151–160 of 842 posts
After reading some of the comments here, my fath in the human race is not enhanced. Castro was a genuine hero and a great man; indeed among the top 10 greatest individuals of the 20th century. He believed in freedom and dignity. He saw the US government as the enemy of progress everywhere in the world; he wanted people to be free and he devoted his life to that ideal. How many people can you say that of? > He was als…
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And Stalin helped defeat Germany in WW2. That doesn't really make up for the millions of Russians he killed for political reasons.
You're comparing apples and oranges, Fidel never killed millions, The U.S. government alone has killed far more people in a single day than Cuba under Fidel Castro.
He has certainly led one of the most exciting lives of our times... And despite his flaws (and/or crimes against humanity) I can't help but wonder how Cuba would have faired under different leadership. Looking at the next-island neighbors in Haiti, or any number of comparable African countries, it seems the Cubans got the better deal. Just one example: life expectancy is 15 years higher than Haiti, and actually even…
>with a superpower fixated on killing you (and ruining you economy) next door Look at how awful the quality of life in Cuba is today. Look at its people's lack of basic freedoms. Look at its awful economy. The US tried to save Cuba from itself.
I've been to Cuba, and life there is somewhat boring, and the standard of living is obviously low. But it's not the kind of poverty you seen many other countries. No starving old people and children in the streets, also no gang violence ruling your block.
Streetlife in general seemed quite happy – old people playing chess, young girls playing soccer (in school uniforms, no less), groups of three or four neighbors fixing one of those old cars etc.
Now it sounds too much like glorification – I also listened to 6 hours of Castro's labor day sermon in 2003 and most people around me felt I was insane for attending it voluntarily – they only went because somebody, somewhere had to check their name of a list or they may get into trouble. That's a price I wouldn't be willing to pay.
I hope Cuba will find a way to preserve a bit of what made it bearable in its worst times.
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Here's a possible starting point: It's crucial to remember that Castro silenced all who disagreed with him. He condemned an entire nation to poverty! His most notable achievement with regards to Africa was sending soldiers to extend the life of wars. It's stripped of the insults to those that disagree with you and complaints of down voting. In my experience users on HN will down vote tone more often than they will do…
> He condemned an entire nation to poverty! That's more because of the embargo than anything Cubans did. And even given that, they do way better than most latin american "free" nations. > His most notable achievement with regards to Africa was sending soldiers to extend the life of wars. Let's not go into which country, besides Germany and USSR, started more wars, meddled in more places, held more peopls down by inst…
I just have to ask, does communism require trading with capitalist nations to be successful? Because there are many nations under embargo by the US that are significantly more prosperous.
But clearly, when Marx was talking about a communist revolution he clearly meant that you should allow yourself to be exploited by your nearest capitalist neighbor.
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If standing up to an empire means subjecting your country to half a century's worth of squalor and poverty, then...yeah, he really showed us what's what.
I'm not going to get into details but if you take major economic facts about Cuba before the revolution and after it the balance is clear. http://hdr.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/CUB comparatively they do better than most Latin American countries. It's a shame that their leaders weren't more pragmatic and allowed more civil liberties but then again, they always lived under an embargo and a permanent terror campaign…
That explains why you see so many people from surrounding Latin America countries flocking to Cuba, right?
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> However, the man has committed grievous crimes Way less crimes than those who accuse him. Never sprayed Vietnamese with Agent Orange or napalms for one, never dropped nuclear bombs on civilians, never supported Pinochet et co, doesn't have 25% of the world's incarcerated in just 4% of the global population, and lots of other things besides. > keeps 'his people' in abject poverty A 40+ years embargo has something to…
>Way less crimes than those who accuse him. Never sprayed Vietnamese with Agent Orange or napalms for one, never dropped nuclear bombs on civilians, never supported Pinochet et co, doesn't have 25% of the world's incarcerated in just 4% of the global population, and lots of other things besides. That's a logical fallacy. You can't say that Castro's crimes against humanity are okay because the US has committed worse o…
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And to those who cheer the advent of capitalism in Cuba as a 'freer society', consider that now there's the form of proto-capitalism that existed in Eastern Europe and the former soviet countries after the fall of the wall. It's the time when society divides into economic winners and losers, and the wealth gap will increase - sometimes dramatically. So yay innovation and (somewhat more) freedom, but woe social tensio…
Fidel's brother Raul is in power. He is 85, but I don't have reason to believe much will change in Cuba if Raul dies as well.
After reading some of the comments here, my fath in the human race is not enhanced. Castro was a genuine hero and a great man; indeed among the top 10 greatest individuals of the 20th century. He believed in freedom and dignity. He saw the US government as the enemy of progress everywhere in the world; he wanted people to be free and he devoted his life to that ideal. How many people can you say that of? > He was als…
There's a lot of positive things to be said about Castro. But your unqualified hymn isn't going to help your cause. Just the number of people making the rather dangerous journey to the US proves how misguided your comparisons are.
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>Paving over it with simplistic thinking "Castro was evil and wrong" does a great deal of violence to the truth. I honestly agree. I just think it is ridiculous to claim that Castro was "a great leader" when Cuba has fared very poorly under Castro in almost every respect. I felt obliged to point this out.
> I just think it is ridiculous to claim that Castro was "a great leader" when Cuba has fared very poorly under Castro in almost every respect. I felt obliged to point this out. Were they given the chance (cold war, embargo, et al)? I feel obliged to point this out too.
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> you can't argue that his political philosophy works either---just look at Cuba today. As someone who studied the subject formally, don't place maximum weight on the success and failures of the (statistically insignificant) rise and fall of modern nation states. This is a very far cry from a controlled experiment to begin with, anyways. Don't read into that too much. I'm not saying mainstream economics doesn't have…
>it's a far cry from a scientific fact, which it seems like not just this comment, but a lot of us in the west (even mainstream academic economics) sell the idea as. Centrally planning an economy is an NP complete problem. Marxism is dumb and if any would be socialist on this forum can explain to me how we as a society can retain the benefits yielded by capitalism without the use of capital and how socialism of such…
For a concrete example, someone who is interested cannot really respond to you if they wanted to because you're firing in every direction with very little detail or explanation. How is anyone supposed to guess at what you consider to be the "benefits yielded by capitalism"? What socialism "of such a form" do you mean? Why do you seem blind to the many "dumb" parts of capitalism or liberal democracy? Do you study the various alternatives that have been discussed in the history of political science and theory? What specifically do you find dumb about Marxism, particularly as compared with its counterparts in other economic models and interpretations of human history?
On HN, you'll find emotional, knee-jerk reactions receive a swift, negative response. Especially when they're negative emotions, delivered with insults and anger. You can do much better than this, and you'll find interesting conversations coming your way.