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tuolumne_tradster
Trad climber
Leading Edge of North American Plate
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May 12, 2017 - 12:35pm PT
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A friend just returned from Cuba. Cubans have universal health care, free education, world renowned cigars, mojitos, afro-cuban music, some of the best baseball players on the planet, and a monthly food ration per person shown here for March 2017...
White rice 5 lbs
Brown rice 2 lbs
Refined flour 3 lbs
Unrefined flour 1 lb
Black beans 10 lbs
Cooking oil 0.5 lb
Coffee 1 package?
Jam 3 U?
Salt 1 package?
Matches 1 U?
Pasta 1 package?
Not on the ration list but I am told 5 eggs per person per month. If you have the money, you can purchase food beyond your ration at the price listed on the board.
Cubans are resourceful and resilient people surviving for decades under a Soviet-backed Castro regime that was being undermined by a US economic embargo that began during the Kennedy administration for nationalizing the US-owned Cuban oil refineries and expanded when the CIA discovered soccer fields on military bases (aka Cuban Missile Crisis). Furthermore, the collapse of the FSU in 1989 had a devastating impact on the Cuban economy mainly due to a decline in sugar exports and oil imports.
Despite these and other setbacks Cubans remain optimistic about their future. Their resourcefulness is demonstrated by the 1950-60s vintage American cars that they keep on the road using spare parts modified from Russian car parts or jerry rigged all together. Medical doctors earn the equivalent of ~$50 US per month, school teachers with a Master's degree earn $15/mth. Someone handing out toilet paper in a public restroom earns $20/mth. No homeless people in Havana or anywhere else. Some here will probably say..."there are no homeless people in Cuba because they're all homeless" ;-(
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kunlun_shan
Mountain climber
SF, CA
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May 18, 2017 - 07:35pm PT
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NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
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May 19, 2017 - 09:46am PT
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That's a great picture!
I think I've said it somewhere here in years past- St. Basil's Cathedral is the most intricate and beautiful on the outside, from what I saw in USSR in 1990. But on the inside, it showed its age, very worn out and dusty. All the effort went into external beautification. I wonder if that is a metaphor, a juxtaposition, a non sequitur, or something else?
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Jon Beck
Trad climber
Oceanside
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For context ^^^^^^^^^^
Michel Chossudovsky (born 1946) is a Canadian economist, author and conspiracy theorist.[1][2] He is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Ottawa[3][4] and the president and director of the Centre for Research on Globalization, which publishes conspiracy theories.[5][6][7][8] Chossudovsky has written that the September 11 attacks were not committed by Islamic terrorists, and that the attacks were a pretext for war in the Middle East.[9][10][11][12]
In 2017, the Centre for Research on Globalization was accused by NATO information warfare specialists of playing a key role in the spread of pro-Russian propaganda.[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Chossudovsky
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Jon Beck
Trad climber
Oceanside
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micheal simple reprinted the article jon
kinda like a retweet?
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Far-left anarchists smash windows in Paris during May Day rally
PARIS
Hundreds of hooded protesters held up an annual May Day demonstration in eastern Paris on Tuesday, with some smashing the windows of a McDonald's restaurant and hurling petrol bombs inside, Reuters television images showed.
French police warned on Monday of possible clashes with far-left anarchist groups, known as Black Blocs, after a call on social media for a "Revolutionary Day".
Authorities said some 1,200 hooded and masked protesters had turned up on the sidelines of Tuesday's planned demonstration by labor unions.
Images also showed the smashed windows of a Renault garage on a road near the Austerlitz station and a construction vehicle in flames.
The protesters moved towards riot police chanting anti-fascist slogans, waving Soviet flags and anti-government banners and throwing firecrackers. Some started to build barricades. The police used water cannon against some of the protesters.
President Emmanuel Macron, elected last May on a promise to shake up France's creaking economy and spur jobs growth, is locked in a battle with the trade unions over his plans to liberalize labor regulations.
Railway staff have begun three months of nationwide rolling strikes in a dispute over the government's planned overhaul of state-run railway SNCF.
Reuters: (Reporting by John Irish; Editing by Gareth Jones)
__€€€€€€€€€€€€€
Fighting the good fight. Then they probably cashed their dole checks and went clubbing, again.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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no one is more responsible for hunger in venesuala than the united states,
We put Hugo in power? How do you live with that guilt?
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Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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More than 100,000 people came out on the streets on Moscow to march in the traditional May Day parade.
Moscow's Federation of Trade Unions said about 120,000 people marched from the Red Square on the main streets of the Russian capital to mark May Day.
Over recent years, the parade became a highly orchestrated show of power by Russian authorities and the ruling United Russia party, with the demonstrators refraining from criticizing the government.
In St. Petersburg, Russia's second-largest city, however, Russians unhappy with the Kremlin's attempts to curtail internet freedom joined the official May Day demonstration.
Police in Istanbul detained more than a dozen demonstrators who tried to march toward Istanbul's symbolic main square in defiance of a ban.
Turkey declared Taksim Square off-limits to May Day celebrations citing security concerns. Roads leading to the square were blocked and police allowed only small groups of labor union representatives to lay wreaths at a monument there.
Still, a group of some 25 people, chanting "Taksim cannot be off limits on May 1" tried to push their way into the square but were rounded up by riot police.
Major trade unions were scheduled to mark the day with rallies at government-designated areas in Istanbul and Ankara
Taksim holds a symbolic value for Turkey's labor movement. In 1977, 34 people were killed there during a May Day event when shots were fired into the crowd from a nearby building.
Thousands of Greeks are marching through central Athens in at least three separate May Day demonstrations.
About 2,000 garment workers gathered at a park in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh, for a rally organized by a garment union coalition.
The workers wanted to march to the National Assembly to urge lawmakers to help them address labor-related concerns, but the group was stopped by riot police.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Remember your history.
Indeed, the phony capitalists and the phony communists should both remember that the power of the people wins out eventually.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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But if the people are crankloons? The people loved the Perons, but that didn’t work out so well.
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Jon Beck
Trad climber
Oceanside
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Good day to remember Hazel Dickens. A big voice in bringing reform in the labor conditions in the mines.
RIP Komrade
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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The U.S. approach to foreign policy has always be driven by capitalism and tilting local politics for ruling elites aligned solely with our economic interests versus relationships based on mutual benefits for both countries. That has almost uniformly resulted in cumulative disaster over the long haul of several hundred years leaving a legacy which has, in general, been an embarrassing and enduring debacle as a result.
South and Central America? Debacle - check.
The Mideast? A ridiculously embarrassing debacle - check.
Africa? Where the f*#k is Africa and who cares - check.
Southeast Asia? How's the fried rice - check.
And that's opened the door and set the stage for what we see going on around the world now: China swooping in to fill the vacuum we've left almost everywhere while we've been engaged in the Mideast without any coherent regional strategy of any kind beyond playing the dancing fool for Israel. China has quietly pursued a highly effective strategy of economic investment combined with Chinese emigration to those same countries in an effort to cement both economic and cultural relationships. They are investing in infrastructure projects and schools everywhere. English as a second language? Think Mandarin instead.
Our historically predatory approach to foreign policy ill-serves our interests. Our "shithole" view of third-world nations and peoples actually works against us in deep and abiding ways. Our short-term, immediate-gain thinking combined with the foreign policy attention span of a Cocker Spaniel and the fact our finger on always on the trigger first, all add up to us being our own worst enemy on the world stage. We consistently undermine our long-term interests in pursuit of short-term gains.
So say what you will about those pesky Commies - at least they've learned to play the long game and are doing it with investments and sandals on the ground around the world instead of boots.
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Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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But if the people are crankloons? The people loved the Perons, but that didn’t work out so well.
As the great man said:
"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."
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Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Btw it's misspelling ;)
How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. Then our ability to spell is drained from our essence. That's the way your hard-core Commie works.
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Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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