I can see in Brazil the left are up in arms that the newly elected president Bolsonaro has denounce the agreement brokered by the previous administration 5 years ago (by former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff of the PT party who was since impeached) for which Cuba sends doctors to Brazil and Brazil pay Cuba directly for these Doctors who only receive 30% of this money whilst the remaining 70% goes directly to Cuba’s dictatorship.
Let’s just have a wee closer look at this before anyone falls for the shit about Bolsonaro carrying out “ultra-right” policies (admittedly I am a gringo writing about Brazilian politics so my views are up for debate)
Firstly Bolsonaro (who is scheduled to take office on the first on January) never simply just bucketed the “Mais Medicos program, he gave Cuba conditions for it to continue in Brazil, he asked Cuba to accepted three conditions: that Cuban physicians receive their full wages; their medical degrees be validated by Brazil; and they be allowed to bring their families as at the moment Cuba does not allow its doctors to take their families with them. Families remain in Cuba as de facto hostages, to reduce the risk of mass defections
Bolsonaro also said Brazil would offer asylum to Cuban doctors who wished to stay in Brazil. He actually said "This is slave labour," he said. "I couldn't be an accomplice of that."
Now really what can lefties and progressives (many who are supporters of Lula’s PT party and aggressively against Bolsonaro winning the election last month) have against this?
The terms of the deal with Cuba were a blatant violation of the doctors’ basic human rights, can anyone really say any different?
Now I have been to Cuba (and Brazil multiple times) and have seen with my own eyes what is happening there. For example, if you get a Taxi from the airport the chances are it will be driven by an ex-Doctor or ex-Engineer the reason being that why would they want to continue working in their trained profession getting paid about £15 a month by the Cuban government when they can make the same some from the profits of a few hours driving taxis picking up visiting tourists from the airport.
Cuba is still very much under a Communist regime, make no mistake about that and its very visible the poverty and suffering across there. Five years ago the leftist President Dilma Roussef agreed to import Cuban doctors via the Mais Medicos program but under the conditions the Cuban government place of their exported doctors it is, rightly as Bolsonaro claims “slave labour” and if lefties and progressives cant side with Bolsonaro on this one then they really need to get their moral compasses recalibrated!!!!
Cuba’s health ministry rejected Bolsonaro’s comments as “contemptuous and threatening to the presence of our doctors” in a statement announcing its withdrawal from the program.
Now remember that this is the same “health ministry” which until recently use to lock away people with Aids for life in so called “quarantine” centres!!! I am not for one second questioning the professionalism and altruism of Cubans Doctors but in this day and age what Cuba is doing by holding the Doctors families in Cuba basically as hostages is a disgrace and also if the Doctors were to defect then Cuba would not allow then to return to see their families for at least 8 years!!! Makes you wonder why Lefty Dilma Roussef agreed with such a program in the first place with a country so notorious for its human rights violations
Saturday 17 November 2018
Saturday 20 October 2018
Che Guevara....not a selfless martyr
Quite comparable. As Stalin once said “death solves all problems, no man, no problem” Che certainly followed this advice, Che also used to sign some of his earlier letters “Stalin 2” This is the brave worshiped hero Che Guevara who before his death in Bolivia during what was one of this only tastes of real combat (don’t believe the shite he wrote in his own autobiography) gave orders to his guerrillas to fight to their last bullet and until their last breath and give no mercy but as his fighters were doing this he got slightly wounded, limped away from the fight, surrendered with a full clip in his pistol having never fired it and begged his captors “don’t shoot, I’m Che, I am worth more to you alive than dead”!!!! Writing in his published “Motorcycle diary” he claimed black people were “indolent, fanciful, spending their money on frivolity and drink” yet people including Iron Mike Tyson have his cowardly racist tattooed on their skin!!
Che even admitted to executing people, he boasted about it when addressing a U.N assembly in 1964 by saying “certainly we execute” Under the drive of Fidel and Che over 14,000 people (including woman and children) where executed by firing squad by the beginning of the 1970s, putting that in perspective of Cuba’s population that would be the equivalent of 3 million executions is the U.S.A!!!! On entering Havana when conducting executions Che’s direct order to his men was to pull 3 thousand books from the library, pile then on the bust street and set fire to them!!! Book burning, we all know which other regime did this. Commander Che also signed the death warrents to many authors and the secret police which he helped recruit and train hunted them through the streets.
After Fidel and Che captured Havana Che moved into on of the biggest most luxurious houses there after throwing the occupying family out. Che’s newly acquired mansion had a yacht harbour, a swimming pool, sauna, massage salon and seven bathrooms, he was certainly living it up with the spoils of war, not exactly the humble, noble rough living hero the Che museum next to his massive mausoleum which I visited at the start of this year in Santa Clara, looking back I have to laugh at how it portrays “love affairs between a leader and his people” something which I naively believed in with the propaganda before going to Cuba, with his face painted on walls and legendary tales of valour but who could speak out the truth when the prospect of Castro’s torture chambers were a reality. How we watch these days on the news lefties, progressives and Antifa using Che as a symbol of rebellion and anti-imperialism, the posters, the tee-shirts, and black berets and some budding lefties with political aspirations even modelling their looks and personas on him. Ironic that their hero was a brutal executioner, coward and hypocrite, even he can be described as one of the first modern terrorists. Oh, and let’s not forget how his supported movement once in power in Cuba tortured and murdered thousand, criminalised gays and caused one of the biggest refugee (real refugees that is, people fleeing for their lifes) crisis of that time!!!!
The liberal media have a lot to answer for too, the final “battle” in the city of Santa Clara where “ Commander Che Guevara turned the tide in this bloody battle by whipping a force of 3000 of Batista’s men” was actually “fought” by bribing Batista’s commanders and the casualties on both sides did not exceed 5!!! During the 3 days of the Bay of Pigs invasion Che was 300 miles away, he did get a medal for being shot though, a bullet entered his chin and exited above his temple narrowly missing his brain….but the bullet came from his own pistol, negligent discharged….lol…what a clown. Before Castro and his beared rebels took control of Cuba it had a higher per capita income than Austria or Japan and the third highest protein intake in the world. Within a year of Castro’s control it was rationing food, closing factories and its most productive citizens were leaving in droves, yes ..the USA’s embargo has a lot to answer for but never the less, should the new established power in Cuba no hold some accountability? Che was appointed Cuba’s economic Minister, he responded by opening a forced labour camp and forcing Cuban’s to work at gunpoint. Now this is the man who’s poster is on many a student’s wall and the poster boy of many lefties who idolise him. I have seen the poverty in modern Cuba first hand, the people are lovely, warm and friendly there yet still they only criticise the Castro regime behind closed door. The poverty is terrible, my host across there queued for 4 hours to buy toilet paper for the guests in her “casa particular” Engineers and doctors leave their profession to become taxi drivers for the tourist as they earn more!! These days Cuban children recite each morning "We will be like Che."…. for their sake and the future of their country I really hope not.
Saturday 13 October 2018
Ineptocracy ....another failing of democracy
Ineptocracy” is a new word so you man not find it in the dictionary yet, as I write this even my spell checking is questioning it. It appears to have been created recently as a means to describe the nature of the democratic electoral process and its possibly result. Its definition is “A system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.”
Anyone who believes himself to be a “net producer” will surely be pissed off at the idea he may well be living in an ineptocracy, as it means that he is in for a lifetime of being in the minority and will spend his life, to one degree or another, enslaved to the provision of goods to others who are “least likely to sustain themselves.” So basically working his arse off paying taxes which benefits the lazy who are quite happy to sit back on their excuses claiming benefits such as using public money for legal aid, getting allowances for a search for a job they never intend to achieve or pay for their methadone, perhaps even toward paying for housing for 3rd world (economic) refugees who have no tolerance for our way of life.
For some who reach this conclusion their first reaction (should be) is to say, let's change the system. But will ssoon recognise that this cannot be done by one person, so they instead join whatever group seems to have the most like-minded people as its members or voice their frustration on social media. But the facts are that those who hope to change the system to make it more equitable will not succeed, they don’t have change because those who are not net producers tend to be in the majority. Therefore, democratic change for the better, by definition, cannot take place. Thus a failing of the democratic process.
There are examples (in my opinion …I say that this is in my opinion so you don’t need to agree and I may not be very popular to say this but also please understand there are always exceptions to every rule so I am sure that if you are one of these electorate who voted for who I disagree with add value to society and give more that you sit on your arse and take….or maybe not) ..the examples in my book are voters of the SNP in Scotland, perhaps (I am not certain as its still new territory) voters of Brexit (I can almost sense hackles rising) Voters of Corbyn (remember it’s my blog my opinions) some may say Trump voters in America too but I am not so sure ( more hackles shooting up there ?) What is the cure for this failing of democracy you may ask? Well red my post from November last year titled “Democracy ...an insult to the few but felt by the many” especially the part about John Stuart Mill thoughts on parliamentary reform who wrote ““If every ordinary unskilled labourer had one vote … a member of any profession requiring a long, accurate and systematic mental cultivation – a lawyer, a physician or surgeon, a clergyman of any denomination a literary man, an artist, a public functionary … ought to have six) I don’t agree with all of this statement, for example I would not give the Clergy any votes, and I would personally modify it so anyone unemployed for a certain length of time would not have any votes!! ….prisoners certainly none too no matter what human right they thing that may break!! Now don’t take this post too serious, I don’t want to come across as some crazy radical but it’s always food for thought ….or simply dismissed if you have even made it this far.
Anyone who believes himself to be a “net producer” will surely be pissed off at the idea he may well be living in an ineptocracy, as it means that he is in for a lifetime of being in the minority and will spend his life, to one degree or another, enslaved to the provision of goods to others who are “least likely to sustain themselves.” So basically working his arse off paying taxes which benefits the lazy who are quite happy to sit back on their excuses claiming benefits such as using public money for legal aid, getting allowances for a search for a job they never intend to achieve or pay for their methadone, perhaps even toward paying for housing for 3rd world (economic) refugees who have no tolerance for our way of life.
For some who reach this conclusion their first reaction (should be) is to say, let's change the system. But will ssoon recognise that this cannot be done by one person, so they instead join whatever group seems to have the most like-minded people as its members or voice their frustration on social media. But the facts are that those who hope to change the system to make it more equitable will not succeed, they don’t have change because those who are not net producers tend to be in the majority. Therefore, democratic change for the better, by definition, cannot take place. Thus a failing of the democratic process.
There are examples (in my opinion …I say that this is in my opinion so you don’t need to agree and I may not be very popular to say this but also please understand there are always exceptions to every rule so I am sure that if you are one of these electorate who voted for who I disagree with add value to society and give more that you sit on your arse and take….or maybe not) ..the examples in my book are voters of the SNP in Scotland, perhaps (I am not certain as its still new territory) voters of Brexit (I can almost sense hackles rising) Voters of Corbyn (remember it’s my blog my opinions) some may say Trump voters in America too but I am not so sure ( more hackles shooting up there ?) What is the cure for this failing of democracy you may ask? Well red my post from November last year titled “Democracy ...an insult to the few but felt by the many” especially the part about John Stuart Mill thoughts on parliamentary reform who wrote ““If every ordinary unskilled labourer had one vote … a member of any profession requiring a long, accurate and systematic mental cultivation – a lawyer, a physician or surgeon, a clergyman of any denomination a literary man, an artist, a public functionary … ought to have six) I don’t agree with all of this statement, for example I would not give the Clergy any votes, and I would personally modify it so anyone unemployed for a certain length of time would not have any votes!! ….prisoners certainly none too no matter what human right they thing that may break!! Now don’t take this post too serious, I don’t want to come across as some crazy radical but it’s always food for thought ….or simply dismissed if you have even made it this far.
Sunday 27 May 2018
multiculturalism is broke
Since the recent events regarding the arrest of self-proclaimed social activist Tommy Robinson (who I am not his biggest fan but I respect what he has been doing recently which is to bring matters to public attention despite the flak he is getting) for reporting (via a live Facebook stream) the comings and goings outside a court in Leeds concerning 10 alleged child-grooming rapists who all shared a common ideology turning up for trail, there has been a serious concern for the public exercising their Freedom of Speech and a fear that UK is turning into a dystrophy state, an Orwellian police state who’s citizens are being anesthetised with shit TV and false news, encouraged to tolerate the intolerable under the banner of diversity and if we are outspoken or voice criticism then this is a hate speech and we can face the wrath of the courts.
The ring-fence protection given to this (or any ideologies) will encourage far right hate groups to fill the vacuum of silence and this is the very last thing we want as this should be debated openly and addressed peacefully and if multiculturalism is to work in the UK certain reforms must take place within certain ideologies (but I do fear this will prove to be impossible but we need to think about future generations and prepare safe havens and encouragement for those who wish to leave such ideologies behind or to follow more acceptable interpretations within their communities (build bridges not walls) but before this happens we need to face the facts, we all need to be like Rosa Parks and not give up our seats on the bus!!
I do fear I post too much criticism about this on my blog but we can’t just sit on the fence without engaging or encouraging debate, we all have our part to play and this should be done by our own research into what is happening and demands to our government that what is happening is unacceptable, we are supposed to be a democracy not a theocracy (well you know what I think about democracy from past posts) I would like to post an article here which Allison Pearson from the telegraph wrote. “Rochdale, Rotherham, Derby, Oxford. The towns change, but the pattern is always the same. Gangs of men, mainly of Pakistani Muslim heritage, lure white girls as young as 10 with gifts and displays of affection. Next, the girl is raped as a way of “breaking her in”.
Once the child’s spirit is subdued, and her mind fogged with drugs, she is sold for sex to multiple men at £200 a time. If the girl tries to break away, a gang member might threaten to behead her or firebomb her home. Mohammed Karrar, who was found guilty in the Oxford sex-grooming case this week, took a scalding hairpin and branded one girl so she would know she was his property. Later, the gang gave the same girl a DIY abortion. She was 12 years old. And this, all this, is happening in Britain now. In a particularly warped twist, the pimp will teach his victim that her parents are racist towards Asians, which is why they disapprove of their relationship – absolutely nothing, of course, to do with him being a violent, controlling thug. Gang members have grown wise to the wimpy ways of Western society. They exploit the fact that police, newly trained in “cultural sensitivity”, are terrified of being accused of racism. So the pimps operate with impunity until, years later, the slave girls find the courage to testify in court against their masters.
We all know what happens next, don’t we? Leaders of the Pakistani Muslim community – essentially a Victorian society that has landed like Doctor Who’s Tardis on a liberal, permissive planet it despises – are at pains to deny that the grooming gang’s behaviour has anything to do with ethnic origin or contemptible attitudes towards women. Then Sue Berelowitz, the lamentably foolish deputy children’s commissioner, trots out her lame line that Asian men targeting white girls is “just one of a number of models”, even though such “models” account for an improbably large proportion of all gang sexual abuse. Did Berelowitz not hear Nazir Afzal, Chief Crown Prosecutor for North West England, when he blamed “imported cultural baggage” for appalling crimes by members of his own community? “The men think that women are some lesser being,” he said. The chief constable who was in charge while all that torture and rape was going on in Oxford appeared on Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday and said that she took “full responsibility” for shocking police failures. But, no, Sara Thornton, head of Thames Valley Police, would not be resigning. Why ever not? Because saying you take responsibility is the new not taking responsibility, stupid. All that remains is for the panel on tonight’s Question Time to do a little gentle hand-wringing about the Oxford horrors before it concludes that no particular group is implicated in these vile, misogynistic crimes.
And, once again, the fear of racism will have trumped sexism, and hundreds of young girls – or the “hollow shells” of girls, as one tearful copper called them – will be betrayed. Then we can all sit back comfortably and wait till the next hideous court case comes along, probably in Bradford, where at least 30 men have been arrested in the past few months over child sex-grooming allegations. Sue Berelowitz may believe the perpetrators could turn out to be Buddhist podiatrists. But I wouldn’t count on it. At least some good has come from this spate of incredibly distressing cases. Those brutalised young women have not testified against their tormentors in vain. Courageous Muslim writers and community workers have spoken out with repugnance and great moral clarity. Kris Hopkins, the MP for Keighley and Ilkley, believes the police crackdown in Bradford reveals that the political correctness that made the authorities reluctant to act in the past is gone. Maybe. But what remains is a political class still far too timid to challenge growing and alarming separatism in Muslim education and law. It is 30 years since I first taught English to Bangladeshi women in their flats in Tower Hamlets, and I still remember how those smiley, interested ladies shrank and cowered when their husbands came home.
Only one thing can permanently change the misogynist behaviour of certain Pakistani men and that is the education and empowerment of their daughters. Female emancipation drags societies with even the darkest attitudes towards the light. But what hope is there of those girls getting the education and status they need to take their men to task? Back in January, there was a profoundly disturbing case at Nottingham Crown Court. Adil Rashid, who had “raped” an underage girl, was spared a prison term after the judge heard that the naïve 18-year-old attended an Islamic faith school where he was taught that women are worthless. Rashid told psychologists he had no idea that having sex with a willing 13-year-old was against the law; besides, his education had taught him to believe that “women are no more worthy than a lollipop that has been dropped on the ground”. If the fresh-faced Rashid had picked up that view in a madrassa in Karachi it would be profoundly depressing, though not surprising. But the school he attended was in Birmingham, for heaven’s sake! Although it cannot be named for “legal reasons”, the school is voluntary-aided – mainly funded by the taxpayer. At this hugely popular Islamic school, where a majority of pupils are from a Pakistani background, boys and girls are taught in separate classes; a segregation policy no normal comprehensive could get away with. Rashid’s barrister said: “The school he attended, it is not going too far to say, can be described as a closed community.” So, the defence against a rape charge by a young Muslim living in 21st-century Britain was not just ignorance of the law (which should be no defence at all). It was that the law and, indeed, the values of the wider country, were irrelevant in his Islamic school, even though it was a state institution funded by citizens who would go straight to jail if, for instance, they tried to have sex with a child. The fact that the judge accepted Rashid’s defence shows what a god-awful mess this country has got itself into over multiculturalism.
I reckon Britons in a hundred years’ time will look back at us in outraged astonishment for allowing Islamic schools to flout the laws of the land and teach boys that women are worthless. All Islamic schools should be obliged to introduce mixed-sex classes, so boys can learn at first hand that girls are their equals, or those schools should be closed. If you teach boys that a female is no better than a lollipop that has been dropped on the ground, eventually you produce a pimp who thinks that you break a girl’s spirit as though she were a horse, before branding her with your initial. That man and those attitudes have no place, no place at all, in Britain now”
The ring-fence protection given to this (or any ideologies) will encourage far right hate groups to fill the vacuum of silence and this is the very last thing we want as this should be debated openly and addressed peacefully and if multiculturalism is to work in the UK certain reforms must take place within certain ideologies (but I do fear this will prove to be impossible but we need to think about future generations and prepare safe havens and encouragement for those who wish to leave such ideologies behind or to follow more acceptable interpretations within their communities (build bridges not walls) but before this happens we need to face the facts, we all need to be like Rosa Parks and not give up our seats on the bus!!
I do fear I post too much criticism about this on my blog but we can’t just sit on the fence without engaging or encouraging debate, we all have our part to play and this should be done by our own research into what is happening and demands to our government that what is happening is unacceptable, we are supposed to be a democracy not a theocracy (well you know what I think about democracy from past posts) I would like to post an article here which Allison Pearson from the telegraph wrote. “Rochdale, Rotherham, Derby, Oxford. The towns change, but the pattern is always the same. Gangs of men, mainly of Pakistani Muslim heritage, lure white girls as young as 10 with gifts and displays of affection. Next, the girl is raped as a way of “breaking her in”.
Once the child’s spirit is subdued, and her mind fogged with drugs, she is sold for sex to multiple men at £200 a time. If the girl tries to break away, a gang member might threaten to behead her or firebomb her home. Mohammed Karrar, who was found guilty in the Oxford sex-grooming case this week, took a scalding hairpin and branded one girl so she would know she was his property. Later, the gang gave the same girl a DIY abortion. She was 12 years old. And this, all this, is happening in Britain now. In a particularly warped twist, the pimp will teach his victim that her parents are racist towards Asians, which is why they disapprove of their relationship – absolutely nothing, of course, to do with him being a violent, controlling thug. Gang members have grown wise to the wimpy ways of Western society. They exploit the fact that police, newly trained in “cultural sensitivity”, are terrified of being accused of racism. So the pimps operate with impunity until, years later, the slave girls find the courage to testify in court against their masters.
We all know what happens next, don’t we? Leaders of the Pakistani Muslim community – essentially a Victorian society that has landed like Doctor Who’s Tardis on a liberal, permissive planet it despises – are at pains to deny that the grooming gang’s behaviour has anything to do with ethnic origin or contemptible attitudes towards women. Then Sue Berelowitz, the lamentably foolish deputy children’s commissioner, trots out her lame line that Asian men targeting white girls is “just one of a number of models”, even though such “models” account for an improbably large proportion of all gang sexual abuse. Did Berelowitz not hear Nazir Afzal, Chief Crown Prosecutor for North West England, when he blamed “imported cultural baggage” for appalling crimes by members of his own community? “The men think that women are some lesser being,” he said. The chief constable who was in charge while all that torture and rape was going on in Oxford appeared on Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday and said that she took “full responsibility” for shocking police failures. But, no, Sara Thornton, head of Thames Valley Police, would not be resigning. Why ever not? Because saying you take responsibility is the new not taking responsibility, stupid. All that remains is for the panel on tonight’s Question Time to do a little gentle hand-wringing about the Oxford horrors before it concludes that no particular group is implicated in these vile, misogynistic crimes.
And, once again, the fear of racism will have trumped sexism, and hundreds of young girls – or the “hollow shells” of girls, as one tearful copper called them – will be betrayed. Then we can all sit back comfortably and wait till the next hideous court case comes along, probably in Bradford, where at least 30 men have been arrested in the past few months over child sex-grooming allegations. Sue Berelowitz may believe the perpetrators could turn out to be Buddhist podiatrists. But I wouldn’t count on it. At least some good has come from this spate of incredibly distressing cases. Those brutalised young women have not testified against their tormentors in vain. Courageous Muslim writers and community workers have spoken out with repugnance and great moral clarity. Kris Hopkins, the MP for Keighley and Ilkley, believes the police crackdown in Bradford reveals that the political correctness that made the authorities reluctant to act in the past is gone. Maybe. But what remains is a political class still far too timid to challenge growing and alarming separatism in Muslim education and law. It is 30 years since I first taught English to Bangladeshi women in their flats in Tower Hamlets, and I still remember how those smiley, interested ladies shrank and cowered when their husbands came home.
Only one thing can permanently change the misogynist behaviour of certain Pakistani men and that is the education and empowerment of their daughters. Female emancipation drags societies with even the darkest attitudes towards the light. But what hope is there of those girls getting the education and status they need to take their men to task? Back in January, there was a profoundly disturbing case at Nottingham Crown Court. Adil Rashid, who had “raped” an underage girl, was spared a prison term after the judge heard that the naïve 18-year-old attended an Islamic faith school where he was taught that women are worthless. Rashid told psychologists he had no idea that having sex with a willing 13-year-old was against the law; besides, his education had taught him to believe that “women are no more worthy than a lollipop that has been dropped on the ground”. If the fresh-faced Rashid had picked up that view in a madrassa in Karachi it would be profoundly depressing, though not surprising. But the school he attended was in Birmingham, for heaven’s sake! Although it cannot be named for “legal reasons”, the school is voluntary-aided – mainly funded by the taxpayer. At this hugely popular Islamic school, where a majority of pupils are from a Pakistani background, boys and girls are taught in separate classes; a segregation policy no normal comprehensive could get away with. Rashid’s barrister said: “The school he attended, it is not going too far to say, can be described as a closed community.” So, the defence against a rape charge by a young Muslim living in 21st-century Britain was not just ignorance of the law (which should be no defence at all). It was that the law and, indeed, the values of the wider country, were irrelevant in his Islamic school, even though it was a state institution funded by citizens who would go straight to jail if, for instance, they tried to have sex with a child. The fact that the judge accepted Rashid’s defence shows what a god-awful mess this country has got itself into over multiculturalism.
I reckon Britons in a hundred years’ time will look back at us in outraged astonishment for allowing Islamic schools to flout the laws of the land and teach boys that women are worthless. All Islamic schools should be obliged to introduce mixed-sex classes, so boys can learn at first hand that girls are their equals, or those schools should be closed. If you teach boys that a female is no better than a lollipop that has been dropped on the ground, eventually you produce a pimp who thinks that you break a girl’s spirit as though she were a horse, before branding her with your initial. That man and those attitudes have no place, no place at all, in Britain now”
Friday 4 May 2018
Communism and Cuba
There are over one million Cubans exiled. We often hear and fall victim to the bull shit spewed by academia imbeciles who have their knowledge of communism/socialism from "politically correct " books and received "lectures". If you visit Cuba you will see the famine, lack of electricity and other human neccesities, they have things because the exile community sends everything from medicines to portable air condition window units. Taxi drivers make much more than doctors and engineers.
Now don’t get me wrong on this, I am aware that the usa has spent billions of dollars and over 50 years trying to make cuba fail.
The Cuba headache probably could have been resolved in 1961 or 1962 when the world knew that the revolution was the beggining of communism just 90 miles away from the US mainland and millions of assets, American dollars were tied up in this island that was almost a part of the U.S.. The big catch was that Cuba had no oil that could be harvested by American interests and the states had a president that was hypnotized by what was going on with South East Asia and never thought that Russia would eventually have missels 90 miles away form U.S. shore, ballistic submarines just a few miles away, squadrons of Mig 23 & 25 just one or three minutes away from Miami.
The cuban refugees in Miami across in the states sent tons and more ton s of every kind of goods to the island to "help" the left behind family that didn't even had toilet paper to wipe their butts and that was a big help in keeping the regime afloat. I am myself guilty of being glazed over by the idea of a small island such as Cuba holding up two fingers to a superpower nation, I bought and read the books of Castro before visiting Cuba. I saw the (now I know very few) positive sides of Cuba since the revolution such as the education and health system and thought that hey, this communist system can’t be all bad, if once across there and I saw the poverty and have since spoke to ex-pats living in Edinburgh and Glasgow. One such ex-pat I spoke to, an older gentleman said his homeland of 1959 was a jewel compared to the Cuba of today. No one makes money except prostitutes. The people who (were) his family and used to consider him a worm for asking for an AC, a coluor television, toilet paper, medicines, vitamins, toothpaste when he lived there and it goes fir to all consumer goods. He talks about the Takeover of “the Rat” known as Fidel back in 1960. It pissed him off that he is now 68 years old left Cuba at 10 and still I can't go back! I have another well traveled friend from Cuba in Glasgow who her and her family also suffered due to communism in Cuba, but I don’t have permission to write her story so won’t but believe me that it’s a sad one.
The theory behind Communism is (I know this is basic) that everyone contributes what they can, and takes what they need. The key word in that is need. It will only ever work on a small scale because of human nature, and greed. It fails on a large scale, and then has to turn into a dictatorship with the people at the top succeeding at the expense of the people at the bottom and this is what has happened to Cuba. I stayed at a casa across there and was impressed they had toilet paper which I did not expect after reading some guides and had brought my own in my bag from the U.K. upon asking about this I was told that the owner of the casa spent 4 hours in a queue awaiting to buy toilet paper!!! I saw queue of cuban people waiting outside shops when I left the tourist grid!!
Communism in Cuba is courtesy of the USSR who were victorious over German Nazism and Italian Fascism on the battle field. The old saying goes," To the victors go the spoils of war." In this case , the spoils of war are being able to denounce the political system of the vanquished, while ignoring the evils of their own. Mankind is always trying to take a smooth running government system and trying to make it pay off like a fruit machine.
There is a lot of negativity about a capitalist society, especially said by followers of certain political groups here is the U.K. such as labour and SNP (not seeing either of these parties have communism swings ..eh, well....Corbyn ...but let’s not go there on this post) but communist society is not the utopian life I may have once believed when it is put into practice, quite an eye opener going into a pizza restaurant in Cuba and to be told they don’t have any pizza on the menu today, can you imagine that when visiting the capitalist capital of New York :)
(Siderite about the pre-mentioned political parties about, their supporters need to be wary of being indoctrinated into thinking socialism is the correct path, certainly ironic with labour and there recent sellout to the Muslim Brotherhood, again something which I have wrote about on another post)
A recent visit to Berlin also let’s me to believe this, and May across there depending upon which side of the wall you grew up on. Although a taxi driver who drove he from the airport to my hotel did insist that life was better on the east side before the wall was torn down but this was due to immigration (but Merkel has a lot to answer about this)
Communism may appear appeal from the outside in but those trapped within are climbing walls, digging tunnels or building rafts to escape, let’s not be so quick to turn the AK47s into ploughs, looking towards the Far East it appears more have died due to the ideologies of communism that the frantic brutality of Nazism.
As someone once told me.
The Cuba headache probably could have been resolved in 1961 or 1962 when the world knew that the revolution was the beggining of communism just 90 miles away from the US mainland and millions of assets, American dollars were tied up in this island that was almost a part of the U.S.. The big catch was that Cuba had no oil that could be harvested by American interests and the states had a president that was hypnotized by what was going on with South East Asia and never thought that Russia would eventually have missels 90 miles away form U.S. shore, ballistic submarines just a few miles away, squadrons of Mig 23 & 25 just one or three minutes away from Miami.
The cuban refugees in Miami across in the states sent tons and more ton s of every kind of goods to the island to "help" the left behind family that didn't even had toilet paper to wipe their butts and that was a big help in keeping the regime afloat. I am myself guilty of being glazed over by the idea of a small island such as Cuba holding up two fingers to a superpower nation, I bought and read the books of Castro before visiting Cuba. I saw the (now I know very few) positive sides of Cuba since the revolution such as the education and health system and thought that hey, this communist system can’t be all bad, if once across there and I saw the poverty and have since spoke to ex-pats living in Edinburgh and Glasgow. One such ex-pat I spoke to, an older gentleman said his homeland of 1959 was a jewel compared to the Cuba of today. No one makes money except prostitutes. The people who (were) his family and used to consider him a worm for asking for an AC, a coluor television, toilet paper, medicines, vitamins, toothpaste when he lived there and it goes fir to all consumer goods. He talks about the Takeover of “the Rat” known as Fidel back in 1960. It pissed him off that he is now 68 years old left Cuba at 10 and still I can't go back! I have another well traveled friend from Cuba in Glasgow who her and her family also suffered due to communism in Cuba, but I don’t have permission to write her story so won’t but believe me that it’s a sad one.
The theory behind Communism is (I know this is basic) that everyone contributes what they can, and takes what they need. The key word in that is need. It will only ever work on a small scale because of human nature, and greed. It fails on a large scale, and then has to turn into a dictatorship with the people at the top succeeding at the expense of the people at the bottom and this is what has happened to Cuba. I stayed at a casa across there and was impressed they had toilet paper which I did not expect after reading some guides and had brought my own in my bag from the U.K. upon asking about this I was told that the owner of the casa spent 4 hours in a queue awaiting to buy toilet paper!!! I saw queue of cuban people waiting outside shops when I left the tourist grid!!
Thursday 19 April 2018
Cuba...The Havana leg...part 1
During the Autumn/winter months I planned an escape from the UK, somewhere away from the norm, the thin veneer of of a shallow society which is UK is. My destination, I determined had to be out with Europe, somewhere off the beaten track and after scanning google maps, talking with some friends and some inspiration from one of my lifetime favourite authors I decided upon Cuba, and with the clock ticking that the embargo maybe lifted and floods of capitalism would wash upon the island's shores in a more peaceful "Bay-of-pigs" attack since the welcomed visit of Barak lifting Cuba out of its 50's time warp (a "fear" i need not have worried about since Trump is now in the big house much to the dismay to the cuban population after such hope)
I booked my flight quickly before I could talk myself out of it, surprisingly cheap flying from Edinburgh to Havana via Gatwick with British Airlines and Virgin. I did my prep by deciding to learn Salsa and use that as a ice breaker across there instead of learning Spanish as I have no aptitude to languages only to discover I have no aptitude to Salsa either but it was fun and good to do something new out of the comfort zones.
Brightly coloured shirts and Hemingway hat modelled for selfies I was getting in the mood.
Havana here is come, the first stop city of my Cuban adventure and what a place to start...
Havana in a lively, magical city of tropical heat, sweat, ramshackle beauty, and its very own rhythm. A cadence. A tempo.
At first, this unique place can seem like a confusing jigsaw puzzle; but work out how to put the pieces together, and something beautiful will emerge, quite a culture shock and also to my system landing here in the evening after leaving Scotland on a cold frosty January morning.
First job after getting my English pounds exchanged into CUCs at the airport was to get a taxi onwards to the Casa I was bedding down in for a couple of nights. Easy enough, first sortie successful enough, delivered safely to my Casa, after a good sleep and a light breakfast prepared by the casa owner it was time to get out and explore Havana.
Picture this; you’re wandering in Havana firstly transversing the Malecon looking out upon the Florida straits, blue ocean so strikingly beautiful and 50's vintage cars like from a movie slowing down shouting out the one word question to you "Taxi?". Strolling along the cracked uneven concrete of the ground is cool underfoot – despite the afternoon sun still resting high – from tall shadows, cast by pale honey-coloured, crumbling buildings that line these streets. Watching the waves crash against the barrier wall on the other side of the road.
And the place is alive.
Vendors, shopkeepers, tourists, taxi drivers, rickshaws and waiters. There are faces everywhere. Hunched in low-slung doorways, smoking on corners. Small groups here and there; a smattering of people, moving seemingly with no order at all, yet each marching to a steady, unspoken beat. This is such a contrast to being in the UK, but you are o conscious of that dollar sign above your head and it does attract the attention of every local attempting to sell you everything and anything "cigars my friend?", "Woman?", "Wi-fi card?" "come in here my friend and I will write down the address of a Salsa party for you"....yes, I fell for the last one, stepping in a bar so my new "friend" could get pen and paper, only to find a rum and coke served in front of me at a ripoff price that the fancy bars in Edinburgh would not have the balls to attempt and charge you, I did not protest, this was my first lesson about Cuba, I gave my new "friend" a knowing smile and rejected the further request of him wanting to show me where I could buy Cuban cigars.... this guy was obviously getting a cut from the bar to talk naive gringos such as I was at this point, into its dark, low quality rum serving domain, he knew I was now wise to him so after one last attempt asking for 20 cucs to help feed his family (which I refused with a stern face) he shook my hand and wished my a good trip, and this is Havana in a handshake, its safe enough, just watch out for the hustles and try and get your street smarts on quickly for your cash will soon part your company to the jineteros with their promises of the best mojitos in the city and Salsa parties.
Plaza Vieja, Havana’s famous Old Square was a pleasure to see in Havana (well apart of a sub-standard lobster dinner)
Now its walking around a live Havana postcard scene.
An oil painting of kaleidoscopic colonial buildings, just like you saw in the travel guides. Here, pastel-coloured Cuban baroque nestles seamlessly next to Gaudi-inspired art nouveau. Bright sunlight bounces some of Havana’s finest vitrales; stained-glass windows that glitter like spun sugar in every shade of the rainbow.
For at Plaza Vieja, grandeur is in no short supply. Granted, the architecture is dilapidated and falling down, but it only adds to such breathtaking ethereal beauty and looks like a condensed tropical Edinburgh Royal mile, but without the bagpipe music.
People describe Havana as a place lost in time – and it’s true. It’s been six decades since the Revolution, where working people inherited a city they simply could not afford to keep, and now? Cuba wears these years on its sleeve.
From your spot on the Square, you hear the clinking of glasses, shouts and yips and yells of locals, and tourists alike, filling out the packed paladares (homes made into restaurant by locals attempting to earn from the tourists), loading their plates with flavours free of state-run restrictions.
Serving up African, South American and Spanish fare, these privately owned restaurants peddle meat, fish, and seafood. Freshly made paella, steam rising high, served hot from huge cast iron pans; cloying golden orange and amber rice, jewelled with inky black olives and ripe cherry tomatoes ( I will add here that the tomatoes were the very best I have ever tasted in this world), vermillion in colour and ready to burst.
And of course, as is custom, all food served the option of thick cigar (which I rejected) and a few throat-warming shots of the hard stuff (which I welcomed).
Good rum, this time. Thankfully but the moonshine I had in the shady bar before.
Crowds surround street performers and laughter erupts, carried by the wind on top of musical notes from the house band. Dry wailing from a creaky old accordion, coarse and discordant, softened by pleasing, golden twangs plucked gently from a guitar. It’s enough to create a pleasant tune, and cause a slow, lazy smile to spread across your face.
It could be the rum talking Possibly but I am Scottish, whisky runs in our blood like antifreeze.
Here, people wander hand-in-hand, side-by-side with vintage candy-coloured Cadillacs that roll along the concrete promenade. The image creates a surreal time-warp, reminding us of the struggle, no, the tenacity of Cuban people. It creates a genuine connection with the welcoming past; in this unique, dreamlike place, where history is piled up like wrecked treasure on a palm-fringed beach.
Faraway car horns sound over chugging, coughing engines that wheeze into life. Waves crash loudly against stone breakwaters. Leafy palms sway in the breeze, peppered by the shouts and laughs of young Cubans lighting fires on the sand. The salty sea air stings your skin.
You walk under dusky skies, still blue but now in bloom, streaked rose pink with cloud blossom. You pass locals. Fishing, lazing, smoking on the sea wall. Waving an arm from a 1950s Ford Crestline, crudely painted flamingo pink in a valiant attempt to hide the rust.
And so, with the crumbling city skyline in the distance, the sun starts to dip. Melting into the horizon, sinking over the edge of the world, it transports you. You stare straight ahead and feel calm, despite the chaos around you. Lean in on someone close, and remain in that far off, peaceful land for as long as you possibly can.
Because a sunset seen from the Malecón is a sunset that steals your heart. It takes you to a different place, sweeps you off your feet. Makes every hair on your neck stand up.
Days feel like months as you try to absorb every detail of the spellbinding scene unfolding around you, but in Havana? You’ll only ever scratch the surface of this infatuating, captivating country.
In Havana, making sense of your surroundings is no mean feat. It makes you think. It makes you question. Around every corner, in every direction you send your eyes, you’ll be hungry for answers. But this city has been evading these for years.
No one could invent Havana – and you should never go with a long list of questions. Just arrive with an open mind and steel yourself for a long, slow seduction.
Be prepared to disconnect from the life you know as routine. Be prepared to just be.
Monday 16 April 2018
Jirga Law in Pakistan
Early in 2017 the government decided that the solution to Pakistan’s inefficient, politicized, and backlogged judicial system, which has over a million cases still waiting to be decided on, was to provide constitutional cover to Pakistan’s centuries old jirga system, a tribal (primitive) system of justice.
The government believes the jirgas will offer swift and speedy justice to those who are marginalized, poor, and unable to access formal justice.
Jirgas operate on centuries-old codes of honor and their tribal code considers women to be property (as Islamic values teach). It was a jirga that decided in 2002 that a young innocent girl was to be gang-raped as recompense for a sexual assault committed an other member of her family.
It was also a jirga that ruled that two teenage lovers, Bakht Jan, 15, and her boyfriend Rehman, 17, were to be electrocuted to death for bringing dishonor to their community.
Last year jirga law give the verdict it was ok to gang rape of a teenage girl in a revenge for a crime committed by her brother in central Pakistan.
This was the verdict of a council of village elders who ordered the rape of the 16-year-old victim after her brother was accused of raping a 12-year-old girl.
This post is about this medieval Jirga law being practiced in “modern day” Pakistan, I won’t even discuss about the blasphemy laws there which have many people on death row at this very moment!!!! These are Barbaric bastards of the highest order yet the U.K. still hands over millions of pounds to Pakistan in aid £300 million each year to this country which even now has its own space program!!!!! We should not give them a penny and boycott going there for tourism and the UN should place an embargo until this shit pit starts practicing human rights!!!
The government believes the jirgas will offer swift and speedy justice to those who are marginalized, poor, and unable to access formal justice.
Jirgas operate on centuries-old codes of honor and their tribal code considers women to be property (as Islamic values teach). It was a jirga that decided in 2002 that a young innocent girl was to be gang-raped as recompense for a sexual assault committed an other member of her family.
It was also a jirga that ruled that two teenage lovers, Bakht Jan, 15, and her boyfriend Rehman, 17, were to be electrocuted to death for bringing dishonor to their community.
Last year jirga law give the verdict it was ok to gang rape of a teenage girl in a revenge for a crime committed by her brother in central Pakistan.
This was the verdict of a council of village elders who ordered the rape of the 16-year-old victim after her brother was accused of raping a 12-year-old girl.
This post is about this medieval Jirga law being practiced in “modern day” Pakistan, I won’t even discuss about the blasphemy laws there which have many people on death row at this very moment!!!! These are Barbaric bastards of the highest order yet the U.K. still hands over millions of pounds to Pakistan in aid £300 million each year to this country which even now has its own space program!!!!! We should not give them a penny and boycott going there for tourism and the UN should place an embargo until this shit pit starts practicing human rights!!!
Wednesday 14 February 2018
Animals Inside out in Seville
On a previous post from a few years ago I described the Bodyworks exhibition I attended in Newcastle at the Science Museum. The exhibition displayed human bodies and parts of which have been preserved and Plastinated which is a process invested by Gunther von Hagens whom I am a big fan of.
Gunther von Hagens is a German anatomist who invented this technique for preserving biological tissue specimens and controversially displaying them to the public. The process is done as follows…
1. Embalming and Anatomical Dissection
The first step of the process involves halting decay by pumping formalin into the body through the arteries. Formalin kills all bacteria and chemically stops the decay of tissue. Using dissection tools, the skin, fatty and connective tissues are removed in order to prepare the individual anatomical structures.
2. Removal of Body Fat and Water
In the first step, the body water and soluble fats are dissolved from the body by placing it into a solvent bath (e.g., an acetone bath).
3. Forced Impregnation
This second exchange process is the central step in Plastination. During forced impregnation a reactive polymer, e.g., silicone rubber, replaces the acetone. To achieve this, the specimen is immersed in a polymer solution and placed in vacuum chamber. The vacuum removes the acetone from the specimen and helps the polymer to penetrate every last cell.
4. Positioning
After vacuum impregnation, the body is positioned as desired. Every single anatomical structure is properly aligned and fixed with the help of wires, needles, clamps, and foam blocks.
5. Curing (Hardening)
In the final step, the specimen is hardened. Depending on the polymer used, this is done with gas, light, or heat. Dissection and Plastination of an entire body requires about 1,500 working hours and normally takes about one year to complete.
To see human bodies exhibited in this fashion may seem a little gruesome and morbid but it’s very educational and feeds our thirst for knowledge of what is under our skin.
This process of course is not limited to humans…..it can also be done with the bodies of dead animals and last month I attended his “animals inside out” exhibition in the beautiful city of Seville and also had the chance to take some photos of the displays as I was the only one that the time in attendance.
Here I have attached some photos I took from this amazing exhibition……
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)