopt the failed policies of poor starving capitalist countries in LA/C whose people consume far less than the FAO's minimum allowances.
From: Cuba, it is a secret the censors are looking for me
With regard to defections, compare the number of defections from a true Socialist state with the number of defections from the United States. Every year, thousands of Americans leave the United States -- permanently. And would you care to guess how many citizens leave North Korea? Almost none.
Written by: Belial, 19 Jul 2008 9:06 PM
From: United States, Texas
GC, you stupidly recommend ag policies that have failed dismally all over LA/C and where they have occasionally succeeded in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and the DR, they have not resulted in nutrition levels for the peoples of these countries that even equal, not to mention exceed, the nutrition levels of the Cuban people relative to calories or protein.
Resume your babbling about irrelevancies.
You have nothing else to talk about.
From: Cuba, it is a secret the censors are looking for me
I recommend no ag policy what are you talking about fool...dont you know how to read.....spewing that party line stuff has finally flipped you out... The Castro dictatorship can lock its opponents away in its gulag. But it cannot always make them shut up, for prison is not just a form of punishment, it is another venue for their message that Cuba is not free. Their continued opposition to the regime exposes them to even harsher treatment, but it also reveals the character of the men and women on the front lines in the struggle for liberty.
One of those men who has courageously taken his fight to the gulag is Aurelio Antonio Morales Ayala.
From: Cuba, it is a secret the censors are looking for me
In January, Morales and other prisoners at the Combinado de Guantánamo prison were punished after they refused to attend a concert by Cuban folk singer Castroite troubadour Silvio Rodriguez. Rodriguez was touring the Cuban prison system and preaching some sort of twisted message that Cuban prisoners were fortunate to be in prison, or some other such nonsense.
And last month, Morales and several other prisoners at Combinado de Guantánamo were dispersed across the island, after they sparked anti-government protests by inmates. Guards beat the ringleaders, and then sent them to other jails. Morales was transferred to the Guanajay prison in Havana province, where on July 11 he started a hunger strike protest.
From: Cuba, it is a secret the censors are looking for me
Another political prisoner, Héctor Raúl Valle Hernández, told human rights activist/independent journalist Juan Carlos González Leiva, that Morales started his hunger strike to protest mistreatment by prison officials. Family members have been unable to visit him, and he currently is forced to sleep on the floor, with the bugs and the rats, in a punishment cell.
I could not find much about Morales's background, except that before his imprisonment he worked as a human rights activist. Gonzalez's report states that he currently is serving a 33-month sentence for the supposed crime of "disobedience," although other reports say he is serving a sentence of almost twice that.
From: Cuba, it is a secret the censors are looking for me
and yes Senor Raw Sewage how about Jorge Ramírez Calderón, who on July 10 was sentenced to 2 years in prison on a charge of "disrespecting of authority," after he intervened on behalf of a street vendor being abused by police officers in front of Ramírez's house a week earlier. Only four of Ramírez's relatives were allowed to attend the otherwise secret trial in a Trinidad courtroom. Ramírez, a member of the 30th of November Democratic Party, carried out a hunger strike from his arrest on July 4 to the day of his trial, to protest the obvious injustice.
From: Cuba, it is a secret the censors are looking for me
you ratfink belial you support those people that run the gulag you are a creep
Written by: Belial, 19 Jul 2008 10:08 PM
From: United States, Texas
"I recommend no ag policy what are you talking about fool..."
oooo
Given the worthlessness of what you have said, you may be right.
How high do you intend to pile the lies you're telling?
From: Cuba, it is a secret the censors are looking for me
Why the big switch to agriculture out of fossil fuels belial ? things not going your way
Written by: Belial, 20 Jul 2008 2:24 PM
From: United States, Texas
"Why the big switch to agriculture out of fossil fuels belial ? things not going your way "
oooo
One of the terrific economies of large scale urban farming, supplying over 50% of Cuba's produce and 90% of Havana's, is that urban farms eliminate the need for huge amounts of costly gasoline and diesel to transport crops to the market.
Examine the two pictures, here.
http://www.cubaagriculture.com/agriculture-today.htmThe top picture shows a urban farm in front of a two 10-story high-rise apartment buildings.
BETWEEN the farm and the high-rises are stalls or booths, enjoying the shade from nearby trees, where produce is sold to the apartment dwellers and other customers.
So, fuel isn't wasted either by bringing crops to market or by the consumer traveling to purchase food.
Why big switch out of gas and diesel?
It's rational and results in a higher rate of productivity of labor.
Farm is even closer to the high-rise in the lower picture.
Written by: Belial, 20 Jul 2008 2:37 PM
From: United States, Texas
If you look at the top picture again.
http://www.cubaagriculture.com/agriculture-today.htmFocus on the roofs of the two high-rises.
There are likely urban farms up there too.
A large protion of Havana's urban farms are on roofs.
A proletariat steadily approaching self-sufficiency in food in the last thing that Dominican bourgeoisie and the US imperialists want to see in the DR, a prime piece of the imperial backyard, even if the bourgeois farmers in the DR have ready export markets for most of their crops before the food crisis and, surely, doing the crisis.
Whether the workers in the DR eat depends on the will of the bourgeoisie and the servility of the workers to the bourgeoisie.
If the DR workers refuse to bow before the rich, the bourgeosie will cut off food supplies ... in a second ... to teach the workers a lesson in capitalism.
Written by: Belial, 20 Jul 2008 2:56 PM
From: United States, Texas
GC, most criminals who get out of Cuban prisons and get to Miami where they belong don't tell your lies about life in Cuban prisons. Your lies come the lie factories of Radio Marti and TV Marti, both propaganda mercenaries are 100% funded by the imperialist regime in Washington.
The abuses, torture, and atrocities that you describe occur in US prisons holding 2,000,000 people in the USA and in US concentration camps outside of the USA, including Guantanamo, holding 500,000 people, most of the latter are not even charged with a crime.
They're "suspects."
From: Cuba, it is a secret the censors are looking for me
Wrong again o buzzard breathed commie and you know it ....you think you can silence the Cuban people with some cheesy chinese rice cookers ...wrong again you swine faced socialist
From: Cuba, it is a secret the censors are looking for me
Castro has ruled Cuba during 10 U.S. presidencies and longer than the Soviet Union ruled Eastern Europe. The Economist has called him "a Caribbean King Lear." Raging on his island heath, with nothing to celebrate except his endurance, his creativity has come down to this: He has added a category to the taxonomy of world regimes — government by costume party. Useful at last, the Comandante, dressed for success in his military fatigues, presides over a museum of Marxism
Written by: Belial, 20 Jul 2008 3:34 PM
From: United States, Texas
I'll remain on topic, thank you.
GC, I notice that most of the upper parts of your brother body, in the picture above, are grey.
But his underbelly is white.
Is the grey dirt or his real color?
Perhaps, the he is grinning because he just finished playing or wallowing in the dirt.
The color of the ground, on which he stands, perfectly matches the upper parts of his body.
From: Cuba, it is a secret the censors are looking for me
the Cuban government tells a whopper. Orchestrating lies is the specialty of police states. Anyone who has ever listened to Radio Havana or watched a Cuban TV ”news” program knows that Cuban leaders lie to their own people and lie to the outside world. They even lie to each other. But sometimes the lie is so blatant, so malign, so far removed from the painful reality of life in Cuba that it must be refuted, for the sake of common decency if nothing else.
That’s the case with Raúl Castro’s recent claim that there has not been ”one sole case of torture” in Cuba. Even by Cuba’s standards, this is an astonishing falsehood, a lie of such outsized proportions that even Raúl Castro should have been ashamed to utter it.
From: Cuba, it is a secret the censors are looking for me
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez heads to Moscow today to shop for tanks, air defense systems and other weaponry as Latin America's arms race quickens amid signs that his regional influence is waning. The war mongering low grade moron continues to waste his peoples money on military equipment ..The two old commie queens Raul and Huey show is a spectacle
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"Here there’s no lack of products, instead it’s about an increase in production costs which leads to higher consumer prices," the DT quotes LF.
0000
But higher consumer prices translates into a lack of products for consumers.
Yes, in the past, the problem was NOT so much production, but just distribution of products as the 42 percent poverty rate attests. The higher consumer prices increase the poverty rate that persists in alleged "abundance." Today, the DR must improve the system of distribution include all consumers and increase production of food aimed for malnourished domestic market and new foreign markets, especially Venezuela where ample cash awaits.
After LF's talk last night, there can be little doubt that LF knows this and wants to do something about it.
CON'T
"The chief executive said farmers must lower production costs and at the same time increase their capacity to produce the main family food staples ... the Government will incorporate 500,000 tareas (around 315 million square meters) of State-owned lands, joint venture or lease contract, whose production contributes to meet the population’s food demand and feed for livestock, as well as to expand exports," DT reports.
LF hit the nail on the head.
(1) "Food staples" ... not just the dressings for the rich capitalist countries.
(2) "lower production costs," productivity thing.
(3) Additional "315 million square meters" of farm lands. That makes a big difference.
(4) "Joint venture or lease contract." Doesn't identify the class -- bourgeois, middle class, or proletariat -- which takes extra land. Most likely, bourgeoisie farmers.
(5) "to meet the population’s food demand, feed livestock, as well as to expand exports."
The poor population included.
In the past and present, the DR seems more concerned about feed for livestock than food for the poor layers of society. Of course, the US market for DR food exports was a jealous God.
Hopefully, things will change.
The only weakness in LF's plan is "(4) "Joint venture or lease contract." where everything is loaded in favor of the bourgeois farmers and the capacity of the proletarians to produce enormous mass of food themselves in urban farms is ignored.
0000
Rym87, good post.
It's amusing to look at time. The crisis is now and was back then.
The poorest layers of the Dominican working class [a lot of people] or, in short, the poor have been in a serious gastro crisis for some time.
Nobody cared whether these people lived or died. And still don't.
What's new is the gastro crisis is spreading from the poor and perennially starving to higher layers of the working class and depressing the gastro consumption of lower layers and even middle layers of the middle class.
LF's plan is designed to leave the poor hungry and restore the standard of living of aristocracy of labor and the bottom of the middle class.
But the poor are watching, sulking, and waiting for a chance to eat.
0000
Yes, Rym87, but if something was done back then, it would have put food in the mouths of the poor, something less than a priority.
The others were full. They were fat, sweating and uncaring gluttons unable to rise from the table.
So, they didn't do it, but they, like you say, should have.
They didn't do it because they were too "innocent" about the malice of US and other imperialists, coldbloodedly diverting a third of the world's corn crop from food consumption to fuel production.
They never imagined that the imperialists, in a malnourished world, could be so bestial and degenerate.
The reality still hasn't sunk in. But the gastro crisis is very enlightening.
oooo
GC, why do you interminably re-introduce the same old lies and rubbish.
Can't you find new lies and rubbish to introduce?
And, on another matter, can't you find a spot with more privacy to perform your excretory activities.
Evidently, you believe the performance here of you excretory activites entertains us.
But neither the sight nor the smell of these activities is in any way amusing.
The proper place to perform these activities is the desk of George W, Bush if you can find a clean spot.
Reportedly, Mr. Bush often dines at his desk. Perhaps he will invite you to a "White" House dinner.
In a neo-liberal and laissez faire capitalist economy, he had little choice.
Big state farms and proletarian coops, more under his control, would have been a better choice.
But that may not be do-able at this time.
If LF had tried something like this, boureois dogs would stop wagging their tails, bark, growl, howl, and show their hideous teeth, as saliva drops profusely. Then bite.
LF would have become food for the dogs.
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GC, you should deposit or ... better still ... serve these excretions at the desk or table of George W. Bush, your God, because they are his favorite cuisine.
Don't forget to say grace.
Agriculture seems to be a different story, where the “structural” changes called for by Raul Castro may indeed come into being.
oooo
You forgot to say grace, but did you enjoy your meal?
After you ate your full, did you climb up on G. W. Bush's desk and resturned the food you ate.
If so, you can expect another White House dinner invitation is less than two weeks.
I have been producing in quantity Tomatoes, peanuts, ochra, black beans, peppers, Chinola, melons, Watermelon, corn, squash, batata already. I have coming in in the next month probably 20,000 lbs of Yuca and as much Juan Duli as I can pick. In 8 months I will have a Lot of Yautia, plantano, bananas, guayaba, oranges, limons and more..
Too bad posters have no clue as to how fast the land produce. When I purchased the land in October it was an overgrown pasture and looked like crap. It took months just to get in shape.
I have goats and sheep and had many born on the farm already and many due soon.
I wonder which classification belial would classify me as since he has to put a nasty classification even on moderately successful
oooo
I believe what you described ... and a lot more ... is within the reach of any proletarian farmer with proletarian entrepreneurial spirit within a socialist climate.
I wouldn't be surprised if the production and productivity of proletarian Cuban farmers matches or exceeds what you say you're doing.
I note you are reticent about marketing, especially in regard to pricing in the food crisis, a topic which everyone, here, will love to listen to.
President Raúl Castro continued his rollout of changes in Cuba on Friday with the start of a plan to boost the island’s sluggish food production by granting private farmers access to up to 99 acres of unused stolen government land.
Cuba stole land from most large-scale farmers after the 1959 revolution; the latest announcement in the Communist Party newspaper Granma stopped well short of a return to pre-revolution private enterprise.
Where he has stood firm is on political dissent, continuing his brother’s insistence that overt criticism of the system and government amounted to disloyalty.and the dissenters would be shot or worse be forced to listen to old Fidel speeches
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You of course mean the "error" giving the Cuban people the highest standard of living in LA/C if you deign to use housing, nutrition, education, and health care as the chief indicators of living standards for poor countries, whether capitalist or socialist.
If giving Cuban people the highest standard of living in the region is an "error," nobody in Cuba ... except imperiailist mercenaries running in and out of the US Interest Section in Havana with their pockes bulging with dollars ... wants this "error" corrected.
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Good old Raul.
He knows what a special period is and means.
He knows how to endure one.
Cuba is spending too much on food and energy.
Some measures that appeared in the special period will temporarily return.
Aren't your attentions, GC, misplaced?
GC can't see the whole financial system of US captialism is infested by insolvent companies, banks. and firms, including most of the industry leaders. If the US finanical system collapses, the US capitalism collapses. If US capitalism collapse, the ripples will spread worldwide, including to the DR.
While US capitlalism veers toward collapse, you, GC, mastubate yourself violently, using fantasies about a counter-revolution in Cuba to excite your lust for yourself.
Aren't your attentions misplaced?
(1) The stunningly successful urban farms by which the workers largely feed themselves.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/20....B-FEA-GEN-Cuba-Farming-Havana.php
The urban farms began during the special period, but they didn't grow into a stunning success until later.
"WHAT: How does Havana feed its population? What strategies and models have been implemented? And how is the non-profit sector supporting the efforts to increase food security? With a population of 2.4 million people, Havana is providing for its citizens by growing 54% of its food supply in the city limits. Urban agriculture takes many forms in Havana patio gardens, school gardens, organoponicos and cooperatives."
http://pollenatrix.blogspot.com/2004_01_01_pollenatrix_archive.html
Only philistines, like the dense GC, underestimate the city farms.
http://www.cubaagriculture.com/agriculture-today.htm
Today, 8 years later, Cuba is far above the minimum FAO recommended allowance for calories and protein. No other LA/C countries equals or exceeds Cuba's outstanding performance in the UN nutrition indices.
But many other LA/C countries are falling further and further short of the minimum caloric and protein allowances, even before the current food crisis.
But pro-bourgeois slime and capitalist trash still recommend that Cuba abandon its successful socialist policies in food and nutrition and adopt the failed policies of poor starving capitalist countries in LA/C whose people consume far less than the FAO's minimum allowances.
With regard to defections, compare the number of defections from a true Socialist state with the number of defections from the United States. Every year, thousands of Americans leave the United States -- permanently. And would you care to guess how many citizens leave North Korea? Almost none.
Resume your babbling about irrelevancies.
You have nothing else to talk about.
One of those men who has courageously taken his fight to the gulag is Aurelio Antonio Morales Ayala.
And last month, Morales and several other prisoners at Combinado de Guantánamo were dispersed across the island, after they sparked anti-government protests by inmates. Guards beat the ringleaders, and then sent them to other jails. Morales was transferred to the Guanajay prison in Havana province, where on July 11 he started a hunger strike protest.
I could not find much about Morales's background, except that before his imprisonment he worked as a human rights activist. Gonzalez's report states that he currently is serving a 33-month sentence for the supposed crime of "disobedience," although other reports say he is serving a sentence of almost twice that.
oooo
Given the worthlessness of what you have said, you may be right.
How high do you intend to pile the lies you're telling?
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One of the terrific economies of large scale urban farming, supplying over 50% of Cuba's produce and 90% of Havana's, is that urban farms eliminate the need for huge amounts of costly gasoline and diesel to transport crops to the market.
Examine the two pictures, here.
http://www.cubaagriculture.com/agriculture-today.htm
The top picture shows a urban farm in front of a two 10-story high-rise apartment buildings.
BETWEEN the farm and the high-rises are stalls or booths, enjoying the shade from nearby trees, where produce is sold to the apartment dwellers and other customers.
So, fuel isn't wasted either by bringing crops to market or by the consumer traveling to purchase food.
Why big switch out of gas and diesel?
It's rational and results in a higher rate of productivity of labor.
Farm is even closer to the high-rise in the lower picture.
http://www.cubaagriculture.com/agriculture-today.htm
Focus on the roofs of the two high-rises.
There are likely urban farms up there too.
A large protion of Havana's urban farms are on roofs.
A proletariat steadily approaching self-sufficiency in food in the last thing that Dominican bourgeoisie and the US imperialists want to see in the DR, a prime piece of the imperial backyard, even if the bourgeois farmers in the DR have ready export markets for most of their crops before the food crisis and, surely, doing the crisis.
Whether the workers in the DR eat depends on the will of the bourgeoisie and the servility of the workers to the bourgeoisie.
If the DR workers refuse to bow before the rich, the bourgeosie will cut off food supplies ... in a second ... to teach the workers a lesson in capitalism.
The abuses, torture, and atrocities that you describe occur in US prisons holding 2,000,000 people in the USA and in US concentration camps outside of the USA, including Guantanamo, holding 500,000 people, most of the latter are not even charged with a crime.
They're "suspects."
Castro has ruled Cuba during 10 U.S. presidencies and longer than the Soviet Union ruled Eastern Europe. The Economist has called him "a Caribbean King Lear." Raging on his island heath, with nothing to celebrate except his endurance, his creativity has come down to this: He has added a category to the taxonomy of world regimes — government by costume party. Useful at last, the Comandante, dressed for success in his military fatigues, presides over a museum of Marxism
GC, I notice that most of the upper parts of your brother body, in the picture above, are grey.
But his underbelly is white.
Is the grey dirt or his real color?
Perhaps, the he is grinning because he just finished playing or wallowing in the dirt.
The color of the ground, on which he stands, perfectly matches the upper parts of his body.
That’s the case with Raúl Castro’s recent claim that there has not been ”one sole case of torture” in Cuba. Even by Cuba’s standards, this is an astonishing falsehood, a lie of such outsized proportions that even Raúl Castro should have been ashamed to utter it.