LOCAL - COUNTY - STATE - NATION AND INTERNATIONAL ISSUES
08-29-2024 Drains, Clogging, Rain and Flooding, a perennial cycle of stress: A property owner called to tell me that a truck was putting mulch around the trees by the end of Menteith Terrace when it meets Dunbarton, an area that floods due to heavy rains because the drains are not regularly cleaned and mulch washes off due to heavy rain adding to the struggle to keep the drains free of debris. After close to 40 years of residing at that address, now much older and with an impediment due to wrists that are affected, she can no longer continue to try to clean the drains herself therefore, she approached the workers to tell them NOT to install mulch on the trees by her drain.
Town Manager goes over a slide presentation on General Fund Items
That ends the General Fund Revenue and the next slide shows the pie chart on the expenditure side with Safety / Police being the highest expense
To continue watching, click below:
AGENDA IS NOW ONLINE: A FEW SELECTED ITEMS
2B11 #241450 Report Related to the Publication of Legal Advertisements and Public Notices on a Publicly Accessible Website of the County, in Accordance with Section 50.0311, Florida Statutes – Directive No. 240633
On April 12, 2024, the Board of County Commissioners (Board) adopted Resolution No. R-281-24 sponsored by Senator Rene Garcia, directing the County Mayor to:
Additionally, the County Mayor was further directed to develop, and present to the Board for approval, a form inter-local agreement for use by the County and another local government in Miami-Dade County when such local government wishes to utilize the County’s website to publish legal advertisements and notices.
The Communications and Customer Experience Department (CCED) oversees the County’s web portal miamidade.gov and has, for a number of years, maintained legalads.miamidade.gov, which has historically been used to publish courtesy notices that have been legally advertised. Pursuant to R-281-24, CCED confirmed that online publication would provide cost savings to the County as compared to publishing in a newspaper. Subsequently, working with the Information Technology Department (ITD), CCED has made necessary modifications to the website to adhere to section 50.0311 of the Florida Statutes and legalads.miamidade.gov is now designated by the County as a publicly accessible website for legal advertisements. Per the requirements, the website is featured on the County’s homepage; the County will provide notice at least once per year in a newspaper of general circulation or another publication that is mailed or delivered to all residents and property owners advising of th eir ability to subscribe to receive notices via email and first-class direct mail; and a registry has been established for those requesting such notices.
Furthermore, as directed by the resolution, a form Interlocal Agreement (ILA) for use by the County and another local government that wishes to utilize this website to publish legal advertisements and notices was presented to and approved by the Board at its July 16, 2024 meeting. The ILA includes provisions to ensure that the use of the website shall be at no cost to the County, address and provide for indemnification of and duty to defend the County, cost and payment to the County and an agreement term not to exceed five years, with a possible option to renew. The County has already begun working with a number of cities interested in utilizing this website and will reach out to all municipalities.
Pursuant to Rule 5.06(j) of the Board’s Rules of Procedure, this report will be placed on the next available Board meeting agenda.
4C??241414 Ordinance Sen. Rene Garcia, Prime Sponsor???ORDINANCE RELATING TO THE ELDER AFFAIRS ADVISORY BOARD; AMENDING SECTIONS 2-2381 AND 2-2383 OF THE CODE OF MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, FLORIDA; REVISING THE MINIMUM AGE FOR A PERSON TO BE ELIGIBLE TO SERVE ON THE BOARD, INCREASING THE NUMBER OF BOARD MEMBERS, AND PROVIDING APPOINTMENT PROCESS FOR CERTAIN BOARD MEMBERS; MAKING TECHNICAL REVISIONS; AND PROVIDING SEVERABILITY, INCLUSION IN THE CODE, AND AN EFFECTIVE DATE?
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5 PUBLIC HEARINGS (Scheduled for 9:30 a.m.)?5A??241520 Resolution Sen. Rene Garcia, Prime Sponsor???RESOLUTION APPROVING, ADOPTING, AND CONFIRMING A PRELIMINARY MANDATORY PAYMENT ROLL PURSUANT TO SECTION 18-53 OF THE CODE OF MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, FLORIDA AGAINST CERTAIN REAL PROPERTY TO FUND THE NON-FEDERAL SHARE OF SUPPLEMENTAL PAYMENT PROGRAMS TO BENEFIT EXISTING AND NEWLY LICENSED HOSPITAL PROPERTIES; DELEGATING AUTHORITY TO THE COUNTY MAYOR OR COUNTY MAYOR'S DESIGNEE TO EXECUTE REQUIRED AGREEMENTS IN CONNECTION WITH THE MEDICAID HOSPITAL DIRECTED PAYMENT PROGRAM, LOW INCOME POOL PROGRAM, AND THE FLORIDA CANCER HOSPITAL PROGRAM; AND PROVIDING FOR THE COLLECTION OF SUCH MANDATORY PAYMENTS?
?PDF ??
COMMUNICATION
11A3??241252 Resolution Marleine Bastien, Prime Sponsor???RESOLUTION PERTAINING TO MIAMI-DADE COUNTY'S COMMUNICATIONS POLICY; DIRECTING THE COUNTY MAYOR OR COUNTY MAYOR'S DESIGNEE TO EVALUATE THE CURRENT COUNTY COMMUNICATIONS PLAN AND PROPOSE STANDARDS AND PROCEDURES WITH THE COMMUNICATIONS DEPARTMENT TO BE USED THROUGHOUT THE COUNTY FOR CONSISTENCY AND UNIFORMITY IN COMMUNICATIONS WITH CUSTOMERS?
?PDF ???7/9/2024Forwarded to BCC with a favorable recommendation 3 - 0?
MIAMI-DADE COUNTY PLANS TO BUILD THE LARGEST INCINERATOR IN THE UNITED STATES, ONE THAT WOULD PROCESS 4,000 TONS OF TRASH PER DAY!
Weeks before a showdown vote on where to build Miami-Dade’s new garbage incinerator, a Miami developer is offering a new site in an agricultural area outside of Hialeah Gardens on the western edge of the county. David Martin, chief executive of the Terra development firm, is pitching his 65-acre site as remote enough to let Miami-Dade commissioners avoid the fights underway from Doral and Miramar as the county considers incinerator locations near neighborhoods in those cities.
The 1982 incinerator that was burning nearly half of Miami-Dade’s garbage for decades at a site in Doral shut down after a fire in February 2023, and Doral is pushing the county to pick a new location for constructing a replacement.
Martin’s proposed location is a tree farm off Okeechobee Road by Northwest 137th Avenue. That site is nearly 2 miles away from the closest neighborhood in Miramar, a Broward County city promising to sue Miami-Dade if the county moves forward with building a $1.5 billion incinerator near the county line.
The incinerator site recommended by Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, at an abandoned air strip known as Opa-locka West, sits less than a half-mile from the same Miramar neighborhood. Miramar and Doral are about 12 miles apart. Miami-Dade is also considering a private site in Medley, near the existing Doral incinerator.
Locations under consideration:
The Martin offer injects an influential developer into one of the most contentious decisions awaiting commissioners after the August elections that handed Levine Cava and six board members new four-year terms. Martin is a reliable donor in local races and was in the news last year for an eye-popping $1.2 billion offer to purchase a real estate portfolio that included the former Miami Herald headquarters on city waterfront before that transaction with the new owner fizzled.
Martin’s site also brings some of the same downsides as the airfield location. It sits outside Miami-Dade’s Urban Development Boundary, which divides suburban construction from the county’s rural areas and is designed to shield the Everglades and farmland from sprawl. Michael Goldstein, a Miramar lawyer, described the two sites as “functionally the same” and said that Miramar would oppose both locations.
The mayor of Hialeah Gardens, a city about 3.5 miles southeast from the Martin site, also is not a fan of the new location added to the incinerator mix.
“My preference would be they don’t build it anywhere near our city,” Yioset De La Cruz, the mayor of Hialeah Gardens, said Wednesday. “I think it can make a difference in air quality.”
While Doral residents complained of garbage odors from the Doral plant, Levine Cava and other county leaders argue that modernized incinerator technology has mostly eliminated the air-quality issues that plague the older generation of trash-processing facilities. Known as “waste-to-energy” plants because they generate some electricity while burning trash, incinerators allow local governments to dispose of garbage without relying exclusively on burying waste in landfills or recycling it.
Miami-Dade commissioners are expected to debate the future of the county incinerator at their Sept. 17 meeting. Miramar is vowing to pack the chamber with residents opposing a possible move to the airstrip less than a half-mile from Miramar’s Sunset Lakes housing development.
Separately, Doral has pushing for years to remove the incinerator, which was built in a remote area, only to see housing developments pop up near it in the decades that followed. One of the nearby residents is the county commissioner representing the area, former Doral mayor Juan Carlos Bermudez.
A Martin representative declined to comment. The developer’s Aug. 19 written proposal to Bermudez, obtained this week by the Miami Herald, involves a swap in which Martin would provide the land for a new incinerator site in exchange for a county-owned plot outside of Doral that he wants for a mix of commercial and residential development. He would not be involved in what Miami-Dade built on the proposed incinerator site.
Martin wants the county-owned land outside of Doral, where Northwest 58th Street meets 87th Avenue, for a mix of commercial and residential development. Currently used by the county’s Solid Waste Department — it has a station where residents who pay for Miami-Dade trash services can dispose of home chemicals — Martin would build 1,002 apartments units in low-rise buildings and 1 million square feet of industrial space.
The county’s plans for a soccer park next to the Solid Waste site would not be affected, since Martin’s development would be designed to accommodate the proposed recreational hub, Martin said in an Aug. 19 letter to Bermudez. Bermudez did not respond to a request for comment.
Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article291597105.html#storylink=cpy
With Miami-Dade County commissioners soon expected to decide on where to put a new trash incinerator, the mayor and other officials in the city of Miramar voiced grave concerns about one potential site that sits near Broward County’s border, going as far as threatening legal action.
“Our message is simple: Miramar says ‘no’ to the incinerator,” Miramar Mayor Wayne Messam said at a Wednesday morning press conference. “We’re taking action, and we are consulting experts and preparing to challenge the proposal in every way necessary and possible. We will not be bullied into accepting a flawed project. We are ready for a fight and determined to win.”
The city began fighting the proposal after it was announced that the defunct Opa-locka Airport West near the Broward/Miami-Dade county line was a potential option.
Miami-Dade’s previous trash incinerator in Doral caught fire in February 2023, and the Miami-Dade County Commission has since been exploring other sites. The Doral incinerator processed half of Miami-Dade County’s trash and was equipped to burn 1 million tons of it per year.
The county has long been expected to vote on a proposal for the incinerator site at a September meeting, although the item is not listed on next Wednesday’s commission agenda.
Miami-Dade County has proposed three sites where it could potentially build the next incinerator: the former Opa-locka Airport West site, an industrial area in Medley and back in Doral. In April, the county released a study conducted by the consulting firm Arcadis that determined the Airport West location had the lowest potential risk.
Overall, the study found that each of the locations had a low risk and did not present a risk to surrounding communities.
Messam has been a vocal opponent of the incinerator potentially coming to Opa-locka West, fearing that it could lead to health issues for his residents and others in south Broward County. Miramar Vice Mayor and Broward Commissioner-elect Alexandra Davis echoed Messam’s sentiments, voicing concern for vulnerable residents such as children and seniors.
“The proposed incinerator less than a mile from Miramar is a threat to our community, particularly our cherished senior population, our children and our local businesses,” she said. “Our seniors, who have contributed so much to building this community, deserve to enjoy their golden years in a clean and healthy environment.”
Miramar Commissioner Maxwell Chambers, who lost his son to complications of asthma, noted that his daughters also have breathing issues and urged Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine-Cava to consider other locations outside of the defunct airport. “I trust that she understands the nature of this facility close to our family,” he said.
“I’m relying on Miami-Dade County to be a good government and look elsewhere and not right here in Miramar.” In recent months, the city has been mounting a six-figure campaign against the Opa-locka West site and sending letters to various cities in Broward County urging them to oppose efforts to bring the incinerator to the decommissioned airport and contribute monetarily to the fight.
As of June, the city had invested over $300,000 to fight the move but expected additional costs to hire experts to conduct and write assessments on the potential surface water, health, and ecological and air quality impacts of having an incinerator nearby.
Michael Goldstein, an environmental lawyer representing the city, said Wednesday that the city is prepared to move forward with a lawsuit if it comes to that. “If the county elects to approve the Opa-locka airport site as the site for the incinerator … the city will file a host of lawsuits that will roll out over a period of time,” he said, saying that other nonprofit groups and environmental activist organizations would join Miramar in its fight to prevent the incinerator from being built nearby.
At the news conference, city officials were joined by members of the NAACP Miami-Dade Branch and Florida Rising, as well as Democratic state Rep. Robin Bartleman.
“What you’re doing is putting not only my community at risk, but our most precious, valuable environmental asset, the Florida Everglades,” Bartleman said.
“We all saw the destruction and the harm by the fire in Doral, and we know what can happen if it goes wrong.” Bartleman said this year alone, the state legislature had allocated $850 million toward preserving the Everglades.
“Why would we put all of our work at risk?
Miami-Dade County, please, listen to the environmentalists,” she said. Annastacia Robinson, a Broward County organizer with the nonprofit Florida Rising, noted that Miami-Dade had twice put an incinerator in communities where people of color live, citing Old Smokey in West Coconut Grove, which consisted of a predominantly Black community, and the incinerator in Doral, which has a predominantly Latino population.
Miramar’s population is 46% Black and 36% Hispanic or Latino, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. “Now, Miami-Dade’s government is seeking to repeat history and historic harm on either their residents or the city of Miramar, another predominantly black and Latino community,” she said.
“No community should suffer from the endangered toxic outlets of [a] trash incinerator that could end up being the nation’s largest.”
Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/article291500295.html#storylink=cpy
The Walt Disney Company has ended a feud with Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The area was known as Reedy Creek but it is now under the control of the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District -CFTOD. After a prolonged issue with the special Taxing District outside the famous Orlando Resort, the House of the Mouse has announced a $17 Billion development project on the disputed land and Reedy Creek real estate area.
Disney and DeSantis end feud
In 2023, DeSantis signed a bill removing Disney's autonomy from the park's surrounding area. The Governor stated 'The Corporate Kingdom finally came to an end.'
Orlando and Disney are synonymous, and the company provides a massive swathe of jobs in the area across retail, tourism and production. DeSantis was criticized for taking on Disney for all the wrong reasons. He was pursuing the company as they would NOT acknowledge another of the Governor's bills that quashed equal rights ite, the ncolloquially known Don't Say Gay law.
Trump, Kennedy and the true nature of Democracy.
MATTIAS DESMET, AUG 27, 2024
Dear friend, I am busy writing my next book - and I like it. In a few days I will publish a long article on the moral judmentent and ethical awareness of Artificial Intelligence in times of elections. But I want to react concisely to something else first.
Some people, based on my article where I wrote that Google works for Kamala Harris, assumed that I myself write for the Republicans. As far as I know myself, that’s nonsense.
I write against totalitarianism and for a world where humans can live a truly human life.
If my criticism is now directed at the Democratic Party, it is because I believe they currently pose the greatest threat in terms of totalitarianism by seamlessly conforming to the technocratic ideology of globalist institutions.
As Kennedy said last week when he announced his support for Trump:
Now, they have become exponents of Big Tech, Big Pharma, a deadly food industry, and Big Finance, and they practice censorship on a scale that Stalin could have only dreamed of (full Kennedy speech here with transcription thanks to Robert Malone).
In other words, while the term ‘demo-cratic’ suggests that the Democratic Party represents the interests of the people, the very opposite is likely:
The Democratic Party represents industries that have the most detrimental impact on the people. The decline of the Democratic Party follows a general mechanism: the institutionalization of a virtue usually deteriorates into the vice that is precisely opposed to the original virtue.
According to that psychological mechanism—which I won’t elaborate on here—the police become a threat to the safety of the people (see, for example, the police response during COVID protests and what happens in ‘police states’), the church a threat to morality (perversion and child abuse thrived within institutionalized religion), medicine detrimental to health (a huge percentage of diseases are ‘iatrogenic’) and the university becomes the main producer of misinformation (see replication crisis).
But the most important problem of the Democratie Party is this: they rely more and more excessively on propaganda to keep in power.
The only thing that still holds the Democratic Party together is the immense Big Tech propaganda machine, in which the media are also deeply involved.
I will elaborate on that thoroughly in my next article.
The discourse of the Democratic Party has become an empty shell where the sea whispers a melancholy dirge for the great Democrats of the past.
It’s important to emphasize something here that may not be obvious to some:
Trump is a human being.
A human being is always at a crossroads—he can turn towards the light at any point on his path or plunge into darkness.
This is going to be the decisive question:
Will he follow a truly democratic policy, that is, a policy of the majority with respect for the fundamental rights of minorities?
Tocqueville rightly pointed out: democracy is not merely the rule of the majority.
In a totalitarian system, the (propagandized mass) majority also rules.
But it pays no attention to the fundamental rights of minorities.
To speak of true democracy, the majority must therefore respect the fundamental rights of minorities—freedom of expression, self-determination, etc.
This is exactly what happened during the COVID crisis: the unvaccinated had hardly any rights left. Trump, with his ‘Operation Warp Speed,’ was to some extent complicit in this; with Kennedy by his side, he has a chance to rectify this. I hope he seizes it.
This is the question:
In which direction will the human being Trump evolve under the influence of the enormous psychological forces acting on him?
Will he become more human and seize the opportunity he may get to create a more humane America with a few Democrats like R. F. Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard?
Or will he slide into resentment and become more and more the monster he should be fighting?
Trump and Kennedy are finding common ground now, something they never expected.
But whether this also means they will continue to find common ground if they actually have to work together is another question.
I believe there are quite a few issues where Trump and Kennedy hold radically different positions.
The biggest challenge will not be winning the election; the biggest challenge will be to govern in a truly humane way in times of desolation and dehumanization of the social fabric.
I’ve said it many times: the core problem of the crises in our society is our rationalistic view of humanity, which absolutizes rational knowledge and prioritizes it over ethical awareness.
Essentially, it comes down to this: to the extent that the Republicans operate within the dominant (rationalistic) worldview, they will just as easily continue to create the conditions for totalitarianism.
They will ultimately either become totalitarian themselves, perhaps in a different way than the Democrats, but still totalitarian; or they will lay the groundwork for the unstoppable rise of another totalitarian party.
The real work, therefore, is to investigate how we can move beyond the rationalistic and mechanistic worldview.
It is that worldview that creates a fundamental disconnection between humans and their fellow humans,
between humans and nature,
between humans and their bodies, and
thus forms the breeding ground for totalitarianism.
Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, the key is to transcend that worldview and contribute to the metaphysical revolution needed to leave behind the ailments of our Enlightenment culture.
A Democrat who contributes to that does more than a Republican who does not.
And vice versa.
But in any case: we are on the threshold of a political shift unlike anything we have seen in recent decades. For the first time in recent history, a political movement is emerging that—whether you support it or not—has the determination to stand firmly against much of the established Big Corporations and Big State.
If necessary, to the death.
The effects are already visible:
Zuckerberg made unprecedented revelations about undemocratic influence by the Biden administration (during the COVID crisis and during the 2020 elections).
In other words: he is about throwing the Biden administration under the bus.
He might feel the storm coming: if Trump gets another chance, an investigation will be launched into the censorship and manipulation he was involved in.
And the panic over the upcoming Trump-Kennedy duo is accelerating less pleasant aspects of the great totalitarianizing process our society is undergoing:
the system is transitioning from the phase of indoctrination and propaganda to the phase of terror (see, among other things, the arrest of Pavel Durov).
One thing is certain: the coming months won’t be boring in the USA.
And not in the rest of the world either.
Mattias
The democratic party coup against Biden.
MATTIAS DESMET, AUG 19
Dear friends,
Things are getting quite interesting in the mainstream media. Here and there, something real is seeping through the omnipresent facade.
I read in The New York Times that Biden was removed from the presidential race through a genuine "coup" or overthrow. It's just an isolated article amidst the vast sea of media content that upholds the illusion of the day, but it's still being picked up here and there in the mainstream media.
The content of the original article goes like this: Biden fell victim to an actual conspiracy by Obama, Pelosi, Schumer, and Jeffries. On alternative media, this conclusion was reached much earlier: the way Biden was removed from the race bears all the characteristics of a coup. This conclusion was drawn from a series of factors, including the fact that neither Biden himself nor people from his entourage publicly communicated about the withdrawal from the race, except through a letter signed by Biden "as if with a gun to his head."
Is it a problem that a number of influential Democratic figures forced Biden behind the scenes to withdraw?
Yes, because Biden was indeed democratically elected as the presidential candidate by millions of Democratic Party members.
Kamala Harris was not democratically nominated at all.
The choice of Harris is, to put it mildly, remarkable. She initially had little to no grassroots support within the Democratic voter base; her knowledge of crucial aspects of the state system and key societal issues (such as the pressing phenomenon of inflation) seems almost nonexistent; and nature certainly did not endow her with rhetorical prowess.
Either the Democrats had an incredible poverty of available candidates, or they believe so blindly in the propaganda machine that is being mobilized that they dare to go to the elections with just anyone. A combination of these two factors seems most plausible to me.
Certain aspects of how the propaganda machine is used to influence elections have already been extensively documented.
The development of Google and many other popular internet applications was originally funded by the U.S. State Department due to their potentially extraordinary usefulness as propaganda tools. And that turned out to be a good bet.
Propaganda is not primarily the art of lying; it is the art of psychological manipulation.
It is primarily the art of directing attention. Propaganda ensures that you notice certain aspects of reality and not others. And what is more suited to that than a search engine?
Google is nowadays the Great Other that answers all your questions.
And that answer is far from "objective" or "neutral."
Google more frequently directs you to "desired" narratives than to undesirable ones.
And sometimes the disbalance is quite outspoken.
To give just one example: In the days following the attack on Trump, it was signaled frequently that the search term "assassination attempt" in America yielded little to no results referring to the assassination attempt on Trump. Instead, one would get content referring to all sorts of assassination attempts.
This suggests that those who believe the whole attack on Trump was a "deep state"-orchestrated publicity campaign for Trump are wrong.
The attack on Trump was indeed extremely good publicity for Trump, but the establishment did everything to minimize that publicity.
While the manipulation of search strategies about the assassination attempt on Trump are still somehow speculative, the same is not true when talking about the 2020 elections.
I've mentioned it before: this interview with Mike Benz introduces you to the most expert way in this matter. This much is clear: propaganda works stunningly well. It seems that the enormous propaganda machinery might even be able to achieve the impossible: making a candidate without grassroots support, without rhetorical talent, and without significant intellectual abilities the president of the USA.
The Democratic Party in America is rapidly discarding any democratic character and is transforming more and more into a fully developed totalitarian structure.
Under Biden's rule, it became more or less normal to prosecute and imprison political opponents and dissident journalists (according to some sources, this involved hundreds of dissidents); he actively and explicitly helped create social support for the attack on Trump; he incited violence against the people of the MAGA movement in a barely concealed way; and in true totalitarian style, he kept the numerous (and perhaps justified) legal allegations against him and his family members out of the media.
The coup against Biden confronts Biden himself with a law of totalitarian systems.
As Hannah Arendt already said: a totalitarian system always ultimately becomes a monster that devours its own children.
Biden now knows this: he became a victim of the beast he himself abundantly fed.
That rising beast is, of course, not merely an American affair.
It is a global phenomenon. The social dynamics set in motion by the riots in Great Britain illustrate this abundantly, for example. What is happening in Great Britain is socially so important that I will dedicate a separate article to it, but I will already touch on it here.
The totalitarian censorship there entered the next stage.
People who articulated a dissident opinion on social media are now being imprisoned almost arbitrarily. In some cases, the posts indeed incite violence to some extent; but in other cases, it's hard to detect anything in the post that could be legally sanctionable.
And ultimately, this is exactly what the legislator announces: the post doesn't have to be illegal to be forced to censor it.
In this way, the totalitarian system achieves something typical: it cancels every law (see, for example, Solzhenitsyn’s "there is no law") and replaces it with a system of ad hoc rules that whirls around and ultimately descends into radical absurdity.
In that sense, totalitarian systems are variants and outgrowths of the bureaucratization of society:
"In a fully developed bureaucracy there is nobody left with whom one can argue, to whom one can present grievances, on whom the pressures of power can be exerted. Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless, we have a tyranny without a tyrant." (Hannah Arendt, On Violence).
Ultimately, in such a bureaucratic-totalitarian system, every psychological anchor that the law normally provides is lost. In place of the law is a completely irrational and inconsistent rule system. In this way, our rationalist culture culminates in exactly the opposite of what it sought to achieve.
The absurd, suffocating networks of rules first turn against those who do not want to go along with the system. But those who do engage with the system also fall prey to it, narrowly escaping, if at all, the machine they themselves built.
In a totalitarian system, no one is safe; everything and everyone can fall under the rules that are rewritten daily on the walls of Animal Farm by the pigs in charge. This gives us a glimpse of what the coming years will mainly bring: unimaginable chaos and psychological dislocation. And the only anchor will be precisely what our rationalist Enlightenment society pushed to the background: loyalty to ethical principles even if it means losing whatever you possess in the world of appearances.
SPEAKING OF TOTALITARIANISM, ONLY 90 MILES AWAY:
Cubans continue to flee a worsening economy in record numbers while the elderly have been left behind, fighting to survive on the communist regime’s $10 monthly pension and a critical lack of basic supplies.
Food, power, medical equipment, and pharmaceutical shortages have ignited persistent protests this year and driven Cuba’s ongoing exodus of working-age adults.
The result has been nothing short of devastating for the country’s retirees.
“It’s a nightmare in every direction. This is an SOS. Cuba is about to collapse in a fatal way,” Ramón Saúl Sánchez, a longtime anti-Cuban regime activist and president of the Democracy Movement in Miami, said.
“People can’t really imagine, especially from outside, making elderly people live in such inhumane conditions,” Sánchez told The Epoch Times.
“Because of the deterioration of the economy and the lack of interest of the Cuban regime, they aren’t helping those who need it. Retirement pension maybe allows you to buy a dozen eggs a month. That’s it.”
With one of the oldest populations in Latin America, Cuba ranks high in its number of citizens older than 65 years, according to a Cuban Research Institute and Florida International University report.
The report notes that the number of elderly dependents for every 100 working-age adults could soon reach 28, and the soaring volume of migrant outflows that began in 2022 has worsened the problem.
U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended nearly 425,000 illegal immigrant Cubans during fiscal years 2022 and 2023, according to Customs and Border Protection data.
Almost 200,000 more have been arrested in fiscal year 2024 through July.
These numbers have eclipsed previous large-scale migrations from Cuba to the United States, including the 1965–1973 Freedom Flights (about 300,000 Cubans) and the 1980 Mariel Boatlift (about 125,000 Cubans).
Plummeting birth rates have also fueled the acceleration of Cuba’s aging population for decades.
The trend became noticeable in the 1980s, but Cuba has had birth rates below the replacement level since 1978, according to an analysis published in the journal JSTOR.
The study authors stated that fertility rates climbed past 30 births per thousand citizens for several years following Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution.
However, once the initial optimism of the communist regime faded, that rate had declined by the late 1960s.
As of 1980, Cuba’s birth rate plummeted to a historic low of 14 per thousand.
Cuba’s birth rate now stands at a little more than nine per thousand, according to Macrotrends.
In 2023, the deputy head of Cuba’s state-run National Office of Statistics and Information, Juan Carlos Alfonso Fraga, appeared on the television program “Mesa Redonda” to address concerns over Cuba’s aging population.Fraga said the country has endured low fertility and high mortality rates for four years straight.
Meanwhile, relatives of Cubans living on the island say the lack of food and medical supplies is creating daily survival challenges for their loved ones.
Sánchez said that people who are too old to work and are living on as little as $10 a month from their government pensions often lack proper medication and nutrition.
He said the country’s communist party isn’t interested in helping its most vulnerable citizens, many of whom are former supporters of Castro’s revolution or even worked for the communist party.
Sánchez said Cuba’s entrenched regime now complains that it doesn’t have enough money to pay out the pensions, claiming the country’s finances are too tight.
“People are dying. Elderly people are fainting in the streets from a lack of nutrition,” he said.
The daily survival fight for Cuba’s older residents is personal for Sánchez.
Sending Help
Of retirement age himself, Sánchez has a close friend to whom he has sent medical equipment and other supplies on many occasions.
Most recently, he shipped health care items after his friend broke a leg.
Even the most basic medical supplies are scarce in Cuba.
Sánchez described the situation his friend dealt with upon arriving at a hospital with his leg broken in three places.
“They took a used cast they had propped up in the corner and put it around the knee. Then they put a piece of clothing to hold it in place and sent him home.”
When the leg didn’t heal, Sánchez’s friend was told by a doctor he'd need surgery.
“I had to send him everything for them to do the surgery,“ Sánchez said with a heavy sigh. ”I’m literally talking about everything you need to do surgery.”
Without an urgent care package of antibiotics, bandages, stitches, and even anesthetics, Sánchez said his friend’s surgery wouldn’t have been possible.
Like so many, most of his friend’s family have either left the island or passed away.
“They took a used cast they had propped up in the corner and put it around the knee. Then they put a piece of clothing to hold it in place and sent him home.”
When the leg didn’t heal, Sánchez’s friend was told by a doctor he'd need surgery.
“I had to send him everything for them to do the surgery,“ Sánchez said with a heavy sigh. ”I’m literally talking about everything you need to do surgery.”
Without an urgent care package of antibiotics, bandages, stitches, and even anesthetics, Sánchez said his friend’s surgery wouldn’t have been possible.
Like so many, most of his friend’s family have either left the island or passed away.
Sánchez said his organization helps hundreds of Cubans in the same situation. Some have families in the United States that can ship supplies, but others are trapped and have no lifeline at all.
There is a severe shortage of medication because the regime is bankrupted and has no credit anywhere in the world. Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat, co-founder and spokesperson, Cuban Democratic Directorate
“We get calls like this every single day,” he said.
Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat, an author and the co-founder of and spokesperson for the Cuban Democratic Directorate, confirmed this.
“There is a severe shortage of medication because the regime is bankrupted and has no credit anywhere in the world,” he told The Epoch Times via text.
Boronat said the elderly are now paying a disproportionate price for years of economic mismanagement at the hands of Cuba’s regime.
This is especially concerning in health care, given the higher number of medical conditions that afflict the elderly.
In response to the mounting crisis, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel fired economic minister Alejandro Gil Fernández in March.
This is underscored by multiple?reports of health care worker and water shortages at Cuban hospitals.
Boronat said there’s an acute lack of health care staff because of the number of doctors sent abroad by the regime, while others leave voluntarily.
He added that it’s a common practice to have medical students in charge of emergency services in most hospitals in Havana.
It’s an image that exists in sharp?contrast to Cuba’s alleged status as a model example of government health care.
The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation said the contradiction exists because Cuba has a multi-tiered approach to health care and access to high-quality treatment is reserved for medical tourists and high-ranking members of the communist party.
For locals, the story is quite different, the foundation said in a report.
“The Cuban health system is collapsed and does not have adequate facilities or supplies,” the report stated.
It cited field research that observed a “widespread reliance on the black market, or the informal economy, to meet the basic needs of consumers” delivered from friends, family, or charities from overseas.
The analysis further noted that common items Cubans usually get from outside the health care system include cold and flu medicines, surgical and dental equipment, and painkillers.
The effect of Cuba’s failing health care system is even more profound on the elderly.
95% - One analysis observed almost 95% of adults 60 and older have at least one chronic condition.
One analysis?observed that almost 95 percent of adults 60 and older have at least one chronic condition. Nearly 80 percent have two or more, according to research from the National Council on Aging.
“It is a well-known fact that the elderly population in Cuba able to be fed and dressed are receiving remittances from their families abroad,” Boronat said. “No retiree can live on the pension they receive.”
He added many of the homeless in Cuba are retirement-age individuals who lack external support.
Sánchez said even regime members are being abandoned as they age out of the workforce.
“People who fought for the [communist] revolution are coming forward now and saying ‘I gave my life for the revolution’; we see it everywhere now,” he said.
Working Around the Regime
Sánchez said he and other Cubans living in exile abroad have to be careful not to put their names on anything they send to loved ones on the island.
He said that is because if you’re a persona non grata with the ruling party, whatever is sent will be confiscated.
Sánchez explained he has helped collect and ship containers of food, but it has to be done “in a concealed way,” so the items make it past Cuban customs.
He recently sent $500 worth of general supplies to the island.
Sánchez said that in Miami, it’s common to find Cuba-specific stores that carry everything from medical supplies to appliances for those who want to ship items to their family.
“You’ll hear a lot, ‘Did you find someone to send the thermometer?’ or ‘How do I find someone to send orthopedic shoes?’” Sánchez said.
He said Cuba’s regime takes a sizeable cut of what comes into Cuba and the biggest challenge is getting critical supplies into the hands of those who need them.
Sánchez said that although the United States doesn’t block efforts to send humanitarian aid, the communist party does.
“We are the main humanitarian source for the Cuban people. The American embargo doesn’t interfere with that.”
The group Human Rights Watch noted that Cuba’s economic crisis is taking a heavy toll on residents. In addition to food and medicine shortages, blackouts are a significant problem.
In a 2023 events analysis, the organization stated that Cubans suffered three-hour blackouts every day for several months, starting in February.
Some Cuban officials?blamed the U.S. embargo for the inability to obtain critical medicines, which has been a catch-all excuse for the government for decades.
But this explanation rings hollow for many since countries have been trading with Cuba for years, including biotech giants such as China and Brazil.
“The health care of the population is not a priority to the regime. The segment of the people most severely hurt is the aging one, who need the most medications,” Boronat said.
Life expectancy in Cuba?dropped from 78.07 years between 2014 and 2016 to 77.7 years between 2018 and 2020.
When asked why older residents don’t flee Cuba with their families, Sánchez said: “Many of them in retirement don’t have the resources to buy the tickets to get out. They live in a very dire condition.”
He said younger generations sell everything they own, except the clothes on their backs, just to leave.
Others roll the dice and cross the dangerous Straits of Florida for a shot at living outside the reach of communist Cuba.
Even older residents are willing to risk crossing the treacherous waters between Cuba and Florida, according to Sánchez.
He described a recent incident in which he organized help to evacuate an abandoned elderly man who was starving in his home.
Tragically, the man died just two days after being taken to a hospital.
To read the article: https://humanevents.com/2024/08/29/breaking-brazils-top-court-freezes-starlink-financial-assets-as-supreme-court-judge-continues-to-target-elon-musk
Brazil's Federal Supreme Court froze financial assets for Elon Musk's internet company Starlink on Thursday after he decided to close the headquarters for his other company, X, in the country amid an ongoing battle with Minister Alexandre de Moraes. The companies are entirely different entities and have no relation to each other other than Musk being at their helm.
X's financial assets were blocked last week due to a discrepancy over fines owed to the Brazilian courts and Musk subsequently closed the country's office. Moraes first ordered a probe into X over "spreading misinformation" in April and is now threatening to shut the platform down entirely in Brazil if Musk does not appoint a local legal representative.
Per Metropoles, Musk "claimed to disagree with the fines applied by the Supreme Federal Court and with the order to remove content published by users on the social network that violates the Democratic Rule of Law and Brazilian legislation."
Because of this Moraes blocked financial assets for Starlink and summoned its managers in the country to be held accountable for the fines he claimed were owed by X.
Musk took to X to express his outrage, writing "This guy Alexandre de Moraes is an outright criminal of the worst kind, masquerading as a judge."