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Fidel Castro has died

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Re: Fidel Castro has died

#451

Post by tehwebguy »

Trombone12 wrote: post #446
fspear wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Castro is up there with the worst of the worst (Hitler, Pol pot, amin, mugabe, chavez, Kim Jong, Stalin, Mao, etc) these individuals resigned to their humanity the moment they decided to step all over their citizen's rights and dignity for their own benefit. Please stop trying to humanize him.

A yes, one bucket holds all evil, and the bool is the only integer the honest man needs, that's your position I take it?

Sure, executing dissenters is one of the bools. Not sure there is any getting around that.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#452

Post by Trombone12 »

eyko wrote: post #374
vixen99 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it's pretty much black and white for most of us if for life's duration we're forced to do what someone tells us to do. If permitted, we could do a few polls and discover whether such sanctions are regarded by those affected as 'consensus reality'. 'Evil' has religious overtones but it's not a bad word to sum up such a situation.

Even in democracies, we're forced to do what our govt tells us to do, or not do. Soft drugs and alcohol are the perfect example of someone's opinion forced down our throats. the fact that some drugs are harness but illegal while others are harmful but legal. Americans couldn't travel to Cuba. During the cold war, USSR. Americans couldn't freely express socialist ideas never mind communist ones. This in a democracy. I…

No, daylight saving is the perfect example of someone's opinion forced upon us.

There is a general case to be made for regulating toxic substances and the examples given are of people arguing over if particular substances really are toxic enough.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#453

Post by Pica_soO »

nl wrote: post #395
kekimo wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is false, the Germans didn't learn anything at all from WWIII. If they did learn anything, they learned the wrong lessons. Germans learned that one shouldn't wage war, that there is no such thing as 'better' cultures or societies, that one should under no circumstances label any group, that one must be tolerant towards anyone at all cost. What do Germans do then, once we start talking about cultures where infant…

I think they learned to be very, very wary of call to demonize any group. I think that's a reasonable lesson.

They also learned in Rwanda, that people pushed to the brink dont actually need a backstory to slash out into every direction. The backstory is not important. It allows to give reason to something which has the reason in not enough of everything, and human nature not acting upon this. Fighting the circumstances, is fighting the backstorys come to live.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#454

Post by rat87 »

matt4077 wrote: post #25

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…

Comparing it to Haiti is pretty unfair, Haiti has long been the poorest country in the Americas.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#455

Post by tehwebguy »

mrleinad wrote: post #379
tgarma1234 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have never seen the movie Before Night Falls I recommend it. While I agree that 20th century politics in Latin America was complicated, it's also true that the Castro regime committed a lot of human rights violations in ways that now seem really unjustified. I am not saying the United States was innocent. I am saying that a lot of people suffered under the regime needlessly and that should be acknowledged hone…

Right after the USA acknowledges ALL of their crimes against humanity, which are far more and spread much more wider. No cuban children sleeps in the streets tonight. You can't say that about northamerican children.

How could you possibly assume that no children in Cuba sleep on the streets?

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#456

Post by shrikrishna »

apsec112 wrote: post #338
hkt wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fixation people have with expanding middle classes is odd. I'd say progress where the poorest are included in social gains is more valuable than any other kind. Otherwise we end up with societies like the US where some parts of the population live in ghettoes worthy of the worst of the third world.

With all due respect, that's a crazy exaggeration. There is nowhere in America where the entire neighborhood has no electricity, no running water, no sewage, and no paved roads. Such places are common in Africa and India. https://www.facebook.com/126979a/posts/10101269399749522

Whenever someone quotes poverty and hardships in India, I feel the urge to defend - the scale at which India has to operate is completely different from any other country. Being a democracy, and hence having to deal with high viscosity in governance

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#457

Post by tehwebguy »

CalChris wrote: post #424
sebastianconcpt wrote: post #366

I invite you to step back and think that you are free to share your filomarxisms here where you have freedoms instead of promoting a genocidal system that is at heart and soul of totalitarian people like Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot and Castro. Hasta la liberty siempre! Enjoy

Castro just doesn't belong in that sentence. Hitler does. Why does the Right Wing have such a love affair with Putin and such a hatred for Castro?

Maybe some of us have distant relatives that died in Castro's prisons for the crime of dissent?

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#458

Post by quonn »

macspoofing wrote: post #440
woodpanel wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've come to see the Cuban revolution as something different than the sole work of Castro etc. wether you regard their work as accomplishment or atrocity. Also Socialism, Communism, Marxism are just the packaging. The core of the whole movement back then was the wast income inequality combined with US-foreign-affair meddling with Cuban domestic affairs, perfectly illustrated by mafia movies depicting Cuba as the play…

>Also Socialism, Communism, Marxism are just the packaging. That's like saying modern terrorism as practiced by groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS has nothing to do with a particular interpretation of Islam, but is rather just a response to colonialism and foreign interference in middle eastern countries, etc. There was an ideological basis to the Cuban revolution that tapped into a existing global Marxist ideology. 'Pack…

I don't think this is accurate. I can't point to a source right now, but I have read a lot about the revolution in the last decade and my impression was that some of the revolutionaries were Marxists, but there was no official ideology and Cuba became Marxist perhaps a year after the revolution. This involved a power struggle and some revolutionaries emigrated or went to prison. Castro eventually sided with the communists (Che, Raúl).

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#460

Post by dorfsmay »

afarrell wrote: post #375
briandear wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Butchering priests in the name of revolution? Nope. Sorry. Can't appreciate the 'humanity' of someone that clearly doesn't deserve to be called such. Suggesting Castro deserves acknowledgement of his humanity is like suggesting Hitler was a sensitive art student.

Both are true though. Many humans have butchered fellow humans. Hitler wasn't uniquely evil in human history, but a part of a long-running tradition

I don't care how human anybody is, killing fellow humans, except to prevent the crime of others (police and military interventions in very specific cases) is not OK. That line cannot be crossed.

That includes death penalty and political revolutions.

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