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The Cuban Memory Stick Underground
circletimessquare writes "The NyTimes has an aticle describing how students and others in Cuba have taken to passing around media on memory sticks, as this is the only way they can get around state-controlled media. Also driving this phenomenon is the fact that there are so few places to get on the Internet. In Old Havana there is only one Internet cafe; getting online there for an hour costs 1/3 of the average Cuban's monthly wages. Local entrepreneurs get the memory sticks from European friends, since they are scarce to find in Cuba through normal channels, and expensive."
Not bad bandwidth, but the lag time can be a bitch.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
I see that your memory stick is as big as mine.
-Aegis Runestone-
Great example of the sneakernet in action. Quick RIAA, ban shoes! :-)
This is really smart. Maybe the college kids here in the US could learn a thing or two from this. Why provoke the beast when nobody has to know about your trading?
(I'm not advocating copyright infringement, just pointing out how silly attacks on internet users are)
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
I have an image in my head of the stereotypical people who pass around guitars and sell them with cocaine hidden within the instruments. I wonder if the gov will start cracking down on them like they do with drug dealers...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers I think this is better and more subtle if they really want the Internet.
I had read about stuff like this before, but never really seen anything in the mainstream about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneakernet
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a pre-revolutionary automobile loaded with thumb drives!
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
or did you just get a new batch of porn?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
a/s/l kind of chat over this network. so romantic..
Then the US should drop their trade sanctions, and station ships off the Cuban coast, or possibly blimps flying over Cuba, with *huge* wireless network systems on. Basically, turn a ship into one giant floating wireless AP, with a satellite connection to the Internet. Then give all the people USB wireless adaptors.
But.. but.. I thought Cuba is a utopian society with perfect free healthcare that the rest of the world should aspire to emulate!? ( see movies by fat slobs who don't know what they're talking about )
I love Sneaker-Net
Wow, and I thought back when I was playing Quake MY lag was bad!
At least in cuba you don't get slashdotted...
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I suppose European friends are the way to go, but in general non-USA friends. I am not sure which would be worse for a USA citizen, being discovered that you are subverting state censorship or being discovered by your government that you have been to Cuba.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I can hear it already:
;) )
Yo está apesadumbrado, podría usted descargar el Internet sobre esto?
And for once, it'll actually make sense!
(If the translation sucks, blame babelfish.
That green slime had it coming.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
They have first rate low tech preventative and pre/post natal health care. Which gives them a lower infant mortality rate than the US and a life expectancy just a bit lower that the US.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
It's sort of like any other enforcement.. the coke dealer on the corner is easy to bust, but the guy who is moving kilos of product to the hedgefund managers in the downtown highrise? Well, he's a lot more under the radar.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
All societies have pros and cons. Personally, even though I'm a geek, I'd say having a reasonable healthcare for all should be prioority ofver bandwidth for all.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Because there are no capitalist counter-revolutionaries in Cuba of course.
What always amuses me is that people decry the reactionary left-wing government of Cuba without seeing it in the wider context of the history of Latin America and the Caribbean in the 20th century, during which the US made a point of launching vicious attacks on every progressive left-wing government in the hemisphere by organising strikes, spreading propaganda, sponsoring coups and terrorists, and occasionally direct military force. The repression of the Cuban regime is a result of a Darwinian process that has weeded out every left-wing government in the region that didn't shoot or imprison anyone and everyone who even might be on the CIA payroll.
Yeah, the Castro brothers aren't exactly nice to those who disagree with them - but thanks to the actions of America there is literally no way their social programmes could've been implemented if they were not prepared to run the country as a dictatorship. Western democracies such as Britain have reacted in a similar way when faced with extreme outside threats.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Sony's proprietary format is popular some place!
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
We should donate our old memory sticks to them, I've got a 128mb mp3 player which is worthless to westerners but could be of use to people in the third world to dissemenate information.
are you kidding, with 55% packet loss, and 6165731.1 ms lag over 3 miles... i think the little thumb drive method is way easier. not to mention getting carrier pigeons to cross a couple hundred miles of ocean doesn't work very well either. plus carrier pigeons are really bandwidth restricted, they can at most carry .5 ounces of microfilm which then requires a microfilm reader... thumb drives just work in any usb enabled pc, even ones running linux, and you can get a whole month of blog sites, interesting news etc all in one package with a thumb drive. if they're relatives have the cash they can even send feature length films on thumb drives (i've seen 8 GB modules, in divx/xvid format that's a lot of movie)
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
And healthcare has exactly what to do with memory sticks and Internet access?
Who modded this insightful?
Score: i, Imaginary
And a choice of presidential candidates just one behind the US as well.
Nowhere in "Sicko" did Moore imply that Cuba was a utopian society. If anything, the exterior shots in Cuba should show how their clinging to communism (not to mention the US embargoes) have caused extreme poverty among most Cubans.
With that said, it's hard to deny that Cuba is doing some things right in regards to their healthcare system. For example, according to both the UN & the CIA world factbook, Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate than the United States does. (See list of countries by infant mortality rate on Wikipedia for a full list.) That, despite the extreme discrepancies in GDP, per capita income, etc., between the two countries.
Is it that inconceivable that a country can have excellent healthcare but at the same time severely limit its people's political freedoms?
Jeez, I finally get it! And here I thought the whole strategy of destroying a country through decades of economic sanctions based on political ideology two generations out of date was one of the great disasters of US foreign policy. But it's actually a clever strategy to turn a whole nation into a think tank and foster innovation the old fashioned way: by creating necessity! It's so simple!
A-Bomb
This sort of reminds me of the line in Jurassic Park, 'Life will always find a way,' in reference to the scientists creating only female clones so they can't breed. How well did that work out for them?
Passing laws banning something only makes it more difficult for law-abiding citizens. Prohibition didn't work. How's the war on drugs going here in the US? Not only do you fail at your original goal in something like this, your shoot the value of whatever you're trying to stop through the roof!
The real problem I had with Moore's citing of Cuba is that we have no idea how good their official statistics are. Also, if anyone is getting shafted by their medical system, was there any real chance of Moore -- or any outsider, for that matter -- finding out about it?
Dog is my co-pilot.
Now here's a thought for people who want to visit Cuba, but still feel a bit guilty because of its repression. Take a bunch of USB sticks with you - they can be empty if you don't want to take any risks. Or maybe some flash memory, so you can claim it's for your camera, and a card reader. Hand them out to people there. And maybe you've made a small contribution to improving the human rights situation there...
Do those life expectancy figures include people dying from acute lead poisoning?
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
You can't take the sky from me...
About 16 years ago, in a time of floppy disks, 486s and joysticks, I also was a part of such a network. Media such as the anarchist cookbook and all kinds of software were passed around by hand through packs of floppy disks from one person to another, spreading through everyone.
Mind you, that took place in a western european country, a free country with freedom of expression as best as the world could muster. Yet, that network, which TFA tries to label as a sign of subversive actions against a government went ahead anyway. How could that be?
The thing is, that has absolutely nothing to do with dissent or trying to overthrow any government. People form data sharing networks because they want to share data. With the internet we belong to multiple P2P networks. Before that we had FTPs. Before that we had BBS. If there is no electronic network available then that doesn't stop anyone. Instead of a computer network, people networks are formed. Nowadays, instead of floppy disks or even CD-RWs we have USB mass storage devices such as flash drives.
So quite simply the article is nothing more than yet another piece of anti-Cuba propaganda. Just because there are people in Cuba sharing media around does that mean that they do it with subversive intentions in mind? If you fire up your FTP client does it mean that you are also trying to overthrow your country's government? What about your USB drive? And what about SD cards? What a rebellion.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Totally false. They don't count a child as "born" in Cuba until it has lived for a week. Since a significant portion of infants die during that time, it should not be a surprise their statistics indicate a lower infant mortality rate.
And all they've given up is their inalienable rights as human beings. Yay!
Do those life expectancy figures include people dying from acute lead poisoning?
Wait, are those the Cubans, or American kids with toys made in China? I'm confused.
Because the ends justifies the means.
People like you are the scariest of all.
Okay, perhaps you're not one of "those" people (Michael Moore, you are!). However, from your apology for the regime in Cuba, and the socialist policies (programs) you seem to embrace, I'll make that assumption.
What you don't realize is that the greatest force of all, which you seem to embrace, is the force of the herd mentality (Tyranny of the Majority). The moment you force someone into your viewpoint, you've become a tyrant.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
the cuban government is clearly more authoritarian than the us government, on most every measure, according to most any observer (try the great neocon fortresses of human rights watch and amnesty international), by a large order of magnitude
but then you have some people such as yourself, due to hating the usa's tactics in fighting cuba, or in thinking the idea to defeat cuba is not to fight it, or with a laundry list of cold war and colonial era grievances... that it all somehow means that the point here is to prosecute the usa, rather than the clearly worse government: cuba
how does this convoluted kind of thinking present itself? on the subject matter of the evils cuba does, we should... drum roll please... prosecute the usa. the clear enemy of cuba!
(smacks forehead)
how does this work in some people's minds? that the usa gets prosecuted for what its bitter enemies do?
various internet ideologues: fine. you win. the usa sucks. fuck the usa. rah rah rah! the usa is evil! blah blah blah. whatever! i don't care: be my guest, hate the usa, you go on with your bad selves
but in your effort to hate and prosecute the usa, how do you get anywhere in that passion of yours by forgiving regimes which, right now, in the PRESENT TIME, are doing clearly worse than the usa, ON THE SUBJECT MATTER YOU SAY IS IMPORTANT, such as freedom of expression?
i can never understand this kind of thinking
again, someone please explain to me: how on the subject matter of the bad things the usa's bitter enemies do, does the usa gets all the hate?
it just blows my mind how that is possible in someone's mind. you present them with evidence of usa's enemies doing truly vile things, and their reply is to hate the usa
it blows my mind how this kind of thinking works
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Citation Please....
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Micheal Moore only spoke about their health care system, not the other social problems.
Mind you, with decent free health care, they have something fundamentally good that Americans don't, and the way things are going, never will have.
How many people in the US can't change jobs because of losing health insurance if they do?
I have known a few myself, doesn't seem either fair or pleasant.
Insert Monty Python and the Holy Grail coconut-laden swallow jokes HERE.
How about this, why don't you find me infant mortality statistics in Cuba that were NOT reported by the repressive, communist government that rules over that land?
Oh, you can't. Why? Because anyone else who tries to survey doctors will be arrested and imprisoned.
The UN does not do any research on the matter, it merely reports what the dictator tells them.
Why does the summary mention the average Cuban wages? Sounds like an extraneous calculation.
in soviet cuba they slashdot YOU!
no?
People use DVDs.
Still, this brings up an interesting idea for a project: construct a network where multiple packets are carried in bursts on physically delivered storage media (such as a USB drive) where you can only retrieve those packets addressed to you when it arrives and not monitor the others. Obviously encryption would be required, but design it for reasonable packaging and retrieval from the thumb drive. Anyone could add packets to the media after retrieving their own. Basically, formalize a community sneakernet. Best if it can be made compatible with a private LAN of, say, an apartment building that has no direct connection to the Internet.
You have 26 days left to get the RFC in by April 1.
Not to say that I think it is entirely a joke. This could be useful when we discover we cannot trust the common carriers any more.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
This bullshit urban legend about the "low" infant mortality rate in the US has got to stop.
The reason the infant "mortality" rate in the US is low is because the US is one of the very few countries that tries to save the life of severely premature babies and babies with severe birth defects. Not surprisingly, quite a lot of these sad cases die, up to 80% in the case of severely premature babies. By contrast, most other countries don't even try to save those infants, and simply record them as late miscarriages or stillbirths. Since they're never "born" they can't "die," so they don't count in infant mortality statistics. Hey presto! A lower infant mortality rate than the US! Congratulatory headlines in any random self-hating US media outlet...
Here's a related fun fact: university hospitals often have higher death rates than community hospitals for grave disease, e.g. heart attacks, strokes. Is this because they're less competent? Some strange corruption where the richer and more prestigious hospital is screwing up because of its callous disregard for humanity, i.e. the kind of "logic" used to criticize the US infant mortality rate? Nope. It's just because the most serious cases prefer to go to university hospitals, or get transferred there from community hospitals, and because university hospitals often admit people for experimental therapies that usually don't work, whereas less sophisticated hospitals just send folks to hospice or home to die.
Whenever you compare statistics, it really needs to be apples to apples, and when the statistic is so politically-charged as a quality of life versus type of government measurement, you really need to ask some hard and detailed questions about the methodology. It's amazingly easy to lie with statistics.
..so would a hawk or eagle in the mix qualify as a BITM (Bird In The Middle) attack, or DoP (Denial of Pigeon) attack?
CIA Factbook - Govenment of the United States Infant mortality rate Cuba 6.04 United States 6.37 figures from 2007 Will this do?
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Cuba a few tons of clones Cisco gear, some slew of Linux servers, a fat pipe into the Internet, and pay off the Cuban government to open up.
But, do it in some diplomatic Asian way that might gain inroads into Cuba. Apparently, the US/Western ways must suck pretty bad. SOME government SOMEwhere needs to overtly defy the US. Externally oppressing Cuban citizens and denying US citizens visitation of Cuba is plain evil and heinous. It's just a matter of time before Cuba opens up. i just think their elite don't want history to show that the *USA* forced them to open.
China, are you LISTENING? Maybe Medvedev (and Putin) might take lead on this. Surely, the rest of the world has balls to stand up against this. Would be ironic, though, to see some combination of China and Russia convincing Cuba (through aid packages) to just knock off the current situation and in a few years be where they ought to be as if no embargoes ever happened.
i mean, REALLY, what threat has Cuba herSELF been to the US? None. She's been an active symbol of rejection of the US (to a great extent), survived coup plans orchestrated by the US, and other than refugees, has yet to launch some military attack upon the US. Drugs and other things might be issues, but it's not as if Cuba has a physical border to the US.
i'd like to see some world or NGO body once and for all defy the US and just SETTLE this matter without coups, assassinations, economic oppression or destabilization...
This is just insulting political BULLSHIT, and it's embarrassing and it just one more reason to make 'merkuns question whether travel with a US passport it the wisest or safest thing to do. After all, i've met in Japan people from various countries who had US passports AND multiple others, apparently valid, because they were from countries that permitted dual/multiple citizenship. Their countries aren't so arrogant or stupid as to assume that forcing someone to swear allegiance to ONE country makes them less likely to turn on their "new" country. Some of these people were from Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, and places in Europe. This was in 2004. i don't know what has happened between then and now. Of course, i'd be remiss to suggest that these people use their passports solely to not be fingered AS american citizens. Some do it to skirt around visa time frames.
Why? Well, as a non-US citizen or by entering Japan with a NON-US passport (and not being on a list of terrorist nations, unfriendly nations, or nations that might swamp Japan with foreigners looking to squat there), a visitor from the "right nations" can enter Japan on a Visitor Visa for not 90 days (as from the US) but for 180 days. Not only THAT, such visitors can WORK part time to subsidize their tourism/stay. From the US? Forget it. You can visit for 90 days, but are NOT legally permitted to work in Japan unless some company or individual puts up a bond or sponsorship and prepares the entry paperwork for obtaining a visa stamp.
Anyway, criminalizing a US citizen visit to Cuba is just obsequious, stupid, asinine, and vindictive. Someone should try again to fast-track (non-violently) Cuba's state status and maybe embargo the US for embargoing Cuba -- unless Cuba and the US are technically in a state of war. The US normalized with Vietnam, has trade status with China (a nation vastly superior to Cuba and a nation which the US is constantly measuring defense budgets against, but not against Cuba -- not on THAT scale...), and other nations from which the US incurred civilian and military deaths vastly greater than anything Cuba could have done to the US. Besides, is CUBA conducting technology-based infrastructure warfare upon the US? USA, grow up.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I'm impressed. I would expect them to be handing off 8" floppies.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The US Govt and their corporate friends seem to be doing a really good job of "banning" that book. Their mind control rays make it REALLY hard for me to find the big blue BUY IT NOW button.
"The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
Just because it's not using TCP/IP doesn't mean it's not still internet.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
If you think that was an apology for the Cuban regime, you have pathetic reading comprehension skills. Also, the fact you accuse people who disagree with you of having 'herd' mentality and your sig says people are panicky animals, suggests you are a frightful elitist.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
all those of you who find good things to say about the current Cuban government that the same government makes sure that the Cubans can't read your words.
Interesting eh?
Steven
This used to be a standard exam question when I taught CS, only back then he was only armed with a floppy. As floppys got larger faster tha bandwidth increased (back then it was proabbly 2400bps dialup) the poor guy kept having to ride further and further.
Lets see - the file will take 8*4x10^9/256x10^3 (back in asynch dialup days that multiplier was 10, not 8) = 0.125x10^6 seconds. Lets suppose the bicyclist average 10 miles per 3600 seconds. So break even is 10*1.25x10^5 /3.6x10^2 ~ 4x10^3 (4000) miles.
For extra marks: How large a thumbdisk would a swimmer need to carry from Florida to Cuba so that the transfer rate would be faster than the entire bandwidth of the island? There are no extra marks for speculating where the swimmer would carry it.
Squirrel!
"Which gives them a lower infant mortality rate"
No, what gives them a lower infant mortality rate is, at least partially, their extremely high abortion rate.
Cubas per capita abortion rates are nearly 3 times those of the US. In fact, once you examine the figures you realize the number of countries that perform fewer abortions than Cuba is vanishingly small.
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/ab-unitedstates.html
United States= 19.7 abortions per 1000 (2004)
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/ab-cuba.html
Cuba = 57.0 per thousand. (2004)
I imagine the US numbers would come down too if we started aborting that many fetuses.
Here's another (slightly less current) list. It says the same thing.
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/2504499.html
Regardless of your stance on abortion, crowing about low infant mortality while you're aborting that many fetuses seems a little ridiculous.
I think they're called iPods. Seems like everyone has one, though it's mostly music and crappy resolution videos.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
. . . it is my duty to report these reactionaries to the Cuban authorities so the Revolution can succeed!
Can you explain why you are unable to provide any references to back up your original statement?
Or was it just made up?
On the other hand, looking at US figures on unnecessary surgeries and deaths caused by unnecessary surgery, I could well believe Cuba can cover up few 10,000s of infant deaths, if the US can hide 100,000s of adult deaths each year (some project the figure to be over 1M deaths per year).
M0571y H@rml355.
exactly, it's been awhile
make a list of the usa's cold war and colonial era crimes, and you have a list which is pretty much no better or worse than any other major country that has ever existed
such that you aren't really commenting intelligently on the reality you find yourself in today, right now
if you wish to grouse about history, go in a corner and do that
but if you wish to make comments that are relevant to what is happening in the world right now, look at who is doing bad things in the world right now
not that this gets the usa off the hook. you can give me another nice list of current american crimes
but that's ok, do that. and also give me a list of what other players are doing that is criminal
then you can begin to be relevant, intelligent, and you can begin to actually matter on the subject matter you are commenting on
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
They abort more fetuses than virtually any other country on earth.
If that's what it takes to get the number in the US marginally lower I'm not sure it's worth it.
http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/index.html#ST
american japanese internment camps excuses cuba's present day limits on freedom of expression?
this is where you lose: "the usa did something bad once, so we can't criticize what cuba is doing bad now"
this is an incredibly useless way of thinking about the world you live in
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The embargo against Cuban travel by the united states is a terribly counter-productive policy. If Americans were hopping over to cuba for the weekend, dropping off laptops, satellite dishes and money, the citizens of that nation would be free by now. Instead Cuba has remaned the communist boogyman on our doorstep for 50 years. Sick.
No, the CIA factbook uses UN statistics. Sorry.
I don't think it's censorship so much as people knowing enough to ignore crazy.
Which implies when people ignore you, then aren't censoring you either.
Virtually none.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_Omnibus_Budget_Reconciliation_Act_of_1985
"I have known a few myself"
I'd like to hear specifics because that's pretty unusual.
criticize pakistan for pakistani crimes
criticize the usa for american crimes
criticize cuba for cuban crimes
DON'T criticize the usa for cuban crimes
DON'T criticize the usa for saudi crimes
DON'T criticize the usa for pakistani crimes
that's the kind of weirdo i am
i'm sorry if this kind of thinking is so strange and exotic to people!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Actually, I believe that there was an attempt to port Quake so that it's playable via Sneakernet.
Lame. It doesn't even support rocket jumping!
The enemies of Democracy are
With store and forward for email and Usenet.
Though we used to feed a couple of sites with 10Mb tapes...
If all you have is analog phones, or even tapes, you can still run email and get usenet.
Deleted
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Wikipedia entry on disparities between way infant mortality is measured.
US News & World Report article on same (doesn't cite sources, though news magazines almost never do).
Slate article on impact of premature births on infant mortality rate.
Boston Globe article on rate of premature births in U.S.
It would appear there is something to the claim that better medical care can skew infant mortality rate upwards.
How much space do the off-line versions of Wikipedia take up in text-only format? That would seem like a good thing to put on a USB drive.
Think of it as an avian spoofed RESET packet.
I'm sure Comcast is evaluating it even as we speak...
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
I'm considering implementing this standard using hogs instead of pigeons. My first planned transmission will be a copy of Duke Nukem Forever.
I like this idea a lot. What would be really neat would be to write a virtual server for the sneakernet software - so basically you operate your computer as though it's connected to the internet, only all requests to the internet are recieved by the local server software and "queued" for delivery via the sneakernet.
The server component could be designed to accept connections and handshakes for popular protocols like HTTP, SMTP, POP3, etc, but when sent data, it would queue it instead of sending directly. And when data was requested, it could just check the existing cache and supply the content when requested (for example new emails or earlier requested web pages).
The advantage of doing it this way is it would be compatible with existing software, you could use most common internet apps with no modification, only a new service written for the virtual server.
In the industrialized world infant mortality rates are primarily a function of genetics, not healthcare. Some ethnic groups have integer factor higher rates of miscarriage even after controlling for the environmental and medical factors. If you control for ethnic and racial demographics, infant mortality rates are more or less the same in the industrialized world. In the non-industrialized world, infant mortality rates are primarily a function of infectious disease (a pretty low bar to cross before genetics take over).
A similar story exists with life expectancy, which largely measures environmental factors (e.g. car accidents and homicide in the case of the US). The statistics you are using do not measure what you think they are measuring. For example, if you look at survival rates for cancer -- a leading cause of death in the industrialized world -- the US leads the world by a significant margin (e.g. per the recent Lancet Oncology study), yet this is not obvious in the aggregate life expectancy statistics.
Can you fucking read?
"How about this, why don't you find me infant mortality statistics in Cuba that were NOT reported by the repressive, communist government that rules over that land?"
THAT'S WHY you god damned moron, Cuba fudges their numbers and has for years, stop being a fucking douche.
"during which the US made a point of launching vicious attacks on every progressive left-wing government"
Well, lets start with THIS statement above, shall we. Every one of the "progressive left-wing government" you speak of was communist thuggery dictatorships. We're still dealing with such these even today.
"organising strikes, spreading propaganda, sponsoring coups and terrorists, and occasionally direct military force."
Same could be said of France's support with respect to the US Revolution against Britain. History has a way of sorting these things out, and remembering only the things it wants. While it would be nice to live in a peaceful world, I'm not ignorant enough to think that we live in such a place or that the world could become such a place anytime soon. But as long as some people want what others have, and use force to take what they want, then this world will be screwed up. Oh and this applies to all socialist, communist and "progressive left wing governments" .
"accuse people who disagree with you of having 'herd' mentality"
I didn't accuse anyone of anything. I said Tyranny of the Majority is still tyranny. In fact I even stated that you MIGHT NOT be (perhaps you're not one of "those" people), but since you replied, I can now show that you are in fact, "one of those people". In fact, I purposely couched my sentences and gave escape clauses in case I miss read your intent (eg "which you seem to embrace").
So, you see, my reading and comprehension skills are quite evident, while yours seem to be lacking.
"but thanks to the actions of America there is literally no way their social programmes could've been implemented if they were not prepared to run the country as a dictatorship."
This statement here, completely suggests you support forced government "programmes" even under a dictatorship, suggesting you indeed believe that the ends do justify the means. Phrases such as "literally no way" suggest that dictatorships are acceptable for instituting ill conceived, unsupportable "programmes" that force people into a system which is based upon herd (group, majority) wishes, under penalty of government retribution for non-compliance.
My original post stands as posted.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
DON'T criticize the usa for pakistani crimes
that's the kind of weirdo i am The USA endorses and defends these criminals.
The accomplice of a crime deserves blame just as much as the perpetrator.
You can't take the sky from me...
"I put it to you that the Cuban government is no worse than the United States government, under similar circumstances."
"This is not to condone the Cuban dictatorship (and I am calling it such directly seeing as you seem to have missed me calling it so indirectly in my original post...) - it is merely to explain its actions and its nature."
"In the same way that sharing an environment with dangerous predators has made Hippos extremely aggressive animals, sharing the Western Hemisphere with the U.S. made revolutionary movements there extremely aggressive."
tell me where i am wrong in my understanding of your words: you are saying that the cuban government behaves the way it does because of the usa
W.T.F!?
this utterly blows my mind!
here is my bizarre, neocon, libertarian (is that what you called me?! how did you base that weird judgment!?), imperialist, neocolonial, mercenary capitalist, zionist, orphan children raping opinion:
1. criticize cuba for cuba doing bad things
2. don't criticize the usa for cuba doing bad things
that's it. that's the beginning of my thought. that's the end of my thought. that's my strange, exotic way of thinking
please forgive me if this such an alien concept to you!
(smacks forehead)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
NO ONE can provide any references. You don't understand. The government will imprison/execute anyone trying to establish legitimate statistics regarding the health care system in Cuba. Not only that, the culture of repression will insure that no doctor will give you the honest truth unless you have a boat ready to take him to the US.
I have known many who have fled that land of oppression, and have known a few doctors. It is from them I receive my information. Absent any transparency of the Cuba government, anecdotal evidence is to me far more reliable than propaganda. If you want to believe the shit shoveled to you by the Castro Monarchy, feel free.
Also, if you honestly believe that 0.3% of the population dies every year because of unnecessary surgery - nothing I could possibly quote would be acceptable for you. That is nearly 1/3 of all deaths every year. Total insanity.
"Like all the US citizens! Yay!"
Bush is a fucking idiot and a traitor. Rise up and overthrow that madman.
That would get me found and shot in Cuba, yet strangely, not here in the US.
Funny how the reality of the situation escapes people like you in your rush to spew snide remarks all over the place.
"...with 55% packet loss, and 6165731.1 ms lag over 3 miles... i think the little thumb drive method is way easier."
Yes, USB sticks over a sneaker net can be more reliable. But for small, UDP packets over medium distance, a pigeon net can more convenient assuming, of course, you are aware that their is no guarantee your packets will arrive at its destination and in order sent.
Pure Randroid gold. Basically, your fevered ranting tells me you consider anybody who favours universal 'socialised' healthcare to be an unthinking zombie, a member of the 'herd'. You are so deeply embedded in your ideology that you assume anyone who disagrees with your principles can't possibly have a mind of their own. They've all been brainwashed by Noam Chomsky and Hugo Chavez.
You see everything in black and white. You vs. the 'herd'. Freedom-loving objectivists on one side and lazy, stupid 'statists' on the other side. I imagine in real life you make a point of avoiding those who might challenge your belief system.
By the way, I'd love to hear your opinions on the fluoridation of water, you paranoid right-wing nutjob :)
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
why aren't you excoriating moscow for selling arms to war torn africa?
why aren't you lambasting beijing for endorsing myanmar?
based on your understanding of how accountability and responsibility works, no one in this world is responsible for anything except washington dc
don't you find that your lines of "logic" for finding blame and responsibility gee, i dunno, just a little creative and unreasonable?
this way of thinking is entirely in line with your way of thinking: "saddam hussein talked on the phone to osama bin laden once. therefore the usa is entirely right to invade iraq in 2003 after 9/11"
what i just wrote above is 100% pure horseshit
but it is EXACTLY the kind of horseshit you are trying to sell me when you want to blame the usa for what pakistan and saudi arabia does
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...you?
But using 2008 tech.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
this is the essence of accountability:
you are responsible for what you decide to do
for example: if i sell you a gun, i am not responsible for how you use that gun
meanwhile, the "complex understanding of our modern, interconnected world" that you are defending is this: "all the bad things that happen in the world is fault of washington dc, somehow"
yeah, i see your vast intellectual and moral complexities in that persepctive
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"Is it that inconceivable that a country can have excellent healthcare but at the same time severely limit its people's political freedoms?"
It depends on what you mean by "excellent healthcare" and how it is impacting the economy as a whole. Care to clarify?
"come up with something more recent than 1985"
That's when IT WAS PASSED INTO LAW genius.
It's still in effect.
I might be interested in arguing once you get your foot out of your mouth...
You hit the nail right on the head there. We abused the CIA the way some doctors abuse anti-biotics. We killed off the weak leftists, leaving only the strong ones. Curiously enough though, we had Western Europe under our influence after WWII, and allowed socialism to develop within a framework of democracy there. This has resulted in a Western Europe that stands to our left and pokes us verbally, but doesn't stand too far to our left and threaten us militarily. It's a pity we can't treat our near neighbors the way we do the countries across the pond. Even if we started *right now*, there is a built-up lack of trust.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
russia tinkers in british affairs. china tinkers in american affairs. cuba tinkers in angolan affairs
etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum
most every country that exists and has ever existed and will ever exist has tinkered in the affairs of other countries
and you want to do two things:
1. conveniently forget all tinkering by any country except american tinkering
2. leverage that american tinkering into direct accountability by the usa for whatever bullshit someone else does
example: britian, france, russia, china, and the usa all had arms deals with iraq. but we'll forget all of that and just think about the usa. next, saddam hussein gassed kurds. so obviously, the usa is responsible for that
this is your superior understanding of the world?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What's the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with memory sticks?
Cuba might have the highest bandwidth in the _world_
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
When those "common carriers" are begging for retroactive immunity from handing our communications to bad actors like the Bush Administration, I'd say that "when" is "now".
You are welcome on my lawn.
What criteria does Cuba count infant mortality by? Some countries do not count every life birth against their infant mortality standings. The U.S. does. Because of this the U.S. often appears to have worse infant mortality than other countries when that is not necessarily the case. Details here: http://www.ocregister.com/ocr/sections/commentary/orange_grove/article_443950.php
then i want you to think about a few things:
1. more people than the usa are involved in what happens in cuba
2. some of those people are from other countries, but even more importantly, MOST OF THOSE DECIDING WHAT CUBA DOES ARE CUBAN
so, in my strange weird exotic universe, when cuba does something bad, i blame cubans
what a crackpot i am. what a neocon propangadist i am
i'm clearly an imperialist neocolonial warmongerer for saying that: cubans are responsible for what cubans do. what a weird strange little man i am: blame cuba for what cubans do? what a crazy person! we all know that the usa did something bad in cuba 50 years ago, so the usa should get the blame for every single thing that cuba does bad now. obviously!
now you'll excuse me, i'll be slapping my forehead
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Psst, hey, buddy. You seen this video yet? Some real femmy guy is crying on his webcam and says stuff like "Leave Britney alone!" No, no, this one is free. See me next week, I got this great vid of a 15 year old boy the Americans call "Paris" goin down on a guy.
...and the rockets red glare
-------------
I'm so happy we can share. *crying*
america tinkers a lot. nevermind any other tinkering by any other country. never mind how long ago the tinkering took place. nevermind tinkering by latin americans in their own damn countries
so we can never ever find actual latin americans responsible for anything bad that happens in latin america. we must always creatively extend and embrace the idea that the usa is repsonsible for all the bad in the world, forever
you know, the concept of accountability and responsibility: it only falls on the usa. it never falls on latin americans. latin americans can never be held accountable and repsonsible for what happens in their own damn countries, right?
don't you find that patronizing and condescending to latin americans?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I wouldn't go so far as to say the US allowed social democrats to gain power in Western Europe - it is more a case that Western European democracies were older, stronger, and lest corrupt than the generally fledgling ones that the US crushed in Latin America. It would take a lot more to institute a coup d'etat in France than in Venezuela, and IMHO that is purely the reason the US has never tried it.
That said, the US has tried to use a lot of soft power over the years to drag Europe to the right. The Murdoch media in Britain, for example, was instrumental in keeping the Labour party out of power in the 1980s and also played a major roll in convincing the British public it was necessary to invade Iraq. 45 minutes my fucking arse.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Sneakernet. Remember the days when a floppy got passed from person to person, before reliable broadband came to the U.S.? I do.
But the Cuban government is doomed. They have to know that they're in a very bad position because once a view outside Cuba gets in, their days in office become numbered.
Why do individuals who disagree with Michael Moore's movies always resort to calling him "fat"? I don't see how his being overweight has any relevance for his views on guns, corporate crime, or health care.
How about you address the issue he points out: that too many people in the U.S. have too little access to health care.
Well, yes and no.
There WEREN'T any Capitalist Counter-Revolutionaries in Cuba, (for all the reasons that you mentioned), but it seems like they are creating their own (the people running the black market are certainly Capitalist, and some would argue that those using their services are counter-revolutionaries).
The more interesting thing to me is the perceived path for Information Freedom. That its coming from the Universities (similar to how Email and the WWW found their way to people's homes).
From TFA:
The world is out there, and it looks like the next generation is not only aware of it, but actively [thinking about/seeking/working] to become a part of it.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
here's an alternative view: the notion of the usa being responsible for everything that happens in the western hemisphere is something that died last century. in today's world, latin americans are responsible what happens in their own countries. but rather than waking up and realizing the world is changing, some people's minds are locked in the past, and therefore their way of thinking actually stands in the way of progress
say the usa deserves blame for something bad that happens in latin america. ok, fine. now: at what point in time do you say "ok, blame is up, now latin americans are responsible". and what if you had a bunch of minds who never get to that point. who stay stuck on blaming the usa, with no sell by date or expiration date on that mode of thinking? then aren't such people part of the problem rather than the solution?
in other words: yes, learn from history. but don't stay trapped it in. history should inform progress. not stand in the way of progress
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
My anecdotal experience while travelling in Cuba was that, overall, the local Cubans 'looked' healthier than the Mexican, Belizean etc. counterparts.
I'm not trolling though, it's a serious argument:
The important difference between the US and Cuba is the independent judiciary. Look at Hong Kong, Singapore and various other well-function south-asian countries and the numerous failed democrasies in the world and you'll find one important trend. Parlamentarism, checks'n'balances and sharing of power leads to succesfull societies.
Being able to pick the president doesn't.
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
I wouldn't associate freedom of information with capitalism. Plenty of capitalist countries have censored and imprisoned dissenters more than Cuba has. I consider it unlikely that people passing around memory sticks in universities are saying they want the right to start a business and not have it taxed and regulated much. They are probably more concerned with being able to protest and communicate with the outside world freely.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
"5oz of microfilm? That seems far lighter than a coconut."
African or European coconut?
Ok, so let me get this right, you cannot provide any references because you information is based on hearsay. That fine, it's just nice if you say so, it in no way invalidates what you are saying - although getting defensive/abusive would definitely draw your validity into question.
I've also encountered doctors who have worked in Cuba, they do not share your views on infant deaths.
I don't believe or disbelieve anything. Do you know what is the 3rd leading cause of death in US is?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Third+Leading+Cause+of+Death+in+the+U.S.
Do you think every doctor who kills somebody by accident reports it as death they caused?
Yeah, total insanity.
M0571y H@rml355.
1. you don't attack the intent, you attack the poor policies. which is 100% correct of you. which also means you are not someone i am attacking, nor are you effectively understanding what i am really attacking. what my enemy is: those who actually believe the usa just does evil things. that's not what you are saying, so i have no argument with you on that point
2. the bad usa policy towards cuba does not make cuba. cuba makes the bad usa policy. castro did not turn his country into an authoritarian dictatorship because the usa doesn't want to trade with it, the usa doesn't want to trade with it because cuba is an authoritarian dictatorship
for the life of me, i can't fathom in a million years how otherwise intelligent people like yourself can get this cause and effect reversed!
now you are correct that authoritarian governments use aggression towards them as the rationale to tighten their authoritarian controls. but that doesn't matter: if the usa was extremely hostile towards the cuba, cuba is still 100% responsible for their authoritarian policies. if the usa relaxed its hostility, cuba would probably relax their authoritarianism as well. i completelty and utterly understand this connection
but that still doesn't mean the usa is RESPONSIBLE for what cuba does, merely that it has influence on cuba like every country in the world has influence on each other. if russia masses troops towards its border with china, and china in response jails all of its dissidents, russia's actions might have influenced china's actions, but russia is in no way responsible for china jailing its dissidents. china is, 100%!
my problem is with the kind of thinking, utterly beyond my grasp, of saying because the usa is hostile towards castro, or iran, and iran or cuba tightens their grip, THAT THEREFORE THE USA IS REPONSIBLE FOR WHAT THOSE GOVERNMENTS DO
this is the bill of goods you are trying to sell me. and i absolutely reject it, as completely out of touch with an intellectually honest definition of how accountability and responsibilty works in this world
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It does, but it is a one time deal.
In the U.S. there is a great deal of money spent keeping preterm babies alive. Some even as small as 500g. "The primary reason Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate than the United States is that the United States is a world leader in an odd category -- the percentage of infants who die on their birthday. In any given year in the United States anywhere from 30-40 percent of infants die before they are even a day old." http://www.overpopulation.com/articles/2002/cuba-vs-the-united-states-on-infant-mortality/ Just one data point sometimes doesnt make a point at all.......Cuba's health care may look better from this point but it doesn't tell the whole story......
that were NOT reported
Then how could anybody know that they are eating babies if it's not reported? ESP?
M0571y H@rml355.
"your fevered ranting tells me you consider anybody who favours universal 'socialised' healthcare to be an unthinking zombie,"
:)"
... Studies have also indicated exposure to fluoride can lower IQ ... http://www.fluoride-journal.com/00-33-2/332-74.pdf
... substance." They called for "an immediate halt to the use of the nation's drinking water reservoirs as disposal sites for the toxic waste of the phosphate fertilizer industry." The management of the EPA sides not with their own scientists, but with industry on this issue. (See 1-6: "Why EPA's Headquarters Union of Scientists Opposes Fluoridation", Chapter 280 Vice-President, J. William Hirzy, May 1, 1999).
;)
No, more like a tyrant who wants to take something belonging to someone else, by force or coercion if necessary. This is nothing short theft or robbery. What makes you think that it is okay to take what is not yours to take? Because you're giving it to someone else?
I'm personally against forcing anyone into any system which requires forced regular payments. Just because YOU think its okay to take my money doesn't mean it is. This idea of universal health care is nothing more than tyranny of the greatest threat. I can make my own damn health care decisions, I don't need you or anyone else's opinion.
I also don't want to pay for someone elses poor decisions either. You want to eat McDonalds Burgers and Fries twice a day, I don't want to have to pay ANY portion of your Coronary By-Pass. You want to jump off buildings with parachutes and you end up breaking twenty bones doing so, I don't want to pay for a nickel of your million dollar hospital bill.
And I certainly don't want to pay for the illegal alien's Cancer Treatment, just because s/he ended up on the door step of some hospital.
"By the way, I'd love to hear your opinions on the fluoridation of water, you paranoid right-wing nutjob
From Wikipedia
Also
The EPA scientists recently concluded, after reviewing all the evidence, that the public water supply should not be used "as a vehicle for disseminating this toxic and prophylactically useless
Which side of the argument you fall on? I suspect that will make sense of a bunch of things.
See http://www.fluoridedebate.com/ for more of the debate, including plenty of study materials. I don't blindly accept fluoridation of our water supply is a good thing, do you? Perhaps the good out weighs the bad, perhaps not. I suppose not blindly accepting what the government tells me is cause for me being a nut job.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
My friends and I do this in the USA. We call them library cards. Sure we all have internet access and could email stuff but that would take all the fun out of it. Beer recipes, pod casts, project info etc. It all fits on the cards and in your pocket. Instead of an email that might not get read it is a tangible item that is looked forward to.
My father is a truck driver with spoty internet. We exchange sd cards via the mail. Load them up and ship them off. Works great and gives you something to expect other than another bill in the mail.
Ascii artist &
And we know about these low infant mortality rates and life expectancy figures because the Cuban government collects the data and offers it up, right? Well hey, that's the gold standard, right?
Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
They have first rate low tech preventative and pre/post natal health care.
Well, I agree with the 'low tech' part. As for the rest, getting the nurses there to stop reusing hypodermic needles would be a good start. I was waiting at a clinic in Havana with my (Cuban) ex-girlfriend for a blood test and was amazed at the Cubans waiting their turn to get an injection from the same needle. At least they washed it in a tray of water between shots. Yeah, Cuba is the high tech health care capital of the world. I demanded that they do *not* use a shared needle for my girlfriend and they were willing to comply for the rich foreigner. It just costs a bit extra and most Cubans don't have the extra money to pay for the new needle. Also, I hope you aren't expecting a large selection of drugs or say, bandaids (only available at the biggest hospitals in Havana) or antibiotic ointment (haha, that's a good one). Also, outside of Havana there are rolling blackouts on a regular basis. Just hope you aren't getting some medical procedure when that happens. They do have basic antibiotics at least, but not much else. Vitamins are often prescribed by doctors there for all kinds of ailments. And even the largest hospitals seem to lack those machines that go "bing".
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
This is a pretty interesting take on it. I haven't done a lot of checking to see if the numbers in the article are accurate, but it does make logical sense. The long and the short of it is that children in the US are more likely to receive medical care when they're in dire circumstances compared to some other countries. Since those children have a very low long term survival rate, it skews our numbers because doctors try and fail. In other countries, they wouldn't bother trying and the children wouldn't live long enough to be counted toward infant mortality.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
That's exactly the point moron, no one can verify the numbers in Cuba, but you can everywhere else. And even though they can't be verified, they get accepted by mental midgets like you.
Holy shit you're a fucking idiot.
Then I have a stupid and possibly obvious question for you: what are you doing on Slashdot?
Look ... we understand that you can only have a democratic "lunatic left" ideology if you believe cuba is perfect. Cubans risk their lives to get out of the country ... lots and lots of them do.
What more do you really need to know ?
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Much smaller then a thumbdrive yet you will be able to use the pigeon. Best of both worlds.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
no one can verify the numbers
Ah, now you get to my point. Since nobody knows either way, all claims are made up.
M0571y H@rml355.
basicly what you are saying is build a token ring network where some poor guy walks around carring the token.. might want to watch out.. i wouldn't be supprised if IBM has a patent for that
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Exactly. Cuba is just the last punchline, and not actually that important considering their medical technology somewhat sucks. Free 1960 medical care is not exactly something to get worked up over. The actual countries to pay attention to in Sicko are England, France, and Canada.
Just the other day I was talking to an English friend online who'd taken issue to some American saying that new mothers should stay in the hospital for longer periods of time. We talked past each other for a bit until I realized she was saying that hospitals make new mothers stay too long, which in her book was 'two weeks', and that they should let them go after a day or three and just send people out to check on new mothers and babies, whereas in my experience hospitals were throwing mothers out four hours after giving birth because that was all insurance allowed.
It was truly a surreal moment for me. Hospitals...having people stay too long? Nurses...making house calls?
And then it really hit me this was all for free and I almost punched a hole in the wall.
And while some of Moore's other documentaries play loose with some of the facts, Sicko doesn't. The only outright lie in it is that prisoners at Gitmo get nice medical care, when in fact they don't, but that's a government lie (Remember when they swore up and down they weren't hurting people there?), not Moore's.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
And another set of mental midgets like you accepted a whole bunch of other "facts" which can't be verified either.
Communist dictators generally murder between 10 and 1000 times as many people as non-communist dictators. Castro is no exception to the rule.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
"And then it really hit me this was all for free and I almost punched a hole in the wall."
And THEN it was explained to you that it wasn't in any way free, and that they had paid for it.
You people always fail on that one, like you did there, and that kind of disregard for reality says much about your ability to accurately assess subject.
And all they've given up is their inalienable rights as human beings. Yay!
Er... where do I find these "inalienable rights" for all human beings? Last I checked, the common interpretation was that these only apply to US citizens, if we had to extend them to everyone else our current international (and increasingly domestic) policies would dissolve.
To all of our leaders, since FDR (perhaps before), the only "inalienable right" that the US has stood for is opening your markets to our corporations, and do what we say. Or at least this is the right that we've fought every modern war over.
That said, Cuba has some problems, and should have free elections. I do think, sans the embargo, that they are better off than under the US shill Batista, though. If the people freely decided to be communist, then fine, no business of ours. Appearently communism isn't enough, since we are now trading with Vietnam and China, leaving only two "verboten" states, Cuba and North Korea. Cuba doesn't compare to N. Korea in any way besides economic systems.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
I got a better idea than passing stuff around on memory sticks. Now that Fidel ain't in charge no more, the people of Cuba need to kick Raul's butt out of power, get rid of this Communism rubbish, install a democratic government, and watch how everyone's wages soar, the quality of life goes from fourth-world to first-class, and this nonsense about the state controlling everyone through fear becomes a thing of the past.
Actually, it is more like a high tech version of the old Russian Samizdat during the Soviet era.
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
It would take a lot more to institute a coup d'etat in France than in Venezuela, and IMHO that is purely the reason the US has never tried it.
One word: Gladio
It was a secret network operated by the CIA in, basically, all of Europe. Its many parts:
Lochoi Oreinn Katadromn - Helped overthrow Greece government in 1967 in miltary coup
Aginter Press - assassinated many leftist Portugal politicans
Counter-Guerrilla - Killed about 5000 Turks via domestic terror.
Gladio - Blew up, shot, and killed half of Italy. Way too much to list. Also linked to the very odd 'Propaganda Due' conspiracy.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I wonder if some of those "suppliers" of thumb drives would have happened to "accidentally" pick up a few sticks at US army bases...
Last I checked, those sticks were hot items in Iraq... I'd hate to think about whats on them.
C++ isn't Java, try this instead:
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig; sig.dump();
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
Read the post again, you're obviously not smart enough to understand what I wrote.
Damn dude, if you're going to grammar Nazi troll, at least do it right. The first comma is correct - it's a separate idea (if you were speaking, you would PAUSE there).
Sorry, perhaps you need a lesson, you're wrong when you say
"It was a secret network operated by the CIA"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio
"Gladio (Italian, from Latin gladius, meaning sword) is a code name denoting the clandestine NATO "stay-behind" operation in Italy after World War II"
You can't take the sky from me...
Your rule simply isn't true. Hitler and Pol Pot killed an awful lot of people and they weren't communist. The bloodiest conflict in the world, Congo, has nothing to do with communism.
The official reason for the embargo is the seizure of US assets 50 years ago. If we send 'em 'American Media', I'm betting we'll see the RIAA making ex parte filings against the John Does on every refugee boat that makes shore, alleging that flirtatious speech while packing a USB key in the pants constitutes 'making available' which itself is equivalent to mass duplication. You thought the revolution was bad for busiess - you won't believe the kind of damages these guys willl assert.
UUCP.
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
You are a crackpot for saying Cubans are responsible for Americans aiding the overthrow of their democracy and supporting a dictator. And then claiming Americans do not effect Cuban politics. While maintaining trade sanctions and a gigantic army.
When I upgraded my cell phone recently the clerk gave me the option of donating my old phone to a charity that passes the phones along to battered women so they can dial 911 in an emergency. Seems like something similar could be done with memory sticks. I have a couple of memory sticks I don't use anymore because I've gotten a new one with more capacity. I imagine that a lot of people have older, smaller capacity memory sticks sitting in a drawer somewhere. Wouldn't it be great if there was a trusted third party that we could give our old memory sticks to which could then smuggle them into countries living under repressive regimes? Thus encouraging a robust sneakernet that is below the state's radar.
Imagine sending hundreds of helium-filled balloons, with a payload of memory sticks full of games, pron, and Linux source code!
I've done networking over tin cans and string, but sneakernet sounds like a new low.
Moore said Cuba was paradise.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
You're late. RFC 4838 does just that.
Thank you Bush.
for the sake of rhetoric
let us take your assertion at face value: batista was 100% the puppet of the usa
ok
based on that, when castro overthrew him, castro reasserted cuban independence, and has in fact been acting in opposition to the usa the best he could ever since
therefore, according to the implications of your own assertion, whatever the hell cuba does today, is cuba's responsibility and cuba responsibility's alone
right?
or is it that because the usa gave support to some dictator 50 years ago, that was overthrown, therefore the usa still bears responsibility for what cuba does?!
(smacks forehead)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I was going to say, I just saw a 2GB microSD card for $30. A bird could easily carry that, it's smaller than folded paper they usually carry. They couldn't cover to Cuba, but for dozens of miles they would probably work well.
I find the suggestion a great example of hi-fi, lo-tech. You could even read one of these on an OLPC network spaced 1km apart.
for a history of pigeon post look here:
http://www.mediahistory.umn.edu/archive/PigeonPost.html
it's got more history than I thought!
he's not 100% pure absolute hitler evil so he's acceptable
pffffffffft
castro and castro bro are not batista. but they still suck, no matter how they compare to batista, so we criticize them on that basis. not on the basis of "well, there's worse"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm just assuming so because your first thought is to use this information to try and figure out a way to overthrown a foreign government :)
And evidenced by people coming from Canada to the US to get the best Health Care Money can buy, but isn't available there. All the socialized health care in the world has this backup plan, called the US of A.
Part of the problem is most of the newer and innovative treatments are created, right here in the US of A, and all of that R&D comes with a price, the skyrocketing insurance premiums people like me pay (yes, I pay for my insurance). But we pay them with the expectation that when the need arises, we'll get the latest and greatest treatment, often without much cost to ourselves.
Yeah, it sucks for those that can't afford the most expensive treatments, but on the other hand, I don't see people getting turned away at the emergency rooms because they can't pay either. Not that I'd ever want to go into a normal ER, because it is clogged with people who don't go to regular doctors for the sniffles.
But I don't want second class medical care because you think I don't deserve it, because it isn't fair to those that can't afford it. That is the whole point of Socialized Medical Care, isn't it? You don't think I deserve the best, right? You want to take from me, what isn't yours to take, and give it to someone else because of some weird sense of "fairness".
Life isn't fair, get over it. I have to spend extra money on clothes and food because I'm 6'5" and can't buy off the rack and require more nutrition. I don't see anyone crying for "universal food care" because someone is starving. Or Universal Housing because someone is homeless.
No thanks, I don't want Univerally bad Health Care.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I have a 16GB *well, more like 15GB* stick myself, and can fit quite a few hours of porn... *eh-hem* I mean movies... on it.
Funny how the reality of the situation escapes people like you in your rush to spew snide remarks all over the place.
Yes, the open complaining about oppression, without repercussion, is one of the reasons my wife and I want to emigrate to the US.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
Posting anonymously for obvious reasons (don't want my dictator torturing and killing me.) I have the actual number on baby deaths. There are none. We have amazing technology that has actually completely eliminated death. The only deaths we have are murders.
This gives democide estimates for both Batista and Castro. Between 1952 and 1959, about 1,000 people are thought to have been outright murdered by the Batista regime. Between 1959 and 1987, between 35,000 and 73,000 people are thought to have been victims of democide by Castro's regime.
Hitler wasn't communist, but rather an adherent of fascism, a form of guild socialism. Pol Pot was a communist, who imposed the purest implementation of Marxism ever seen, and was the most murderous as a result, in terms of percentage of population killed.
Conflict in wartime, where both sides are armed, is different from democide, where the victims have been disarmed.
This documentary is far better, if you want to learn about Cuban medical/humanitarian aid.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Don't copy that floppy!
...with decent free health care
The is no such thing as free health care. Someone has to pay. This is not a comment on whether government health systems are desirable or not.
So long as large amounts of people don't take reasonable measures to protect their own health (good diet, exercise, etc) no health care system will be adequate to cope, public or private. Too many resources are taken up by preventable illness. The cost is unsustainable.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
You can't take the sky from me...
Up to the year 2005 Cuba's bandwith and internet connections were supplied by a US fiber cable. In 2006 they cut that connection leading to the more expensive ( about 3 times more ) and slower satellite link for our country. Google up a map of the Caribbean with the layouts of all neighboring fiber cable connections, and see if Cuba is crossed by any one of those. Did you know about the embargo the US government has on the Cuban people ??( they think the pressure relies on the Cuban government, but it's our people who are suffering those consecuences ). Did you know about the Helms Burton Law?? or the Torricelli Law?? or how they prohibit us from acquiring us equipment or any type of products in foreign countries thus leading to more expensive transport arrengements?? I don't recall the "famous" New York Times talking about it, or eveng refering to the cause of the problems. It's pretty easy to speak without any knowledge, firstly if you don't know the problem in it's roots, it's causes, and secondly if you haven't lived any of those problems. How many of the people speaking here have ever been to Cuba?? I didn't see many posts saying "I've been to Cuba and ..... "
But despite of all those publicitary, and media commentaries that I've seen expressed throughout a group of replies to the article, despite the enormous pressure brought upon us by many governments throughout the world ( that in many cases don't represent the opinion of their people ) we have survived almost half a century. And to those wondering what will happen in Cuba if there's an invasion, to you I want to say : "Remember VietNam?? " Worse ....
In Cuba it is a national duty to defend the country and there are actually 6 million soldiers ready to defend it, having Cuba 11 million people. Our army is composed by proffesionals and the whole people ready and trained. Try to compare it to the army of any country vs it's population and see the rate. Never doubt it, the US government isn't stupid, and have tried for over 50 years to get someone to do the "dirty work". See if they have succeeded. Take Bush for example, 8 years in office, promising year after year the surrender of Cuba to their followers in Miami, well we're still here, our words: "Bye Bye" .....
Possibly replying to a troll (the mod-gods think so anyway), but here goes...
I last visited Cuba about 6 years ago, and took a laptop and a couple of large - for 2002 - thumbdrives. The Cuban customs official noticed them, casually asked how much capacity they had, then carried on about her business. Maybe customs would pay more attention now, but 6 years ago they didn't seem to care about laptops, USB drives, CD-ROMs (blank or full of data), cameras, books (including a critical biography of Karl Marx by a conservative biographer), or pretty much anything else I was bringing in.
...And before the oh-so-obvious remark that I was a tourist and wouldn't be able to pass my potentially subversive material to real Cubans - Cuban tourist resorts aren't golden prisons. I wandered around the town I was staying in (sorry, forgotten the name, somewhere on the North East), I wandered around Havana, I spoke to random people about random nonsense. I had ample opportunity to pass someone a USB drive. In hindsight, I should have done... though the 64MB I had back then would probably be ridiculed by even a Cuban these days...
This is where the serious fun begins.
Perfect place to implement FidoNet. Tailor made for bursty transmission with high bandwidth needs.
if they're relatives have the cash
"their".
And Jesus Christ, have you not heard of fucking capitalization?
(The word "fucking" in the previous sentence is meant as an adjective, not a verb; I do not mean to imply in any way that you should be engaging in sexual intercourse with capitalization. In fact, I have absolutely no idea how such activity would be accomplished, or, indeed, whether it's even possible.)
Funniest comment I've read on /. in years.
What signature defines me as a person?
When you've got roaches on the floor of your hospital, you just might not have world class medical care:
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/004070.php
Take a look at the photos of the hospital El Presidente calls "one of the most modern and best ones in the capital". The evidence is plain to anyone who cares to look that Cuba is just lying outright, like the USSR before it, and their official statistics (and the UN and NGO reports which are based, ultimately, on the Cuban government statistics) are just a fiction, buttressed by non-representative sampling of a few good clinics they make available to health tourists who can pay in hard currency.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
The infant mortality rate as it is currently counted is worthless for comparisons.
The problem is that the US considers any child removed from the womb that shows a sign a life or self movement as being born, so thier death counts against infant mortality. Most other countries require additional things such being above a certain height or weight(common in Europe) to being seperated from the mum for a min of 24 hours to multiple days in some countries.
The other problem are premature births, current the ratio is something like 1 in 8 births is premature. In the US and other first/second class countries were the medical technology is ample those kids are being born, the reason why some countries have the height/weight requirement. So because of the technology you know have doctors birthing a premature kid and taking that chance that it will live, where in the past it would of died in the womb(like what happens in Cuba), so with an increase of technology you get a spike in infant deaths.
Abortions do not count against the mortality rate since the child is considered to not have left the womb.
In Old Havana there is only one Internet cafe; getting online there for an hour costs 1/3 of the average Cuban's monthly wages.
I see they have Comcast also.
Table-ized A.I.
in south korea only old people use thumb drives
Not to mention, it doesn't make any sense applying the per capita income calculation to Cuba. It's true that the average Cuban "salary" is low but, unlike profoundly capitalist nations such as the US, all basic human needs are provided by the state. Things such as healthcare, education, housing, public transportation and even food are freely provided by the state. That means that, unlike what happens in capitalist nations like the US, Cubans don't spend their salary on basic human needs. We are talking about expenses that, in the US, would cover more than the average person's paycheck. How many americans find themselves bankrupt due to not having enough cash to pay their medical bills or education?
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
The wiki link to the article which says the count is different and thus the mortality in the US is higher, but it does not :
1) cite peer reviewed study, it only cite a media article
2) it does not cite a comparison on identical basis. For example take 1000 infant death, then cut off those less than 1 pound. Do you get the same number as the germany , worst or better ? Count only birth after 6 month and a half (26 weeks) do you get identical number as France ? I see none of this. Just a "they don't count like us".
3) as another poster said, even if you discount infant mortality outright as being counted differently and thus not being comparable, death in the 0-5 year period is still apparently higher in the US than in the same previously discounted countries. That should certainly indicate a trend.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Sneakernet /. effect: Steal every USB stick and never read THFA's
Here be signatures
They obviously need to use UUCP! http://www.wizzy.org.za/
I predict that Cuba will become the centre of a new world-wide anti-imperialist UUCP network reaching all the way to Venezuela.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Shouldn't you insert the usb stick in the unladen swallow?
the cold war? defeating communism? not a reason in your mind for dealing with dictators?
no, in your mind dealing with dictators to defeat communism gets warped to become "we say we want democracy but we really want dictatorship because we're flagrant hypocrites like that"
and even better, DEALING with a dictator becomes "the usa purposely destroyed a democracy and put in a dictator, all by itself"
amazing the idiocy
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
that other countries besides the usa tinker in the affairs of other countries?
do you want me to prove to you the sky is blue too?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
so, inalienable human rights end at the rio grande?
above that line, huamn beings have equal value, below that line, human beings are lesser? is this what you are trying to say? are you trying as hard as you can to be an outright ethnocentric racist?
"If the people freely decided to be communist, then fine, no business of ours."
right, people FREELY decided (they did?) to give up their FREEDOM. got it. that's how you read cuban history. wtf!
what kind of mental gymnastics and purposeful avoiding of the plainly obvious does it take to think like you?
the usa is the great devil. the usa is a godly saint. it doesn't matter what you think of the usa and what the usa does to realize this about your thinking: when you begin to assert that cubans have freely chosen to have less freedoms than americans, you have completely and utterly swallowed some really stupid propaganda
but don't take my word for it. go tell a cuban in havana they deserve less freedoms than americans do. go ahead. let's see how they react to your way of thinking, shall we?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Long live sneakernet!
Couple things: Schools, university all have access to network and internet resources (although with the deny everything allow specific mentality). The internet that costs 1/3 of a monthly wage is the tourist internet. EVERYTHING sold to a tourist costs 10-20 times what a cuban pays. The reality is, for Cubans there really isn't any access point outside of the schools. It used to be a lot more lax, until the Cuban government got paranoid because US interests caught trying to stir up things for billionth time. What used to happened is the person working the internet cafe would sell (blackmarket) the leftover time a tourist paid for if he left early. Cubans would hang out outside the tourist cafe waiting for the "nod". Government got wiser to that. Now you are a seeing the latest version of that...People make "requests" to the internet operators and they get what you want. Its mostly music, movies...emails..etc. In fact they have 2 currencies. They have their tourist dollar(CUC) which trades for USD and they have the cuban peso (CUP) which Cubans use. 1 bottle of 12 year old rum costs Cubans the equivalent of .50 CUC. Cubans are not really allowed to use USD and CUC, so they would never pay the full CUC price a tourist does.
And then I learned exactly how much they had paid, which was a good deal less than any US health insurance, and I almost punched a hole in you.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I'm not saying that there aren't problems. Take a look at obstetricians in the US, and why many are fleeing that field. I blame people like John Edwards who made a fortune off the misery and sadness of genetic defects, suing doctors for problems that had nothing to do with the doctor.
You want to fix part of the high cost of Medical Care in the US, get the lawyers out of the mix, and the stupid juries who award billions in the latest get rich quick scheme. And illegal Aliens seem to get free medical care here, so I'm not sure why people are leaving to go to Canada.
That, and doctors think that they are entitled to seven or eight figure incomes. And why can't we license more nurse practitioners to take the more "normal" cases, like colds, flus, sprains and abrasions. Why does it take a full MD to treat relatively minor problems?
There are ways to fix many of the problems in the system today. The problem is, that people suggesting these things are often called radical and dangerous. Yeah, I am radical and dangerous, as I can think for myself and can see the problems in the system that nobody wants to touch.
The problems in the system aren't huge, its just that nobody wants to touch them because the AMA and the Lawyers have huge lobby's in Washington, creating artifically restricted markets, increasing cost every step of the way.
And I haven't even begun to talk about the problem from the Insurance side, which is another huge part of the problem.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
In scifi, it's typically assumed that you have ftl radio if you have ftl drives. Of course, a few settings play with that assumption, Battletech being the most notable. Ships can make jumps of up to 30 lightyears with a roughly two week recharge time between hops. ftl communication technology exists but is the secret property of a cult-like technology company that isn't Apple. Naturally, any messages that pass through that company, comstar, cannot be absolutely trusted as secure. So this means that starships are now the new pony express for secret communications.
Starships would be part of the physical network in the OSI model. A starship enters the system and starts beaming message traffic to the nearest relay. Having announced its presence and intended destination, packets are beamed back to the starship for relay to the next hop.
One of the interesting quirks of the setting is that the fabulously rich can setup jumpship chains for rapid transit. The jump itself is instantaneous with all the time consumed with charging the fusion batteries. With a properly positioned chain of relay ships with freshly-charged batteries, a trip that would normally take months could be done in days, just like relay riders on the pony express.
The setting replicates the pre-telegraph days of human history when wars could end up going on for months after a peace treaty is agreed to since it takes time to relay the terms across oceans.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
You can't take the sky from me...
Get some wifi cards to a few of those Cubans! No infrastructure needed, completely free (except for the cost of electricity) high-speed data transfers (faster than I get with DSL), and ad-hoc routing across the country. With a few wifi cards and some decentralized P2P app (like Gnutella), pretty soon everyone in the country has access to EVERYTHING, from home.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Nowhere in there does it say the CIA sponsored it, it says they are being investigated. As to "If you're sponsoring something, you're pretty much running it" that's just stupid.
"he who has the gold, makes the rules."
NATO has more gold, so by your logic THEY make the rules.
Just like I said. Stop trying so hard, it just makes it look that much worse when you're wrong like you are now.
"And then I learned exactly how much they had paid, which was a good deal less than any US health insurance, and I almost punched a hole in you."
Is that really the best you can come up with? You're stupid enough to think it's free, then when proven wrong, you try the "well it's cheaper" crap?
Let's see your figures guy, I say you're full of it, and in light of your total failure to support your spew with citations, I'm right.
"I almost punched a hole in you."
THEN you realized you're a pasty ass loser who is safe behind his keyboard, but knows full well if you HAD punched me in the face it's be YOU who needed "free" insurance.
"Did you actually read what you responded to?"
Clearly, you on the other hand have failed to understand it twice now.
"The question was: How many people in the US can't change jobs because of losing health insurance if they do?"
Right, and I was right. Very few.
"If they'd lose health insurance if they change jobs, it's because their new job wouldn't have health insurance. "
That's idiotic, the state of insurance at their new job has no influence on their old insurance. You're wrong
"Most people do not change jobs and then immediately look for a new job."
What kind of retard are you? They look for a new job then change to it. Stop grasping at straws you look even more idiotic now.
"And CORBA lasts 18 months when changing jobs."
No moron, that's wrong too.
"And incidentally many people in the US cannot get insurance without a job"
Another lie.
So you've lied, and made up facts, just because I proved you were wrong.
How fucking pathetic are you?
"you complain about the lack of democracy "
You're a liar, I've never done that.
"and still you think it wrong of them to abort however many fetuses they want to?"
No, actually, improve your reading skills. I never said anything about "wrong" in any of my discussion of the subject.
You really need to get a reading tutor.
ratio of anti-usa rants to anti-china rants or anti-russia rants: 99 to 1
if you spend 200 paragraphs ranting against the usa and then go "oh yeah, china and russia are bad to" then you are revealing your intellectual dishonesty
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
so if in a country a military coup ousts a communist government, exactly what democracy is being destroyed?
certainly, a country can vote for communism. this is akin to suicide: you're freely giving up your right to be free. which is whole other philosphical argument: do you have the freedom to destroy your own freedom? my answer would be no, as it imperils the freedom of others, but i digress
back on point, if a country winds up in a fight between communists and military forces, how is the usa solely responsible for this? oh certainly, the usa got involved in these fights in the cold war. as did the ussr. as did anyone vying for influence. but mostly, it was the internal forces of the country at work. the usa wasn't a deciding factor
and furthermore, if the usa then interacts with the military dictator, or theocrat, or royal monarch, or whomever, that world despises, how does "interaction" turn into "support" in your mind exactly?
i suppose you could say that you expect the usa to act virtuously. for example, i woudl suppose you would want the democratic usa to have no interaction whatsoever with an unelected authoritarian in a display of clean idealistic allegiance to democratic principles
ok
BUT THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT THE BUSH POLICY IS TOWARDS CUBA WHICH EVERYONE HERE SAYS IS EVIL!
so you can't win. because the argument isn't really about what is the right thing for the usa to do, the argument is really "whatever the usa does is wrong and i'll stand against the usa in kneejerk fashion no matter what it does"
so ther eis no intelligence to anti-americanism
there is only intelligence to aligning yourself with a principle. and if you align your thinking with a principle, you will find, astonishingly, that the usa does things which helps your principle
really
imagine that crazy concept huh?
pfffffffft
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
you just provided the factual representation of what i asserted: that the bush govt doesn't deal with cuba as a matter of policy, and will deal with it when it becomes more democratic
so thanks for the support, but i don't know why you providing links that support my assertions makes me look stupid
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
ok, start here:
http://google.com/
(snicker)
you've got a great rhetorical approach: prove the obvious with copious links or what you say is wrong
darling, i don't need to cite the obvious
it isn't obvious to you that more america bashing than china or russia bashing goes on in the world?
okkkayyyy
darling: it's not beholden on to me to hold your delicate hand with copious links just because you are sheltered from obvious observations of the world we live in
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The problems for universal health care is a non-starter for me. It requires (demands under penalty of law) that I participate, and in the process get lower quality care than I can provide for myself now, or makes me pay MORE for the coverage I already am paying for. No thanks.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
You can't take the sky from me...
If you don't know the relative amounts different countries spend on health care per capita, perhaps you really should exit this conversation before you look like even more of an idiot.
The US, to get you started, spends approximately twice as much on health care as every other country in the world.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
From line 739, the low estimate is 500, mid-range is 1,000, and the high estimate is 20,000, a figure provided by Castro.
From line 848, the low estimate for Castro's democide is 35,000, mid-range is 73,000, and the high estimate is 141,000.
Suharto is nowhere in the same league as Hitler or Pol Pot.
Anyway, I stand by my statement. You can't actually prove that the Castro regime is worse than that one it replaced. Nor can you prove that left-wing dictators (like Castro) always mass slaughter their people unlike right-wing dictators (like Hitler) who don't.
"Let's see your figures guy"
Why am I not surprised that you didn't provide any.
"I can't get insurance without a job, you idiot."
Liar.
So the fact that the African-American infant mortality rate in this country is two-and-a-half times higher than it is for white babies must mean that we've got one helluva health care system set up for our inner-city minorities. Somebody ought to contact the NAACP; they seem to have the impression that there's something wrong with this state of affairs.
And what is going on with this country when even the frackin' Puerto Ricans and Native Americans are doing better than white people? Dammit, what is their secret, that they can get infant mortality rates approaching 1.5 times to twice that of the white kids?
So yeah, a big problem with big numbers is that most folks reach false impressions based only on the surface data. And then there are the people who only drill down far enough to get the answers that they wanted all along.
Isn't it obvious?
You are welcome on my lawn.
perhaps you really should exit this conversation before you look like even more of an idiot.
And now it's too late for you to not look like an idiot, but I trust I've made my point.
And here. You'll notice that except for Luxumberg (Which it is populated almost entirely by rich transients and the 'health care' there is half facelifts.), the next most expensive places, Norway and Switzerland are at 2/3 our per capita cost, and there's Austria at slightly above half, and then all the others are at or below half.
Considering that this is one of the most repeated facts when discussing health care in this country, you are either a) a troll pretending not to know it, or b) a fucking moron who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a discussion of health care.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Can't stop the signal!
I'd like you to stop lying. We can't always get what we want (unless it's insurance).
By the way, I did, and I did. Easily.
So, I caught you lying again liar.
First, thanks for the link, it proves you're too fucking stupid to read, because it doesn't say what you think it does. Holy shit you're stupid.
Second
"a fucking moron who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a discussion of health care."
Like someone who thinks that government provided health care will be "free" as you stated? Or is that a different kind of fucking moron?
And isn't it funny how you STILL refuse to admit you were lying about that, and are trying so hard to insult and flame me into forgetting your lie.
You lied, I caught you, and now you're just looking more pathetic. The best part is your 3rd grade understanding of the subject causes you to link to studies which demonstrate your ignorance even more effectively, as they don't say what you claim and you're too stupid to realize it.
If you expcet people to believe that nonsense after I proved you're a liar repeatedly, then you're as dumb as you act.
Dude, you're a proven liar, no one cares what you think.
Line 788 does not include refugees who die while fleeing, or political prisoners who die in prison.
Cuba was a much more open society under Batista. If larger numbers of people were imprisoned or executed, it's likely that someone would have heard about it.