[QatzelOk]

If China were an open society they may not need these hospitals.

If China were a more open society, they would have been severely colonized and crushed by Western business interests.

The West and its lying, stealing elite, force other countries to shut themselves off. This is the other horrible consequence of colonialism and creating a mindless, zombie soldier class (like we've done).

[Patrickov]

If China were a more open society, they would have been severely colonized and crushed by Western business interests.

The West and its lying, stealing elite, force other countries to shut themselves off. This is the other horrible consequence of colonialism and creating a mindless, zombie soldier class (like we've done).

What I know is that whoever still supporting China now are undoubtedly of the mindless, zombie soldier class.

At least the West are under scrutiny when they lie. No one could stop the Chinese leadership when they lie and thus cause irreversible damage.

Two wrongs do not make a right.

And in any case, the "other countries" incompetence and oppression made me think colonialism is actually something better.

[QatzelOk]

...There will be political impacts in Europe when all this is over. They have shown very little solidarity, even sympathy, with each other and especially for the most afflicted, Italy. Who has Italy appealed to for help, asking for medical doctors? To three supposed “dictatorships”, three maligned international pariahs: China, Cuba and Venezuela. And they have stepped up to help all sending doctors to Italy.

Cuba was first on the spot in China in the midst of the Wuhan crisis bringing doctors and their anti-viral medicine Interferon Alfa 2, which has been very successful in saving the lives of the afflicted. Then after the peak had waned, China has sent help to Italy. Italians from their balconies played the national anthem of China in gratitude to them on their arrival. And the little island of Cuba has shown once again what socialist international solidarity is by giving refuge in its harbour to the MS. Braemen, a British cruise ship with coronavirus cases that no one wanted to receive.

A delegation of Cuban doctors arrived in Venezuela two days ago along with the Cuban Minister of Health and Dr. Luis Herrera, the creator of the Interferon Alfa 2. Cuba and Chinese experts are also helping Venezuela in this hour of need.
...

An interesting article about government-response to the current Covid-19 pandemic, that demonstrates how little real community-solidarity that capitalist-run countries have.

And in the case of Cuba... a person I met in Spain last year argued that Cuba had "too many doctors and not enough good products and services." I think it would be hard to argue right now that Cuba has too many doctors and that we capitalist countries have 'just enough.'

[late]

we capitalist countries have 'just enough.'

America needs more doctors, mostly GPs. I don't know about the other countries.

My Doc is an emigree with a hard to pronounce name. We import a lot of them to try and fill the gap.

[Patrickov]

We import a lot of them to try and fill the gap.

Again, maybe not that simple, and is rather another chicken-and-egg situation.

I perceive the other half being "Professionals from all over the world flock to the United States because their own countries or governments suck".

[late]

Again, maybe not that simple, and is rather another chicken-and-egg situation.

I perceive the other half being "Professionals from all over the world flock to the United States because their own countries or governments suck".

We put limits on the number of people that can become Docs. When we run short, we import a few.

[Patrickov]

We put limits on the number of people that can become Docs. When we run short, we import a few.

I am not saying the import thing is not true, but if the United States is not superior to many other countries this trick wouldn't have attracted anyone at all.

I even suspect this policy is the result of the "over-supply" of foreign doctors because of what I said.

[skinster]

Cuba’s role in the struggle against Covid-19 is that of a moral giant, Washington’s that of a moral pygmy
Coronavirus, as well as reminding us of our vulnerability as a species no matter how technologically advanced we may be and how complacent we had allowed ourselves to become, has also made clear that the richest country in the world, the United States, is also the poorest when it comes to common decency, honour and humanity. At the same time it has provided the world with unassailable proof that one of the poorest in terms of GDP, Cuba, also happens to be among the richest.

The recent arrival of Cuban doctors and nurses in Italy, Europe’s coronavirus epicentre, allows us to believe that another world is possible, one in which solidarity, compassion and human connectedness occupy paramount importance in international affairs. The country’s legacy of sending medical missions to poverty and disaster-stricken countries began soon after the revolution of 1959 succeeded in overthrowing the Cuba’s then US-aligned dictator Fulgencio Batista.

Two of the Cuban revolution’s key priorities were universal healthcare and education in a country in which both had been the preserve of Batista’s ruling clique and supporters. The first long term international Cuban medical mission overseas was dispatched to Algeria in 1963, replacing French doctors who’d left the North African country at the end of French colonial rule after a long and bloody war of national liberation. However Cuban doctors had already previously been sent to Chile in 1960 to help that country deal with the devastation wrought by an earthquake.

Fidel Castro, who died in 2016, even extended the offer of a Cuban medical mission to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and surrounding areas in 2005. This despite the tightening of US sanctions by the Bush administration in Washington. Of the offer of help, Castro said at the time:

We weren’t offering money; we were offering doctors to help save lives, and that offer stands today and tomorrow, and represents Cuba’s attitude towards any of the world’s peoples.

Literally thousands of Cuban doctors are operating around the world at any given time, saving countless lives. Such international medical missions mar a truly astonishing legacy given the country’s own plight under US-directed sanctions, first imposed in the early 1960s and which despite the intention of strangling the country’s socialist system to death have merely reinforced its force as a beacon in a hemisphere cursed to exist under the shadow of a brutal hegemonic beast perversely referred to as the land of the free.

Moreover, in 1999 Cuba opened its Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) in Havana, designed to train medical students from out with Cuba, including the US. By enrolment, ELAM is the largest medical school in the world today, from where 500 students from 84 countries graduated last year.

To date in Italy there have been 5,476 deaths from coronavirus (Covid-19). Fourteen of those who’ve died were doctors. This means that those Cuban doctors and nurses who’ve arrived in the country do so in the sure knowledge that they are risking their lives. They haven’t arrived completely unarmed, however. With them has arrived stocks of Interferon Alfa-2B, a drug developed by the world renowned Cuban biotech industry which has proved effective in treating Covid-19.

Compare and contrast Cuba’s response to this global pandemic with that of Washington. There, in the richest country in the world, Covid-19 has been weaponised and to all intents deployed as a biological weapon of mass destruction against Iran and Venezuela, both of which have pleaded for sanctions relief in order to allow them to obtain the necessary medical supplies and equipment they so desperately need and are short of.



Iran in particular has been badly hit by the virus, where at time of writing 1,812 have died and where a shortage of face masks in particular has compounded the humanitarian catastrophe the pandemic has produced there.

‘Hell is empty and all the devils are here’ is a line from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. In the midst of a global pandemic which has shown the world the difference between those countries that are guided by moral and ethical principles of international solidarity, and those guided by motives of brute power and callous disregard for human life, they are words that should now be engraved on the Statue of Liberty.
by John Wight

[Donna]

The chad moral giant vs the virgin moral pygmy

[skinster]

[QatzelOk]

Radical Individualism and Profit vs. Human Solidarity:The United States And Cuba
On Ideology

The economic and political structure of capitalism requires “an ideology, a consciousness, a way in which the citizenry can be taught to accept the system as it is. This ideology has many branches but one root, the maintenance and enhancement of the capitalist economic system. The elements of the dominant political ideology include: privileging individualism over community; conceptualizing society as a brutal state of nature controlled only by countervailing force; acceptance of the idea that humans are at base greedy; and, finally, the belief that the avariciousness of human nature requires police force and laws at home and armies overseas.”
...
Cuba’s prioritization of the fulfillment of the health care needs of its people and Cuba’s commitment to the health and wellbeing of people all across the globe. From the early days of the revolution, Cuba committed itself to educating its population and providing free and effective health care. In the spirit of international solidarity, Cuba began sending medical professionals to countries all across the globe. Its first medical mission, 56 health care professionals, was sent in 1963 to Algeria after the French were ousted.
...

Harry Targ examines the ideological differences between capitalist medicine and Cuba's "revolutionary medicine" in a short article. Very relevant for future epidemics and health crises. Even when this one quiets down, we're all getting older (more vulnerable to disease) and our earth is also getting sicker (because industrial greed has ravaged it).

[QatzelOk]

Within a few hours of being launched, over 800 Venezuelans in the U.S. registered for an emergency flight from Miami to Caracas through a website run by the Venezuelan government. This flight, offered at no cost, was proposed by President Nicolás Maduro when he learned that 200 Venezuelans were stuck in the United States following his government’s decision to stop commercial flights as a preventative coronavirus measure. The promise of one flight expanded to two or more flights, as it became clear that many Venezuelans in the U.S. wanted to go back to Venezuela, yet the situation remains unresolved due to the U.S. ban on flights to and from the country.

Those who rely solely on the mainstream media might wonder who in their right mind would want to leave the United States for Venezuela.
...
First, international solidarity has played a priceless role in enabling the government to rise to the challenge. China sent coronavirus diagnostic kits that will allow 320,000 Venezuelans to be tested, in addition to a team of experts and tons of supplies. Cuba sent 130 doctors and 10,000 doses of interferon alfa-2b, a drug with an established record of helping COVID-19 patients recover. Russia has sent the first of several shipments of medical equipment and kits. These three countries, routinely characterized by the U.S. foreign policy establishment as evil, offer solidarity and material support. The United States offers more sanctions and the IMF, widely known to be under U.S. control, denied a Venezuelan request for $5 billion in emergency funding that even the European Union supports.
...

While it is possible for countries that are governed with social welfare in mind to help one another in times of need, capitalistic countries always have their eyes on profit. Even when this leads to mass death.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbIX1CP9qr4

[skinster]

[Patrickov]

Fidel Castro: "Our country does not launch bombs against other people."

They do. In the form of a human being -- Che Guevara.

I am not saying it is a bad thing if Cuba does the same. I only want to say the above quote is a lie.

[Pants-of-dog]

They do. In the form of a human being -- Che Guevara.

I am not saying it is a bad thing if Cuba does the same. I only want to say the above quote is a lie.

Comandante Guevara went to help liberate other countries from foreign exploitation.

[Patrickov]

Comandante Guevara went to help liberate other countries from foreign exploitation.

Many countries who bomb others also claim similar things.

[Pants-of-dog]

Many countries who bomb others also claim similar things.

Well, if you have evidence showing that Comandante Guevara was a tool of Cuban imperialism, feel free to show it to us.

[skinster]

[Patrickov]

Well, if you have evidence showing that Comandante Guevara was a tool of Cuban imperialism, feel free to show it to us.

He's not a tool of Cuban Imperialism.

He's a manifest of pan-Communism.

Ideologically we can define what is what as we like, but technically what he did is no different from other countries actually bombing others. Revolution export is effectively the same as democracy export. Everyone push whatever they believe, and unfortunately what Guevara advocated was not what I agree with.

[skinster]

Ideologically we can define what is what as we like, but technically what he did is no different from other countries actually bombing others.

post-modernism lol.