HAVANA TIMES -- Ever since the Cuban Revolution triumphed in 1959, different US governments have used every kind of violent method to try and pull the plug on the Revolution.
Starting from the Bay of Pigs; the boom in armed groups who carried out all kinds of atrocities, such as the hateful murders of farmers, teachers, literacy teachers; the cruelest acts of sabotage against the Cuban people, such as the murders and forced disappearances of Cuban diplomatic employees abroad; bombs in Cuban hotels so as to damage national tourism, without caring about how many innocent people had to die in the process; as well as hundreds of assassination plots against key revolutionary leaders, mainly against Commander in Chief Fidel Castro.
This whole series of attacks, plus their rigid economic, commercial and financial blockade which has caused many difficulties and shortages among the Cuban people, hasn’t managed to achieve anything but unite our people even more with regard to the Revolution.
The current US president Barack Obama, undoubtedly an intelligent man, realized that the US would never be able to reverse by violent means Cuba’s history so that our country once again becomes a capitalist state with a multi-party political system. He thus decided to change strategy and work instead on winning over different sectors in Cuban society, making them believe that socialism isn’t the best thing for them and that they should head towards capitalism instead. When you are as far left as Cuba, and you see Barack Hussein Obama as a right-wing pro-capitalist force, you know you've entered Bizarro World. How many dark-skinned Cubans are in positions of high authority in Cuba?
The US has tried this many times before using different techniques with our youth, but it hasn’t been successful. Furthermore, they’re trying to win over the Afro-descendent sector, which is very large here in Cuba, for their counter-revolution.
You have to be very naive, or seriously compromised by the imperalist policy against Cuba, to write articles such as that by Mr. Alberto N. Jones entitled "The persistence of racism in Cuba", published on Havana Times on August 25th.
#2
I was in Cuba 30 years ago. I recall the roads were paved in the white part of town and unpaved dirt in the black part. No street lights in the black part either.
#4
Now all the streets are breaking up, street lights only in the tourist zones. My wife carries flashlights and batteries to our sister congregation along with the usual aspirin, Advil etc.
h/t Instapundit
What does the beginning of an economic collapse look like?
Do you see grocery stores closing? Do you see other retailers, like clothing stores and department stores, going out of business?
Are there shuttered storefronts along your Main Street shopping district, where you bought a tool from the hardware store or dropped off your dry cleaning or bought fruits and vegetables?
Are you making as much money annually as you did 10 years ago?
Do you see homes in neighborhoods becoming run down as the residents either were foreclosed upon, or the owner lost his or her job so he or she can’t afford to cut the grass or paint the house?
Did that same house where the Joneses once lived now become a rental property, where new people come to live every few months?
Do you know one or two people who are looking for work? Maybe professionals, who you thought were safe in their jobs? Friday’s anemic jobs numbers tell that tale.
Did your high school buddy take a job at the local convenience store because he could not find work in sales?
Is the pothole on your street getting larger instead of getting repaired? Is there more than one street light out in your town?
Don’t be fooled into thinking that the stock market is any indication of the health of an economy.
Is the town pool closed this summer much more than usual?
Have you seen a situation -- any situation -- and said, "Jeez, it wouldn’t take much money to fix that" -- but it hasn’t been fixed?
You may have witnessed many of these situations, but you tell yourself it can’t be an economic collapse because the stock market is at an all-time high.
Does that mean all is well? No, this is what a 21st-century economic collapse looks like in the beginning.
When I was first looking for a real job 40+ years ago my father taught me that a gov't gig didn't pay great but the security was invincible. Now it pays great AND the security is invincible.
#7
Your local hospital ER looks like a giant Cinco de mayo festival.
I resemble that remark.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
09/06/2016 11:21 Comments ||
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#8
The only people secure in their jobs are public functionaries, and they make more than regular people in the private sector do.
Mickey Kaus said a long time ago - 'The deal used to be low pay in exchange for security.' It'song past time to alter the deal, and they should pray that it is not altered further.
#9
The unemployment rate highly touted by the Obummer administration is a number that can't be relied upon. The labor participation rate is the lowest since 1970. Many of the jobs are B.S. jobs. Jobs have been cut back and hours cut because of Obamacare; thus people have to work two or three jobs to make out. The stock market is good for Wall Street and not for Main Street.
US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on Monday she will not accept an invitation by Mexico's president, Enrique Pena Nieto, for a visit after rival Donald Trump created what she called a "diplomatic incident" in his foray there. Trump goes to Mexico, Hillary wants Mexicans to come to her? Apparently the check didn't clear...
We’re winning. I know it’s a farfetched idea right now.
There’s an Islamic terrorist attack every week or every few days. A bomb goes off. A man with a, quote unquote, history of psychiatric problems, takes a machete, a gun or a truck to a bunch of non-Muslims while shouting Allahu Akbar, and the media repeats the same old lies. You know the lies. I don’t need to repeat them.
How can we be winning then?
...The best weapon that the enemy has isn’t its firepower. It’s not even WMDs. It’s willful blindness in our society. It’s a narrative which says that the terrorists are a tiny minority of extremists and that if we reach out to the moderate majority, everything will work out. It’s a very seductive narrative.
...When you see the denial all around you, this is the important thing to remember. No lie, no spin and no scam can beat reality. Reality will always win. Reality is going to win.
Everything we’ve gone through since September 11 and even before that has been the reality distortion field, the one that says there’s no such thing as Islamic terrorism, colliding with reality.
If there are days when you get up and think that it’s hopeless, that people will never know the truth and that we’ll be going through the same motions, twenty years from now, don’t.
Every lie that has been told, every media story lying about Islamic terrorism, lying about Hamas and Iran, every piece of propaganda used to support the narrative, is the little Dutch boy with his finger holding back the flood.
But the flood is coming. In fact it’s already here.
#1
Got to agree with the premise of the article. A look back at history would indicate that Nazi Germany took over Europe and part of Africa and caused a great deal of death and destruction. Unfortunately, a lot of damage can be inflicted on us on our way to victory because of our willful denial of reality.
If you listen to Rodrigo Duterte's now infamous rant against president Obama (start a minute 6) you might be forgiven for thinking it was Howard Zinn or Bill Ayers speaking, allowing for the accent. He spoke of the "lapdogs of America" who forget that "America has one too many [offenses] to answer for". He argued that the Philippines "inherited the [Muslim] problem from the United States" and since "everyone has a terrible record of extrajudicial killing ... why make an issue of it." He describes the massacre of the Indians, the oppression of migrants etc. as reasons for ordering the deaths of thousands proving, if there was any remaining doubt, that he learned the lesson of moral equivalence well.
From this Duterte concluded that he wouldn't listen to lectures from the SOB leader of such a country. It's almost as if he's been listening to Obama and Obama was hoist on his own petard. The Western left has the habit of preaching from a moral height while simultaneously describing its history as one unending crime. You've heard the teaching moments. "I live in a house built by slaves." "You didn't build that!" This whole country is stolen!
Say it often enough and someone will believe you. Somebody did. The trouble is you can't rise from the toilet to suddenly preach from a great moral height. It's possible to do one but not both simultaneously. Of course the liberal left can context shift and switch between sackcloth and ashes and the throne of moral superiority with the alacrity of Dr. Who. But Durterte isn't that nimble.
The clash between the two is tragi-comedy. Obama's planned teaching moment has complicated the problem of holding the Philippines against an expansionary China. The stark reality is that Duterte's Philippines is almost totally helpless against the Chinese military power and extremely vulnerable to Islamic terrorism. Who does Duterte think is keeping the Chinese away? The Philippine Navy? Nor will his hometown of Davao last very long against Islamic rebels without intelligence support and Sigint from the United States. Maybe Durterte believes that USA and Obama are two different things - I know, I do.
...The Era of Hope and Change has been one prolonged act of suicide. If anyone had said that Obama would manage to alienate Israel and the Philippines, lose Turkey, pay Iran a hundred billion dollars, preside over the loss of a won war in Afghanistan, lose billions of dollars in military equipment to ISIS, watch a consulate burn, restart the Cold War with Russia, cause Japan to re-arm and go the knife's edge with China would you have believed it? If someone had told you in 2008 millions of refugees would be heading for Europe and that the UK would leave the EU after Obama went there to campaign for them to remain would you not have laughed?
#1
A foundational tenet of leftism is that the scorpion, the black widow and the cobra have as much right to be in the crib as the baby. Then they are surprised when that gets turned back on them...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
09/06/2016 14:16 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.