Welcome to Cuba... One in Four to lose their jobs.... So says Castro....

[RollWithIt]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/cubas-state-run-economy-p_b_537988.html

In a seemingly never ending cycle there are frequent announcements of remedies that will invigorate our economy. This time it is called, "Ending the inflated payrolls," although from the perspective of those who will be left without jobs it can be summarized in one word: unemployment. Lengthy reports on TV show that the problem of inefficiency is caused by the excess of personnel in offices, factories and even hospitals. Each workday must contain enough work to avoid idleness, they tell us on the news, as if such an elemental formula had just been discovered in the last couple of weeks.

Some economists warn that sending home all the excess workers could make the unemployment figures soar to more than 25%. One in four workers would be laid off in order to clean up the bloated payrolls, as the country has no liquidity to keep on paying idle hands. Such a high number of unemployed would imply an increase in social unrest, hundreds of thousands of people released to take up illegal occupations, and finally the trick of creating underemployment as a way of adulterating the employment statistics. I would like to investigate what will happen in those government departments, swarming with bureaucrats, or what will happen with the engorged list of those who work for State Security. Will they also be downsizing? Seeing the growing number of plainclothes police who roam the streets, I think they should start with them to eliminate so much excess. For reasons of image, those left outside will not be called unemployed but rather something subtle - as already happens at other times - such as "surplus" or "idled."






Looks like 2013 will finally end the sad experiment.

[Common Sense Party]

1. Get ready for the boat people.

I predict a large flotilla soon if this happens.

[provis99]

3. so will Miami be refilled with Cuban drug dealers and murderers?

I think that only applies to the Batista lovers already there, though.

[EFerrari]

2. Yoani Sánchez: Pentagon babe

Rosa Miriam Elizalde
May 8, 2009

English Translation: Machetera



Havana – The news has gone around the world. The Obama administration is putting the final touches on a new cyberspace army. First the Wall Street Journal and then the New York Times reported that the objective of this cyber-command is to guarantee the security of U.S. military computer networks threatened by the intrusion of hackers, particularly those linked to countries such as China and Russia.

Victims are being offered a single pill in which to swallow the fantasy of an external enemy and the details of the homicidal weapon used to kill it (a cyber-command that will keep watch over the planet and eventually enter into action). As Tom Burghardt, of Global Research <1> put it, the United States is using the subterfuge of cyber-security as a pretext for cyber-war, a project forged by the North American hawks before September 11, 2001 and one that began to come together in 2003, when a secret document <2> signed by Donald Rumsfeld, the ex-Secretary of Defense, was leaked, in which the order was given to create this special Command.

Since then, the military has been greasing the arsenal in order to hack into servers, engage in internet espionage, buy cyber-mercenaries, attack laws in order to criminalize citizens in the name of the war on terrorism, twist the arms of telecommunications companies and even launch – in March of 2003, in Iraq – an electronic bomb, which disabled all electronic systems at once.

The unprecedented thing then was not the creation of this army, but the actions of electronic warfare, which previously were split among 10 Pentagon operations and other centers of intelligence, as well as the Air Force, which began to function in a single direction, in order to extend Bush’s holy war – “Either you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists” – not only against countries but against businesses, groups and individuals who would begin to be hunted like rabbits via the great nervous system of the global era.

http://machetera.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/yoani-sanchez-pentagon-babe/

Your tax dollars at work. :patriot:

[Mudoria]

4. Well spent

[EFerrari]

5. US funding of Cuba democracy work draws scrutiny

US funding of Cuba democracy work draws scrutiny
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jWs5s...
(AP) – 12 hours ago

MIAMI — During the waning months of 2008, the Bush administration quietly pushed through two major contracts to international development companies in an effort to spend a record $45 million to support regime change in Cuba. It was the first time Cuba funds went to private contractors, marking an effort to professionalize U.S. aid to the island's independent media and people opposing the communist government.

Two years later, as the Obama administration is poised to reauthorize the Cuba democracy funding, it's tough to see where that money has gone or whether contractors have fared any better than the foundations, universities and nonprofits that were once solely responsible for the aid.

Members of Congress are starting to demand more answers. In late March, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, temporarily held up funding.

"We are asking hard questions about fraud, waste and what actually works to benefit the Cuban people," said Berman, who has also long been opposed to the U.S. embargo of Cuba.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jWs5scdZ972aaxN1qbOdUDtkAD4QD9EUOSRO0

I hope the revolution is never over or Yoani will be out of work. :)

[Moochy]

12. Remember kids when laws are broken on your behalf by the govt.

= double plus good.

[Ken Burch]

The Cuban Revolution wasn't a sad experiment

It was too close to the Soviet model, but most of the Cuban people gained from it. Those people now have nothing to gain from "market values" and the return of American corporations.

Had the U.S. left Cuba alone, most of the repression wouldn't have happened and most of the economic stagnation caused by lack of democratic decision-making on the economy would likely have been avoided as well.

It will be a sadder day when Havana gets a stock exchange. That will be the day all the beauty and poetry of Cuba dies. It will just be Hong Kong with sugarcane then. Nothing magical and distinctive will be left.

And the ultimate tragedy will be if Cubans are forced to pay for university education and healthcare out of pocket. Market values will reduce both to nothing but luxuries for the few, as they are here.

Cuba needed democracy and space, not the return of greed.

[RM33]

8. Ken Burch does not know what he is talking about.

Don't take advice from people who never been their.

I have been to Cuba. Twice. Cuba is a hell hole. There is mass starvation. Most people eat every other day, if they are lucky. The whole place looks like the South Bronx. Since no one owns anything, they have no incentive to fix anything. Why fix a home, if the government benefits. Homes fall apart.

Only in Cuba you see something that you don't see anywhere elese. Skinny pigs. That's right, the farmers can't afford to feed their own livestock. So you see actual pigs with their ribs sticking out.

And the government runs the place like organized crime. If you wondered what a country would look like if Tony Soprano ran a country take a look at Cuba. Women are forced into prostitution. The communist party shakes down citizens for whatever they can get. Huge tracks of land are dedicated to the growth of drugs that are shipped into the US with the help of Columbian drug lords.

Cuba is hell. Hell for the common man anyway.

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[EFerrari]

13. LOL

[Cal Carpenter]

34. I'll second that

and double it. LOL, LOL

[Moochy]

14. You've ben their?

How did you escape to tell the tale? what with the skinny pigs and all!?!

[RM33]

18. You've ben their? answered . . .

I was in Cuba several years ago. And I might go next year.

Any American can go if they want. Just go by way of Canada or Mexico. When you get there tell the Cubans not to stamp your passport.

[Mika]

19. I ben their to.

Lived their four awhile.

We had a nice fat pig cooking underground all day on Nochebuena, and feasted all night with the neighbors.
Its a tradition there.

Stoopid logik. No point in keeping skinny pigs. No meet to eat.

What were these skinny pigs? Pets?

---

[EFerrari]

26. LOL! A puppy! A pigpy!

[SOS]

15. What drugs were "grown" in Cuba?

Coca? Opium poppies?

A rather extensive google search on this assertion indicates that you are the only person on earth who has seen these fields.

[RM33]

17. SOS answered . . .

SOS


What the Cuban's did was approach the Columbians in the 70's and encourge the use of Cuban air space and waters. They offer sancuary to the Columbians. The US does not do anything about this because they don't want a war with the Cubans. I believe it was 20/20 did a show about this years ago.

Several years after I saw that show, meet a soldiers who patrol Columbian farms in Cuba. They are ordered to shot to kill if any Cuban climbs over the fence. The soldier could not believe it when he saw well dress Columbians in Cuba.

Between the investigative 20/20 report and rumors from Cuba. I would not put it past Castro to get in bed with drug lords. The drug money would be a great way to keep his failed economy afloat.

[EFerrari]

27. You have this exactly backward. It was the CIA who climbed into bed with druglords

and grew a global market. We call that "IranContra", which is ongoing.

[RM33]

31. Here is some evidence of Cuba/ Columbian connection

Here is a piece done by PBS show called FrontLine

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/archive/cubaandcocaine.html

Cuba work with Columbians to push drugs into the US.

[EFerrari]

32. I'm so sorry but this bit of propaganda is not sourced and it's nearly 20 years old.

[EFerrari]

16. Food Security in Cuba.

http://americas.sas.ac.uk/events/docs/Food_crisis_papers/Morris.pdf

[Truth2Tell]

20. I think maybe you were in North Korea.

Were you using any strong narcotics or maybe drinking heavily prior to these "trips" to Cuba by chance?

:shrug:

[RM33]

30. Truth2Tell answered . . .

Truth2Tell got relatives there. I dress like a native and live with the people in Cuba.

How many times have you been there? If so, where. Name the street. Discribe it for me.

[Truth2Tell]

33. EFerrari already posted

a link above that makes a mockery of your claims of mass starvation. Why don't you describe the mass starvation you witnessed a bit more?

[Ken Burch]

22. It was hell under capitalism.

What have they got to gain by bringing the gusanos back? Nobody who went to Miami has good intentions for Cuba.

[EFerrari]

28. One of the most moving witnesses I've seen

was in a documentary about Cuba and I don't remember the title.

But the witness was a jeweler. He started out saying how before the revolution he owned three shops and now they had been nationalized. He didn't own them and his income was a fraction of what it had been.

Then, he started listing the social benefits that he no longer had to sweat. And then he says, my daughter is in medical school. No one discriminates against her because she is black. "No me la descriminan".

[Rex]

23. Let me see, believe Ken or someone with a few posts.

Nice propaganda, I think you missed a few of the talking points. :eyes:

[mitchum]

35. "Blah, blah, blah"

[blindpig]

10. misplaced post

[blindpig]

11. +1

[Ken Burch]

6. self-delete

dupe post.

[Mika]

7. Yoani Sanchez: "Some people say..."

With a track record like this....

1959 - Cuba will fall any day now.
1960 - Cuba will fall any day now.
1970 - Cuba will fall any day now.
1980 - Cuba will fall any day now.
1990 - Cuba will fall any day now.
2000 - Cuba will fall any day now.
2010 - Cuba will fall any day now.

Seems like a good bet this year.

:rofl:

---

[Mika]

21. Not mentioned in article: Unemployment insurance in Cuba.

100% of former salary.

Rent capped at 10% of income.

Fully subsidized higher ed or technical education/retraining.


Been there. Seen it.

---

[Dreamer Tatum]

29. Sounds like that might be part of the problem. nt

[bemildred]

24. What a load of ignorant horseshit. nt

[defendandprotect]

25. And, of course, America had nothing to do with the disaster in Cuba ... end the embargo -- !!