Fidel Castro has died • Hacker News Board

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#501

Post by geezerjay » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 2:09 PM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #494

geezerjay wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you actually looked at the faction supported by Cuba? Not only are they responsible for launching global private military corporations, they are Africa's worse cleptocracy. Then, oddly enough, MPLA also intervened in Namibia's civil war against the communists.

There are no clean hands on either side, I reject the notion that Apartheid South Africa were the good guys, after all it birthed its own own private military corporation (Executive Outcomes), supplied a lot of mercenaries throughout global hotspots and had a nuclear program they only dismantled after it became clear that black people would be allowed to vote. The intersection of African Liberation politics and Cold…

> I reject the notion that Apartheid South Africa

That's a blatant false dilemma.

The atrocities committed by Fidel Castro aren't whitewashed just because you can pick other nasty regimes.

Stalin isn't suddenly fabulous because he fought the Nazis.

Fidel Castro imposed a totalitarian regime on Cuba and extensively used violence and political assassinations to preserve his stranglehold on Cuba. Fidel Castro also projected his atrocities by intervening in decades-long civil wars.

You can't pretend nothing happened by playing the racist card.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#502

Post by lizardking » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 2:10 PM UTC

forgetsusername wrote: post #416

Where do American administrators who are droning Arabs to death fit on that list of "evil peole"? What's the line you need to cross to make it on there?

So causing casualties while waging war is morally equivalent to assassinating domestic political opponents and agitators?

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#503

Post by lizardking » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 2:10 PM UTC

forgetsusername wrote: post #416

Where do American administrators who are droning Arabs to death fit on that list of "evil peole"? What's the line you need to cross to make it on there?

So causing casualties while waging war is morally equivalent to assassinating domestic political opponents and agitators?

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#504

Post by peteretep » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 2:12 PM UTC

tehwebguy wrote: post #457

CalChris wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Something that also happens in plenty of democracies.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#505

Post by peteretep » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 2:13 PM UTC

dorfsmay wrote: post #460

afarrell wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

    > is not OK

Why not? We kill plenty of other living things. Why not people?

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#506

Post by betolink » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 2:13 PM UTC

bzbarsky wrote: post #274

betolink wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many did Fidel kill?

Finding unbiased numbers is hard, obviously. Maybe we'll know more about it 50 years from now, but at the moment our knowledge is approximately what it was for the Soviet Union right after Stalin's death or so, yes? That said, I have yet to see anything resembling a credible source that claimed more than 10,000 direct deaths caused by the Castro regime. I've seen much higher numbers (50,000 or more) in terms of indir…

Under those indirect causalities the U.S. has killed millions! even its own population when they get sick and can't afford their drugs. My point is that Cuba under Castro was not -by far- like the Soviet Union under Stalin as some people believe.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#507

Post by MarkMc » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 2:16 PM UTC

sssilver wrote: post #204

MarkMc wrote: post #149

Castro's poor judgement led directly to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Afterwards John F Kennedy estimated there was between a one-third and one-half chance that it would have escalated to nuclear war [1]. That seems like an underestimate considering that we now know some of the missiles were fully operational [2] Yet today it's difficult for most people to appreciate the extreme threat and terror of nuclear weapons in th…

Wait, I thought it was Kennedy's poor judgement that "led directly to the Cuban Missile Crisis" by placing nukes on the USSR border?

I don't mean to suggest that Castro was the only person who showed poor judgement. Placing Jupiter missiles in Turkey ratcheted up tensions and invited some kind of response from the USSR - it increased the chance of nuclear war to some degree and it's fair to criticize Kennedy for that. But it wasn't a step-change in the perceived balance of power. Given all the possible Soviet responses, I don't think it was reasonable for Kennedy to conclude that placing missiles in Turkey would lead to a 50-50 chance of nuclear war.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#508

Post by cloverich » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 2:17 PM UTC

Pica_soO wrote: post #292

wildmusings wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My family and the family of just about everyone I grew up around had their whole lives destroyed by this evil man. He has executed thousands, has imprisoned thousands more, and has totally ruined a country that was once the most prosperous in Latin America. You may philosophize about the 'complexity' of the life of this evil man, but for people who actually lived under his abuse, who have seen what he has done to the…

No Sir, nobody is denying that he was evil. Its just that we want to see the whole black and white picture he was the darkest dot of. Neither was Rafidel Baticastro in any way special - he was just another human, using the chances that life presented him- and many of those for selfish reasons, like we all would. The Dynamics of revolution and upheaval could have swept anybody ruthless enough to the top. What the ruth…

> but if we dont find out what made him possible and prevent society from sliding into that direction again- your family suffered for nothing

I think most people believe we already know. Suffering --> Revolution --> Dictatorship is a very common pattern. I think there is a lot to learn from the circumstances and based on the histories I've read of e.g. WWII germany, that feels like the general focus. I think its popular to initially focus on the person themselves, though once you begin any serious study of a particular revolution, the circumstances and cultural influences become so pronounced that the idea of the particular dictator being of importance begins to shrink.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#509

Post by selectodude » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 2:19 PM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #279

wildmusings wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are talking about Fidel's regime and how he decided to rule. Batista was an evil man and a bad ruler, but the economic and societal destruction of communism is in its own category, as is the level of totalitarian control that the Castro regime has imposed, which includes a committee in each neighborhood responsible for suppressing dissent. Because of how backwards Cuba is today, everyone thinks it was always like…

Consider that despite many natural disadvantages Cuba had higher standard of living, better educated public, better healthcare system, etc. than any of the countries in Latin America which started at similar level but were left under the control of US-backed right wing governments. I’d much rather live in Cuba of the 1960s–1980s than in any of Washington’s pet quasi-fascist police states or in those Latin American st…

> I’d much rather live in Cuba of the 1960s–1980s

Yes, while the Soviet Union was sending Cuba billions per year, it was much better there.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#510

Post by lap42 » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 2:20 PM UTC

jknoepfler wrote: post #119

I would encourage the commenters in this thread who see Fidel's legacy as a black-and-white matter of an "evil dictator who did bad things and was wrong about economics" to step back, bear witness to the objective facts about Fidel Castro's life ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidel_Castro ), think sincerely about what could lead a highly intelligent and charismatic person to become or follow Fidel Castro (as many ha…

What a pathetic piece of text!