Mark Bennett

Bike rider, advocate for safer streets and car independency in St. John's. Electrical Engineer. Musical electronics enthusiast. Views are my own.

[Mark Bennett @mark_bennett95]

Someone was caught doing 201km/h on the outer ring road this week.

[The Telegram @StJohnsTelegram]

The legislation isn't keeping up to the use of electric scooters and e-bikes - and it's left an ER doctor worried https://t.co/GVgax1JgBV

[Avi Lewis @avilewis]

Cuba is out of fuel, strangled by the US fuel chokehold.

People are dying, systems are breaking down.

This is collective punishment against a people who have done absolutely nothing except live their lives under hard conditions imposed by the US blockade for decades.

It’s a blatant violation of international law, a crime in progress.

Canadians are connected to Cuba: we’ve been welcomed, had great holidays, heard incredible music, done business and made friends.

We need to help Cuba right now, even if it bothers Trump: Canada should send immediate humanitarian fuel aid, in as much quantity as we can quickly assemble.

And we should be speaking out loudly on the international stage: US military action against Cuba is absolutely unacceptable!

It’s time for the countries of the world to rally and stop this impunity before it takes another sovereign country into chaos.

We have to come to Cuba's aid. What's happening is too cruel, too horrible.

[Luke Savage @LukewSavage]

Let the record show that, when a deranged American president threatened mass murder on a potentially unprecedented scale, the prime minister of Canada waffled some absolutely meaningless boilerplate then reiterated his support for the very same war.

[Sony Thăng @nxt888]

Before Fidel, Cuba was not some balanced, diversified "free market" farm paradise.

It was a U.S. sugar monoculture with land concentrated in latifundia, serving one buyer, in one currency, for one purpose.

Sugar for the empire.

Tourism for the empire.

Mafias, casinos, and brothels for the empire.

That was your "economic fundamentals."

When you turn a country into a plantation, it will import a lot of its food.

Because the best land is reserved for export crops that serve foreign profit, not local nutrition.

The revolution inherited that structure.

Cuba did not start from "normal economy" and then ruin it with Marxism.

It started from a gangster client state, where Washington and a tiny local elite owned the soil.

What did Fidel do?

He broke the plantations.

He redistributed land.

He sent literacy brigades into the countryside.

He turned a semi-feudal island into a society where peasants could become doctors, engineers, and teachers.

Then the United States answered that audacity with:

Bay of Pigs.

Economic embargo.

Terror campaigns.

Permanent attempts to isolate and starve the island.

You act as if the USSR "feeding" Cuba was proof of Fidel’s incompetence.

In reality, it was the only major power willing to trade with a country Washington was trying to strangle.

Cuba sent sugar, citrus, nickel, and workers.

The USSR sent oil, machinery, grain, and yes, food.

That is called trade and specialization.

Japan, the Gulf monarchies, Singapore, South Korea, many European states import large portions of their food.

Nobody calls that a failure of "economic fundamentals."

They call it comparative advantage.

It only becomes "proof of incompetence" when a socialist country does it under siege.

You say, "In the end, this folklore hero achieved nada."

Nothing?

He took a U.S. playground of casinos and child prostitution and turned it into a country with:

Universal literacy.

Life expectancy comparable to rich countries.

Infant mortality rates lower than many U.S. cities.

One of the highest doctor-per-capita ratios in the world.

Medical brigades that went to Africa, Latin America, even to Western countries during crises.

Under embargo.

Under permanent sabotage.

Ninety miles from a state that spends more on its military than most of the planet combined.

If that is "nada," what do you call a superpower that spends trillions on war and still has people rationing insulin, drowning in student debt, and sleeping under bridges?

You reduce six decades of resistance to a meme about "importing two-thirds of its food."

I look at the same history and see this:

A small island that refused to be a plantation.

A people who were told, "Surrender and we will feed you properly."

A leadership that answered, "We would rather be poor with a spine than rich on our knees."

You want to score a cheap point about Fidel’s "folklore."

But the real folklore is the story you are selling:

That a country under embargo, sabotage, terror, and economic siege should be judged by the same metrics as the empire that besieged it, and if it is not equally rich, the problem must be "communist incompetence."

Cuba’s real "crime" was not bad economics.

Its crime was proving that a small, Black and brown island could kick the United States out and still refuse to crawl back for forgiveness.

That is why people like you need to keep repeating that it "achieved nothing."

Because if you ever admitted what it actually achieved under those conditions, you would have to ask a much more uncomfortable question:

What would Cuba have become without the boot on its neck?

[Avi Lewis @avilewis]

Trump is fuelling a humanitarian crisis in Cuba, with an oil blockade that is leading to devastating power outages and rationing. This administration is determined to dominate the hemisphere with brute force and naked impunity. 

Canada has a long history of good relations with Cuba. We have consistently voted at the UN to end the blockade of Cuba, and millions of Canadian tourists have visited the island. 

We should immediately follow Mexico’s lead and condemn this act of economic warfare. And we should step up with humanitarian assistance to the Cuban people, as NDP MP @alexboulerice calls for in this excellent parliamentary petition: https://t.co/Fu12uUMfgu

Prime Minister Carney, silence is not an option when Trump attacks sovereign nations in the Americas. Canadians expect you to stand up for human rights, international law, and against the bullying of smaller nations by a rampaging superpower.

[US-Cuba @CubaSi15]

If you are Canadian and want to help Cuba, let your gov. know. Please sign and share the petition e-7082.
(Also, buy a ticket, go to Cuba 😉).
https://t.co/Ul9v00Wppq

[Alex Tyrrell @AlexTyrrellPVQ]

Canada cannot stay silent while the United States escalates military aggression in Latin America and wages economic war on Cuba. These actions violate international law, undermine sovereignty, and threaten peace in our hemisphere — including our own independence.

This parliamentary petition sponsored by Alexandre Boulerice calls on the Government of Canada to condemn U.S. aggressions, reject participation in sanctions and military interventions, support Cuba through trade and cooperation, and uphold the right of peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean to self-determination.

If you believe Canada should stand for peace, sovereignty, and international law, add your name and share this petition.

https://t.co/10OtPSpXF1

[Duncan Kinney @duncankinney]

the reason so many conservatives feel comfortable crossing the floor to the liberals is because mark carney is as right wing a prime minister as stephen harper.

[Kjell @FerrexCS]

saying ipt is a "private team, not government" is such a cope. team owner is a turbo zionist with close ties to netanyahu who, need i to remind people, is a literal warcriminal according to the ICJ at den hague

ipt out, israeli teams out

[GEOFF DAVIS 🇺🇦 @jazzgeoffda]

Come on City of St. John’s, do it! We’re the most European city in Canada, we don’t have to resemble Scarborough and it will likely be a raging success!

[The Lefty Canadian Radical 🇵🇸 @Tori_TLCR]

Canadians who consider themselves progressive have got to stop projecting their own values and political opinions onto the Liberal party as if that's the same thing as the Liberal party actually sharing those values.

📢<<<<< They do not!

[Christo Aivalis 🌹🍊 @christoaivalis]

I see some Carney voters cheering on Mamdani when Carney is much more like Cuomo

[NOT Potato Bolshevik @NotPotBol]

This is what the unified proletariat can do to Elon Musk

[Mark Bennett @mark_bennett95]

This shit happens near-daily and somehow “public safety” discourse almost exclusively revolves around shielding houseless folks and drug use from view for reactionaries. Our priorities are so out of whack, we need a complete overhaul of our street designs.

[The Telegram @StJohnsTelegram]

A serious collision in Mount Pearl sent one woman to hospital Sunday afternoon https://t.co/XjfoyuKNj6

[Mark Bennett @mark_bennett95]

Protesting works. Well done to all the brave students and the student union for their persistence ✊

[The Muse @themusenl]

BREAKING: MUN Faculty Association passed a motion yesterday to support university divestment from companies tied to “Israeli apartheid, war crimes, and occupation,” sources say.

[Cardi Bay @TweetsByDre88]

Can't stop thinking about the guy who created fake bands for Spotify then created fake bots to listen to the fake music so he could reap millions in ad revenue. The only losers here are the advertisers and I think this proves how stupid capitalism works. He did nothing wrong