For leftists, Cuba has always been kind of like the promised land. The country that has stood up to the imperialist giant to the North — the United States For the past 60 plus years, it is Cuba that has led the fight for liberation and socialist struggles both in Latin America and around the world. The country that never gave in, or gave up, no matter how hard the United States came down on the socialist island.

China has seen some pretty dramatic bubbles in recent years, many of which have yet to pop, such as real estate.
The Chinese stock market bubble that peaked and crashed last summer comes to mind.

However, the craziness has only gotten more and more extreme. This time it was the commodities market that went bonkers.

Yesterday in southern China a labor arbitration panel held a hearing in China's first legal case claiming employment discrimination on the basis of gender identity.

Identified only as Mr. C, the 28-year-old plaintiff says that he has identified as a transgender man since college.

Mr. C applied for a sales job with the Ciming Health Checkup Center in Guiyamg, Guizhou Province, last April.

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Sunday February 11, 1906
Greensboro, North Carolina - Mother Jones Speaks on Child Labor

From the Greensboro Daily Industrial News of February 9th:

"MOTHER JONES" ON CHILD LABOR
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Socialist Declares That Factories Are Responsible
for Mental Degenerates
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LABOR AND CAPITAL ARE DULY COMPARED
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Laboring Man's Champion Speaks to a Small Audience
in Labor Union Hall But Holds Her
Hearers' Interest to the End.
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Mother Jones talked in Labor Union Hall last night to an audience made unfortunately small by the inclemency of the weather. But the few people who were there were profoundly interested and were besides very greatly taken with the "spunky" little woman who tried to stir up in them the revolutionary spirit and to implant in them a firm purpose to benefit their brothers and help them forward to a higher civilization.

Mother Jones related first the history of the tool, told how it had become a machine, and how its change, and its ownership by the few had brought about the present economic conditions. She told about how young men used to go West to escape the servitude of labor, but now, she said, the conditions were the same everywhere.

Cuba appealed for relief from Spain, said she, and could have had it without war, but in the interests of capital war was brought about. Then capital went on to the Philippines, to work up that country. In the Far East, before the gates of Pekin, Militarism and Capitalism for the first time in history, joined their interests and worked together. The whole thing means that we are face to face with a competition as the world has never known it before.

Calls Child Labor Murder.

Things are very different in China than they are in the United States. For instance, try to imagine this sentence referring to America's wealthy.

Willem Buiter, Citigroup chief economist, is concerned. He sees a 55% chance of a global recession in the near future because of China.