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Freedomhouse is a right wing funded propoganda machine. Try a different scource for unbiased information.

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Yeah,,IMXP,
why not let Arias’ brother take over later. Bush had his son take over in the States. Now that is REAL old time nepotism. We evenw ent to the bother of voting only to have our votes thrown away when the powers that be didn’t like our selection.

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Some governments do a bad job, some do a good one. I thought I read that the government is letting in some competition for the public franchise while still keeping control of the cost. Subsidized internet service…what a concept!

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Has anybody in this discussion ever visited Cuba for any length of time? I have and I stand by my observations about that country and its people and its valiant efforts to stand up against the most powerful and evil force in this hemisphere. Few have done so successfully.

If you have moved from the US to Costa Rica, you have made a choice of socialism over unregulated free market capitalism. I applaud your decisions but critique your hipocrisy if you are railing against the form of government and society in which you
chose to live. Actions speak the loudest and truest, don’t you think?

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History says you are wrong about the “yearning for freedom”. People have always preferred a strong leader over the responsibilities of maintaining a democracy.
Every time democracy has been tried, it eventually slips back into an oligarchy. It happened to the Greeks and it has already happened in the U.S. quite a while ago.

The only force against oligarchy is socialism. Socialism is an effort to vest ownership and control of the means of production in the community as a whole,..quite the opposite of concentrating power in the hands of a few….and it is an ongoing battle in the world between these two ideologies with no clear victor yet.

If you are living in Costa Rica, you are contributing to socialsim and I congratulate your decison to live here.

Edited on Mar 26, 2009 16:31

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Anybody who relies on an old document to protect him from unscrupulous exploiters is in for a big dissapointment. SOme of the Bill of Rights have already been shredded repeatedly over the decades by various manifestations of our government, the most recent being the Bush administration.

The Constitution was meant to be a living document and it was meant to be changed at will by the people, just as the government was meant to be changed whenever the people agreed on that, and not necessarily by election.
Americans lost their will to keep their freedoms a long time ago.

And you should drop the super adjectives..liberty and tyranny. You are just mouthing the same old tired phrases that have been used to keep people down for the last hundred years, both here in Central and South America and in the States.

The only ones who argue in favor of tyranny are the rich oligarchy but they call it liberty so as to fool a naive people. I am tempted to say Americans are not naive, rather they are crazy because when you do the same thing over and over, like partcipating in a rigged system, and get the same unwanted results, that is insanity.
At least much of the latin world has finally rejected the North American nonsense andhave gone in a more healthy direction.

Edited on Mar 26, 2009 12:16

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If Arias can turn any other part of the world into Costa Rica; no army, no problems with neighbors and a lot of healthy, happy citizens, then more power to him!

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Banks, like health care, roads, bridges and education, should be part of the commons and owned and directed by the people, the government. That is socialism or collectivism as some call it. It works in most of the world and it could work in the States as well. Conservative corporate autocracy is stopping our progress in that direction. Why is that bad?

The corporate autocracy just took our money again in the billions. Sweden also put forth money to its banking system to save it but they took control of the banks, They nationalized them. And why not? The citizens bought the banks.

In the States, the banks just took our money and kept it. We have no controlling interest. They pass out huge bonus checks to themselves with a tiny portion of this money but that is just a sympton, not the problem. The problem is that our butts have been and are still owned by the corporate autocracy.

Edited on Mar 24, 2009 04:35

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The US State Department has declared it illegal for US born citizens to visit Cuba. How’s that for curtailment of freedom to travel? The Cuban government has no such restrictions. I would have to illegally paddle my sea kayak to Havana from Miami in order to visit Cuba.

I mean those Cubans refugees who do not rape, rob or smuggle in bombs or smut while visiting Cuba.

By the way..more evidence that Arias is a smart guy when it comes to foreign relations. He made nice with the Chinese as well and now, it appears, the Chinese are going to replace the dollar with a new world currency. Get ready to wipe your hind quarters with Gerorge Washington’s portrait. A new Chinese world currency will put the dollar in the gutter, perhaps one day soon on par with the colon.

Edited on Mar 24, 2009 02:38

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The US has cut Cuba off from using the undersea cable running near the island for internet access. Cuba has been forced to use limited satellite access which severely cuts internet availability. For that reason, Cuba has had to ration access to public necessity uses such as schools and hospitals. In typical right wing bully fashion, you knock out the skinny kid’s teeth and then criticize and tease him for talking funny. Luckily, Venezuela is coming to Cuba’s aid and will be laying cable to the island.

I know a whole lot of Ticos in my area who don’t have the resources for internet access so I can say that many Costa Ricans also suffer from not having a voice in cyberspace.

Your point about press freedom is countered by similar studies and opinions presented by organizations with a less biased slant than the right wing funded mouthpiece you listed. Titles don’t mean a thing. Does Reporters without borders advocate the abolishment of national borders as their title implies?

Your other points are just so much right wing rhetoric that I have been hearing for decades. A huge ignorant American audience has been ready to hear such things in the past because it backed up their erroneous belief that the U.S. was a “blessed” land superior to any other country or culture and any opposing ideas had to be evil.

I know way too many Cuban refugees who used to regularly return to visit Cuba with no problems. I don’t know of any who were ever jailed for that in Cuba In fact, in the last 6 years it has been the United States who stopped Cubans from visiting their homeland. That is being reversed now by Obama. Get your facts straight. No law abiding Cubans visiting Cuba went to jail. Period.

There are some freedoms that are curtailed in Cuba. Among them are prostitution and access to internet pornography. Only one of those morally questionable freedoms is still legal in the States and BOTH are legal in Costa Rica.

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Some people leave Cuba for the States for the same reasons tha people do elsewhere; the perceived access to more wealth. Never mind that many times, the actual cost of that wealth is an unhealthy and unhappy lifestyle. Never mind the fact that the American Dream is a lie which has been successfully sold to an awful lot of people. Never mind that there is always a segment of the human population that believes greener grass is elsewhere. You and I are examples of that, although our reasons may be different. To say that most immigrants to the US are looking for freedom is to mouth right wing propaganda and should be evidently ridiculous on the face of it.

As far as handing off power to relatives, look to your own country for prime examples of that practice. Bush, Clinton, Adams, Roosevelt, Kennedy…these are names of American ruling class royalty. People who live in glass houses…….

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Imxp,
Set aside the brainwashing that you have been exposed to. I am sure it’s hard to do and I was only able to do it after visiting and seeing Cuba for myself. Cuba HAS AS free and open a government as is humanly possible living under the constant economic pressures and real military threats from the “Monstro del Norte” in the words of its most famous 19th century poet, Jose Marti.

The Ticos already have a government with many of the socialist values and entitlement guarantees that the Cuban government has promised and delivered to its people. The Costa Ricans I have talked with proudly defend their socialist entitlements.

Ask any Tico if he would give up the social net and employee protection his government gives him in exchange for a purely free market capitalist system as in the States. Go ahead. Ask one. Just make sure you explain the working hours, the cost of health care, the lack of job security and the other negatives. Oh yeah, offer him a nice little car and house if he agrees to spend less time with his family in order to work week ends and after hours for a few decades to pay for these things while living under the social pressures to continually borrow more to buy more to keep up with the Jones’ and then live under the dark cloud of continuous debt till he dies.

I am sure most Costa Ricans would do better living in Cuba than in the United States. Very few Ticos emigrate to the US and I’ll bet that proportionately more Costa Rican expats return to their country than do American expats return to their country.

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What percentage of the Tico population lives like gringos at this moment? What percentage lives like Cubans? Does the average Tico REALLY desire to become like a gringo?

I sense that Ticos have a certain wry , down-to-earth and correct opinion of us and our attitude towards life and I doubt they are eager to behave and live like we do in order to have the relative wealth we have. The Tico culture may bend and sway a bit with the onslaught of gringo culture, but I don’t see any drastic, culture changing effects ever moving them away from what they are today and what they have been for a long time.

Sit a typical American, say from the mid west, a typical Cuban from Habana and a typical Tico at your typical Tico bar anywhere in Costa Rica and ask them to talk about some of the things that interest them most. The gringo won’t speak more than a half dozen words in Spanish and will end up listening in silence as the two latinos
find out how much they have in common besides language.

Edited on Mar 21, 2009 16:47

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Oscar is watching his part of the world move away at an alarming speed from the old regime. Perhaps he is making sure Costa Rica is not shut out from the developing new allegiances being formed at this time. Ticos have a hell of a lot more in common with Cubanos than with gringos.

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Your side and mine will always disagree. We have at a root level different assessments of human nature and the expected results when that nature organizes itself in the form of government.

First of all, let’s stop using the term “wealth” and replace it with the term “resources”. Wealth implies resources in excess of what is needed. People need basic resources for survival. Nobody needs wealth. Capitalism’s stated goal is the creation of capital, which is wealth. Nothing more. Socialism’s stated goal is equitable distribution of resources for the benefit of society (hence the SOCIAL of socialism). Either we are going to be a social animal or simply declare that it is every man for himself (Libertarianism) and run off in all directions away from each other

Capitalism’s drive for excess wealth has raped the planet while creating hugely disruptive booms and busts over the last 200 years causing great suffering within it’s nations’ borders and outside them as well. We are now on the brink of a global climate disaster, much of which is due to the effects of relentless pursuit of ever increasing profit.

The latest mess is just that..the LATEST mess. This time, one can only hope people will have the revolution Scott referred to above and remove this evil once and for all. The only viable replacement we have for capitalism is socialism. Most of the world has come around to using it in varying degrees already, including Costa Rica.

And now I am going to ask YOU to give ME a break. Nobody becomes fabulously wealthy by their hard work and will power alone. Great wealth requires much more than just those things. It requires a network of connections to other wealthy people and a healthy infrastructure in which to do business, an infrastructure which is paid for and maintained by society’s main agent, the government.

You have succumbed to that great lie called the American Dream, created by the rich and powerful to keep people contentedly slaving away to support the wealthy control of all. We bail them out when they lose money, we pay for the roads and schools and bridges and wars which they use to increase and hold and continue their wealth..all at the people’s expense. And the people are just now awakening to this truth. There could be a terrible reckoning on the way. Then again, maybe not. People can be such cows sometimes.

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