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Jobless in Cuba? Communism faces the unthinkable
By ANNE-MARIE GARCIA (AP) – 1 day ago
HAVANA — At a state project to refurbish a decaying building in Old Havana, one worker paints a wall white while two others watch. A fourth sleeps in a wheelbarrow positioned in a sliver of shade nearby and two more smoke and chat on the curb.
President Raul Castro has startled the nation lately by saying about one in five Cuban workers may be redundant. At the work site on Obispo street, those numbers run in reverse.
It's a common sight in communist Cuba. Here, nearly everyone works for the state and official unemployment is minuscule, but pay is so low that Cubans like to joke that "the state pretends to pay us and we pretend to work."
Now, facing a severe budget deficit, the government has hinted at restructuring or trimming its bloated work force. Such talk is causing tension, however, in a country where the words "neoliberal job cuts" are sacrilege and guaranteed employment was a building block of the 1959 revolution that swept Fidel Castro to power.
Details are sketchy on how and when such pruning would take place. Still, acknowledgment that cuts are needed has come from Raul Castro himself.
"We know that there are hundreds of thousands of unnecessary workers on the budget and labor books, and some analysts calculate that the excess of jobs has surpassed 1 million," said Castro, who replaced his ailing brother Fidel as president nearly four years ago. Cuba's work force totals 5.1 million, in a population of 11.2 million.
In his nationally televised speech in April, Castro also had harsh words for those who do little to deserve their salaries.
"Without people feeling the need to work to make a living, sheltered by state regulations that are excessively paternalistic and irrational, we will never stimulate a love for work," he said.
Indeed, the process of labor reform may already have started, albeit slowly.
Workers in the tourism sector say some of their colleagues have been furloughed during the lean summer months, while others have been reassigned to jobs on state-run farms.
"Since we are now in the low season, the hotel where I work has sent many workers home for two or three months," said Orlando, a chef in Varadero, a sand-and-surf enclave east of Havana.
"It's very hard because you're left with no salary at all," said Orlando, who like almost all state employees, didn't want his full name used to prevent problems at work. Unemployment benefits don't exist in Cuba. He added, "I'm lucky since I'm still in my job."
Veronica, a receptionist at another Varadero hotel, said she feared she may be sent home in August, when her resort will be only half-occupied.
"Sometimes they offer alternatives, to study in a particular course or another job," she said, "but sometimes, when (workers) are sent into the agricultural sector for instance, they just quit."
With the government giving no details of its thinking, rumors have spread that as many as a fourth of all government workers in some industries could lose their jobs or be moved to farming or construction. But Labor Minister Margarita Gonzalez has promised that "Cuba will not employ massive firings in a manner similar to neoliberal cutbacks."
The government has moved to embrace some small free-market reforms. It handed some barbershops over to employees, allowing them to set their own prices but making them pay rent and buy their own supplies. Authorities have also approved more licenses for private taxis while getting tough on unlicensed ones.
The global financial crisis, and the $10 billion in damage inflicted by three hurricanes in 2008, have forced authorities to run a deficit of 5 percent of GDP, leaving them unable to pay back credits received from China and elsewhere.
Cuba slashed spending on importing food and other basics by 34 percent to $9.6 billion in 2009, from $12.7 billion the previous year. But so far, the moves have not been enough to rein in the deficit.
Carmelo Mesa-Lago, a Cuba economics expert and professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh, said Cuban officials have spent months debating cuts in the labor force and economic reforms. He said they know what's needed, but face "a problem of political viability."
Various government perks like cars, gas, uniforms and office supplies have become incentives to bloat the payroll, since they are based on the size of a company's work force.
But low pay means low productivity. On Obispo street, a state-run cafeteria sells heavily subsidized soft ice cream and pork sandwiches for the equivalent of a few American pennies — meaning wages and tips are so tiny that the staff is completely indifferent toward customers.
Three waiters sit at the counter cracking jokes. A fourth is the only one working, making coffee for three tables. Nearby, a cashier stares into space, a cook flirts with a scantily clad teen and a supervisor sits idly by.
The state employs 95 percent of the official work force. Unemployment last year was 1.7 percent and hasn't risen above 3 percent in eight years — but that ignores thousands of Cubans who aren't looking for jobs that pay monthly salaries worth only $20 a month on average.
Salvador Valdes Mesa, secretary-general of the nearly 3 million-strong Cuban Workers Confederation — the only Cuban labor union allowed — has instead written that "reorganization" will ensure redundant workers are reassigned rather than fired.
He said the government wants more jobs in construction and agriculture.
Still, 35-year-old computer engineer Norberto fears for his job. He thinks it's unfair to keep workers under communist domination and yet call them unmotivated. "I didn't graduate from college to now work as a day laborer or a peasant, he said.
If he loses his job and gets an offer to work abroad, he said, "my question is 'Will the Cuban authorities put aside their paternalism and let me leave?'"
Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserve

Thank you Fidel Castro you have been a great help and fighting tyrants in my country, “D.R.”... A lot of people hate you but they know that you are a just man; they know that you are the truth and the truth will set you free…

They have tried for years but they could not get you, you are one of the greatest Latin American men to govern a country.
The empire has installed many traitors in lands, but you came along risking your life. Many so called men on this web site will comment but, they would never have the gust to do what you did. They would never get a makeshift boat and travel to your homeland willing to risk their lives for true liberty and justice.

Sorry for my " ignorance", but you commies have failed and always will !. Social-Capitalism is the future!. Fidel Castro is a men who didn't know how to rule well. Now he's life is almost passing away, and Cuba will soon be free from that tyranny, that's if Cubans get some balls and take the regime out.

Alvaro Vargas Llosa
Are the brothers Castro at it again?

Raul Castro’s insistence that the 52 political prisoners leave Cuba means he wants to get rid of the independent journalists and the Ladies in White

Alvaro Vargas Llosa
WASHINGTON — From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
You have to hand it to Fidel and Raul Castro. They are masterful tacticians. Whenever they’ve needed to diffuse pressure, they set tongues wagging with speculation about reform. By the time the ruse is exposed, another period of stability has set in. The recent announcement that 52 political prisoners will go free has spawned a whirlwind of conjecture. Are the brothers at it again?

The slow-motion release that began last week and will go on for months will liberate one-third of Cuba’s political prisoners, according to the Havana-based Cuban Commission for Human Rights. These men emerged some years ago as a group of independent journalists. Together with an organization of librarians and some bloggers, they later began an effort to bring to life a Cuban civil society. Not since the emergence of illegal human-rights organizations and political parties had anything more encouraging happened. No wonder the Castros incarcerated 75 of them. What they didn’t anticipate was that the wives and sisters of the prisoners would jump to fame. With a campaign that got louder and bolder with every pogrom that busted their marches, the incredible Ladies in White gained for these heroes the attention of the world.

One day, out of the blue, a prisoner deployed the ultimate weapon – the hunger strike. The death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo in February changed the game. The decision by Guillermo Farinas to replace Mr. Zapata, and the announcement by others that they would follow suit if the second striker died, took the struggle to a level not seen since the anti-Castro guerrillas of the 1960s. Left-wing celebrities – a bellwether of Cuban affairs – expressed their disgust for the Castros, friendly democratic presidents shunned them (except for Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who infamously called the prisoners criminals) and Spain’s socialist government confirmed that there was no hope that the European Union would lift the diplomatic sanctions. The economy, despite Venezuela’s subsidies, was stagnant, and Fidel Castro made sure, with intimidating columns from his sickbed, that the timid reforms his brother Raul had signalled he wanted were a non-starter.

Then, in May, Raul Castro began negotiations with the Catholic Church led by Cardinal Jaime Ortega. Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos joined later. The result was the announcement that the 52 remaining prisoners from the 2003 crackdown known as Black Spring would be released, and that Spain would take them and their families.

Other releases have lifted people’s hopes in the past. In 1969-70, about 1,300 prisoners were deported. In 1979, after a controversial negotiation with some exiles, 3,600 opponents were set free – and expelled. In 1998, Pope John Paul II’s visit was followed by the release of 40 men – and another mass deportation. Few regimes have played more deftly the sinister game of confining and torturing innocent persons in rat-infested jails only to win praise for using them as bargaining chips in subsequent negotiations.

A couple of things make the latest release potentially more meaningful, as some critics, including the Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation, have said. The fact that the decision was made by Raul Castro, an admirer of the “Chinese way” pioneered by Deng Xiaoping, may signify something. The participation of the church, which has gained more recognition these past few days than in the previous half a century, is intriguing. And Cardinal Ortega’s discreet trip to Washington to brief American officials suggests that Raul Castro is interested in some kind of arrangement with the United States. The cardinal, in fact, stressed in his meetings that Raul Castro is serious about reform.

None of which guarantees anything. The safest bet is to assume that the Castros are – for the umpteenth time – taking one step back before taking two steps forward. Raul Castro’s insistence that the prisoners leave the island with their families means he wants to get rid of the independent journalists and the Ladies in White – and abort the embryonic civil society they had painstakingly engendered. But it is not inconceivable, given Raul Castro’s bind, that the regime will try some reform in order to beef up the economy and ensure its survival after Fidel Castro dies – a move that, if it’s to generate international support and investment, will require a degree of political accommodation.

Not even Raul Castro himself knows whether reform will really occur. But one thing is clear: The Black Spring heroes and their Ladies in White have revealed to us, against all odds, that the Castros are not invincible. After 51 years, this is a soothing thought.

Nicolae Ceausescu: a profile of the former communist dictator
Romania’s former communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu rose from humble countryside roots to rule the country with an iron fist for almost a quarter of a century before a popular revolt led to his execution.

By the time a three-man firing squad shot him and his wife Elena on Christmas Day 1989, he would become one his country’s most hated people.
His execution had followed a hasty trial, which sentenced the pair to death as Eastern Europe’s bloodiest revolution reached its climax.


Born into a peasant family from southern Romania on January 26, 1918, Ceausescu’s childhood home, which remains open to the public, testifies to his modest background.
His family of nine siblings and their parents were forced to live in a house that had three small rooms and no electricity.
Despite his upbringings, he would become an acclaimed "conductor" for grandiose parades around the world and was even welcomed at one stage with equal pomp and ceremony by the Queen.
His thirst for power led to his regime bulldozing historical parts of Bucharest in the early eighties and forcing workers to build, through day and night, the enormous political and administrative complex known as the House of the People.
The grandiose palace, which was not completed in the Ceausescus' lifetime despite the huge human and financial cost, has been called the world's second biggest building after the Pentagon and boasts luxurious fittings. It is now Romania's parliament building.
But the man who would forge a powerful personality cult for almost three decades started out as an apprentice cobbler, when he left his village of Scornicesti to move to Bucharest.
At 15 he joined the Communist Party where he fast became involved in illegal revolutionary activities and quickly rose in the ranks after the regime was installed in Romania after the Second World War.
He had been in the shadow of the party leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej, until he died in 1965, after which Ceausescu was elected secretary general of the central committee.
Two years later, he became head of the Council of State and in 1974, elected president. He met his wife, who political analysts refer to as the regime's number two, during a military parade in 1939.
She was a farmer's daughter, born on January 7, 1919 in the village Petresti and began her working life in a textile factory before signing up for the Communist Party.
It was Elena who advised her husband to wear an old, worn coat whenever the couple, who rarely separated, visited a factory or model farm.
She thought it was proof that he was "a man of the people".
Recently uncovered archive vision shows him relaxing and smiling with French and US presidents Charles de Gaulle and Richard Nixon while also having an enjoyable experience on similar trips to North Korea and Hollywood.
He was one of the few communist leaders to condemn Czechoslovakia's revolutionary period, the Prague Spring in 1968.
But black spots on his heroic image accumulated as Romanians then suffered through worsening food shortages.
Under his regime, eating a banana was a rare luxury while all staple products such as milk, sugar, eggs and butter were rationed.
Security police also terrified opponents to the regime with suspected dissenters subjected to continuing surveillance, persecution and imprisonment.
The Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev weakened Eastern Europe's communist regimes and one by one they fell like dominoes after 1989.
The couple resisted the same fate until the last month of that year. But on December 22, they fled Bucharest following protests that had spread across the country.
After an extraordinary car chase the couple were caught, tried and executed on December 25, 1989.
In the last recorded images of the dictator alive, Nicolae Ceausescu can be seen refusing to recognise the military court that would judge him.
Diehard supporters have consistently questioned whether the Stalinist dictator was really shot at all, floating various vivid conspiracy theories.
Wednesday’s exhumation and subsequent DNA tests should now settle the myster once and for all.

Castro and His Memoirs ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Fidel Castro leads ceremony unveiling his new book


BY WILL WEISSERT

ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

HAVANA -- Fidel Castro presented his new book at a closed-door ceremony Monday, a work he says contains an autobiographical section and details a major military victory that sped his rise to power in 1959.
The book, "The Strategic Victory," has yet to be released to the general public. Organizers of the unveiling ceremony said 3,500 copies would be made available in coming days and 50,000 copies would eventually be published.
State television showed images of Castro's appearance at Havana's convention center, alongside his longtime official biographer, Katiuska Blanco. Wearing a red, short-sleeve shirt and appearing relaxed, Castro spoke for more than an hour, largely reading from the book and pointing out highlights to a crowd that included ex-castaway Elian Gonzalez and his family.
It was the second time Gonzalez, who was 6 when he was at the center of a nasty international custody battle pitting Cuba against the United States and who is now 16, was at a public event where Castro turned up.
When he was through reading, Castro took some historical questions from the crowd, then signed copies of the book.
Castro, whose 84th birthday is Aug. 13, has made a string of near daily public appearances of late, after staying almost completely out of the public eye since undergoing emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006. He ceded power to his younger brother Raul on a temporary basis, then and stepped down as president for good in February 2008.
Fidel has not been seen publicly with Raul and has skipped major political events, such as Sunday's session of Cuba's parliament or last week's celebration marking Revolution Day, the top holiday on Cuba's official calendar. But he has been popping up in other, unlikely places, from a meeting with Cuban ambassadors at the foreign ministry to the dolphin show at the Havana aquarium.
"I thought that this work wouldn't happen. We've been working on it a long time, and now I received this surprise," Castro said at the book reading.
He said he was surprised the book is being released so quickly, in just a matter of weeks after he completed it.
The author of numerous books, Castro already completed and released another volume since his health crisis, writing on Cuba's role in attempts to broker peace between Colombia's government and rebel groups that have waged a decades-long civil war in that country.
The new book runs nearly 800 pages and includes maps, photos and illustrations of the weapons that his bearded rebels used during an important battle in 1958 that saw Castro's forces prevail over thousands of government soldiers in the isolated and rugged Sierra Maestra mountains in Cuba's east.
That victory paved the way for dictator Fulgencio Batista to flee Cuba the following New Year's Day.
The lengthy excerpts Castro read Monday talked about the 1958 military battle.
Castro says his latest book also contains details about his early life. A possible memoir by Cuba's top revolutionary has long intrigued those in publishing circles, but exactly what Castro has been willing to reveal in his autobiographical section remains to be seen.
Castro has said he is already working on a follow-up book.


Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/02/1758414/fidel-castro-leads-ceremony-unveiling.html#ixzz0vXrA0Zon

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Fred c Dobbs with Bobby Blake the murderer in Treasure of Sierra Madre

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