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Fidel Castro has died

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Re: Fidel Castro has died

#531

Post by kuschku »

endisukaj wrote: post #496
kuschku wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is just that you have to see it a lot more nuanced. It was the cold war, and the US had already put nukes into Italy and Turkey, well within range of Moscow. In such a game-theoretical standoff, the USSR had had to react – to keep the balance of power. It’s a completely crazy situation, and I’d consider both sides of the conflict as Evil , but I’m not sure why so many people try to claim the US was Good ,…

> US was Good, while the USSR was Evil Objectively? They were both Evil. If you compare them, the USSR is hands down the evil one. I really hate this whitewashing of USSR's history just to put down the US. I'm pretty sure nobody here defending Castro or Cuba ever had to live under a communist dictatorship. It's as simple as: Ask anyone from Eastern Europe or even Cuba on whose sphere of influence would they had rathe…

Most of that is true.

But comparing the US and USSR isn’t nearly as easy. Both were (and are) horrible to non-citizen. And while the US was mostly okay to the white citizen, minorities had to suffer for quite a while. And nowadays, the US mistreating its own citizen is getting extreme.

> Ask anyone from Eastern Europe or even Cuba on whose sphere of influence would they had rather been

That question isn’t nearly as easy either.

In Germany we’re having a huge group of people who lived under communism – and want it back. In some states (those which lived under communism), up to 20% of the people.

(This also answers the "I'm pretty sure nobody here defending Castro or Cuba ever had to live under a communist dictatorship" question, I guess? I didn’t live myself under communism, but I know quite a few who’d want it back, because they had it better)

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#532

Post by AngrySkillzz »

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…

A lot of people would say that, actually. World leaders throughout history have always picked up religions, ideologies as a way to get additional support, not because it's something they believe in or want implemented.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#533

Post by sidcool »

We can debate all we want about Communism and democracy, but if history is any guide, democracy has definitely had more positive effect on the world.

Communism looks awesome on paper, but hardly works in practice.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#534

Post by cmrdporcupine »

woodpanel wrote: post #336
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…

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…

The Cuban revolution was a part of the broader anti-colonial struggle in the post-war period. Many of the leaders of that movement were inspired by some components of a kind of Marxist-Leninism but it was by no means the only influence.

Nor was there universal adulation of the Castro-ites by Marxists around the world.

There is a lot of criticism of the Cuban revolution, and debate whether it was in fact a revolution or a coup, within Marxism itself.

Castro himself was not a self-described socialist until after he was spurned by the U.S. who committed a major foreign policy blunder by supporting Batista, the landowner class, and the existing regime long after they had shown themselves to be brutal and corrupt and after Castro had overthrown them.

Castro threw himself into the Stalinist bloc out of necessity. Blame for the 50 year trajectory of Cuba can be placed squarely on ineptness of U.S. foreign policy to deal with the post-colonial reality. They committed similar and in fact bloodier and worse blunders in central America throughout the 70s and 80s with Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guetemala.

A very sad incompetent and shameful history that Obama looked like he was finally willing to confront.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#535

Post by dorfsmay »

peteretep wrote: post #505
dorfsmay wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because you have to draw the line somewhere.

Morale/ethics do change over time, but not killing people has been shown throughout history to be the bare minimum for a decent society, and an accepted standard today. We can discuss and expand on adding more species, kingdoms and domains, but humans are not up for discussion.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#536

Post by bzbarsky »

Trombone12 wrote: post #517
bzbarsky wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

10k over 50 years? Wow, that's a lot less than I imagined from how he is described as a mindless killer, and the dictatorship as drenched in blood. For comparison Puerto Rico have had about 10k murders in the last 15 years alone[1], and that's in less than half the Cuban population. From 1998 figures[2] and 2002 population numbers I guesstimate that officially about 820 murders occur per year in Cuba, and the 10k in…

> Wow, that's a lot less than I imagined from how he is described as a mindless killer, and the dictatorship as drenched in blood.

Yep. Would it likewise surprise you to learn that the Pinochet government, which is described in similar ways, killed (at the high end of the estimates; the officially accepted ones are 10-20% lower) about 3200 people and "disappeared" about 1000, over the course of 17 years? Also, about 30,000 tortured, though; I have not seen claims of this for Castro's Cuba. All this out of a population of 10-13 million. It sure surprised me when I looked up the numbers.

I'm not condoning the things either government (Pinochet's or Castro's) did, but they are both nowhere close to being "drenched in blood" the way Stalin's or Pol Pot's or Mao's governments were.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#537

Post by bzbarsky »

betolink wrote: post #506
bzbarsky wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep, you and I agree that those people are just wrong. It's a lot more like the Soviet Union under Brezhnev, at least superficially.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#538

Post by bzbarsky »

rubberstamp wrote: post #439
bzbarsky wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cuba was doing better than most Latin American countries before the revolution too, for what it's worth.

Even so, were would it have been if intervention attempts by Uncle Sam against Cuba succeeded? Name one country that is better of than it was before western intervention.

South Korea is the poster child here, depending on how you define "western intervention".

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#539

Post by MarkMc »

Lordarminius wrote: post #271
Lordarminius wrote: post #91

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…

Its too late to edit my prior post so I'll just stick these Castro quotes in here: " They talk about the failure of socialism, but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?" " ...I began a revolution with 82 men. If I had to do it again, I do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and a plan of action." Fidel Castro 1926 - 2016

> ... where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?

When Castro asked that question in 1991, around 60% of people in East Asia were living in extreme poverty. Today it is 3.5% [1]. The change is mostly due to China switching from a socialist to capitalist economy.

[1] http://www.vox.com/world/2016/10/2/13123980/extreme-poverty-...

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#540

Post by jgome »

gedy wrote: post #175
coldtea wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Never sprayed Vietnamese with Agent Orange or napalms for one, never dropped nuclear bombs on civilians Yes, on the North Vietnamese invaders who had a track record of murdering civilians well before the US was ever involved. And the Japanese who perpetrated the Rape of Nanking, etc. But even so - the US has voted out these previous politicians whereas Cubans were and are not able to do that.

So the US as a nation is evil.

BTW, you are wrong: cubans do vote, too.

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