From: harelb@MATH.CORNELL.EDU (Harel Barzilai)
Newsgroups: alt.activism,talk.politics.misc,soc.culture.latin-america
Subject: HISTORY LESSON: _"Socialism"
Date: 27 Jul 92 06:40:19 GMT
Organization: misc.activism.progressive on UseNet ; ACTIV-L@UMCVMB

means of production and the society in general. In short, it means
democracy, in the real sense not yet attained fully by any country but
which has been attained in part in some European counties whose social
conditions make the U.S. look third world (see Andrew Shapiro's
just-out _We're Number One_, e.g.). Under both Capitalism and
so-called "socialist" or "communist" east-bloc totalitarian regimes, a
very small elite part of the population make the decitions about
production, own or control the mass-media, etc. End of digression --
for now]

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Left/Progressives point out what Chomsky is pointing out not because
they think Cuba under Castro is so wonderful, but to expose the real
U.S. aims, which, unchecked will transform Cuba into something the
likes of which make present-day Cuba look like a Sunday Picnik, a
human rights Paradise, and a cornucopia of plenty.

Don't believe it?

Cuba's human rights record is better than many other Latin American
countries, see next file on human rights; similarly it's a paradise,
in comparison, not justin human rights, but in that in large parts of
Latin America huge parts of the population are starving (in Brazil,
one of the richest, about 2/3 do not get enough to eat). I can post
plentiful files documenting this (please email me as I don't regularly
read this newsgroup as I spend much time on misc.activism.progressive
from which people should forward relevant materials, and from the
ACTIV-L archiver).

This is not a coincidence. As painful is facing reality is, the
history of the region and U.S. involvement democstrate beyond doubt
that, regardless that some U.S. leaders *tell themselves* -- and
sincerely believe -- that they are doing otherwise, U.S. policy has
and is guided by Corporate interests (and starting long before the
CIA overthrow of Guatemalan democracy in large part due to the United
Fruit Company).

History reveals that if Cuba spent its resources not on its own
people, but in ways that helped foreign investors make nice profits,
like most of the rest of latin america -- where huge profits are
repeated and debt-service made by govenrments whose resources are
exploited and whose labor works for peanuts, while doing next to
nothing about mass-starvation about it's people -- Cuba would very
quickly "come into favor" with Washington -- as are in favor regimes
which wage mass-terror campaigns of mass-murder against their
populations, like El Salvador and Guatemala, or starve large segments
of their populations like Honduras, while Corporate Agribusiness reaps
profits and an elite class enjoys the "good life."

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Send 1-line message

GET OXFAM HONDURAS ACTIV-L

For Oxfam's Bulletin on "Honduras: Why Farmers Go Hungry"
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for some background

Or use GET with

  E-EUROPE C-AMERIC  Comparisons and contrasts by Guat. journalist

(see below for GET command usage)

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On development, Chomsky writes in part (we will have the original
footnotes online for Part II as we already do for parts I and III by
next fall):

"A WORLD BANK study in 1982 estimated that "40 percent of households in
Latin America live in poverty, meaning that they cannot purchase the
minimum basket of goods required for the satisfaction of their basic
needs, and... 20 percent of all households live in destitution,
meaning that they lack the means of buying even the food that would
provide them with a minimally adequate diet." The situation became far
worse through the victorious 1980s, largely because of the huge export
of capital to the West. From 1982 to 1987 this amounted to about $250
billion, 25 times the total value of the Alliance for Progress and 15
times the Marshall Plan. The Bank for International Settlements in
Switzerland estimates that between 1978 and 1987, some $170 billion in
flight capital left Latin America, not including money hidden by
falsified trade transactions. The New York Times cites another
estimate that anonymous capital flows, including drug money and flight
capital, total $600 billion to $800 billion.

This huge hemorrhage is part of a complicated system whereby Western
banks and Latin American elites enrich themselves at the expense of
the general population of Latin America, which is saddled with the
"debt crisis" that results from these manipulations, and of taxpayers
in the Western countries who are ultimately called upon to foot part
of the bill. These are among the triumphs of free market capitalism
that we now celebrate -- apart from a few perpetual complainers who
are "as welcome as gnats at a nudist party," a New York Times reviewer
comments, referring to Murray Bookchin.

[Use GET command with  CHOMSKY VICTORS2]

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[...]

Augmenting the Infant Mortality chart in Sklar's
book with data from the 1990 World Almanac and
Book of Facts:

              Infant Mortality Rate   From 1990
              Deaths under one year   World Almanac
              per 1,000 live births   

                  1979    1983        1990 (*)

Costa Rica         22      20         15.2
El Salvador        53      71         71
Guatemala          69      64         66
Honduras          103      81         73
Nicaragua         122      75         37

(*)Or most recent available data.

[Cuba's infant mortality: 13.3 per 1,000 (1987)
and 96% literacy, according to the Almanac]
==================================================================
U.S. infant mortality rates: 10 ; white: 9.2; black: 18

US Rate is worse than all other Western industrial nations: worse than
(from best to worst): Japan, Finland, Sweden, Canada, Netherlands,
Switzerland, Australia, Austria, Denmark, Frank, Norway, UK, German,
Ireland, Spain, Belgium, Italy, New Zealand, and last: U.S.
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Source: _We're Number One_, by Andrew Shapiro, 1992.
Vintage Books, a division of Random House, $10 paperback, full
of stats/charts and references.

[Use GET command with FSLN ACHIEVE]

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