[–] Natanox@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

Funny how there's only a Canadian flag next to the US Empire one (obviously due to their astronaut being present), completely ignoring the 2 Billion € European Service Module's existence (ESM, build by ESA in Europe) which literally keeps the astronauts alive.

I guess it's very easy to take from others, but acknowledging them is too hard. The whole 'MURICA-dicking around in the Artemis 2 stream was vomit-inducing. I can't put in words how much I hate that regime and their minions by now.

That said, Cuba also has a sufficient amount of skeletons in the closet.

[–] green_red_black@slrpnk.net 34 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Both? Sorry I just don't see what the dig against artamis II is for? Do you really think there is nothing beneficial in getting a human to the Moon long and eventually permanent term?

[+] stabby_cicada@slrpnk.net -28 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

That's correct. I don't.

As long as a single person on Earth is without food, or shelter, or hope for the future, it is a fucking crime to piss away our finite resources on a barren chunk of space rock.

The Artemis mission cost four billion dollars. If that money had been used to refund USAID it would have saved, literally, based on the estimates of casualties that will be caused by USAID's defunding, two million lives. Two million of the world's poorest people, now dead or dying of starvation and disease and exposure to the elements, that we could have saved for the cost of sending a handful of the most privileged people in the world on a fucking tour of the Moon.

And it's happening now as a fucking distraction from the casualties of the war on Iran, and I don't even have words for how monstrous that is, or how angry I am at the people embracing this propaganda campaign as an "apolitical triumph of the human species".

All manned spaceflight is a waste of precious resources, but Artemis is the most repugnant, cynical, brazenly and dishonestly political waste of precious resources in my lifetime, and I am fucking older than manned spaceflight.

So, yeah, fuck this mission, fuck the entire idea of colonizing the Moon, and fuck everybody who thinks it's more important to colonize the Moon then heal the sick on Earth.

[–] kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 1 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

The apollo program led to tech advancements including, among many of things, fire-retardent materials, improved parachute technologies, water filtration systems and insulin pumps, each of which has directly saved lives. Not to mention solar cells technology that will be instrumental in fighting climate change.

The moon is a big barren rock, yes. But it is one that has answers to our planets history and potentially its future. Funding scientific and engineering endeavors like Artemis is how we, as a species, advance, how we move beyond the status quo of today's world. There are WAAAAAAAY more wasteful things we spend money on than science. And while you're entitled to think otherwise, you're just wrong.

Also that you think they timed a moon mission to be a distraction for a month old war... like the original launch wasn't planned years in advance, and it was delayed anyway. There is something to distract from every fucking week now. That doesnt mean that anything else happening is a deliberate distraction or even remotely related to it. Too cynical to function.

[–] Telorand@reddthat.com 34 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You're tilting at the wrong things. What NASA does is science. Science benefits humanity, and we always learn something by going to space, and we've been able to do experiments that would be otherwise impossible to do on Earth. In this capitalist hellscape, it unfortunately costs money to do science, so I can understand balking at the $93B + $4B price tag (spread over 7 years) but we currently spend trillions of dollars (over 7 years) just on the military and if ICE were to get their current budget over 7 years, it would also be over a trillion dollars.

We could absolutely feed and provide childcare for every child in this country for under $100B, but we don't need to defund science to do it. The annual budget of ICE alone could take care of all of that and still have some leftover.

The problem isn't spending $13B/yr on space science, it's spending $85B or $175B on ICE and the military (just as two needlessly wasteful examples; there are more).

[–] stabby_cicada@slrpnk.net -1 points 14 hours ago

I see your argument, but I disagree with it.

First, "science" does not benefit humanity as a whole. It benefits the rich.

"Science", as performed under capitalism, benefits those who can pay for its benefits, and widens the gap between those who can pay and those who can't. Better weapons technology benefits the people who can buy the weapons, and people who can't afford them find themselves at the wrong end of them. More efficient food production benefits the people who can buy the chemicals and machines and bioengineered Monsanto seeds, while farmers who can't afford the new technologies can't sell their crops at low enough prices to compete with the more efficient farmers and go out of business.

Every scientific "advancement" by the colonial class - with only a handful of exceptions - has led, in one way or another, to greater exploitation of the colonized class or the colonized land. The climate crisis itself is the purest example, since the impacts of the warming and worsening world are being felt most acutely by the people of colonized nations, the ones who can't afford to adapt, while wealthy western nations are simply sealing their borders and building seawalls and growing food in greenhouses using the resources they extracted from those colonized nations over the past few centuries.

And second, I get the idea that the space budget doesn't matter when the United States government wastes a much bigger amount of money on even worse things.

And if you were arguing "this is bad, but it's not as bad as a bunch of other stuff" I would be more likely to agree.

But the fact that so many on the left have positive feelings towards NASA and space exploration shows the soft power of that line item in the American budget.

Pretty much everybody on our side agrees that American military spending is a vicious waste. But a lot of us think NASA is "one of the good ones". That space exploration is something useful and positive the United States does.

And I think, if we think about what NASA's budget could be used for instead of a soft power propaganda campaign in the name of "science", we can start to question the value of space exploration and decolonize our brains a little bit more.

[–] pennomi@lemmy.world 31 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

You clearly don’t understand how much engineering, medicine, materials science, and other research happens because of manned spaceflight. Plus, there are things you can only study in microgravity.

NASA budgets definitely look big, but the value of the technology produced in that process (and consequently released to the public) dramatically outweighs the input. This has been proven over and over again.

You’d be surprised how much of that tech is used for precisely the purposes you want - feeding people sustainably, healing the sick, etc.

[–] PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S@anarchist.nexus 31 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The Artemis mission cost four billion dollars.

The FY-2027 defense budget will be 1.5 trillion. AmeriKKKa could cut billions of dollars without seriously affecting the function of the military (although fuck the military, they deserve exactly $0.00 and all need to be put on trial for their part in this horrible Empire).

It's not because of the Artemis mission specifically that we "cannot" feed people and heal the sick. Like the cost of ending world hunger and poverty, the cost of this mission in comparison to the resources the capitalists control is trivial.

It's because the system is deliberately designed to be unwilling (antagonistic, in fact!) to do these things no matter how much money or resources are ever actually available.

And it's happening now as a fucking distraction from the casualties of the war on Iran, and I don't even have words for how monstrous that is, or how angry I am at the people embracing this propaganda campaign as an "apolitical triumph of the human species".

It's probably a coincidence that it's happening now. This mission has been years in the making. The media is using the event as propaganda to distract from the Iran war. That being said, I will not argue that it's apolitical, nor will I argue that it's not propaganda at all. Generically, the point of televising it is to make AmeriKKKa look good, i.e. to paper over the sins of Empire.

I honestly don't disagree with the rest of what you wrote and I'm even skeptical of the scientific utility of this particular mission, but I believe that a blanket opposition to spaceflight and space research generically is reactionary.

[–] osanna@lemmy.vg 6 points 1 day ago

Fun fact: we grow enough food to feed upwards of 14 or 15 billion people. Instead of eating it, we feed it to animals, then eat them instead. If we just ate the crops instead, we could free up 60-70% of land currently used for animal agriculture.

[–] astutemural@midwest.social 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

A rat done bit my sister Nell.

(with Whitey on the Moon)

Her face and arms began to swell.

(and Whitey's on the Moon)

I can't pay no doctor bill.

(but Whitey's on the Moon)

Ten years from now I'll be paying still.

(while Whitey's on the Moon)

-"Whitey on the Moon", Gil Scott-Heron

[–] RockBottom@feddit.org 2 points 1 day ago

The dislikes come from countries with enough doctors.

[–] bitteroldcoot@piefed.social 2 points 1 day ago (3 children)

what bullshit. The cuban doctors aren't allowed to leave the Cuba unless they sign a contact giving the cuban government most of their wages. They aren't volunteers, they are slaves.

[–] Transform2942@lemmy.ml 1 points 18 hours ago

How would you split the revenue between the doctors themselves and the program that trains, outfits and deploys them?

[–] Tiresia@slrpnk.net 0 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

So like USAians having to pay taxes to the US when they work outside the US?

[–] bitteroldcoot@piefed.social 1 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

USA tax rate maxes out at 37% and then only if you make over $626,351.
Cuba takes 75 to 90% and forces them to not talk about their situation.
RTFA!!!!!!

https://hir.harvard.edu/medical-servitude-the-other-side-of-cuban-medical-diplomacy/

[–] Transform2942@lemmy.ml 1 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

USA tax rate maxes out at 37%

Oh my sweet summer child, only considering the federal income tax

[–] bitteroldcoot@piefed.social 0 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

I used 37% as the max for high earners. The reality could be anywhere from zero to more. Depending on how much you severe your ties and which of the 50 states you resided in, plus the country you work in has a say. Unlike Cuba a US citizen can choose what they want to do. Florida for instance has no state income tax. I thought these points were obvious, but evidently not. Bless your little heart.

[–] Transform2942@lemmy.ml 0 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

Yes, state taxes need to be considered.

Also include healthcare expenses because the US doesn't have socialized medicine (taxes, insurance premiums, and deductibles)

Also include social security deductions and retirement account contributions...

Even before considering the dysfunctional state of housing that's easily 60-70%

[–] bitteroldcoot@piefed.social 0 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

The point is you get to decide which of those to do or not to do. You can renounce your citizenship and apply for it in another country. You can move to a state that doesn't have those tax requirements. And none of those add up to 90% of your wage.

This is not a discussion about where it's cheapest to work, from a tax perspective. It's about the fact that the cubans don't have a choice, while a citizen of the USA or Canada or the EU or UK do have choices. Nobody is holding our families hostage so we will behave.

[–] Transform2942@lemmy.ml 1 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

The notion that these doctors who are a national symbol of pride are somehow slaves is laughable.

Any one of these doctors could defect and they would be endlessly feted in the Western press. Interviews, book deals, speaking tours...

We can see clearly this has not happened because all they can do is repeat this lame talking point about how they don't keep whatever percentage of their paycheck it is.

[–] bitteroldcoot@piefed.social 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

RTFA or live with your delusions, the choice is yours.

https://hir.harvard.edu/medical-servitude-the-other-side-of-cuban-medical-diplomacy/

"One driver for doctors participating in these overseas programs is fear. Employed publicly whether at home or abroad, many doctors fear reprisal for refusing to participate in these programs. Sometimes given bonuses, many feel the pay will benefit them and their families while overseas or upon their return, even if marginally. This is often weighed against the possibility of a loss of work and wages, or further reprisal, for refusing to participate.

When overseas, the fear does not dissipate. Many face exile for speaking out about poor pay or conditions. This threat hung over many that participated in the Brazilian exchange, after doctors went to court to sue to be treated as contractors able to earn an entire paycheck and work independently, rather than as employees of the Cuban state. This put them at risk of temporary or permanent exile, with no viable alternative for citizenship or way to connect with their families. This also put any wages they had earned in jeopardy for them and their families. "

[–] Transform2942@lemmy.ml 1 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

Oh boy, I love deconstructing these stupid propaganda pieces. Here we go!

These positions are often sought after

Discredited their whole argument right out of the gate

extremely restrictive agreements

The linked Time article also says that these doctors are paid very well by Cuban standards (a country that has been under financial blockade for over 70 years)

Consequently, in 2019, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights issued an official communication to the Cuban government requesting information on the working conditions of medical workers stationed abroad. According to the statement, UN special correspondents heard reports of what could amount to forced labor based on indicators recognized by the State Department

What a fucking word salad. Also note how they cite (alone) the US state department, known to be a very reliable source about communist governments LOL

That's as far as I'm willing to go. All their big, scary claims are very weakly backed up (or contradicted!) as soon as you follow any of the links.

[–] bitteroldcoot@piefed.social 0 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

I just realized you are from lemm.ml.

Fuck off tankie!!!!

[–] Transform2942@lemmy.ml 1 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

Must have run out of arguments. Scurry off back to your echo chamber where you can lick imperial boots in peace

[–] DeckPacker@piefed.social -2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Even if that's true (which it's probably not), that not even remotely how slavery works

[–] bitteroldcoot@piefed.social 3 points 1 day ago

Denial isn't just a river in Egypt.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/nov/08/cuba-secret-deal-to-monetise-medics-working-in-qatar

https://business.cornell.edu/hub/2021/05/19/is-cubas-army-white-coats-medical-diplomacy-or-contemporary-slavery/

[–] callouscomic@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 day ago

*near the moon

solarpunk memes

It's because the system is deliberately designed to be unwilling (antagonistic, in fact!) to do these things no matter how much money or resources are ever actually available.