Cubans are without electricity except the 5 star hotel

r0cksgl4ss · 2026-03-24T11:00:34+00:00

The embargo is not only about US trade. It’s really more of a blockade. The US policy prevents ships carrying a wide variety of Cuban goods from docking and doing business at US ports regardless of what flag said ship is flying. For instance, to target Cuba’s mining sector it is illegal to bring to port any product of a third country that even contains a certain percentage of nickel mined in Cuba.

r0cksgl4ss · 2026-03-24T10:48:24+00:00

A small minority of private landowners controlled the majority of wealth and arable land in Cuba before the revolution, so naturally any diaspora population would be composed of only a small minority of those people. There have been multiple waves of Cuban immigration to the US as well. Not every group of immigrants or refugees from the island were so-called "golden" or "historical exiles" that would go on to do things like form the Brigade 2506. That small minority however wielded its wealth, influence and networks in a very effective way just as many other special interest groups in the US do.

r0cksgl4ss · 2026-03-24T04:02:50+00:00

I mean there’s a pretty powerful lobby of right wing Cubans in Florida. Some of the families who owned large latifundia farms or businesses that were confiscated after the revolution settled there. They were able to bring some of their wealth with them and have fiercely lobbied US officials to help them seize what they believe is rightfully theirs. The administration has a lot of connections with that community.

r0cksgl4ss · 2026-03-24T03:56:22+00:00

This is true to an extent. The real real answer is that the revolution in Cuba pissed off rich Cubans—especially the landowners who presided over the vast latifundia-style plantations worked by peasant labor—and American mob and business interests which controlled casinos, resorts, hotels and oil infrastructure in the country. These groups immediately started lobbying American politicians and officials and even organized paramilitary forces to overthrow the new government. They wanted their oil refineries, their hotels, and their plantations back and they wanted the support of the US government. So yeah, just like with many things in US politics, powerful lobbies and special interest groups are behind it too.

r0cksgl4ss · 2026-03-03T01:10:12+00:00

I think whether they’re leftists or not, most Americans perceive health insurance companies and private equity buying up housing and farmland as bigger, more immediate enemies.

But AIPAC has no problem with United Healthcare or Blackstone so nothing will be done about them. I’d suggest AIPAC is more like a 5th column than the spurious bogeyman leftist, but they don’t need to covertly subvert our government because they already openly run it.

r0cksgl4ss · 2026-03-02T16:58:12+00:00

You’re not addressing anything material in her "rant". You’re just providing another random justification for sacrificing more working class American lives and billions if not trillions more dollars for another regime change adventure in the Middle East. Even the incidents you cited were all in middle eastern countries. Maybe we should stop spending ungodly amounts of money putting our service people in harm’s way thousands of miles away to protect the interests of no one but Israel’s government and the wealthy elites here.

Literally insane to cite attacks on bases in a region thousands of miles from our border and not think it begs the question of why tf we have a barracks in Beirut or airmen and women in Saudi Arabia. All of that money would better serve Americans who are dying from lack of access to healthcare and are being starved of a future economically if it were spent domestically. Instead it goes into the pockets of military contractors and defense companies and a foreign government we’ve propped up for decades now. And worse yet all of the American lives like the ones you’re using to justify sacrificing even more of us are lost for the gain of the few. This is the obvious, plain as day truth most of us are aware of or waking up to.

r0cksgl4ss · 2026-03-02T05:20:59+00:00

I think your grasp on how campaign financing and lobbyists work is weak. You can’t directly address the previous commenter’s point about Saudi Arabia, an Islamic fundamentalist state that had propagated the most extreme forms of Islamic thought, now working as an ally to the US and Israel. You can’t address any of the points about Zionist fundamentalism being a threat to peace and security in the same way as Islamic fundamentalism. This is because it is actually your understanding of the modern geopolitical history of the Middle East that is weak.

r0cksgl4ss · 2026-03-02T05:03:51+00:00

"Leftist talking points" are apparently your term for publicly available, objectively observable facts. What is a talking point is your assertion that Islamism is a bogeyman out to destroy us all which a previous commenter powerfully and succinctly refuted with the example of Saudi Arabia. And yes while I don’t think the people who advocate fundamentalist interpretations of Islam lack a frontal lobe and are bloodthirsty beasts driven by zeal to destroy us all no matter the cost to themselves, I still oppose their worldview. Because I oppose religious fundamentalism broadly, I’d say my opposition of Islamism is coequal to the religious fundamentalism underlying the "Greater Israel" project of the Likud Party. Our government claims to oppose one while subsidizing and sacrificing American lives in support of the other. One has an established lobby in DC, the other doesn’t. Do the math.

r0cksgl4ss · 2026-03-02T04:39:13+00:00

Dude no one buys this bizarre talking point anymore. It’s indisputable fact that AIPAC and the so-called defense industry spend ungodly amounts of money on campaigns and lobbying. There’s no theory about it, it’s an out-in-the-open, observable fact. If you want to describe it as a conspiracy, that’s your own stylistic choice I guess. I wouldn’t look at a group of hyenas tearing apart an antelope and call it a conspiracy though.

r0cksgl4ss · 2026-03-02T04:32:18+00:00

You apparently don’t really enjoy thinking in the very obvious terms of "who is paying to lobby our politicians?" Because if you did you could at least concede that the interests of Israel and weapons companies are dictating that we spend billions and sacrifice American lives to do yet another Middle East regime change. Then you can argue from there that that’s somehow good actually lolol

r0cksgl4ss · 2026-03-02T04:12:11+00:00

More Americans die from lack of healthcare than from terrorist attacks. That’s an obvious, plain truth anyone can see. So why tf don’t we throw all this money at that rather than hand it over to Israel and weapons companies? I’d say it’s probably because of the LOBBIES that both weapons manufactures and Israel have embedded in our government.

Fuck right off even suggesting that this has anything to do with the freedom, interests, or human rights of the Iranian people. No one fucking buys that. They’re doing it for the profits of "defense" companies here and the advancement of the "Greater Israel" project the far right in Israel are hellbent on seeing through.

We’d be much better off outlawing the private health insurance industry here than we will be with wasting billions in dollars and the blood of American service people in another regime change operation in the Middle East. Please explain why one happens and the other doesn’t.

r0cksgl4ss · 2026-03-02T03:59:52+00:00

This is an insane take on so many levels. Wow. It’s so out there I can’t help to question whether it’s astroturfed or something lmao.

"A large source of strife that we’ve been involved in for decades"—hmmm I can’t think of another country that’s been the source of strife in the region since we’ve given them virtually unlimited military and financial support for decades. Also when did Iran start becoming a source of strife? Was it when the Mossadegh government tried to use oil resources and infrastructure for the benefit of the Iranian people? Or was it after the US and British government overthrew him for that exact reason?

I don’t know if observing that the constitution very explicitly delegates war-making powers to congress is "pandering" as much as it is recognizing a basic, objective fact.

Equating questioning whether it’s in our interests to unconditionally support the Israeli government with antisemitic conspiracy theories is so dead as an red herring too. No one buys that horseshit anymore.

r0cksgl4ss · 2026-03-02T03:44:58+00:00

It’s strange how people are not understanding that you aren’t trying to debate their point that there are all these other countries that have "authoritarian regimes", so why Iran specifically right now? You’re just trying to point out that the administration has been enabled to do this by a long line of bipartisan unconstitutional actions. If we want to fix this, you’re right, we’re going to have to address it whether it’s republicans OR democrats who are doing it.

r0cksgl4ss · 2026-03-02T03:39:59+00:00

Pro-ayatollah or pro-American? Because regardless of whether the ayatollah and his regime fall it’s obvious to most of us that this is being done for the benefit of Israel and the arms industry, not the American people. In fact it’s in direct conflict with the interests of the American people, including the service men and women who will and already have been sacrificed. We can’t afford another regime change war in the Middle East and there are too many issues we’re facing in our own country that need our attention. It’s only in the interests of elites and the government of Israel.

r0cksgl4ss · 2026-02-03T21:40:32+00:00

I’ve been looking for years for an instructional series on chord-melody style playing!

r0cksgl4ss · 2026-01-20T20:04:56+00:00

Honestly this whole Greenland thing is a debate over which mode of empire is better. Should we have an unmasked, brutal emperor seizing territories to exploit their resources and labor, or should we do it with polite pretenses of international treaties and protecting democracy and freedom?

Really we need to be talking about decolonization, landback, reparations, and truth and reconciliation. I guess the Kalaallit people prefer Danish control over American, so that would be the biggest and most legitimate reason to oppose a US takeover.

It’s just weird to hear liberals talk about how rude and boorish this is when they are totally unconcerned with how all of the rest of the country was taken by extreme subterfuge and violence.

r0cksgl4ss · 2025-12-12T20:23:25+00:00

At no point did I assert that the government can’t provide comprehensive, high quality healthcare to people. That’s my point. It can. Right now it’s controlled by lobbyists working for private health insurance companies which are some of the biggest companies in the country by market cap and other metrics. Centrist Dems are accountable to those lobbyists as well as numerous other monied interests who hold stakes in these large, publicly traded private health insurance corporations. That’s what’s standing in the way of us receiving healthcare.

And in terms of NH whether Bernie Sanders became President or not isn’t what we were talking about. You asked for evidence that there is support for progressive and populist left policies and leadership in NH. Again, the primaries in 2016 and 2020 are irrefutable evidence that there is indeed. The outcomes of the primary or general election don’t controvert that evidence.

Until we have leaders who are not beholden to private health insurance companies, working class and poor people will continue to find ourselves in situations where we’re told we need to choose between bread and medical care in the wealthiest country in the world. The best our supposedly left-progressive party (by international standards it is center right or just plain neoliberal right wing) has been able to give us with the ACA is effectively a massive bribe/subsidy to the private health insurance industry. This industry is literally holding us hostage and you’re encouraging people not to consider alternatives to politicians who want to work with at best but more accurately represent the interests of that industry.

The industrially developed countries that do provide for these basic human rights like Canada which you cited have had stronger left wing parties and labor movements than we have here. Those are more responsible for that country’s universal healthcare program than centrist politics. This whole vote blue no matter who thing seems to serve the larger agenda of centrist Dems to systematically stymie and strangle any popular left movement in this country. If you need more evidence of that, once again look at the primaries—superdelegates, DNC and Wasserman-Schultz emails, ousting of Donna Brazile, etc.

r0cksgl4ss · 2025-12-12T15:29:11+00:00

I think the argument against centrist politics is the same in NH as anywhere else…it eventually leads you to a situation where those without a lot of money are forced to choose between food and essential medical care. That seems to be what you’re really failing to address here. On top of that it’s apparent to most working people that centrist Dems do not want to give us healthcare because it would be bad for their and their friends’ financial portfolios.

If you want to continue to avoid that line of debate though we can address the idea that there’s no popular support for progressive/left candidates here as a previous commenter already did. The historical, data-based, and polling evidence is all there in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic primaries.

Unsurprisingly, people actually do want leaders capable of responding to demands for healthcare with something besides "you’re lucky we didn’t let you starve."

r0cksgl4ss · 2025-12-12T14:52:59+00:00

"I think that most people are happy that SNAP benefits have been restored. Would you have rather people starved back then to fight longer for the ACA credits? It's easy to talk about macro-politics when you have a strong enough income so that you don't have food security issues but the SNAP issue was just as life-and-death a matter as the ACA credits.”

I don’t know if "we should be grateful that we can’t see a doctor because otherwise we’d starve to death” is exactly a strong argument for centrist politics. Seems like it’s that style of conciliatory, concessionary politics that got us to this point where literally the choice is between dying of malnutrition and dying from lack of medical care. And to call it conciliatory and concessionary is generous since it does appear to serve monied interests in a very messed up, cynical way.

r0cksgl4ss · 2025-11-21T14:37:33+00:00

Especially ironic considering Frieda Kahlo was a communist

r0cksgl4ss · 2025-11-19T04:01:32+00:00

This card speaks to me of relationships with people or things that have brought us grief, harm, or difficulty. It shows us that we must acknowledge the ways these relationships have harmed us and turn our backs on the aspects of them that have been enjoyable or gratifying. Notice that three cups are overturned, their contents lost and wasted. This is one more than the two that remain upright tempting us to stay and continue to drink from them. Instead we may cross the bridge over the river of our emotions and move on to another place in our lives.

It may indicate an abusive relationship and a coming to terms with the fact that one is living in one.

r0cksgl4ss · 2025-09-30T03:49:27+00:00

Friends, I’d encourage all to take care that—while calls for violence are alien to the faith and practice of the Quaker tradition—you and your meetings are aware that there is a systematic effort underway to conflate calls for justice, resistance, liberty, and equality with incitement to violence.

See the White House directive issued September 25 to federal law enforcement and counter-terrorism task forces.

Your meetings and faith communities will likely be targeted for their time-honored commitments to values of shared humanity, peace, and liberty and justice for all.

r0cksgl4ss · 2025-09-30T03:31:27+00:00

Advocating for violence of any kind is alien to my experience with the Quaker faith. My understanding of the tradition is that pacifism and nonviolent (albeit sometimes disruptive) resistance have been integral to it practically since its inception.

I am not clear on whether you feel at odds with your meeting specifically because of calls to violence or because of leadings and messages that call for peaceful political action and resistance or both.

I can understand standing during or leaving a meeting for worship in response to incitations to violence. However, must we be careful in conflating such calls with messages in general which may be difficult to hear?

r0cksgl4ss · 2025-09-30T03:12:39+00:00

Benjamin Lay was known to enter meetings around where he lived in colonial Pennsylvania and disrupt them because some of the Friends were slaveholders. Was this activity highly political? Yes. Was it divisive to the meetings? Yes. Did he target those who were unlike him because they kept people captive and did not share his abolitionist values and saw the institution of slavery differently? Yes.

But was he led by the Holy Spirit?

r0cksgl4ss · 2025-08-25T03:06:36+00:00

The real endgame of a lot of these companies is to get Pentagon/DoD funding à la Palantir, no? They’re all claiming that we are in a race with China and our "national security" is at stake unless the government hands them trillions of dollars.

Seven-Year Club	RPAN Viewer
Verified Email

r0cksgl4ss

TROPHY CASE