12 million people are estimated to have been killed by economic 'shock therapy' in Russia alone.
Russia suffered the worst peacetime economic collapse of a major industrialised nation in history.
The Russian economy nearly halved.
The fall in Russian output was much worse than that caused by the Nazi invasion in the 1940s.
Russian male life expectancy fell by 6.5 years, to 57.6 - back to its mid-1950s level.
The overall fall in life expectancy was on the scale of Vietnam during all-out war in the 1960s.
The suicide and homicide rates doubled.
Real incomes collapsed by 40%.
At the time of the Soviet collapse, one in fifty Russians lived in poverty. By the end of 1998, that surged to nearly one in every five.
Full employment gave way to mass unemployment.
As healthcare funding collapsed by a third and poverty surged, disease such as diphtheria, tuberculosis and syphilis rampaged.
Russia was taken over by oligarchs, gangsters implicated in serious crimes who stole the country's resources.
Murderous conflicts in the former Soviet territory included Chechnya, where potentially hundreds of thousands were killed.
Yeltsin's contempt for democracy was underlined by his bombing of the Russian legislature - and the undemocratic farce of the 1996 election.
Putin came to power after the Russian secret services almost certainly staged apartment bombings which killed hundreds.
The invasion of Ukraine has killed hundreds of thousands of people.
Need I go on? Yes, the collapse of the Soviet Union was one of the great catastrophes of our age.
An alternative would have kept the USSR together (Baltic states aside) on a democratic basis, without ruinous shock therapy.
Notably, a Soviet-wide referendum in March 1991 overwhelmingly voted to keep the Union together (although it was boycotted by six of the fifteen republics - in the Baltic and three small republics).
Bombing Iran in the middle of negotiations, while starving Cuba, while genociding Palestinians, while threatening to invade Greenland… the US and Israel are the single greatest threat to humanity and it’s not even close. We are all forced to live in the nightmare they create.
CHINA:
"The US is a war addict. Throughout its over 240-year history, it has been at war for all but 16 years.
The US has 800 overseas military bases in over 80 countries and regions.
The US is the main cause of international disorder, global turbulence, and regional instability."
A couple years before October 7 there were mass nonviolent protests in Gaza to which Israel responded by having snipers en masse shoot out the legs of peaceful marchers. What you are saying is you wanted Palestinians to be happy with being murdered while the world was silent
@CannonCalv39096@kabrinho@hasanthehun the american government is currently starving cuba, and her response is to say it's a dictatorship and doesn't say anything about the embargo blocking food and medicine. it has nothing to do with the "dictatorship"
🇨🇺 In 1960, a State Dept memo concluded the Cuban revolution was too popular to overthrow, so they should "den[y] money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation, and overthrow of government."
66 years of genocidal strategy.
NY Sen. C. Schumer (not up for re-election till Jan 2029):
“We delivered more security assistance to Israel, our ally, under my leadership than ever, ever before. We will keep doing that… I have many jobs as leader & one is to fight for aid to Israel.”
during the height of the corona pandemic Cuba sent its doctors to help hospitals in Europe deal with the crisis. Here they are being applauded as they arrive in Italy. Where are Italy and the EU now? Helping the US starve Cuba. They are all imperialist Zionist scum with no shame
Never forget Border Patrol was on horseback whipping Haitians during the Biden admin. This racist brutality is not new; it was just easy for some to turn a blind eye when their team was in power.
Fidel Castro explains why the US despises Cuba and is desperate to destroy it: "Our country does not drop bombs on other people, nor does it send thousands of planes to bomb cities. Instead our country sends doctors to those most lost corners of the world."
I love how the “added context” to the news that there’s a country where over a billion people live without paying rent every month is “well that’s only because the land is REALLY owned by the state”. Like, you don’t say?? Maybe we oughta look into this state ownership thing then
There are no words. ICE agents ate lunch at a small local Mexican restaurant in Minnesota, enjoyed their meal, then came back later that night as the restaurant was closing down and arrested the people who had served them.
US sanctions have crippled Iran and directly fuelled the current protests.
Sanctions actually kill people.
A new study published in The Lancet finds that US and EU sanctions imposed on developing countries are associated with 400,000–1,000,000 deaths *every single year*.
9/11 first responders went to Cuba to get healthcare.
Cuba took care of them when America discarded them and left them for dead.
Cuba was repaid with crippling sanctions and now threats of war.