Re: [Marxism] Brazil's Lula meets Fidel Castro, offers credit

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Lula doesn't, hasn't and won't be confronting Cuba, or at least 
there's been no evidence cited to back up such a spurious claim.
He didn't meet any of the dissidents when he was in Cuba, either.

I would love to take a vacation in Cuba, but that would be against
U.S. law. When I'm in Cuba I'm working hard, eight days a week.
It's all done on my own time as a research, educational and an
independent journalistic endeavor. Some people also enjoy their
comfortable positions in the U.S. academic world to carry out an
intellectual and political assault against those who would trade
and otherwise interact with Cuba on a normal basis. Such people
will probably, should there be any change in the blockade, then
start to warn Cubans again against the evil intentions of the
U.S. business people who will be trading

The Cuban flag, in which I do not wrap myself, is, however quite
a good thing for Cubans to wrap themselves in. I'm glad they do
and, to me, Cuban patriotism is a very, very good thing. I'm all
in favor of Cuban patriotism. I think that things which are good
for Cuba, a country with a revolutionary political leadership are
good for maintaining and advancing the prospects for socialism in
the world as a whole.

The Cuban Revolution plays a vanguard role in the world socialist
struggle. In the real world, the Cuban government has to put food
on the table, oil in the tanks and maintain the functioning of a
blockaded society in the face of the longest siege in history.

To do that, it makes arrangements with all sorts of people who
deal with them for all sorts of reasons. I find no difficulty in
Cuba doing what it needs to do. Those foreign relations are key
to maintaining Cuba's existence as an independent state despite
Washington's blockade.

Those who fail to understand that don't help the struggle for
socialism by their persistent whining and complaining. 

Spain and Cuba maintained normal diplomatic relations through
the entire duration of Franco's life, despite their different
political systems. Cuba nearly never broke diplomatic ties
with any country. It has always maintained fully normal ties
with the Vatican, for example. I think that the only ties it
ever broke were with Israel in 1973. Chile under Pinochet
broke ties with Cuba, not the other way around. Cuba isn't
normally in the relations-breaking business.


Walter Lippmann, CubaNews
Tlatelolco, Mexico, D.F. 
===============================================================
DR. CRANKY wrote:
Nobody has argued that Cuba should not take credit from Brazil, or from 
Merrill-Lynch for that matter. My objection is in seeing Petrobras in 
the same light as Venezuela's PDVSA. Lula, acting on behalf of the 
Brazilian capitalist class, simply sees Cuban off-shore oil as an 
opportunity--in just the same way that he confronted Bolivia when it 
planned to re-nationalize the nation's gas fields.

> "Know-it-all" ism is one of the diseases from which radicals who 
live in the so-called "advanced" capitalist countries at times suffer from
badly.

So what's the solution to that? Taking yearly vacations in Cuba and 
wrapping yourself in the Cuban flag?
--------------------
SHANE MAGE wrote:
Franco wants to maintain friendly diplomatic relations with  
> Cuba? Let's jump up now and denounce Franco from hell to breakfast...


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