Comments by "Kim O\x27Brien" (@kimobrien.) on "Cuba: High prices, lines and shortages | DW Documentary" video.

@MrSgtau Fidel always told the truth no matter how good or bad the situation was and Fidel put his confidence in the workers and poor peasants to struggle. Fidel was a revolutionary not just of Cuba but the world. The next revolutions will not be made with old propaganda posters but by the those who learn from the revolutionaries and revolutions of the past. Fidel lead the first big defeat for the American Imperialist in the America's and the first defeat of the Racist South African army in Angola. His courage and that of the Cuban people in the face of threats of nuclear destruction will never be forgotten by history.
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@atomariola6410 The poor become obese because food prices favor caloric intake from carbohydrates over protein.
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@drd6893 End the US Blockade of Cuba!!!!
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@raybon7939 Why don't you send them a fishing trawler and a home in the country on farm land? Why not give the Chicago and New York homeless fishing boats
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@ReflectedMiles To understand the way capitalism works as a system you have to understand how different businesses are both dependent and independent of each other and that the source of the profit is the production workers unpaid labor while business success is measured in RATE of RETURN on INVESTMENT. Money has to move around in order for the system to work. Now if we had a relatively free market trade. handicraft producers and farmers then the prices would generally reflect the cost of production. No one would live significantly better than anyone else and you'd have something like the Christian community you mentioned. Industrial capitalism didn't go that way because it began using energy to move things and more complex and complicated methods to save labor time in production. So you have this tendency to build giant industries which is good in many ways but you also have this need to constantly cut the cost of production and replace labor with machines but this both raises the capital value and undercuts the profit because the price tends to slope towards the cost of production.and because the profit comes from the unpaid labor of the production worker less unpaid labor in the product. So this means that the Rate of Return on investment by which success is measured must fall without an infinite market to push goods into. Before Keynes this problem was solved with wage cuts to keep up the rate of profit which provoked strikes and since Keynes devaluing the currency with a central bank and national debt to create inflation took the place of the strike provoking wage cut. Now if the investor invests in expanding production than more workers are hired and more products are sold if the is no new markets to invest capital in then it gets invested in driving up the value of capital itself which was first documented in the tulip crisis in Holland back in the 1600;s. So when you have this type of system were everyone is competing to make the biggest profit but the production worker keeps getting cut out of the value he produces you get all these problems you have. And I haven't even brought in the world market problems.
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@berational1 You think they will be staying warm when they are already preparing for oil and gas shortages in Europe not to mention fears of shortages of diesel jet fuel and heating oil in the United States. Chopping down forests and waiting in cars to buy coal in Eastern Europe and tearing out a wind farm to expand a coal mine in Germany. .
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@ReflectedMiles At the commanding heights of American capitalism everyone is trying to maximize profit yet capital itself doesn't produce the machines only cut labor time.Then you got yourselves convinced that you an American meritocracy and not class based and have the right to rule the world because of this.
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@luperamos7307 Demonstrations and other activities will take place in more than a dozen cities across the U.S., Canada and the U.K. from Oct. 28 to Nov. 3 calling for the end to Washington’s more than 60-year-long economic war on Cuba. The actions lead up to the Nov. 2-3 debate and vote in the U.N. General Assembly on the resolution against “the U.S. economic, commercial and financial embargo against Cuba.” The assembly has approved such a motion 29 times in a row, calling on Washington to lift the sanctions. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez called the U.S. sanctions on Cuba “a constant hurricane” at an Oct. 19 press conference in Havana, where he released Cuba’s latest report on the devastating impact inflicted on the Cuban people. Rodríguez also welcomed the announcement by Washington that it would provide $2 million in emergency aid to Cuba following the damage caused by Hurricane Ian. At the same time, he noted that the standing policy of the Joseph Biden administration toward Cuba is the same as that carried out by the Republican administration of Donald Trump. This year’s report presented by Cuba points out that the U.S. economic war on Cuba “is the most comprehensive, complex and prolonged system of unilateral coercive measures ever imposed against any country in history.” It has caused $3.8 billion of economic losses to Cuba from August 2021 to February 2022 alone, Rodríguez said. The U.S. rulers have never forgiven Cuba’s workers and farmers for overthrowing the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, and, under the leadership of Fidel Castro, opening the road to the first socialist revolution in the Americas. So far there are marches and rallies planned for New York; Los Angeles; Minneapolis; Portland, Oregon; Jacksonville, Florida; Laurel, Maryland; Milwaukee; Miami; Chicago; Washington, D.C.; San Francisco; and Vancouver, British Columbia. There will also be public meetings in Montreal, London, and Manchester, England.
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@pegamini Ya well your going to see rifts open this winter if not sooner when energy isn't available due to war in Ukraine.
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@atfrock Cuba is free from the direct rules of the Imperialist investor class of North America. The Cuba Revolution is only the prelude to the coming socialist revolution in North America. The only way for labor to be free is to abolish private property the property used to exploit others. Capital produces nothing it only demands a return on investment. For if capital could produce than a perpetual motion machine would be possible. With capitalism education and healthcare are just overhead expenses.
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@chizpa305 Maybe you can explain why the homeless in Miami ,Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York don't go fishing and become rich? They don't have a culture were people who work in offices and give orders can act with impunity. .
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@jasonmamedov6769 Biden said, "Cuba is a failed state." this from an elderly man who is not necessarily in charges of his faculties. Biden also announced to the UN that "Democracy is not dead." of course what he really should of said was that the American Imperialism Empire is not yet dead.
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@Gringosaurus US Senator Marco Rubio says Trump put him in charge of Cuban foriegn policy. Rubio's parents left for Miami while Batista was still in power and Rubio has never set foot on Cuban soil. Rubio is consumed with hate for Fidel Castro and can not accept that he was not elected as the US Senator from Cuba on the island itself..
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@dpt6849 The King and landowner have still not lost their fear of the capitalist and the bank. This is why the feudal Kings and Princes showed only their hindquarters when confronted with modern industry.
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@ReflectedMiles He can't because the Soviet Union was created by a revolution not an army financed by capitalist bankers. Czechoslovakia was not part of the Soviet Union nor was Lenin still the leader of the Soviet Union when capitalism was overturned in Eastern Europe by Stalin and the Red Army who ha no choice but to Sovietize the area they held or give it up up the Democratic Imperialists who began the cold war in 1946. (US/UK/France)
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@dannyv2468va2 They have free elections that the Cuban people nominate candidates to in which about 70 % of the voters participate. All citizens over 16 have a right to vote. All votes are counted and the ballot is secret.
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@chizpa305 Hati was the first Black Republic in the Western Hemisphere. It remains dominated by Western Imperialism. The Cuban people kicked out the American Imperialist banks and big companies. Capitalist production must continually work to cut the labor time and skill need to produce otherwise prices would fall towards the cost of production and profits would go into decline. Modern capitalism gets around this problem with central bank generated inflation. The value of property as measured by currency value risis while wages are held down by capitalist crying poverty due to inflation.
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@BolshevikCarpetbagger1917 This is the same political line the Imperialist have been promoting for the last 60 years your situation is hopeless surrender now or else. The Cuban working people have a communist leadership who experience has taught them how to lead an internationalist class struggle against the Imperialist powers. More than anything the Cuban revolution is a story of a David holding a mighty Goliath at bay first without Soviet Nuclear weapons and later without the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc itself. Its a story of the courage power and human solidarity that the modern working class possess when it has a leadership it both deserves and is deserving of the title communist. .
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@axeblue End the US Blockade.
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@ReflectedMiles If capital could produce on its own than a perpetual motion machine would be possible.
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@richardfoster736 End the US Blockade of Cuba.
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@luperamos7307 Germany is divided by class its government is one that is loyal to the German capitalist class of imperialist bankers and bosses. All its major German parties agree that reforming and saving the German bosses Imperialist system of capitalist exploitation must come first. Putin was denied an seat in the NATO Imperialist alliance so he has struck out on his own. Now the "peace loving" German Imperialist have voted for rearming themselves and the British Imperialist who are nuclear armed and having an economic crisis are becoming alarmed by "German militarism". Throughout Europe Protests are breaking out against the NATO Imperialist military alliance.
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@luperamos7307 No born in Massachusetts USA. Their are small protests against the blockade in the US just as their was a letter writing campaign to free the Five Cuban anti-terrorist hero's. I grew up during the cold war just a few miles from an air base where B 52 nuclear bombers took off and landed 24/7. We saw the injustices on our TV screens the Black American beaten by police for wanting the Constitutional rights that the civil war guaranteed them 100 years earlier, the unjust slaughter of the people of Vietnam and the murder of 4 unarmed students at Kent State University Anti war protest by the Ohio National Guard. The media seldom realizes the more lies they promote the more idiotic they look.
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@drewski1441 No they are meant to advance the perspective of the German Imperialist regime or German capitalism. The American Imperialist are still much more hostile to Cuba when it comes to just about everything. They seek to an advance a more paternalistic attitude of being the wiser Europeans. If have been paying attention the NATO allaince is no where near as united as it was in the past. Trump told them to pay up for own defense, France lost an Australian nuclear sub contract to the US and withdrew their US Ambassador in protest and called the UK a vassal state of Washington. When Europe is cold this winter the American Imperialist glee over the NordStream sabotage will make for a lot of unhappy Eurozone Bosses. Putin collection of ex Stalinist gangsters are not radically different in thinking or in the social structure they defend from any Rightest European party.
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@YKKY The Cuban revolution is based on sound ethical political economic and moral principles. It's is not based upon the false promise of the Wall street hedge fund casino. Where a free lunch is the basic promise of capitalism to wealthy investors. Despite all post cold war Keynesian neoliberal theories where capitalism can now continue forward unmolested by the evil Empire of Communism. The worlds biggest military Empire along with its NATO allies was defeated by one of the smallest and poorest nations in the world after 20 years of the most vicious fighting to create what Bush said would be a "New World Order" Where the rule of law would replace the rule of the jungle. The capitalist war mongers have shown them selves to be nothing more than Human hyenas feasting by profit maximization though Imperialist wars of plunder.
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@YKKY The Social Democratic traitors have been making the European ruling classes beds for years now why not just continue? You handmaidens of Imperialism don't have the guts you were born with!
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@larrydugan1441 No its just can't be sent without all kinds of red tape because of BS like being a states sponsor of terror.
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@RodrigoOswego In the US speculators like Bill Gates buy up farm land and rent it out to farmers.
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@michaelotieno6524 The Cuban government will listen to the Cuban workers and farmers it will tell the truth and chart a way forward. In Germany and the UK the politicians will lie and grandstand for capitalism and deny that the greed of the riling classes is the cause of war in Europe.
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@richardfoster736 Oil bosses and AT&T didn't want to take 30 year bonds for the tax value of their property they had declared under Batista's rule like other foreign investors. Instead they called on Kennedy the Banker's son to overthrow a popular revolution. .
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@alfonsobenitez8574 You didn't escape your parents ran away for the promises of the American Imperialists. The American Imperialists lost the cold war and now the world is seeing the true nature pf Imperialism as the Russian neo capitalist invade Ukraine in a fight with the American imperialists over oil and gas profits.
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@richardfoster736 Since the Cuban state is not distinct from the military everything not an individuals property is militarily owned. Legal visits require pre claerance red tape not required for any other common distention. Flights to cites other than Havana were halted by Trump. Marco Rubio a Miami "hater" claims responsibility for Trump's policy.
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@berational1 The government employees everyone except those who choose an independent profession and those who work in cooperatives. Those who want to leave are welcome to do so by legal means no exit permit from Cuba is required. Millions will find out this winter how well all the promises of capitalist Green Energy powering the planet will keep them warm in the Centers of World Capitalism itself.
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@ReflectedMiles Russia is ruled by Putin banking oligarchs not Stalinist or even Social Democrats. The favorable trade ended with Gorbachev. Putin is interested in recreating the CZAR's Prison house of nations. Not Lenin's Soviet Union of freely associated Socialist Republics. He blames Lenin for Ukrainian independence. Maybe you should go look at the slums in Haiti or Santa Domingo. How many foreign students do they have training to be Doctors and medical brigades are they sending to the poor countries. Fidel has passed away and Raul has retired. End your blockade and we will see what a free socialist people can accomplish.
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@ReflectedMiles What Cuba gain by giving every ones home to a bank so a mortgage can be collected? Or playing games by giving workers shares in their enterprise so managers could buy them up and fire everyone to lower wages and create shock therapy like in Russia on the advice of people like Jeffery Sachs and Milton Friedman. N one in Cuba is as stupid as you think the are. People like Milton Freedman and the maximizing profits crazies are why you had the 2008 crisis and why the world crisis of capitalist trade and exchange continues today. Let me know when you think that you've outsmarted Karl Marx and Engle's analysis in Das Kapital or Lenin in Imperialism the highest stage of capitalism. Think you can escape the Imperialist era of war and revolution without Socialist revolution and national independence for the colonial nations?
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@ReflectedMiles "Put it in a non-Marxist, voluntary, Christian setting like the Hutterites" They became refugees from the United States and moved to Canada as conscientious objectors during the first Imperialist war. Not really the same as the Bolshevik slogans of turn the guns around and defeat your own ruling class, No annexations and an immediate armistice. Eugene Debs went to jail as did the 18 leaders of the Socialist Workers Party in 1940. Nothing says yu can't have communal farming and small scale manufacture but that isn't going to work for the majority because we can't buy the railroads and basic industry from the capitalist anymore than the slaves could free themselves by purchasing their freedom. A change in what class rules the productive forces must take place,.
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The natural workings of capitalism lead to the creation of a tiny ruling capitalist classes of bosses and us a property less working class. Capitalism arisise in nation states that go to war over the world market. This is why you live in an era of war and revolution. Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism. Capital produces nothing it merely ac-ululates and demands a return on investment. Class struggle leads first to trade unions than a workers state.
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@Diana-yn2ho Everyone knows that the goal of the US Gov't is to starve the Cuban people into submission. Take the advice of the American imperialist and they will be happy to reimpose capitalism with shock therapy like the did in Russia, They'll be glad to give you what capitalism promises which is nothing. They are looking for the demoralized intellectuals who can spread lies and create violent attacks upon innocent people. They want those who will surrender their dignity for Yankee dollars.
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@Diana-yn2ho The revolution gave land to those who wanted ro work it by taking it away from big landowners like those American companies who owned Cuban land so you don't know what you are talking about. They never practiced forced collectivizaton. In the US small farmers are constantly driven out of business by capital;ist farmers, charged rents by the likes of Bill Gates, must pay up front for fertilizer and seeds and middlemen who take the lions share of the value produced. Thanks to capitalism the people of the world face nuclear war over which group of wealthy investors control the colonial world. Living standards in the US stagnated in 1973 and now they are declining. Capitalist policies liberal or conservative are responsible for whats going on in the US NOT Karl Marx or Valdimir Lenin. . Most of the computer technology was developed in the elite universities for use in the cold war. If private entrepreneurs did anything it was to grab what ever the could and act as gate keepers demanding to be paid for creating monopolies. All they do is use their ability to buy and manipulate markets to make themselves rich. They have fools like you convinced they are genius because the can count in base 2.
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@Diana-yn2ho I don't care how many countries you visit if you don't understand how capitalism works you will never see anything wrong with it. The only reason they don't issue wage cuts anymore is because they can use a central bank to inflate the money supply which drives up the monetary value of property while they hold down wages to supposedly prevent inflation They've been playing this trick since 1973. They lie through their teeth saying that money grows in a bank and other nonsense. The only thing capital does is accumulate and demand more than they started with.
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@Mauricio Fonacier Look at US cities and you see people living outdoors in tents constantly harassed by the police. This is the result of the private profit system. Where the needs of the capitalist bosses always come first. Where their are no checks or balance on the power of the capitalists outside of the trade unions.
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@Ann-fj5py That is just a lot of US Imperialist propaganda made up for the consumption of US petti bourgeois intellectuals with no confidence in the working class. Those who can't leave capitalism behind because they themselves benefit fomr the system they claim they can fix with reformist methods. Those who need confirmation of their petti bourgeois dispair in the face of big capital.
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@GustavoEmmanueldeangolasilva Wny should we listen to a conspiracy theory of history much like Hitler's and the protocols of Zion. Where bankers and Communists conspire to control the world. Trotsky was removed by the British in Halifax placed in a concentration camp with Germans on hs way to St Petersburg Russia. He was Chairman of the 1905 Soviet before he ever set foot in New York. All Sutton is is a mothpeice for the inrtellegnce services making up lies as needed.
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@jude999 They are a small country whose people understand they can't get rich quick by adopting capitalism. The neoliberal reforms in Russia had to be imposed by a dictatorship begun by Yeltsin when he called out the army to fire on the Supreme Soviet. You can see how market reforms sent the economy into a tailspin as greed took over how things were done. This is because they never properly dealt with the problems that were created during the Stalin Era and the reliance on capitalist methods of incentivisation for the administration of the economy. How else would you explain people supposedly being communists so easily fooled into bringing back capitalism.
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@corredor305 Bushes "New World Order" where the rule of law replaces rule of the 'jungle is capiatalisms "New World Disorder? As American Imperialism did not win the cold war but instead has enered an economic crisis starting with 2008. End the US Blockade of Cuba.
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SantiagoDeTortillas Every year the whole world votes against the US Blockade so if it has no effect why does every country with the exception of the US and Israel in the world vote against it at the UN? Obviously US NATO allies like Canada, the UK, France, Germany don't cast meaningless foreign policy votes. The US 60 year blockade is meant to punish the Cuban people for tossing out their dictator Batista.499. Memorandum From the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Mallory) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Rubottom)1 Washington, April 6, 1960. SUBJECT The Decline and Fall of Castro Salient considerations respecting the life of the present Government of Cuba are: 1. The majority of Cubans support Castro (the lowest estimate I have seen is 50 percent). 2. There is no effective political opposition. 3. Fidel Castro and other members of the Cuban Government espouse or condone communist influence. 4. Communist influence is pervading the Government and the body politic at an amazingly fast rate. 5. Militant opposition to Castro from without Cuba would only serve his and the communist cause. 6. The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship. If the above are accepted or cannot be successfully countered, it follows that every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. If such a policy is adopted, it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government. The principal item in our economic quiver would be flexible authority in the sugar legislation. This needs to be sought urgently. All other avenues should likewise be explored. But first, a decision is [Page 886]necessary as to the line of our conduct. Would you wish to have such a proposal prepared for the Secretary?2
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@mathoskualawa9000 Plenty of Protests in the Capitalist world. Those are people who really suffer under capitalism. The end of favorable trade relations with the Eastern bloc countries ended in 1990 and the US Blockade was tightened even more.
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@mikebane2866 Well the majority of English speaking intellectuals are pro capitalist. For them the solution is always "free markets" because they are mostly privileged middle class westerners. The Cuban workers and farmers know what they have and what the have acomolpished has been with the help of their friends despite their enemies desires to destroy them. They aren't interested in having a Putin, Yeltsin or Gorbachev and American neoliberalism destroy everything with so called "free market capitalism" and shock therapy so an oligarchy can be created. .
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@andreiotraskin475 Same type of fraud that was perpetrated just before WW1 by the Teddy Roosevelt trust busters. Anti monopoly laws don't work for two reasons one you can not reverse the products of economic history two the capitalist parties will not abolish the profit system which is at the core of the problems that result in wars and economic crisis. Abolishing private property and replacing capitalist management with workers control and economic planning. By private enterprise you mean the ability enable private profits achieved though the use of capitalist methods. Hiring the labor of others and then keeping the accumulation of exchange value made possible by the workers creation of surplus value. All these profits are is unpaid labor.
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