Dissecting John Stossel's Anti-Communist Lies

[surada]

Yes he did. Obama lifted many of the sanctions and Cubans on the Island saw a dramatic improvement in their standard of living. The sanctions just hurt the people, not those in power. Trump reinstated the sanctions and people's lives got much worse.

But people like Todd just don't get it, so they support the embargoes and sanctions. This is how evil and arrogant some Americans are, not being able to co-exist peacefully with anyone. They're nothing more than imperialist bullies.

It's been more than 50 years. The sanctions should be lifted. Trump is a moron.

 

[surada]

They did not choose it.

It was imposed on them

So continue to punish them for 50 years?

 

[Soupnazi630]

So continue to punish them for 50 years?

Not punishment,

It's refusing to cooperate with an evil government

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

What garbage. All of the Cuban doctors aren't practicing medicine outside of Cuba, and it's only recently that sometimes (not always), the governments of the countries they serve, pay them a very reasonable amount of money when compared to what they would pay Western doctors. There are missions that Cuba participates in without charging a peso. So again, what's coming out of your "capitalist keyboard" is just putrid, stinking trash. Rubbish.

Cuba is recognized around the world as having one of the best healthcare systems and they have that despite of the fact that it is being brutally, inhumanely embargoed by the United States and its cronies.

World Bank Open Data

Free and open access to global development data

data.worldbank.org

Also look at this:

According to the The World Factbook, by 2009 Cuba had an average life expectancy of 78.05 years.[16][non-primary source needed]

Cuba began a food rationing program in 1962 to guarantee all citizens a low-priced basket of basic foods. As of 2007, the government was spending about $1 billion annually to subsidise the food ration. The ration would cost about $50 at an average grocery store in the United States, but the Cuban citizen pays only $1.20 for it. The ration includes rice, legumes, potatoes, bread, eggs, and a small amount of meat. It provides about 30 to 70 percent of the 3,300 kilocalories that the average Cuban consumes daily. The people obtain the rest of their food from government stores (Tiendas), free market stores and cooperatives, barter, their own gardens, and the black market.[17]

According to the Pan American Health Organization, daily caloric intake per person in various places in 2003 were as follows (unit is kilocalories):
Cuba, 3,286;
.[18]

Source of the above quote: Health in Cuba - Wikipedia

According to WHO figures for 2016, Cuba (U5M) has an under-5 child mortality U5M rate of 5.5 per 1000 live births. You can google this.

All you defenders of capitalism can do is lie. Lie lie lie lie. Ironically, you're most likely a working-class person. You're not a capitalist, you're slaving for them and defending your capitalist-lords. Defending your own slavery and future destruction. Either you're a brainwashed working-class person or you're a capitalist and here mindlessly, full of rancor and cynicism, doing everything possible to malign and demonize countries like Cuba and their socialist revolutions.

Now stop ignoring this question and answer it. What is your capitalist solution for human labor being replaced with advanced automation? How do you pretend to maintain the capitalist system, when wage labor is being replaced with technology? Go ahead, use your keyboard for something useful and educate us on your capitalist solution.

All of the Cuban doctors aren't practicing medicine outside of Cuba,

Not all of them. But a lot.

Cuba is recognized around the world as having one of the best healthcare systems

You should write for late night. That's some funny stuff.

According to WHO figures for 2016, Cuba (U5M) has an under-5 child mortality U5M rate of 5.5 per 1000 live births. You can google this.

Do all your Cuban relatives believe all the lies...err...statistics that come out of Cuba?
Or are you the only one?

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Everything that comes out of your keyboard about Cuba is trash, so go make a sandwhich. As far as me leaving to Cuba, why the heck would I do that? I'm an American, a veteran, and I'm here to stay and do everything I can to convert this country to high-tech, democratic communism:

Democracy in Marxism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

If you don't like that, too bad bucko. You leave, how about that? Bye bye.

Everything that comes out of your keyboard about Cuba is trash,

Cuba is awesome!!!! The best place ever.

Why did your family move to evil America?

 

[Ringo]

In some countries, communist symbols are banned, in others they are tolerated, in others they are allowed.
But nowhere will the ruling capitalist class allow you to behave like a real communist.
It will not allow organizing the proletariat to gain political power.

 

[Red Front]

Everything that comes out of your keyboard about Cuba is trash,

Cuba is awesome!!!! The best place ever.

Why did your family move to evil America?

Why did my family eventually migrate to the empire (the great consumer) rather than remain in Cuba or go to some other country in Latin America (the consumed)? Common sense. Most of the people who left Cuba right after the socialist revolution did it out of necessity, due to their position in Cuban society. The aristocracy, the people who had it good and didn't really care about the majority of Cubans who were living in abject poverty, left Cuba either because they were forced or because they didn't want to participate in the revolution. They liked the status quo of Cuba being an exploited, well-consumed colony of the United States (of the ruling elites of another country).

My maternal grandfather was a member of President Batista's police forces and fought against the socialists. He managed to avoid getting killed and arrested by the socialist fighters and authorities by pretending to be dead in a battle where over 100 of his fellow fighters were killed. He managed to escape and went back home.

After the Cuban socialists won, my mother at the age of 13 back in 1960, was participating in CIA-led anti-socialist propaganda campaigns in Havana that consisted of putting up counter-revolutionary posters in public places. She would go at night or sometimes during the day with her fellow activists and would post posters. She and her friends were eventually arrested and interrogated by the police. The government told my maternal grandparents that they had to leave the Island, with my mother. My grandfather's parents were Spaniards, so he had family in Spain, and decided to migrate to Franco's Spain. He eventually left Spain and settled in Miami, Florida.

My father's family, both his mother and his father (my paternal grandparents), were very wealthy. My paternal grandmother was of the Gomez Mena Waddington family. My great great grandfather was a Spaniard who imported textiles from all around the world, especially India and Persia, which at the time were colonies of Britain. So he developed business connections with British importers and would often visit the London wholesale district and factories. He met my great great grandmother, the daughter of one of his British textile suppliers. He would also travel here to NYC, where he owned a warehouse and store in Manhattan. After the Cuban war of independence (i.e. Spanish American War), my great-great grandparents migrated to Cuba, after purchasing a sugar cane farm.

My great-grandfather, the son of the textile merchant I just described, got into the Sugar industry and owned several Sugar mills and farms. He owned many office buildings in Havana, including the port of Casa Blanca. The Gomez Mena Waddington family was the third wealthiest family in Cuba. The wealthiest family was the Lobos family, who also owned Sugar mills and tens of thousands of hectares of sugar cane farms, in partnership with American companies. The second wealthiest was the Bacardis:

And the third was Gomez Mena Waddington:

Here is my family in Paris in the 1960s, after leaving Cuba.​

Part of my family still lives in Western Europe.

My paternal grandfather (this is turning into an ebook and spastic ego trip), was a wealthy rancher, with a huge ranch and thousands of head of cattle:

My paternal grandfather in the 1950s, fishing on his ranch in Oriente.

My father, uncle, and grandfather in the early 1950s. ​

My father and uncle studied in the United States. My grandfather, the cool-looking rancher there with the cowboy hat and sunglasses, was also a petroleum engineer and worked for TEXACO in Texas. He settled in Houston after migrating to the US in the 1960s.


I was born and raised in Miami, Florida, growing up in the 1970s and 80s, in an upper-middle-class household with a six-figure income of about a quarter million. I was fed a steady diet of cold war anti-castro, capitalist bullshit all of my life. I know how the wealthy think because I was raised in that "milieu". People leave Cuba for many different reasons, and ignoring the fact that the US is imposing economic sanctions on Cuba, doesn't help your case against socialism. You don't have the ideological luxury of appealing to the economic failures of socialist countries when America is bombing, invading, and starving socialist countries. Let socialism fail on its own, stop trying to do it by force.

The American ruling class is terrified of socialism proving itself successful in the third world because they'll lose a valuable resource of cheap labor and raw materials. They also fear the American working class, waking up one day and saying:

"Hey if the workers in these other countries have successfully taken control of the means of production and all of the natural resources of their country, establishing a government that serves their interests (the public good), why can't we do this here in America? Why should we continue slaving away for these rich capitalists who own everything and don't give a crap about us? They are continually undermining our freedoms, our livelihoods, our national security, our economy, with one recession bailout after another, with one war after another..etc. ?"

They want Americans to be dumb.

They want the American working class to believe that socioeconomic classes don't exist and that it is in their best personal interest to serve the vested interests of the rich and powerful, with the hope of becoming rich and powerful themselves. That's the common canard sold to the American working-class.

"All I have to do is work harder and smarter and I will become wealthy and one of the ruling elites"

"The poor are that way because they're lazy and want to live off of the nanny state"

"Those who are rich are always that way because they work really hard and they're smarter than everyone else"

"The government is always evil, the private sector is good"

"The government can't do anything right, only the rich can do it right, with their private for-profit business enterprises"

"Democracy or the rule of the people is bad. It's mob rule"

"Whenever the government gets involved, that's evil socialism"

"America is exceptionally awesome and always the good guy"

"We have it really good here in America, even though millions of Americans don't have healthcare and are heavily in debt because their salaries aren't enough to live on, but we're exceptionally awesome here in America. We're America, stop complaining. What? You're objecting to something in America? Leave, get out of here. Go to Mexico or Cuba. Why are you here? All is good here, what's your problem man? It's the fault of those illegals, it's black people, it's Jews, It's morbidly obese feminists with purple-hair , it's those gay pink unicorns, it's those liberals murdering fetuses in their wombs, it's those evil communists, that's the problem. We're good, just shut up and leave, go to Canada where you can buy insulin for your diabetes for ten times less than in the good'ol USA".

Between the late 1940s and the late 70s, the American working-class was considered the aristocracy of labor. American workers had it good because the capitalists were smart enough to recognize that those well-paid workers are their customers. They had a robust American customer base with an immense amount of purchasing power. They created and protected an extremely lucrative market, like no other.

The US was the manufacturing hub of the world, offering the very best products you could buy. We rebuilt Europe and Japan, we filled the world with American brands, "MADE IN THE USA". The rich in the 1950s and 60s, paid their fair share of taxes, they provided benefits to their employees, and a significant % of American workers were fully unionized. My maternal grandfather settled in Miami in the 1960s with my grandmother and mother, when he was 50 years old. Got a job with Bertram Yachts, at their factory in Miami, making the fiberglass hulls of their boats. He bought his house in cash after working there for three or four years. A blue-collar worker and migrant, that could hardly speak English.

You could work a blue-collar job, spraying fiberglass on boat hull molds, and make enough to support your family and even buy your house in cash. Why the hell would an American worker want socialism, much less communism in America? Who the hell wants to trade that for Soviet or Cuban socialism? American workers were the aristocracy of the world's human labor force. The best paid, with the most benefits, fully unionized, living well, in a modern, industrialized America. Under those conditions, you would have to be crazy to replace that with communism.

Ironically, who do you think contributed to the golden age of our economy in the 1950s and 60s? Do you think that was due to the rich and their love for their workers? In the 1930s during the great depression, American socialists and communists (the hard left) organized mass worker strikes and protests, which led FDR to convince the American ruling class that they had to accept the demands of the labor unions {i.e. the American working-class) or there was going to be a civil war.

​

Everything described in the above two videos on FDR's "new deal" is considered "socialism" by most Republicans and Libertarians in 2022 (it's actually just common sense). It's considered a gross government intervention in the economy. Nonetheless, it saved this country from plunging into a second civil war. We wouldn't have many of our current labor laws if not for all of the legislation that was past during FDR's administration. If it wasn't for the American socialists and communists of the 1920s and 30s, we wouldn't have had that golden age of our economy in the 1950s and 60s.

In the 1980s, with supply-side economics, i.e. "Reaganomics" the American working class was gutted like a fish. The right-wing Republicans and some democrats as well, worked in tandem with the wealthy ruling class to strip America of its manufacturing base, engaging in a nationwide effort to deindustrialize the country and destroy the American working-class. What is called the "middle class" of America (the term "working-class" is often avoided in the America mainstream media because it sounds "too commie"). The backbone of our economy is the working-class, the middle-class.

TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS



The trickle-down doesn't trickle.​

In the 1970s, we saw the beginning of the end with the introduction of computers in offices at a large scale and even some robots in automobile factories in Detroit. The once smart capitalists, who had a bit of common sense and love for their country, completely sold their souls to the spirit of mammon and unscrupulous power.

​

Most working-class people are distracted and brainwashed by the ruling class. They don't have time to sit here and read my long posts. They come back from a hard day's work and they just want to see Dancing With The Stars and eat a burrito, with some cheese nachos. Drink a beer relaxing on their lazy boy chair. They don't want to test their beliefs and study some complicated shit, they just want to get through life without too much pain and drama.

We have the military-industrial complex signing contracts with the US government right now in order to send tens of billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine. We're fighting a proxy war with Russia, a nuclear power that can turn this country into a lifeless desert. We are on the verge of fighting WW3 with Russia over Ukraine, because our politicians are completely, criminally corrupt. They have their hands in the pockets of the war profiteers, they buy stocks in these companies and see dollar signs whenever our country goes to war or fires a missile at some boogieman somewhere in the world.

The American imperialists are motivated by money and power. It's not the average Joe American sitting on his lazyboy chair drinking a beer after a hard day's work, who is responsible for this, yet Bubba still pays the price, with his blood and hard-earned money.

We pay with our blood and money. ​

We are on the edge of fighting a war with Russia over Ukraine, because American capitalists, our ruling class, wants to sell tens of billions of dollars in weapons. They hate Russia because it's a giant commodities wonderland. They want control of all of those resources and Putin is in their way. The American liberals also hate Russia because the Russians refuse to allow homosexuals to parade their filth in the streets. There aren't any rainbow flags flying over the Kremlin. The Russians don't want this Western decadence in their country:

Do you know how much money the pharmaceutical companies make when they get children hooked on hormone treatments? Children are being injected with puberty blockers and getting hooked on hormones for the rest of their lives. Girls are getting their breasts cut off and their genitals mutilated by a medical industry that is focused on profits. They don't care what the long-term consequences are for these children. Do you think socialism is responsible for this?

This isn't communism or Marxism, this is pure greed and decadence fueled by vested interests and the cold war effort by the CIA in the 1950s during the "red-scare" to create an American leftist movement that would hate the Soviet Union yet adopt social liberalism. A neutered, synthetic left that is controllable, doesn't pose a threat to the American ruling class but yet still calls itself "socialist" and hates the Soviet Union and other socialist revolutions around the world. The American synthetic left, American liberalism. They're socially liberal, but they serve the ruling class and American imperialism. That's why so many of them support Ukraine and are ready to fight a nuclear war with Russia. They're fucking crazy.

Bubba on the other hand, who is a right-wing Republican Pentecostal, has more common sense than the synthetic left. But unfortunately, he also suffers from years of consuming misinformation and he thinks everything that is socialist or "leftist" amounts to that CIA-created synthetic left or the Soviet Union. He's also been led to believe, that there is no such thing as a socioeconomic struggle between an American imperialist ruling elite and the working-class. For Bubba, a very hard-working man, who supports his family, works two jobs, and regularly attends church, there is no viable alternative to capitalism. Socialism means that he loses all of his property, which he worked so hard for, and becomes an oppressed subject of the state.

The truth is that there isn't one way to do socialism or communism. If we ever have socialism in America, it will be American socialism, socialism, that reflects the values, traditions, culture, history, and spirit of the American people. It will not be Russian bolshevik socialism, it won't be Chinese socialism, it won't be Cuban socialism, it will be American socialism. A socialism that is unique and compatible with American values.

The American Communist Front, the ACF, is comprised of American patriots, who love this country. What we are against is the imperialism of our ruling elite, who if not stopped will destroy our country and all life on this planet. How will we "stop" them? Through civil resistance, on and offline. Mass demonstrations and protests. The right and the true left must unite to stop the imperialists from destroying our country. We need to take money out of politics, impose strict term limits upon congress and make it illegal for politicians to hold and sell stocks in certain industries (Military Industrial Complex, Big Pharma, the Fossil Fuel Industry). This is our first struggle. Getting money out of politics. Who wants to join this fight?

LET'S GET RID OF CRONY CAPITALISM AND IMPERIALISM.

 

[surada]

What do they do? Honestly, we don't get to buy Cuban cigars. That's it. The Cuban masters can get whatever they need from the rest of the world.

The Soviet Union gave them BILLIONS and where didcall of that money go?

The Castro Brothers and their minions.

After the US Sugar Beet lobby won the US stopped buying Cuban sugar cane. It was a crushing economic blow.

The USSR stepped up and bought their whole sugar cane crop for decades until the Soviet union collapsed. Didn't you know that? We drove Cuba into the arms of the Soviets.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

After the US Sugar Beet lobby won the US stopped buying Cuban sugar cane.

And that had nothing to do with Cuba nationalizing US assets in Cuba, right?

 

[surada]

And that had nothing to do with Cuba nationalizing US assets in Cuba, right?

Of course it did. They use to have an Esso refinery and domestic oil production.

 

[hadit]

No need, America is my home. Perhaps capitalists and their fans can go somewhere else? That would be ideal. Capitalists leave, and socialists stay.

Your problem is you think the nation would stay the same, with the same freedoms and with the same wealth. The reality is, if capitalists left the United States, it would quickly fall into poverty with fences and guard towers everywhere, you know, just like all communist nations do. The only way Communism exists more than a few years is at the point of a gun.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Of course it did. They use to have an Esso refinery and domestic oil production.

They stole our stuff, we stopped buying their exports.

 

[AMart]

​

Stossel Comes from Long Island, where he's a social butterfly. For all his "capitalism" hot air, when his 2.5 Mil Hamptons mansion was blown away years ago, he had no problem getting Gov't agencies to pay for the loss. Some say, he was "underinsured". He's the ultimate 'Bankster': "Socialism for me, capitalism for the peasants".

Since you are a commie should I call Xiden, FBI and DOJ and tell them you are a threat to democracy?

 

[westwall]

After the US Sugar Beet lobby won the US stopped buying Cuban sugar cane. It was a crushing economic blow.

The USSR stepped up and bought their whole sugar cane crop for decades until the Soviet union collapsed. Didn't you know that? We drove Cuba into the arms of the Soviets.
[/QURichard!


Castro got his guns from the Soviet Union. Or didn't you know that?

He was already theirs.

 

[Red Front]

Since you are a commie should I call Xiden, FBI and DOJ and tell them you are a threat to democracy?

You can believe and do whatever you want.

 

[Red Front]

Your problem is you think the nation would stay the same, with the same freedoms and with the same wealth. The reality is, if capitalists left the United States, it would quickly fall into poverty with fences and guard towers everywhere, you know, just like all communist nations do. The only way Communism exists more than a few years is at the point of a gun.

Nonsense.

 

[Red Front]

And that had nothing to do with Cuba nationalizing US assets in Cuba, right?

As if a colonizing power exploiting the resources of its colonies has the right to demand compensation for its so-called "assets". The United States owned most of the farmland and sugar mills in the country and had already made a fortune. This silly complaint was also made by Britain when Mohamed Mosadeq nationalized the oil fields of Iran, after decades of benefiting from all of that dirt-cheap oil and human labor.

My great-grandfather had to spend a fortune fighting American companies in court when he refused to sell some of the best sugar cane farms he had bought in the early 1900s. It was a complicated case where American-owned companies claimed that they had bought the land from the Cuban puppet government that they had installed and my great-grandfather supposedly didn't have a right to that section of his farm. They created a crisis and legal quagmire for my family. The American ruling class made a fortune in Cuba and in other Latin American countries and doesn't have a right to continue expropriating the wealth of other nations.

​

 

[hadit]

Nonsense.

That's what history tells us, or do you believe we just haven't done it right yet? Better yet, do you envision yourself in the ruling class in this future Nirvana, or in the peasant class? Because those are really about the only two that exist in Communism, the rulers with all the wealth and the peasants with nothing.

 

[Red Front]

That's what history tells us, or do you believe we just haven't done it right yet? Better yet, do you envision yourself in the ruling class in this future Nirvana, or in the peasant class? Because those are really about the only two that exist in Communism, the rulers with all the wealth and the peasants with nothing.

That's what American cold war bullshit propaganda tells us, not actual history. The CIA was spreading lies about communists and communism throughout the world:

​

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

That's what American cold war bullshit propaganda tells us, not actual history. The CIA was spreading lies about communists and communism throughout the world:

​

Waah......capitalists were mean to communists.