Fidel Castro dead at 90

Gays and trans people calling someone who put gay people into concentration camps a "comrade"..

doom_is_great said:

The US embargo is not a sufficient explanation for Cuba's poverty. Cuba is free to do business with the rest of the world, and many nations that the US considers close allies do business with Cuba. If Cuba had a somewhat competent government that respected human rights and gave its people economic freedom, Cuba would be somewhat of a wealthy country. The little island nation receives millions of tourists every year. There is no reason for it to be poor.

This is a filthy lie. Yes, other countries are "free" to do business with Cuba and Iran, but America consequently slaps them with severe sanctions. This was happening as late as 2014 when BNP Paribas was curbstomped with an outrageous fine and probation in what was obviously a warning to all foreign banks to stay the hell out of Cuba and Iran. Obviously, if you were to choose between doing business with either USA or Cuba, the answer is obvious, but even forcing the choice is blatant blackmail. Europe, particularly Spain, never agreed with the blocade, but was forced to uphold it silently anyway. By the end of his administration, Obama started moving towards repealing these ridiculous policies, but the Orange Man threatened to destroy all of his legacy (though focused on Iran more), so we'll have to see how that turns out.

On the other hand, there's no doubt Cuba wallows in poverty partly to their own fault. Cuba refuses to let foreign currency into their economy, but their unstable monopoly money make any trade needlessly complicated and lengthy.

His views changed in later life:

In a 2010 interview with Mexican newspaper La Jornada, Castro called the persecution of homosexuals while he was in power "a great injustice, great injustice!" Taking responsibility for the persecution, he said, "If anyone is responsible, it's me.... We had so many and such terrible problems, problems of life or death. In those moments, I was not able to deal with that matter [of homosexuals]. I found myself immersed, principally, in the Crisis of October, in the war, in policy questions." Castro personally said that the negative treatment of gays in Cuba arose out of the country's pre-revolutionary attitudes toward homosexuality.

Castro was a dictator, but he was a dictator that the USA didn't like, and one that survived countless assassination attempts by the CIA. People like Castro not for what he did to his country, but because of how much he pissed off the Americans.

Urthar said:

His views changed in later life:

Keep in mind that La Jornada is a newspaper known here in Mexico for being, basically, pro-Castro, anti-USA. They would never dare putting Castro in a bad light. I'd take that with a grain of salt.

Anyway, as much as I didn't like him, may he rest in peace. Let's hope this helps bring a (much needed) change for Cuba.

EDIT: Typo.

Why would I feel bad for Castro when he caused so much negativity in his life?

Using the Embargo as an excuse why Cuba is so poor is a cheap one. The Embargo was quite limited to US and some Friends of the US. While the Cuban were trying hard to escape from Cuba, Fidel was having all the good things of the Capitalism.

He was a Dictator and most people that support him, Either don´t know anything about how the average cuban lives or are part of the Gov and have they own agenda to support the castros.

Zed said:

Keep in mind that La Jornada is a newspaper known here in Mexico for being, basically, pro-Castro, anti-USA. They would never dare putting Castro in a bad light. I'd take that with a grain of salt.

Anyway, as much as I didn't like him, may he rest in peace. Let's hope this helps bring a (much needed) change for Cuba.

EDIT: Typo.

Sadly it won't change a thing in Cuba, his brother been charge for a good time now. After Raul passes away, mostly a cousin or a close friend will put in charge.. That´s how it work with these tyrants

I although I dont really like him either, I dont believe in being happy for anyone's death.

RIP

Wild Dog said:

He was a Dictator and most people that support him, Either don´t know anything about how the average cuban lives or are part of the Gov and have they own agenda to support the castros.

He was also a symbol of defiance against American meddling and keeping other nations down by support of puppet fascist dictators. Most people that don't support him either don't know anything about how the average Cuban lived under Batista, or are part of the American right wing and have their own agenda to support the CIA and Miami cartels.

Yes, but as far as I know, he was supposed to restore the democracy that was taken away from this guy, not establish a communist dictatorship. And wasn't he in turn a puppet of the Soviet Union?

dew said:

Most people that don't support him either don't know anything about how the average Cuban lived under Batista

"A study by the State Department’s Hugo Llorens and Kirby Smith shows, for example, that in infant mortality, literacy rates, per capita food consumption, passenger cars per capita, number of telephones, radios, televisions, and many other indicators, Cuba led when Castro took over on New Year’s Eve 1958.

The United Nations statistics leave no doubt. In infant mortality, Cuba’s 32 deaths per 1,000 live births was well ahead of Japan, West Germany, Luxembourg, Ireland, France, Italy, Spain (40, 36, 39, 33, 34, 50, and 53 respectively), and many others.

In food consumption, in terms of calories per day, Cuba was ahead of all of Latin America except cattle-rich Argentina and Uruguay. In automobiles per 1,000 inhabitants, Cuba’s 24 was ahead over everyone in Latin America expect oil-producing Venezuela (27).

As for literacy rates, Cuba’s 76 percent in the late 1950s put it closely behind only Argentina, Chile, and Costa Rica. Giant Brazil’s percentage, by comparison, was 49 percent.

And Cuba’s gross domestic product per capita in 1959 was higher than those of Ireland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, most of Latin America, Asia, and Africa, again according to U.N. statistics.

In most vital statistics, therefore, Cuba was on a par with Mediterranean countries and southern U.S. states."

Yeah, Cuba was a really terrible place back then. Good thing Fidel and Che showed up and fixed it right up.

Good riddance.

Zed said:

Yes, but as far as I know, he was supposed to restore the democracy that was taken away from this guy, not establish a communist dictatorship. And wasn't he in turn a puppet of the Soviet Union?

As far as I know, Fidel tried to strike a deal with the US, but he was turned away and his trip to Washington cancelled. And he didn't embrace the Soviet Union until the Bay of Pigs invasion, two years after the revolution. By that time, the embargo was already in place for a year. America was incredibly butthurt over their boy Batista getting kicked out.

doom_is_great>
Interesting. I know Cuba is an internationally respected powerhouse in medical care, so I went to check the results of your study and it appears at least the infant mortality rate is... dubious, to be diplomatic. Wiki citing UN sources puts Cuba at 70 deaths per 1000 births just prior to the revolution, more than twice the US rate. Interestingly enough, nowaday Cuba is at 4.63 while the US is at 5.87, both numbers according to the CIA factboook.

dew said:

America was incredibly butthurt over their boy Batista getting kicked out.

All the American mafias had holdings in Cuba. Brothels and casinos. They were really super pissed off when they lost all that stuff.

WOW what a pardise!!! I guess that you must be living in Cuba right??? I mean it's a damm utopia after all!
By the way do you know Spanish? Did you read their letters, their Ideals? I guess not.

Also can you tell me why Castros are still in charge???
Why they don't have elections???
Why they need a permit from the Gov to leave their own Country??
Why Tourist cannot go to residential Area??
Why lots and lots of Cubans escape from Cuba to almost every single Country in the American continet??? All of them are Drug lords hired by the Cia???

it's been a long time since i was in Cuba, hmmm 12 years now, in a part of the country that was not so fancy (never went to Havana, Varadero). Spoke to many of the locals, many of them spoke in favour of the regime, many of them lamented the state of some things (virtually no mobility, poor quality of many foods). locals claimed when fidel died they would finally start making t-shirts with his face on it to sell to tourists, it was considered taboo to do so before he died.

i don't know how much has changed since i went in 2004, i believe one of the worst things they experience is the lack of mobility, whether it's leaving the country or simply moving around in their own country. a lot of people there have just taken it for what it is at this point and realize their life isn't going to radically change. A good summary, when I was walking up one of the back cobblestone roads of trinidad, was a guy putting out his clothes in a box in front of his house, and the instant he turned his back, a stray dog strolled along and pissed in the box. as he witnessed this, he threw up his hands in disgust and walked away, with clear apathy to the situation.

my friend who goes to a different part of cuba every year for the past 10 years says he has seen some of the happiest people ever there, and some of the most destitute. similar to my experiences, he says some people there like what they have, others wish they could leave. but both of us overall think the cuban people were very hospitable, i never feared wandering around alone despite being 12, even outside the hotel area.

it cannot be denied that fidel did some crazy things, bad things. maybe his only good thing was his stand against the US, since the US has a history of strong-arming countries and pushing revolutionaries away even when it is in their interest (ho chi minh for example). but equally so no country or leader is free of some guilt. a mixed opinion is just as valid as a positive or negative one.

personally i am more interested in seeing where the country's path will go in the near future, and what castro's death means for that future instead of what his death means for people debating the past.

Wild Dog said:

WOW what a pardise!!! I guess that you must be living in Cuba right??? I mean it's a damm utopia after all!
By the way do you know Spanish? Did you read their letters, their Ideals? I guess not.

Also can you tell me why Castros are still in charge???
Why they don't have elections???
Why they need a permit from the Gov to leave their own Country??
Why Tourist cannot go to residential Area??
Why lots and lots of Cubans escape from Cuba to almost every single Country in the American continet??? All of them are Drug lords hired by the Cia???

sounds like somebody is getting upset. there is no need to be upset.
the castros are still in charge because that's how authoritarian government works, wow that was hard.
why don't they have elections, well news flash but again that's how an authoritarian government works. elections doesn't equate to freedom anyway; you can see that across the globe.
they need a permit because that's government policy. lots of governments have similar policies for exiting and entering the country, ever heard of a passport?
i went into the heart of trinidad by foot, no problem? not sure how that isn't residential, heck i even watched the local easter mass and ceremony while kids played baseball in the street.
people leave because they want something different? life is tough in cuba and that can't be denied. a local told me it wasn't infrequent to line up for bread distribution only to have the bread have a huge hole down the middle, effectively leaving you with crust for the week. same reason people emigrate from wherever

Upset? Not at all. But is hard to belive that some people is praising an Autocrat like Fidel.
If some of them are happy because they resigned to any kind of change, in the end that is not being happy. Just acting.
Do you think an Human being can be happy being told how much he can eat, how many times he can take a shower, where he can or cannot go?

wild puppy said:

Upset? Not at all. But is hard to belive that some people is praising an Autocrat like Fidel.
If some of them are happy because they resigned to any kind of change, in the end that is not being happy. Just acting.
Do you think an Human being can be happy being told how much he can eat, how many times he can take a shower, where he can or cannot go?

i think you are getting upset that people don't share your viewpoint, and you are now grasping at straws irrelevant to the topic.

happiness is far too deep of a subject to be summed up in a thread like this, in response to a post like yours, which is really just baiting for a long-ass post explaining a position and then you posting a 2 liner saying i am wrong because the people are just acting.

i never asked why (or explicitly if) the people i met were "happy." i'm glad you can speak for them though, i'm sure they appreciate being called actors. next time you go there, why don't you ask them yourself? The closest answer i suppose i would've gotten would be something along the lines of not being controlled by the US (though i believe there was a dependence on tourism in many places), or simply being content with their place in life, which does not invalidate their happiness even if it doesn't match your conception of it.

you might find similar answers there as from those who, in more destitute parts of the world, consider themselves happy or content.

Decay where are you from?

That's basically irrelevant information, since you probably use it to discredit him as you have everyone else who doesn't share your viewpoint.

Mainly all the people "praising an autocrat" as you put it WildDog, are actually pointing he is basically a bad man put in a position of great power, and had a chance to make a lot of changes to a country basically run by imperialism since Europe discovered the New World, and certainly under enormous pressure from the US during the Cold War.

No is not irrelevant. Because you can´t expect to understand them when you don't even speak their language, thinking because they put an act to a tourist they must "HAPPY PEOPLE".
People have died escaping CUBA and some people here say they are just "Druglords"

By the way, yes some people here are "Praising an Autocrat", saying thing like
"Such epic person, he loved his motherland by all his soul. Damn, it's truly a great loss to Cuba and our world at this moment."

People who strongly dislike the US and oppose neoliberal economics are going to be sympathetic to Fidel, mainly because his personality and role in Cuba was larger than life. For these people it is easy to overlook autocratic governments when they oppose the US, mainly because the US supported autocrats all around the world except for the ones that had significant capital investments from the US corporations, or the autocrats opposed the USSR bloc of allied countries. Basically none of it makes any god damn sense because everyone is polarized and his picked a side. People think autocrats can do good things if they oppose the US, mainly because it takes a heroic amount of organization, military strength, and regional support in order to oppose US hegemony. Sometimes only the autocrats have the strength to do stunts like that. For example, North Korea. Incredible amounts of organization and propaganda to oppose neoliberalism but in order to do it, it takes an autocrat.

upset puppy said:

No is not irrelevant. Because you can´t expect to understand them when you don't even speak their language, thinking because they put an act to a tourist they must "HAPPY PEOPLE".
People have died escaping CUBA and some people here say they are just "Druglords"

By the way, yes some people here are "Praising an Autocrat", saying thing like
"Such epic person, he loved his motherland by all his soul. Damn, it's truly a great loss to Cuba and our world at this moment."

i think you need to wipe the tears in front of your eyes so you can actually read what's being written. if you can even understand it because clearly something isn't getting through to you. clearly you are starting to rave.

most of the people i watched i didn't speak to, or watched from a far. a group of enthusiastic domino players tucked away in a street alley smiling and laughing looks like contentedness to me, even if it is fleeting. it's called making the most of your situation.

I don't need to really say where i'm from, it doesn't really lend credence to anything. for example, all i've ever met from argentina were ignorant-ass dipshit trolls, i guess i should lump you in the same category then? you fit the trend i've experienced so far! or are you just "acting"?

Wild Dog said:

Yuki, i live in Argentina

No offense but the Argentinians have been responsible for some of the worst crimes against humanity ever committed in the modern world. Very amusing how you seem to criticize cuba and castro so much: did you forget when your government sanctioned ripping people apart with chainsaws and dropping them off from moving airplanes (including people known personally by pope francis, by the way)? Did you forget Rodolfo Walsh? You really should take your bullshit propaganda elsewhere.

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/walshopenletterargjunta.html there you go, allow me to remind you. And that's just Argentina by the way. If we look at nations much closer to cuba in those periods, if we look at Rafael Trujillo, Jose Napoleon Duarte or the genocide in guatemala, we probably couldn't help but wonder how it is that cuba has been demonized yet for the most part none of those governments have been.

^ I dont see how the past actions of the Argentinian Government invalidates his view, its like if you criticized someone from Germany speaking against war crimes because of many committed by the Nazis.

Look pal, if your gonna attack someone because of their nationality your better off not doing it all, because it looks like you want to start a fight.

Doominator2 said:

^ I dont see how the past actions of the Argentinian Government invalidates his view, its like if you criticized someone from Germany speaking against war crimes because of many committed by the Nazis.

Look pal, if your gonna attack someone because of their nationality your better off not doing it all, because it looks like you want to start a fight.

Thanks for missing the point entirely. I never attacked him for his nationality, I merely pointed out that during the same period, the argentine government was doing way, way, WAY worse things than the cuban government could ever hope to come close to do. What the hell do the germans have to do with this? An Argentinian saying "capitalism is not perfect but" "the US is not perfect but" whereas his government has been responsible for some of the worst atrocities imaginable (atrocities that are not nearly as frequently mentioned as the cuban ones, despite being even more severe) just shows the irony of the propaganda. Especially in his case where he is asking left and right where people are from. I'm not even a Castro supporter but look at the mirror before you criticize other countries.

I must assume it's hard to know how people really feels in Cuba when they are not even able to express what they think.

I mean, you can say what you think about the government and shit where you live (fuck you Peña Nieto!!!). Try that in Havana.

EDIT: Just in case it's not clear: In Cuba, it is illegal.

Wild Dog said:

No is not irrelevant. Because you can´t expect to understand them when you don't even speak their language, thinking because they put an act to a tourist they must "HAPPY PEOPLE".
People have died escaping CUBA and some people here say they are just "Druglords"

By the way, yes some people here are "Praising an Autocrat", saying thing like
"Such epic person, he loved his motherland by all his soul. Damn, it's truly a great loss to Cuba and our world at this moment."

you don't understand, as long as you say "fuck you" to the US you're allowed to be the biggest piece of shit in the world.

In all seriousness most of the people who praise, or defend him, have never experienced a loss of freedom, they've never been told, you can't buy two liters of milk, or just one piece of soap, or have never heard: "you cant buy that because your ID card terminal can't buy today" while a bunch of soldiers are taking everything they want, and you had to wait in line for two hours.

So, yeah, dont tell me that i dont know anything about his regime, because they brought that shit to my country and turned it into a shithole.

Edit: and by the way, did you know all the members of the cuban goverment have a diferent currency?, theirs is 1:1 to dollar, while the rest of the cubans have a devaluated version.

Dynamo said:

What the hell do the germans have to do with this?

To be fair, the shadow of Nazi Germany looms over Argentina's recent history up through the Falklands War...

Coincidentally, my Great Aunt just turned 90.