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French Strike Hits Fuel Supplies
Petrol stations across France are running out of fuel as refinery and port workers continue a strike against the government's plan to raise the retirement age.
Union says 1,500 petrol stations have run dry as workers step up action in protest against pension overhaul. (Al-Jazeera) Around 1,500 petrol stations attached to French shopping centres had dried up by Monday morning, the AFP news agency reported.
It said the petrol stations supply the majority of the country's motorists.
"Twenty to 25 per cent of our distribution capacity is either stopped or in trouble," Alexandre de Benoist, a senior official with Union of Independent Petroleum Importers, which represents the sector, said.
He said the situation was "very worrying" in some regions with fuel distribution stations on strike or blockaded by workers from other sites.
"There are at least 1,500 stations that have run out of at least one fuel product or are totally dry," he said.
France has around 12,500 petrol stations, with 4,500 of those attached to supermarkets or shopping centres.
More protests planned
France's UFIP oil industry lobby has said France could see serious fuel-supply problems by mid-week, meaning the government may have to look at tapping emergency reserves.
Nationwide strikes over the pension changes have spread to the country's 12 oil refineries over the past seven days, adding to the impact of a three-week-long strike at France's largest oil port, Fos-Lavera, over working conditions and a port overhaul.
However, government ministers have sought to assuage fears, saying that the country has plenty of fuel.
"The government is in control," Christian Estrosi, the industry minister, told RTL radio on Monday.
"There will be no blockade for companies, no blockade for transport and no blockade for road users."
Majority support
Unions are stepping up action in the run-up to a senate vote on the pension bill due to take place on Wednesday, with major demonstrations expected to take place on Tuesday.
A majority of the French support the protests against planned legislation to raise the minimum and full retirement ages by two years to 62 and 67 respectively, a measure the government says is the only way to rein in a growing pension deficit.
Lorry drivers joined in the strike on Sunday, blocking roads and staging go-slow operations on highways, while rail unions announced new strikes from Monday.
High-school students are also continuing protests.
The main points of the pension bill have passed through both houses of parliament and following the next senate votel could soon be signed into law.
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63 Comments so far
Show Allthis should be a lesson to the US left, in how NOT to be totally fucking useless.
Hear! Hear!
I suppose you have a proposed solution for a country where the population is aging, the ratio of retirees to workers is increasing rapidly, and the retirement system is going bankrupt because they get to retire with excellent benefits at age 60.
If all you can propose is more of the same, or increasing taxes to support healthy 60 year olds as they sit in the shade sipping wine, then I don't think I can support any of this action. And I sure hope the American left can steer away from behaving this way. It leads nowhere.
I do: end the fucking warmongering! Then, divest that money back to where it counts: inwards.
Oh stop bashing retirees and boomers already. These are the people who paid the taxes that allowed you to go to school, took care of your needs while you were still parasitic on society. Pensions are the rightful property of retirees, as they spent a lifetime socking away part of their incomes in order to be able to retire. It's entirely resonable that someone who spent a lifetime working and paying YOUR way, and saving their earnings, should be able to enjoy their little nest egg for a while. For most, retirement pensions are not exactly a windfall...and they still pay taxes on them.
That "aging population" shtick is just a stategy to create compliance with a plan to raid pension funds. Guess which healthy - and wealthy - segment will benefit from your tunnel vision!
As boomers are still the largest voting demographic, they have noone to blame for the mess we are in but themselves.
Noone under 40 now voted for Reagan.
"These are the people who paid the taxes that allowed you to go to school, took care of your needs while you were still parasitic on society. "
By eviscerating public education and cutting over 95% of federally guaranteed student loans, slashing welfare, introcuding HFCS and rBGH into the food supply, deregulating the banks, allowing minimum wage to stagnate in spite of massive inflation, allowing the increase of advertising to children, offshoring all the jobs, and, in general making sure "you got yours" leaving next to nothing that comes after. Oh yes, the baby boomers should be thanked for all this.
If you want to have a productive conversation, start by "I am sorry we screwed you, and ourselves, but let's work together to find a solution that benefits ALL of us."
Boomers were handed about everything, and once they got it, "I'm spending my children's inheritance as fast as I can" became the mantra.
I realize not ALL boomers feel this way, but it is the cumulative total of that generation, and acknowledging that is a necessary first step and working to correct it is a requirement if one wishes to have a hope of the youth giving the boomer generation anything but what it has earned by their lack of concern for those who come after.
Your attitude, however, inspires the youth to celebrate when you reap what you have sown.
It makes it seem like the best bet for humanity is to yank SSI and medicare now so that the boomers won't have the numbers left to impede progress any further than they already have.
I know that there are some boomers who are better than you and mourn for what their peers have done to later generations, but you apparently do not fall into that category.
All ages are out in the streets across France!
Again, the government is attempting to load the debt and losses of the corporations and banks onto the working people of France. The people are striking back!
Vive la France!
American workers can't strike because they lose their medical insurance when they strike. Obamacare reinforces this shackle.
American students won't demonstrate or take any other action because they are too dialed into facebook trivia, and many don't care if they never get a job because so many American baby boomers will never retire.
So..I would protest as long as it has no personal cost.....?
I would have marched on Birmginham in the '60's, but I don't like dogs?
many are under the impression they need to take chemicals to stay alive and "healthy" or "normal"
mujeriego
I'm not into that Right - Left thing, but I agree. France is one country where the PEOPLE do not allow the politicians to run their lives. In other words People First, Gov. last.
The French sure missed a beat when they elected Playboy Nick over a much more qualified leftist candidate.
Hopefully they will vote Nick out in the next election.
Viva la Francais
All Power to the People!
This action should spread across the world!
This is why Unions in the USA have been crushed by corps and gov.
Because in America we are Lemmings, led to the sea to drown by the Corporations.
Brainwashed amerikans could/ should, take lessons from the French at opposing the corporate empire. But amerikans are too busy with doing lunch and going shopping ! Soon the anger, the fear, will boil over en amerika.
"Soon the anger, the fear, will boil over en amerika."
Ha ha! Wanna bet on that?
Ahh, to live in a nation where unions, students, farmers, and other people are organized, informed and ready and willing to challenge the rulers. In the US organizers spend months organizing a national antiwar march or other event and finally have a march and rally in DC, sometimes in a few other cities simultaneously. The events happens on a Saturday and then it is all over and folks go home and little changes. Now watch closely while the people of France assemble and act day after day, spreading and deepening their action and determination to effectively challenge, linking up and not backing down. Amazing that French high school students understand the issues of later retirement and how it will affect their own employment opportunities, while here most students, high school and college, are immersed in electronic toys (Twitter, Facebook, Iphones, Blackberries, etc) and the corporate generated distractions of pop music culture and are effectively depoliticized/disempowered. And there are many openly identified socialists and communists in the French trade unions who understand class and that working people must organize and stand together against the power and money of the corporate ruling class and their political lackeys. People with a class analysis of society were purged and driven out of US unions in the witch hunting 1950s.
And among the remarkable and unforgettable photos in the UK Guardian story the one of a young woman at a high school soberly holding a handmade sign reading "Carla, just like you we are being screwed by the head of state." Wish we would soon see signs like that in huge demonstrations and actions across the US----with the appropriate name change.
Like I've said before on these posts. If 100,000 people push their way into the NYSE and SHUT BUSINESS DOWN until someone is put in jail for their open handed theft of billions. Or making the executives of Health Insurance companies lives intolerable by clogging their home streets and puncturing their tires. In the same vain as the French are doing you have to put the fire on these people, say like you'll have no gas next week...... Let them feel a small slice of what we feel when we get sick, loss our jobs, and have our home foreclosed on.
If any of us were to act like any of these corporations, we would be sent to jail for decades. Somehow they don't even get a personal fine. And I don't mean a bullshit SEC fine. If US citizens don't get off their ass soon you'll be jumping the border to get into Canada. Oops, I hear they are putting up a wall to keep us out!!!
From France;
Please try not to romanticize too much what is happening here, not many people in the demonstrations (I’ve been to the 5 of them) think the government is going to back out of that law. You may think 3 millions people (or there about depending on who does the counting) is a lot but to us it’s not that much and it’s mainly the public sector that’s making it happen, wait till there are some agents provocateur doing their thing turning demonstrations into riot and we’ll get everybody on our back. Already a 16-year-old kid lost an eye to police violence.
Most people here still think we should organize our society around solidarity and the common good but we’ve been so reaped off lately that’s it’s coming apart at the seams faster than we can keep up with dignity, hate speech has become the norm for the right and the main street left has accepted capitalism as a natural appendage of social justice…
I’m not taking hope for an answer so tomorrow I’ll be at the demonstration!
Thank you for a bit of truth. Of course the governmrent isn't going to back out of the change, they can't. It is simple mathematics at this point.
A lot on the right think this and other factors signals the end of the welfare states in Europe. I don't think it does. It won't be as good a deal as it has been, but the core factors can be preserved with some adjustment.
I'm glad youi mentioned the real danger of this... "agents provocateur doing their thing turning demonstrations into riot and we’ll get everybody on our back"
Good luck to you and be safe out there.
Sorry Mighty but you got it wrong, i, among 79% of the french poeple, think they don't have to do it this way; making the poorest and middle class pay through their nose, no sir we think the problem comes from organized unemployment, yes simple mathematics; you take poeple out of the pool and you don't have enough money to pay pensions and infrastructures making society a haven for robber barons a l'americaine... They'll try taking painstakingly earned social benefits over many dead bodies out here beleive you me!
Thanks for setting him straight.
Thank you for your interesting take on the situation. I am simply looking at facts on the ground...and we agree on the middle class by the way, yours and ours.
Consider this...Around 2050, those high school and college students will be near or above today's retirement age of 60. Who will pay for their pensions?
Today, 23 percent of French men and women are 60 or older. That will rise to 33 percent by 2050, when there will be one French worker for each French retiree, if 60 is retained as the age of retirement.
Today, 5.5 percent of French men and women are 80 or older. By 2050, that doubles to 11 percent.
Where the median age of the French is 40, in 2050 it will be 45. But that number disguises the fact that since 1970, the fertility rate of French women has been below the 2.1 children needed to sustain France's population, what demographers call zero population growth. For the next four decades until 2050, the fertility level of French women is projected to remain roughly 15 percent below ZPG.
Its not the painstaking benefits that are in question that I see, its who exactly will pay for them and I cannot see any way to do it? My opinion is that this is just among a number of adjustments that will and have to be made in Europe and France, but I could be wrong of course.
We have our own problems to solve so I'm not trying to suggest anything other than the money obviously won't be there.
I do hope you will continue to comment and let us know what is really happening. Your civility does you credit.
I know all the figures you gave, it’s basically our government talking points to ram through that reform but nowhere do they effectively facture in immigration they don’t want to because they use that one as a scaring tactic. However I certainly understand somebody has to pay for our elder and there is money, plenty, especially for bailing out banks, tax return for the super rich, all the perks for political personnel, the army… you get my drift there, we participate in the making of the society not merely as a productive element for the enrichment of a few, not only every few years or so when we vote for representation, we are the society…
I don’t want the US model, most people don’t want it, period, I’ve been reading CD for a long time (2003 when I lived in the States) so I know many USAns don’t want that model either. In France we feel, still, sufficiently empowered that we make sure we are heard, we may not win every time but we won’t go down easily…
"Solidarity and the common good" sound suspiciously like code words for communism. I don't think it'll fly.
The biggest lesson to be learned for people in the US just might be this...
How is France getting so many of the common people coordinated to do what they want to do? Cell Phone? Email? Snail Mail? Word of Mouth?
What is the KEY?
Who do they TRUST?
The US needs to know.
Forebiddeninfo October 18th, 2010 1:12 pm
I think the answer is both being more politically aware and the fact that most those demonstrating have job security. That last one being a biggie. Hard to get out into the streets when you're worried about how you're going to be able to keep a roof over your head and food on the table for another month.
We here in the US have just plain let it go on to long and now we're quite literally going to have to turn to our neighbors once again for support, like we use to. Until we're all willing to do that, we'll never get the turnout.
KK...
Still doesn't answer the question of what form of media are they using that is uncorruptable by the PC enough to stage something like this?
I like to think the internet...but it WAS developed by the military, and we should be real careful bout that.
Cell phone? Gotta be bugged.
Snail Mail? Nothing a good x-ray card reader couldn't get past.
???
No technology involved there just plain old union organizing and people keeping informed about what the government does (left or right doesn’t matter if it’s about our society) and we still have a main stream media doing somewhat its job telling it like it is. One more thing we talk politics all the time, at work, during family reunions, with friends, even soccer can become highly political… It’s in our culture. We don’t mind being confrontational, it’s expected as long as you keep aggressiveness at bay! I’ve had very good political discussions during commute in the subway with perfect stangers...
In France, it is still too early to tell if state power will be challenged, and there will be a serious legitimation crisis where the facade of stability is breached by the necessity implicit in events. Obama will send in imperial troops to abet the restoration of international capitalist hegemony and the dictates of fascism. At that point the dice will have been rolled.
"Revolutionary progress determines its directions when it rouses a powerful self centered counterrevolution by engendering an adversary that can only cause the insurgent party to evolve in its battle against the counterrevolutionaries into a veritable revolutionary party."
–(Karl Marx, as cited by Ulrike Meinhoff.)
Modern capitalist governments are in a constant state of permanent counterrevolution against even the merest possibility of insurrectional events. America is counter revolution incarnate as a function of itself.
Perhaps the French penchant and understanding for the 'hierarchical' has the possibility to articulate organizational structures resembling a party to coalesce in a time of crisis. That time has not arrived, but dress rehearsals are welcome premonitory 'tremors'. In America, there is no hope whatsoever, because the people understand nothing, nor in truth, care to. It defaults precipitously to fascism.
When in 1953, Zhou Enlai, The Chinese Prime Minister was in Geneva for the peace negotiations to end the Korean war, a French journalist asked him what he thought about the French Revolution; Zhou replied: "It is still too early to tell."
Good post. Interestingly, (and it maybe nothing more than this), as revolutionary conditions were ripe during the late years of WWI, the revolution, when it came, did not come from the center of capitalist power: England, it came from the periphery: Russia. Americans are hurting, yet that has not affected their collective political consciousness in a way that will challenge the status quo. As Marx might say, the objective conditions for revolution in the US do not yet exist. However, that doesn't mean that the conditions in France couldn't provide important inspiration to others. To whatever extent possible, we should support the activities of French workers.
i agree also. we need to be supporting them and be inspired by them. this could also be said for the workers and students in greece and in bolivia when they marched and changed their government.
we have a lot to learn from people in other countries.
matt
green party of tx
"To whatever extent possible, we should support the activities of French workers."
–(Tom Larsen)
No doubt! The solutions will be International or they will not be at all; similarly, the 'problem' of America is an international one. It cannot emerge from within the United States.
Labor solidarity must be implicitly grounded in and be transnational in scope. Sadly, it appears Americans have little interest in what happens in other countries, if they even know at all. Total disconnect.
We believe accurate polling would probably find most Americans would support crushing the strike of the French insurgents with a direct military intervention. This is what would happen in America. If there was a serious enough legitimation crisis where state authority was jeopardized, there would be a bloodbath, with a full support of the majority of the American populace.
Love the quote by Zhou Enlai - priceless!
Cannot say the same thing for the US Revolution (and it's subsequent plutocratic government), which has ended in utter failure.
in ol' glorious dixie, aging slaves were liquidated after they became unable to work any further for dixie's "finest people". it did not matter that everything they had produced over their lifetime had been taken away by the finest people and therefore the slaves could only "choose" not to save for retirement (they were irresponsible!).
in the "triumphant great western democracies"TM, older workers are instead told that "there is a pension problem!" after (almost) everything that they produce over the years is appropriated by the modern "finest people" (who, unlike dixie’s finest people, do deserve to pocket everything because they are more creative and work hardest when it comes to... grabbing through shrewd contracting most of what is produced, duh!)
yes, these are the same educated, creative, and hard-working "finest people" whose naturally earned superior neofeudal status was preserved by the bank bailouts of 2008-2009 which were decided ("to save civilization") by the "democratically elected leaders"TM of the "triumphant great western democracies"TM when the "finest people's" financial-gambling problem (who said they are perfect!?) threatened to ruin them for good.
in other words, the workers who are about to retire have produced humongous amounts of wealth that, however, is off the table as a possibility to support them during their final years "because" this wealth has been appropriated fairly and balancedly by the modern neofeudal class of "finest people" who, btw, do deserve to grab it all also because they have learned to bribe politicians, journalists, and public intellectuals better than anybody else in history (obviously! otherwise we would be celebrating a different and even more deserving group of "finest people"!).
I would like to pose a simple question.
I am of High school age in Northern California, the western shores of the United States.
I have been analyzing civilization and the basic constructs such as politics, industry and social stratification. I favor communism, or perhaps anarchy, given that I do not support party systems, which are locked in battle, nor do I like the idea of the privileged peoples and group making decisions for the entire nation. I believe in either radical movement towards sustainability, or a drastic self-motivated sacrifice of first-world standard comforts and luxuries.
I am well aware that the media is a distraction and generally the government is serving private interest. I also know that the "masses" will follow the social trends as long as they provide what we perceive as necessity.
Generally I am dismayed & sorrowful; romanticizing escapism as did Henry David Thoreau, McCandles and a few other naturalists. Here is the question:
Does anyone know of a social "stream" which I can follow, for I focus on the end, not the means. I need direct action, I need hope, and at the moment I am filled with a pervasive anger, to riot, yell, and protest, all this momentum turned inward, has created a concerned, obsessive depression, and a the moment the majority of people around me lack the will to act. Be it strike, or protest, or riot.
I struggle against the prospect that I must find a career, or attend a university, take a walk in the park, pay my bills, eat food from across the world, while the environment and humanity suffers!
I know I am young, and have only become impassioned in the last six or so months, but I mean to say that the situation is dire, and we cannot afford stagnancy.
I would love some feedback, constructive, here is my email address/ elijahcalifornia@hotmail.com
Help???
RE: I struggle against the prospect that I must find a career, or attend a university, take a walk in the park, pay my bills, eat food from across the world, while the environment and humanity suffers!
We all do (except for the ruling class)!
Welcome to CD! My understanding is that Thoreau had anarchist leanings. CD, is a "progressive", NOT a radical (anarchist, socialist) forum. So, you will frequently get mainstream (bourgeois) articles published here. The community of posters is a mixed bag as well. Often enough though, the discussion among posters can be far more informative than the article itself. But you need to be discriminating...
The anarchist and socialist tradition is a very rich vein to mine.
There's a vast amount of info on the Marxist internet archive:
http://www.marxists.org/
For contemporary analysis check out: http://isreview.org/ and http://www.zcommunications.org/
If you're more intellectually inclined, check out: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/
For a much more accessible way to learn a lot fast check out the lectures available online at http://wearemany.org/
There's a another whole world out there...
And lastly, see if there is an anti-capitalist organization in your area and check them out. You can't do it alone; we must build a movement.
One of the ideological misconceptions that the younger generation is largely free of is the Cold War (mis)understanding of socialism/communism here repeated. For the propaganda interests of both Western capital and the Soviet Union, "communism/socialism" was respectively condemned or embraced. But describing what was happening in the USSR as communism is a cruel joke. The USSR used "socialism" the same way that the US uses "democracy", both divorced from any meaningful expression in reality.
Fundamental to socialism or communism is "worker control of the means of production "meaning that workers themselves run the economy. By this fundamental Marxist standard, the USSR, China, Cuba etc. were/are not examples of socialism/communism. The word "soviet" means worker's council, but not long into the Bolshevik revolution the soviets had no effective say in how the young government functioned. For several generations, the legacy of Stalinism did great damage to the appeal of socialism/communism. Generally speaking, communism is considered to be an advanced form of socialism, a society that is both classless and stateless.
I can only speak for Cuba, as I've been there several times, and you are right, Cuba is not an example of communism by official definition, but a country beaten down, mistreated, though not defeated, by a paranoid American police state. I think I saw the worst aspects of Cuba and even then I thought one could overall lead a more dignified life there. There isn't much America has that most Cubans would miss once they got a real taste of life in America today.
I love Hugo. The man has done wonderful things for the people of Venezuela, and they love him for it. Unfortunately Hugo's neck is on the chopping block again. US Corporatists have him squarely in their sights, right after or during the next war (read Iran war).
Even if Hugo's government lasts to his old age, it will not last in it's people centric state past his death. Hugo Chavez is one of humanity's rare leaders who step up very infrequently and although their memory and influence last far past their deaths, their government falls with their passing.
RE: ...humans are not really meant to live in a society like that (classless, stateless).
How can you know this? Our current conceptions are created within the context of a world based on exploitation. So, you can't imagine a world where exploitation doesn't exist. Humans have been around in our present form for at least 100,000 years. 90% of that time we lived in a classless and stateless society, Marx called it "primitive communism." Your statement that "humans are not really meant to live in a society like that" is an example of how your thinking is trapped within the dominant ideology.
This is of course very common and is idiomatic to the dominant set of ideas that all result in a view that "capitalism is natural". Marx famously said that the "ruling ideas [in this case your view of human nature] are nothing more that the ideas of the ruling class." The ancient Greek philosophers fought about two conceptions of human "nature". One was where human nature was fixed (a priori) for all humans and was determined by God; this view is called Idealism. There raged a battle between another view of humanity that said that human "nature" was determined by the material conditions of human existence; this view is called Materialism. Idealism supported a hierarchical organization of society; Materialism supported a democratic organization of society. In ancient Greece you had the contradiction of democracy at home and imperialism abroad - you know which conception of humanity won...
"How can you know this? "
here's an example: Chameleon and Tom both work as lath operators at the same plant. Both have the same seniority wife and two kids. So both get allocated the same salary, food etc (to each according to his needs). But Chameleon is a slacker and does not work as hard as Tom. No problem there, as society only gets "from each according to his capabilities". Now how do you think Tom feels about that? would Tom not want to have more for his work? He, after all works harder than Chameleon? Given that society does not give more to Tom, most likely he'll stop working as hard and get down to Chameleon's leave. Now imagine there's million of Chameleons and Toms out there all in teh same situation. You see the problem there?
RE: You see the problem there?
Your "gotcha" problem remains a conception of human behavior that comes from an Idealist view of human "nature" which I disagree with. Your "Chameleon is a slacker" is a notion that is rooted in "the ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideas of the ruling class". Keep in mind that your entire "slacker" notion is based on an assertion - that's it - no evidence required. From the time we are small children, we are indoctrinated to believe that "the way things are" is the way they are supposed to be, this is what is meant by the "ruling ideas". So we (you) just accept them as "common sense" and don't question them, and therefore uncritically maintain the status quo thinking that incapacitates our/your own independent thought. Which is exactly the point and function of ruling ideas.
I agree with you on that point that "Your "gotcha" problem remains a conception of human behavior".
Where i come from kids started being taught Marxism in grade 8 (I thought it sucked then, i think it sucks now). Anyway, one of the principles we were being indoctrinated with was the "new man principle". This new man is not supposed to care about what others do and give his best no matter what. That's where i called BS. Well not really, otherwise i would not be here discussing the finer points of communism with you.
I think we both agree that "new man" (as in human) does not exist yet. Your communist utopia will only happen if all people would embrace that principle, which will probably never happen. Otherwise, the ones that do not adhere to it will have to be eliminated. Which brings us back to things that already happened.
RE: Where i come from kids started being taught Marxism in grade 8...
I'm guessing you grew up in the former USSR? Had a basic Marxist analysis been applied to the USSR, it would have quickly been obvious that no socialism or communism existed there - any more than democracy has ever existed in the US. The Marxism that you were taught had to have been some denatured and Stalinist friendly distortion of Marx's thought. I am somewhat surprised that you did not seem to recognize what I was talking about: Marx"s Historical Materialism, which remains an extremely powerful analytical tool. In the USSR, (and China etc.) one minority ruling class replaced another, and consequently one set of ruling ideas replaced another to justify another exploitative and highly unequal society.
"I'm guessing you grew up in the former USSR?"
Hell no. I'm originally from Romania.
"The Marxism that you were taught had to have been some denatured and Stalinist friendly distortion of Marx's thought"
Yeah, that was the excuse i started hearing from the 2 echelon communists after the whole regime fell.
One thing i know for sure. I do not wanna experience Marxism or communism again ever again and i hope no one ever has to. Say what you want about the US and capitalism I'll pick it over anything else available. Come to think of it, i actually did :).
The transition to capitalism guided by American neo-liberal economists like Jeffrey Sachs devastated the already tottering Russian economy. They used to have free health care and education; now they have the free market - the mafia runs the country. So, how is capitalism treating Romania today?
RE: Say what you want about the US and capitalism I'll pick it over anything else available...
How about France?
"now they have the free market - the mafia runs the country."
Russia was most of the time a pretty f-d up country. Not really a fan of it.
"So, how is capitalism treating Romania today"
Actually pretty good. Most people i know are happy go about their businesses and enjoy freedom. The ones that were losers before are still losers, even more so now that they don't have the government teat to suck on. Those are the ones complaining the most, government employees mostly.
"So, how is capitalism treating Romania today"
Nah, not really. Europe has a different mentality that does not fit my lifestyle. Lived in Canada for awhile and that was so and so. For young productive people who want to achieve something, the US is the place to be. But that's just my take on it.
the theoretical communism you refer to was thought to have been achieved by those at Kronstadt, but then the "Soviets" killed them because they were afraid of losing power.
Nice attempt at brainwashing. Communism has never been adopted in its essence and purity in any country, not even Cuba or North Korea.
Cuba and North Korea are dictatorships, simply put, their entire populations work for the benefit of power elites, exactly like in the US. Go learn something about Communism.