Che Guevara, From The Historical Evidence.

[Eddie]

Cuba didn't power down on purpose. They were forced to by circumstance. This makes them an interesting example of what the future is likely to hold. It does NOT make them superior, or a good place to live, or anything particularly positive.

I have no trouble at all recognizing repression, here or elsewhere. I measure it in higher taxes. I measure it in public lands once open to all but now made inaccessible. I measure it by the loss of rights of all kinds. I measure it by confiscated property, and how many people are in jail for bullshit charges.

Your "mathematical" analogy makes no damn sense to me, sorry. Not sure what you were going for there.

Repression is not the future. Repression is here and ongoing, and getting worse all the time. Anyone who thinks our government isn't repressive should do something to make contact with the court system. Guaranteed to make your represso-meter go right off the scale.

The big problem is that much of your freedom is built on your ownership of slaves.

Now granted, we're talking the mechanical kind, a la 22 Billion Energy Slaves.

But if they didn't work for you, your options would be much more limited.

And, the real problem is, most of them run off of petroleum, which will be running short.  And even before that, they are already doing irreparable damage to our life support systems.

So, repression is the future.  That's one thing Cuba can teach us.  The funny part is, if we resign ourselves to living by Mother Nature's rules, we end up with the most freedom in the end.

There are multiple reasons repression is the future.

Financial repression is ongoing and will intensify as somebody (us) pays higher taxes to cover huge unfunded liabilities.

Repression expressed as closed borders and xenophobia  will intensify. This is due to overpopulation and mass migration around oil depletion and desertification by climate change.

The xenophobes will win out, because the Diversity meme whereby the US and European countries are made better and stronger  by unlimited immigration is, unfortunately, a myth.  The Left will lose on that one. The pie is getting smaller, and it's obvious.

Greater civil unrest will require tighter control. More police. More civil seizure. The judicial system is already an income stream. That will just get worse.

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[Agent Graves]

Eddie: You don't think Cuba is more repressive than the US?  I suggest you try to move there. You can't.

That's biased BS.  You probably can't become a citizen of Cuba unless you marry a Cuban, but that's the same anywhere.  But you can go there for a holiday, or for a political conference (I know people who have been there, organised thru WSWS), and in Michael Moore's "Sicko" he took a dozen sick US citizens there and they got treated in hospital for free, and medicines free.  He wasn't allowed to go to the US part at Guantanamo.  After 50 years of US sanctions, their infrastructure is very run down, but that would be true in any country.

The ones that want to leave are the ones who have availed themselves of all the socialised free education, and then want to move somewhere else where they can earn more money for themselves and not pay Cuban taxes.  Greedy scum in other words.

The christian asylum seeker from Cuba I met in 2010-11 spoke English well, so I assume their education is at least half in English. That fits them perfectly for running offshore call centres for corporations or becoming bartenders and tour guides, making the big bucks compared to anyone still working for the Cuban govt "pretending to work and pretending to be paid". Perhaps taxing this free market that appeared as Castro was on his death bed can fund the govt and improve wages.  But u have to say also that if these people leave, whether they have their Cuban qualifications recognized I have no idea, but if they even work as low skill minimum wage for greed, their education failed.

 Under communism all children are also wards of state and so are schooled in communism. All forms of art, music and literature are only approved to glorify the revolution. The same principle applies to all work, hence the hammer and sickle symbols. The sickles are a little ironic if there are no crops after scorched earth purges though. Anyway, would a programmer who likes to to work on apple, android and ms windows be as much a failure of communist education and greedy scum, as a painter or sculptor who isn't interested in portraits of revolutionaries?

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[Palloy2]

Eddie: You don't think Cuba is more repressive than the US?  I suggest you try to move there. You can't.

That's biased BS.  You probably can't become a citizen of Cuba unless you marry a Cuban, but that's the same anywhere.  But you can go there for a holiday, or for a political conference (I know people who have been there, organised thru WSWS), and in Michael Moore's "Sicko" he took a dozen sick US citizens there and they got treated in hospital for free, and medicines free.  He wasn't allowed to go to the US part at Guantanamo.  After 50 years of US sanctions, their infrastructure is very run down, but that would be true in any country.

The ones that want to leave are the ones who have availed themselves of all the socialised free education, and then want to move somewhere else where they can earn more money for themselves and not pay Cuban taxes.  Greedy scum in other words.

No, stupid man. It is not biased BS.

Cubans have been coming to the US by the tens of thousands per decade for my entire lifetime.



And why would educated Cubans want to leave anyway, if it's such  a spiffy place to live and all? Maybe because all the doctors there have to work a side job to make it? Yeah, that could be it.

For exactly the last 59 years, each and every Cuban who managed to stumble across the US border got asylum. Right up until this year. It is NOT the same everywhere.

I can, for the moment, go anywhere I want, anytime I want. That equates to less repression. It just does, Sorry about that.

You haven't refuted ANY of the points I made.  I agree there have been Cubans going to the US all the time.  That's because it is not far, and the movies make it out to be such a paradise of wealth, and instant asylum.  They are greedy scum, that's all.  All take and no give.

You cannot go anywhere you like, not to live and work.  There are also lots of places you can go for a holiday, but you will be knifed in a back alley because you are American.  The movies have given you the idea America is a great place, and you believe it is true. Absolutely NOBODY thinks the US is exceptional, except Americans themselves.

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[K-Dog]

Eddie: You don't think Cuba is more repressive than the US?  I suggest you try to move there. You can't.

That's biased BS.  You probably can't become a citizen of Cuba unless you marry a Cuban, but that's the same anywhere.  But you can go there for a holiday, or for a political conference (I know people who have been there, organised thru WSWS), and in Michael Moore's "Sicko" he took a dozen sick US citizens there and they got treated in hospital for free, and medicines free.  He wasn't allowed to go to the US part at Guantanamo.  After 50 years of US sanctions, their infrastructure is very run down, but that would be true in any country.

The ones that want to leave are the ones who have availed themselves of all the socialised free education, and then want to move somewhere else where they can earn more money for themselves and not pay Cuban taxes.  Greedy scum in other words.

The christian asylum seeker from Cuba I met in 2010-11 spoke English well, so I assume their education is at least half in English. That fits them perfectly for running offshore call centres for corporations or becoming bartenders and tour guides, making the big bucks compared to anyone still working for the Cuban govt "pretending to work and pretending to be paid". Perhaps taxing this free market that appeared as Castro was on his death bed can fund the govt and improve wages.  But u have to say also that if these people leave, whether they have their Cuban qualifications recognized I have no idea, but if they even work as low skill minimum wage for greed, their education failed.

Under communism all children are also wards of state and so are schooled in communism. All forms of art, music and literature are only approved to glorify the revolution. The same principle applies to all work, hence the hammer and sickle symbols. The sickles are a little ironic if there are no crops after scorched earth purges though. Anyway, would a programmer who likes to to work on apple, android and ms windows be as much a failure of communist education and greedy scum, as a painter or sculptor who isn't interested in portraits of revolutionaries?

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[Eddie]

Oh please. Your bullshit gets weaker by the day. You didn't make any points to refute.

Anybody can get knifed in the back, anywhere. And I can get a work permit in most countries, because I know something and have extremely useful skills. But why would I want to go?  Everybody still wants to come here. Refugees home in on two things. Job opportunities and social welfare bennies. Here it's mostly the former and in Europe it's the latter.

I have no desire to emigrate. I looked at that and ruled it out a long time ago now. Ex-pats only like living abroad if they're completely retired (US retirees are welcome in a lot of places). The only country I'd consider emigrating to is Canada. And that only because of climate change. It appears though, that I'm likely to live out my life here, fwiw. I'm 62. Every day is a bonus for me.

Like everyone else, including displaced people, I can do simple arithmetic. I'm better off here in the worst circumstances I can envision, which is bad enough, but still better than a good many other places. It can get considerably worse before I'd bail.

I don't watch many movies, btw. And I don't get my info from movies, nor do I buy into US media spin, as you want to claim.

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[K-Dog]

Once, this was a long time ago, perhaps twenty years, a Cuban Boxing team visited Seattle.  Four or five men.  How they got here I don't know.  Some international weirdness.  Local news ignored it totally. 

I was in a university area bar/restaurant when I met them.  They had no money for entertainment and were not drinking anything but water.  No beer for them but everybody else had plenty.  I realized what was going on right away.  They were experiencing typical self centered American ass-holes who found it not strange at all that an entire team was spending no money.  The Cubans polite, were being perfect guests and kept together.  They smiled but I also could tell they felt nervous and out of place.  They were hiding it well, their pride was deep.  Occasionally a pair of eyes would glance at glass of beer pause and then quickly snap away.  A nano-second of involuntary sadness and then smiles of men committed to being perfect guests returned.

Not being an idiot like everyone else I knew they wouldn't have any spending money and immediately bought a pitcher of beer for them. 

At that moment I became a god.  I've never gotten more thanks in my life.

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[Karpatok]

Once, this was a long time ago, perhaps twenty years, a Cuban Boxing team visited Seattle.  Four or five men.  How they got here I don't know.  Some international weirdness.  Local news ignored it totally. 

I was in a university area bar/restaurant when I met them.  They had no money for entertainment and were not drinking anything but water.  No beer for them but everybody else had plenty.  I realized what was going on right away.  They were experiencing typical self centered American ass-holes who found it not strange at all that an entire team was spending no money.  The Cubans polite, were being perfect guests and kept together.  They smiled but I also could tell they felt nervous and out of place.  They were hiding it well, their pride was deep.  Occasionally a pair of eyes would glance at glass of beer pause and then quickly snap away.  A nano-second of involuntary sadness and then smiles of men committed to being perfect guests returned.

Not being an idiot like everyone else I knew they wouldn't have any spending money and immediately bought a pitcher of beer for them. 

At that moment I became a god.  I've never gotten more thanks in my life.

  Politeness. I'm so glad you brought that subject up, K Dog. Yes, politeness still counts in these parts. And besides hatred for what the US has perpetrated wide and far, I am sure that the lack of the ability to be polite on the part of the average ugly American, i.e.. Dick swinging, gun totin, offensive feces discussing, skills bragadoccio chauvinism etc. is one of the main reasons Americans are no longer valued or looked up to in these parts. You are right that even under Communism people knew how to be very gracious and polite. I could give many instances but you have the idea. Nor did tHey get by by merely calling their opponents stupid and other ad Homs while retaining that right only to themselves. In short, nobody wants Americans to be working here. As for dental or medical skills, people who need more can always go to Vienna or Munich. You can't top that.

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[agelbert]

Eddie, EVERYTHING we have access to in the USA is based on Imperial REPRESSION of other countries AND the majority of non-wealthy Americans.

How can I say such an "outrageous" statement?

Ask yourself a simple question? How would you feel if you HAD TO buy and sell everything you depend on with Russian Rubles?

Would that bother you a teensy weensy bit?

I think it would put a MOUNTAIN SIZED BURR under your Texas saddle.

It's NOT "okay" because War loving Incarceration Nation USA does it to everyone that ain't rich here and everyone that don't live in the USA.

Please DO NOT tell me that we "had to do that before some other country did it to us 😇 ". That is not a justification for routine repression. And yeah, economic repression DIRECTLY translates into slave wages, poverty, lack of freedom, strife, wars, murder, and so on HERE and abroad. To pretend it doesn't is sophistry.

Cuba is simply not in the same ball park with the level of repression the USA is NUMERO UNO at on this planet.

We did not get our World Reserve Currency “exorbitant privilege” by being the "land of the free". We GOT THAT BY REPRESSION here, there and everywhere, period. Everything the American Imperial Economic Hitmen have done is repression, whether you wish to admit it or not. No other country on the planet, no matter how many they killed for this or that reason, comes close to our level of despotic behavior, except for England and Spain a couple of centuries back, on a much, much smaller scale. 

The phrase “exorbitant privilege” was originally coined in the 1960s by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, then the French Minister of Finance. He was referring to the massive benefits imbuing to the United States for having the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Barry Eichengreen, Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California Berkeley, summarized it thusly:

“It costs only a few cents for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to produce a $100 bill, but other countries had to pony up $100 of actual goods in order to obtain one.” Commodities are priced in dollars; trade exchange takes place in dollars; current account deficits are priced that way too. Enormous benefits accrue to the USA because of it.

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[Eddie]

Global reserve currency status of the USD  is an artifact. It has nothing to do with US citizens or their wishes or intentions. It isn't even within our control. It's primarily under the control of the FED and the BIS, the owners of which, with a few exceptions, aren't even Americans. So it isn't like US citizens are imposing their will on the rest of the world. That is not a true picture of what's going on here.

And, it's going away, in the fullness of time. No need to do anything, it's just gonna happen. A piece of it gets chipped away every day. There are advantages for us Ugly Americans, sure. But it's not like we voted for our currency to be the reserve currency. And when that advantage is history, like Britain before us, we'll just have to do the best we can with whatever our money will buy. I expect it to buy quite a bit less. That's why I try to save and invest my savings in tangible assets (non-money).

But we might not even get there. I sure don't see some long future with the Chinese Yuan being the reserve currency. Why? Because the shit is going to hit the fan early on in that future period, and global trade might be history anyway. But it's hard to say exactly how the dominoes will fall.

One interesting point Marty Armstrong makes....oil is only 7% of the current world economy in dollar terms. Now, once that critical part of the economy is gone, or becomes greatly reduced, the rest of the economy might not amount to much...but that remains to be seen. Right now oil is NOT a lot of the pie, in money terms. But most of our production of various goods and the way we move goods is tied to oil. It might all collapse, or if we're luckier, it might just shrink, and not all at once.

My guilt level over whatever privilege the USD dollar gives me right now doesn't make me lose any sleep. The Bond Kings made this system what it is, off the death and suffering of regular people who went to war for their countries, at the behest of rich people looking to make a buck. Blame them if you want to turn on your blamethrower.

In fact, the loss of reserve currency status is a particular problem that regular Americans face that the rest of the world doesn't. It'll play hell with all old people and everyone on a fixed income, and I expect it'll create a great deal of hardship when the paradigm does shift. What goes around comes around.

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[agelbert]

Global reserve currency status of the USD  is an artifact. It has nothing to do with US citizens or their wishes or intentions. It isn't even within our control. It's primarily under the control of the FED and the BIS, the owners of which, with a few exceptions, aren't even Americans. So it isn't like US citizens are imposing their will on the rest of the world. That is not a true picture of what's going on here.

And, it's going away, in the fullness of time. No need to do anything, it's just gonna happen. A piece of it gets chipped away every day. There are advantages for us Ugly Americans, sure. But it's not like we voted for our currency to be the reserve currency. And when that advantage is history, like Britain before us, we'll just have to do the best we can with whatever our money will buy. I expect it to buy quite a bit less. That's why I try to save and invest my savings in tangible assets (non-money).

But we might not even get there. I sure don't see some long future with the Chinese Yuan being the reserve currency. Why? Because the shit is going to hit the fan early on in that future period, and global trade might be history anyway. But it's hard to say exactly how the dominoes will fall.

One interesting point Marty Armstrong makes....oil is only 7% of the current world economy in dollar terms. Now, once that critical part of the economy is gone, or becomes greatly reduced, the rest of the economy might not amount to much...but that remains to be seen. Right now oil is NOT a lot of the pie, in money terms. But most of our production of various goods and the way we move goods is tied to oil. It might all collapse, or if we're luckier, it might just shrink, and not all at once.

My guilt level over whatever privilege the USD dollar gives me right now doesn't make me lose any sleep. The Bond Kings made this system what it is, off the death and suffering of regular people who went to war for their countries, at the behest of rich people looking to make a buck. Blame them if you want to turn on your blamethrower.

In fact, the loss of reserve currency status is a particular problem that regular Americans face that the rest of the world doesn't. It'll play hell with all old people and everyone on a fixed income, and I expect it'll create a great deal of hardship when the paradigm does shift. What goes around comes around.

Eddie, I honestly do not believe you have any guilt level in regard to the the US Dollar hegemony, as your "artifact" comment evidences.

I disagree totally that Global reserve currency status of the USD is an artifact and has "nothing to do with US citizens or their wishes or intentions".

The Global Reserve Currency is the CORNER STONE, not an "artifact" of the Imperial BOOT of Repression here and abroad which TOO MANY (Greedy Capitalist) Americans wholeheartedly SUPPORT! If you wish to wrongly believe otherwise, I will not stop you.

Also, the Fed ALREADY plays hell with fixed income regular Americans through their selective inflation poverty imposing measures.

Yeah, it will get a lot worse without Reserve Currency Status. So? Anything that massively interferes with our marauding around the world, as losing reserve currency status will surely DO, is a good thing.

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[Agent Graves]

Eddie: You don't think Cuba is more repressive than the US?  I suggest you try to move there. You can't.

That's biased BS.  You probably can't become a citizen of Cuba unless you marry a Cuban, but that's the same anywhere.  But you can go there for a holiday, or for a political conference (I know people who have been there, organised thru WSWS), and in Michael Moore's "Sicko" he took a dozen sick US citizens there and they got treated in hospital for free, and medicines free.  He wasn't allowed to go to the US part at Guantanamo.  After 50 years of US sanctions, their infrastructure is very run down, but that would be true in any country.

The ones that want to leave are the ones who have availed themselves of all the socialised free education, and then want to move somewhere else where they can earn more money for themselves and not pay Cuban taxes.  Greedy scum in other words.

The christian asylum seeker from Cuba I met in 2010-11 spoke English well, so I assume their education is at least half in English. That fits them perfectly for running offshore call centres for corporations or becoming bartenders and tour guides, making the big bucks compared to anyone still working for the Cuban govt "pretending to work and pretending to be paid". Perhaps taxing this free market that appeared as Castro was on his death bed can fund the govt and improve wages.  But u have to say also that if these people leave, whether they have their Cuban qualifications recognized I have no idea, but if they even work as low skill minimum wage for greed, their education failed.

Under communism all children are also wards of state and so are schooled in communism. All forms of art, music and literature are only approved to glorify the revolution. The same principle applies to all work, hence the hammer and sickle symbols. The sickles are a little ironic if there are no crops after scorched earth purges though. Anyway, would a programmer who likes to to work on apple, android and ms windows be as much a failure of communist education and greedy scum, as a painter or sculptor who isn't interested in portraits of revolutionaries?

Good point Kdog, most of us are indoctrinated, but one of those kids could also be Andy Warhol, or Bob "I like fidel castro and his big black beard" Dylan.

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[K-Dog]

Thanks AG.  You had another post to approve but it was a quote of another post with no added content.  I figure it was a mistake and that you had clinked submit too soon.  Before you had written anything extra in it, I gave that one the hook.  We have all done that. 

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[K-Dog]

Castro put the young Che Guevara in charge of industry and economics, “not because he had a degree in it, but because he had read a great deal and observed a great deal”. Che argued for voluntary labor. He led by example, in fields and mines, on building sites and in the docks.

Che had bad asthma all his life.  It could be debilitating and intensely painful.  The consequence of it made him into one tough bastard.

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[K-Dog]

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