The Economic Cost of Afghanistan and What We Could Have Had.

Richard Mellor

This has some useful information in it. In a way it is what most of us that pay attention recognize but feel there is nothing we can do about it, that all politics and therefore all politicians are corrupt. Then we accept that we are better off with our corrupt guys than someone else's. This view is re-enforced by the media and the two political parties that dominate the electoral arena in the US though that era of domination is ending.

So many US workers never travel so they don't experience other countries and what they provide for their citizens. Even Cuba has a life expectancy equal to the US and a higher infant mortality rate. In relation to that when you see reports on the news of late describing the crisis in Cuba with the COVID, one of the major contributing factors is US sanctions and blockade of the Island so supplies of crucial equipment are short, something "Worker Joe" Biden is continuing. The US threatens any country that would help Cuba with sanctions of their own simply because there were gains made in the 1959 revolution which any worker in the US would defend if we had them. So the onus is on the buzzword communist and clearly Cuba is not communist, and that it is under one party rule. The gains Cuba made in the revolution should be defended.

The movement to turn this disastrous situation around in the US is delayed in part by the fact that workers have no political voice in the US. The Democratic Party that the leadership of organized labor is wedded to will not change this situation in any serious way. Another reason is the absence of a national movement or organization to which people can turn. The trade union movement with 14 million workers affiliated to it has the potential to play a major role but the present leadership of organized labor are basically agents of capitalism inside our unions and this is something that we have to change and will.