<HTML><BODY BGCOLOR="#3dffff"> Brad D. : Lenin, after all, thought that the "dictatorship" part was temporary, <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">until the state withered away and the government of men could be replaced by the administration of things. Castro thinks that the dictatorship is permanent. ^^^^^^ CB: Best reading of Lenin on this is that the socialist state would not at all whither away while there were still bourgeois states in the world.  The state whithers away when the communist revolution is universal on the globe. We are hardly at that stage. Further from it than when Lenin was alive. Castro is , not surprisingly, a much more authentic Leninist than you. Wait a minute. You aren't a Leninist at all.  Are you being truthful or politic , here ?</BLOCKQUOTE> ^^^^^^ <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px"> Brad D: The basic political rights of the eighteenth century? Pie-in-the-sky stuff? CB: They've certainly never been actually achieved on the U.S. part of the earth </BLOCKQUOTE> ^^^^^^^^^ 5. Castro shall grant all accused of crimes a speedy and public trial by an impartial and independent jury. CB: Isn't one complaint from the Yankee imperialist's "lefties"  that the trial was speedy ? ^^^^^^^^ <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">?  Isn't the US policy partly to blame for having turned Cuba into a paranoid garrison in the first place? Thiago </BLOCKQUOTE> ^^^^ CB: Cuba is not paranoid. It has eminently well founded fear of the U.S. The whole history of the first efforts to build socialism teach that it is necessary to have significant military defense against imperialism. ^^^^^^^ >sending 75 people to jail for decades for peaceably assembling and >petitioning for a redress of grievances. > >Brad DeLong >___________________________________ I thought they were imprisoned for violating a law prohibiting the acceptance of compensation from a foreign government with the intent of overthrowing their government? I am hardly a Castro fan but this law seems reasonable to me especially given the peculiar circumstances under which Cuba operates. Am I missing something substantive here? Seems like lots of peoples underwear is bunched up over nothing. John Thornton ^^^^^^^ CB: No, you aren't missing anything substantive. You got it exactly correct. <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px"> </BLOCKQUOTE> </HTML>