Listen to a reading of this article: ❖ I still can't get over how brazen the Biden administration is being in just announcing that it's their place to determine who should be banned from social media platforms and how little backlash there is against this.
The "narrative" should be that government employees are "public servants" on the citizens payroll. Constitutionally, American citizens individually and collectively are the bosses of our government employees. The President is simply the leader of our servants—not our boss. Why should we admire, revere, and pay fealty to people who lead extravagant lives on our taxes? Members of congress work 3 days a week, have months of paid vacation ("recesses"), are treated as celebrities at extravagant dinners, sign autographs, and receive huge amounts of "donations" (bribes) to do the bidding of the super rich. This is "democracy"? "Washington is Hollywood for ugly people." They're ugly not only in their appearance, but in their sociopathic domestic and foreign policy.
Lotsa sleepers are finally starting to catch on to this though. But, at this point it's just so in everyone's faces, maybe they really can't avoid seeing it anymore.
For those not busy waving their flags and Bibles, please ponder the fact that the very first amendment the founders passed -- even more fundamental to their concept of a working republic than the right to self-defence -- was the freedom of speech and of the press. Any person not actively opposing the current wave of government-endorsed censorship and violence can in no way deem themselves a patriot.
Cuba with its universal health care and dentistry, free education up to University level really needs 'intervention' from the US and then it can be a truly free democratic capitalistic island just like Haiti.
Andreas, I understand what you are saying. Yes, there is still poverty etc etc. not least because the country has been brutally blockaded since the 1950's and things have got decidedly worse since the fall of the Soviet Union a country that did something to ameliorate the worst effects of the blockade.
Despite this Cuba remarkably, according to WHO figures for 2016 for under 5 child mortality (U5M) show that Cuba has a U5M rate of 5.5 per 1000 live births, whereas the USA has a U5M rate of 6.5. and of 2019 according to Statista had an infant mortality rate as low as 3.3. Considerably better than the richest country in the world. (N.B. My mother who has lived most of her life in the UK has little or no teeth now but she is old so I don't think her lack of teeth would necessarily indicate a poor health system in the UK.)
I was not making an apology for Cuban socialism. But its failures can't be attributed to socialism alone because unlike say Vietnam it has not been left to develop. It has been starved out. If the US had left it alone then we could make an objective assessment but it hasn't and so we can't. It is authoritarian because all states under siege tend to be for reasons of self- preservation: how many times has the US tried in the past to assassinate Castro? I believe the attempts run to hundreds. Russia is also becoming more authoritarian as it feels threatened by the bristling US/NATO military bases surrounding it. I am not justifying authoritarianism (people of my religion are under ban in Russia and have suffered torture in recent months). But threatened states will behave in predictable ways.
As for Gobachev, yes it seemed great that openness and 'freedom' would appear to be how Russia would develop only for its economy to go into free fall (something that threatened all of our security). It paved the way for the gangsterism of the oligarchs and the freedom for the West to engage unchallenged in its wars against anyone not trading with the petro dollar and resisting US hegemony. Putin's authoritarianism probably saved Russia from complete collapse and Syria from Libyan type destruction. Again this is an observation not a supportive opinion.
One party control has not hindered China from becoming probably the single biggest economy on the planet. Again I am not supportive of one party control (we have had this in the UK for the last 40 years, they just change the window display every 5 years or so and call it democracy). China has shown extraordinary creativity (one party state controlled capitalism?).
You know Andreas, when I was doing a teaching qualification at the college I used to teach, the trainer and one of my fellow teachers had been educated in the soviet/system, well the teacher trainer was Albanian so was educated under that very oppressive system. I had some very interesting conversations with them (I was fascinated by their experience, having lived through the cold war in the west and having lived for a time in East Germany in the British sector in Berlin as a child) Although they were not communists by any stretch they spoke positively about their thorough education under their respective education systems. They were very well versed in English literature for example. (how well versed is the average British student in Russian literature?)
My point is that the ‘humans ruling humans’ experiment is fraught with problems regardless of who rules. That some countries are efficiently run is not usually a case of either or (although left leaning governments tend to be more favourable to the poorer classes). The vagaries of the economies of the world go through pretty much the same thing despite left or right ruling parties. Take the 1970's for example. There were many factors contributing to the industrial actions/upheavals of that time but some universal ones. Such as the Vietnam war nearly bankrupting the US. Nixon ending the Bretton Woods agreement, coming off the Gold Standard etc. completely, freeing currencies from the stable exchange regime and the consequence of currency trading among other things caused inflation around the globe and triggered industrial action in many countries including the UK.
People in my country blamed the Unions (well the predominantly right-wing media and even some left-wing media/commentators did as well. But the Unions were doing what they were paid to do: protect the workers' living wage being eroded by inflation. That along with OPEC oil crisis in the early seventies and the Iranian revolution at the end of the seventies caused world-wide disruption and industrial conflict. Regardless of whether it was Conservatives or Labour governments in power.
The most successful countries invariably succeed at the expense of other countries. The UK is wealthy not least because of the far reaching and long-lasting effects of its once massive empire, now focused on a dubious financial sector based mostly on irregular money management in its so-called Sovereign Territories i.e. off-shore tax havens.
We tend to see everything in a binary way: communism or capitalism, democracy or authoritarianism etc. I am one of Jehovah's Witnesses and so do not support or see a future in any of man's political endeavours. The Bible states that 'man has dominated man to his injury' (Eccl 8:9) and 'it does not belong to man to direct his own step'.(Jer 10:23) I think history bears this out as being our general experience for hundreds of years. I suppose I have also been informed by my own experiences in my youth from a colonial British Army family background to what may be called far left leanings of the seventies, or rather socialist anarcho-syndicalism.
So, the seemingly apolitical position I hold or those of my faith hold is one of the reasons why witnesses tend to be targeted when countries become more nationalistic (i.e. We would never disrespect somebody's national emblems but we do not salute flags, take pledges of allegiance to them, sing national anthems or join armed forces as we are conscientious objectors. So, for example in National Socialist Germany, Witnesses ended up in concentration camps and in Soviet Russia in the gulags in Siberia over such issues of neutrality.)
"The US government is without exception the single most corrupt and destructive force on this planet." Indeed. It's so incorrigibly corrupt that corruption has been legalized!
"Saying your economic model is superior to a socialist nation's because you were able to use economic warfare to impoverish that nation is like saying your moral philosophy is better than your neighbor's because you beat the shit out of him." Priceless!
"I trust the wisdom of the collective to sort out what's true infinitely more than I trust the wisdom of the US government and Silicon Valley plutocrats to do it.
Facts. Bravo on succinctly getting to the heart of the matter.
If you were to offer me mashed potatoes and it was somehow made clear from the way you offered them that in your mind I don't really have any right to say "no thanks", I might not want them even though I actually like mashed potatoes and am not at all "anti-mashed potatoes".
Ikr? Those Twitter leftie bitches and the sell out "journalists" think that they will never be next be because they kiss the boot. Now we see how it happens..
The "narrative" should be that government employees are "public servants" on the citizens payroll. Constitutionally, American citizens individually and collectively are the bosses of our government employees. The President is simply the leader of our servants—not our boss. Why should we admire, revere, and pay fealty to people who lead extravagant lives on our taxes? Members of congress work 3 days a week, have months of paid vacation ("recesses"), are treated as celebrities at extravagant dinners, sign autographs, and receive huge amounts of "donations" (bribes) to do the bidding of the super rich. This is "democracy"? "Washington is Hollywood for ugly people." They're ugly not only in their appearance, but in their sociopathic domestic and foreign policy.
Lotsa sleepers are finally starting to catch on to this though. But, at this point it's just so in everyone's faces, maybe they really can't avoid seeing it anymore.
For those not busy waving their flags and Bibles, please ponder the fact that the very first amendment the founders passed -- even more fundamental to their concept of a working republic than the right to self-defence -- was the freedom of speech and of the press. Any person not actively opposing the current wave of government-endorsed censorship and violence can in no way deem themselves a patriot.
Cuba with its universal health care and dentistry, free education up to University level really needs 'intervention' from the US and then it can be a truly free democratic capitalistic island just like Haiti.
Rumor has it that they actually pay for all that "free stuff" with little kids. Sounds fantastical but it just won't go away.
Me either.
Is it sarcasm though? It's still a mystery to me.
Andreas, I understand what you are saying. Yes, there is still poverty etc etc. not least because the country has been brutally blockaded since the 1950's and things have got decidedly worse since the fall of the Soviet Union a country that did something to ameliorate the worst effects of the blockade.
Despite this Cuba remarkably, according to WHO figures for 2016 for under 5 child mortality (U5M) show that Cuba has a U5M rate of 5.5 per 1000 live births, whereas the USA has a U5M rate of 6.5. and of 2019 according to Statista had an infant mortality rate as low as 3.3. Considerably better than the richest country in the world. (N.B. My mother who has lived most of her life in the UK has little or no teeth now but she is old so I don't think her lack of teeth would necessarily indicate a poor health system in the UK.)
No one with common sense believes those WHO stats, guy. Least of the Cubans protesting in the streets.
Fitzjames Woodjust now
I was not making an apology for Cuban socialism. But its failures can't be attributed to socialism alone because unlike say Vietnam it has not been left to develop. It has been starved out. If the US had left it alone then we could make an objective assessment but it hasn't and so we can't. It is authoritarian because all states under siege tend to be for reasons of self- preservation: how many times has the US tried in the past to assassinate Castro? I believe the attempts run to hundreds. Russia is also becoming more authoritarian as it feels threatened by the bristling US/NATO military bases surrounding it. I am not justifying authoritarianism (people of my religion are under ban in Russia and have suffered torture in recent months). But threatened states will behave in predictable ways.
As for Gobachev, yes it seemed great that openness and 'freedom' would appear to be how Russia would develop only for its economy to go into free fall (something that threatened all of our security). It paved the way for the gangsterism of the oligarchs and the freedom for the West to engage unchallenged in its wars against anyone not trading with the petro dollar and resisting US hegemony. Putin's authoritarianism probably saved Russia from complete collapse and Syria from Libyan type destruction. Again this is an observation not a supportive opinion.
One party control has not hindered China from becoming probably the single biggest economy on the planet. Again I am not supportive of one party control (we have had this in the UK for the last 40 years, they just change the window display every 5 years or so and call it democracy). China has shown extraordinary creativity (one party state controlled capitalism?).
You know Andreas, when I was doing a teaching qualification at the college I used to teach, the trainer and one of my fellow teachers had been educated in the soviet/system, well the teacher trainer was Albanian so was educated under that very oppressive system. I had some very interesting conversations with them (I was fascinated by their experience, having lived through the cold war in the west and having lived for a time in East Germany in the British sector in Berlin as a child) Although they were not communists by any stretch they spoke positively about their thorough education under their respective education systems. They were very well versed in English literature for example. (how well versed is the average British student in Russian literature?)
My point is that the ‘humans ruling humans’ experiment is fraught with problems regardless of who rules. That some countries are efficiently run is not usually a case of either or (although left leaning governments tend to be more favourable to the poorer classes). The vagaries of the economies of the world go through pretty much the same thing despite left or right ruling parties. Take the 1970's for example. There were many factors contributing to the industrial actions/upheavals of that time but some universal ones. Such as the Vietnam war nearly bankrupting the US. Nixon ending the Bretton Woods agreement, coming off the Gold Standard etc. completely, freeing currencies from the stable exchange regime and the consequence of currency trading among other things caused inflation around the globe and triggered industrial action in many countries including the UK.
People in my country blamed the Unions (well the predominantly right-wing media and even some left-wing media/commentators did as well. But the Unions were doing what they were paid to do: protect the workers' living wage being eroded by inflation. That along with OPEC oil crisis in the early seventies and the Iranian revolution at the end of the seventies caused world-wide disruption and industrial conflict. Regardless of whether it was Conservatives or Labour governments in power.
The most successful countries invariably succeed at the expense of other countries. The UK is wealthy not least because of the far reaching and long-lasting effects of its once massive empire, now focused on a dubious financial sector based mostly on irregular money management in its so-called Sovereign Territories i.e. off-shore tax havens.
We tend to see everything in a binary way: communism or capitalism, democracy or authoritarianism etc. I am one of Jehovah's Witnesses and so do not support or see a future in any of man's political endeavours. The Bible states that 'man has dominated man to his injury' (Eccl 8:9) and 'it does not belong to man to direct his own step'.(Jer 10:23) I think history bears this out as being our general experience for hundreds of years. I suppose I have also been informed by my own experiences in my youth from a colonial British Army family background to what may be called far left leanings of the seventies, or rather socialist anarcho-syndicalism.
So, the seemingly apolitical position I hold or those of my faith hold is one of the reasons why witnesses tend to be targeted when countries become more nationalistic (i.e. We would never disrespect somebody's national emblems but we do not salute flags, take pledges of allegiance to them, sing national anthems or join armed forces as we are conscientious objectors. So, for example in National Socialist Germany, Witnesses ended up in concentration camps and in Soviet Russia in the gulags in Siberia over such issues of neutrality.)
"The US government is without exception the single most corrupt and destructive force on this planet." Indeed. It's so incorrigibly corrupt that corruption has been legalized!
"Saying your economic model is superior to a socialist nation's because you were able to use economic warfare to impoverish that nation is like saying your moral philosophy is better than your neighbor's because you beat the shit out of him." Priceless!
"I trust the wisdom of the collective to sort out what's true infinitely more than I trust the wisdom of the US government and Silicon Valley plutocrats to do it.
Facts. Bravo on succinctly getting to the heart of the matter.
If you were to offer me mashed potatoes and it was somehow made clear from the way you offered them that in your mind I don't really have any right to say "no thanks", I might not want them even though I actually like mashed potatoes and am not at all "anti-mashed potatoes".
Ikr? Those Twitter leftie bitches and the sell out "journalists" think that they will never be next be because they kiss the boot. Now we see how it happens..