Re.: World Bank: Collapse of Communism brought misery

[Chris Brady <chris_brady@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Lou sent in The Wall Street Journal report by Paul Hofheinz,
"Poverty Jumped in Former East Bloc As Reforms Took Hold, Study Finds."
Hofheinz reported on the World Bank report that may be found via:
http://www.worldbank.org/developmentnews/

Russia expert Professor STEPHEN F. COHEN added more in
"American Journalism and Russia's Tragedy" (The Nation, 2 Oct. 2000):

"...Their [US journalists] prescriptions, reports and prognoses have
turned out to be completely wrong. Nearly a decade later, Russia is
afflicted by the worst economic depression in modern history, corruption
so extensive that capital flight far exceeds all foreign loans and
investment, and a demographic catastrophe unprecedented in peacetime.
The result has been a massive human tragedy. Among other calamities,
some 75 percent of Russians now live below or barely above the poverty
line; 50-80 percent of school-age children are classified as having a
physical or mental defect; and male life-expectancy has plunged to less
than sixty years. And, ominously, a fully nuclearized country and its
devices of mass destruction have, for the first time in history, been
seriously destabilized... <http://thenation.org/>"

Add the stats on prostitution, increased orphans, AIDS, TB, drug abuse
and suicide, and we must admit, truly, this is a time to celebrate the
great triumph of capitalism!  For capitalists, I suppose...

Yours For The Revolution,
Chris Brady