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Fidel Castro has died

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Re: Fidel Castro has died

#641

Post by cmbailey »

sspiff wrote: post #562
cmbailey wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fidel Castro leaves behind a nation awash with tears and blood from thousands of executions, tens of thousands of political prisoners, concentration camps for gay men, labor camps for those who thought differently, listened to jazz, or even just had long hair. These are facts I learned only after doing more research, after listening to friends who are gay and who did years of research. So we all need to be careful no…

I agree that Fidel Castro made many mistakes and is responsible for many atrocities. But the plight of Cuba is not his doing alone. He leaves behind a Cuba that was embargoed by the US, their closest and largest trade partner after the US had staged a failed invasion to overthrow the government. This forced them into the Soviet sphere of influence for supplies and trade. Then, when the Soviet Union collapsed at the e…

>I agree that Fidel Castro made many mistakes and is responsible for many atrocities. But the plight of Cuba is not his doing alone.

In American English, the phrase, "He murdered thousands," can't be followed by the word "but..."

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#642

Post by sebastianconcpt »

CalChris wrote: post #635
sebastianconcpt wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putin, an ex-KGB, is not right-wing. Check what cultural war is. Also hear what Yuri Maltsev, ex economic advisor of Gorbachev, have to say about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNaB0jdODCM

I didn't say that Putin is Right Wing although he has all the markings of a Right Wing authoritarian. What I want to understand is our Right Wing's infatuation with Putin.

Aleksandr Dugin is advising Putin on how to appeal to the sub-informed people that leans to conservative and right-wing. But is a sheep cloth on a wolf. There is a very interesting debate between Dugin and true conservative philosopher Olavo de Carvalho here: http://debateolavodugin.blogspot.com.br/

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#643

Post by kuschku »

bzbarsky wrote: post #284
IslaDeEncanta wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true at all. Companies that do any business with Cuba are not allowed to do business with American companies/individuals.

As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, that's not true. As a simple counterexample, Air Canada flies to Cuba and does business with US companies/individuals just fine. I'm not an expert on the embargo, and it's a bit complicated because it's got multiple pieces of enabling legislation, but at first glance the only one of those that says anything close to what you're saying is Title III of the Helms-Burton act (see…

PayPal (and several US banks) seized all funds of a huge German drugstore chain and their online markets, and demanded they’d stop making business with Cuban cigars before returning it (as reported in the news: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Lassen-uns-nicht-erpr... [2011], also see the thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/ka26b/paypal_bl...)

The same happened with MasterCard and VISA, and is part of the reason why I think Germany should continue to keep its own payment system, and just ban MasterCard and VISA and PayPal within the EU.

Or that you can’t technically put apps on the iOS App Store or the Google Play Store if you trade with Cuba.

(As you technically need an export declaration, as described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10835045 )

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#644

Post by vic-traill »

vixen99 wrote: post #621
vic-traill wrote: post #483

I found Castro's Cuba a very interesting place, primarily because of its independence from American direct influence (and yes, I realise that Cuba has longed been defined by America's influence on it, even in opposing it). American culture has had a huge effect on the world. To attend an island off the coast of Florida and find it more or less free of that cultural influence was fascinating. Fascinating in that they…

Someone who held no free nor fair elections for half a century, imprisoned his political opponents after trials presided over by crony judges, completely controlled all the national media and installed his brother as his successor? And that's not a tyrant?

Well, that's a part of the story. And the only part of the story that you have been able to encounter in the American media since the 1950's.

The story is much broader than that. Fidel was also the liberator of his country from a military dictatorship which had sold Cuban casinos to the Mafia [0] and swaths of Cuban agricultural land to the United Fruit Company. [1]

In that context, Castro was certainly not the tyrant.

History is nuanced. Look below the surface.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meyer_Lansky#Cuba

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company#Cuba

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#645

Post by CalChris »

douche wrote: post #406
pif wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you write "evil dictator", you mean that a dictator could not be evil. This is hugely wrong. Dictatorship contains evil. I appreciate your effort to invite people to learn from history instead of just rejecting a portion of it. But this is a black-and-white matter: he chose to be a dictator, and he was wrong. Subsequent crimes and economics theories are less important once you keep people from choosing their fat…

Dictatorship is not a concept that is synonymous with evil. Fabius Maximus was not evil. Coriolanus was not evil. Abraham Lincoln or George Washington, who were effectively dictators during war time, were not particularly evil.

Lincoln had war powers in a civil war but he still remained subject to Congressional oversight, judicial review and he was re-elected. Not quite a dictator in the Roman sense.

FDR had war powers too; he placed Japanese Americans in internment camps. I'm a big FDR fan but that will always be a stain on his legacy.

You're more right with George Washington. He was a commanding general during a civil war and the Continental Congress granted him more powers as he went along. What he's justly famous for, besides winning (or really if you want to be accurate, not losing and outlasting the Brits), was refusing dictatorial powers after the Revolutionary War (like Cincinnatus).

In the sense that both Washington and Lincoln were still subject to the Congress, I can't quite agree they were dictators, certainly not in the ne res publica detrimenti capiat (the Republic suffer no harm) sense where the Congress capitulates to the dictator.

And while I prefer liberal democracies, yes, I agree that:

  Dictatorship is not a concept that is synonymous with evil.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#646

Post by CalChris »

sebastianconcpt wrote: post #642
CalChris wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say that Putin is Right Wing although he has all the markings of a Right Wing authoritarian. What I want to understand is our Right Wing's infatuation with Putin.

Aleksandr Dugin is advising Putin on how to appeal to the sub-informed people that leans to conservative and right-wing. But is a sheep cloth on a wolf. There is a very interesting debate between Dugin and true conservative philosopher Olavo de Carvalho here: http://debateolavodugin.blogspot.com.br/

That's nice but it doesn't explain our Right Wing's infatuation with Putin.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#647

Post by hisham_hm »

jl6 wrote: post #331
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…

Otherizing - great terminology. It is important to remember that all of history's "monsters" were human beings. Calling them monsters is pretending that it couldn't happen in your own culture. It could, and vigilance is required.

Indeed. It could, and it still can.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#648

Post by IslaDeEncanta »

varjag wrote: post #326
IslaDeEncanta wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are ignorant of the reality of Cuban society. People have been able to leave Cuba freely since 1980. Cuba is a participatory democracy, with essentially every adult being involved. Internet access was not really a priority with the USSR collapsing and the recovery from that, but it is being quickly broadened. Only those who actively attempt to undermine the Cuban democracy are imprisoned, but people are free to v…

> Only those who actively attempt to undermine the Cuban democracy are imprisoned

Did you know that if you try to overthrow the government of the United States you'll be arrested? Crazy stuff.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#649

Post by notahacker »

jgome wrote: post #569
notahacker wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, if you're willing to make arguments that sending troops 4000km to protect your own citizens from Galtieri's invading military junta was a more dictatorial act than, say, rounding up homosexuals, hippies and clergy and incarcerating them in UMAP forced labour camps - something even Castro conceded was a "great injustice" - then there's literally no reasoning with you ...

> if you're willing to make arguments that sending troops 4000km to protect your own citizens You mean, the colonialists sent by the UK government? They shouldn't have been there in the first place.

Who should? I mean, the place was literally unoccupied at the point the distant ancestors of the Falklands population first turned up, sitting off a thinly populated part of Patagonia whose indigenous population was - decades later - subject to repeated invasion and eventual colonisation by the European-descended leadership of an expansionist Argentine Republic situated thousands of miles to the north.

Nice to see you put the territorial ambitions of a literal fascist like Galtieri on a higher pedestal than the right of the people that have lived there to self governance though...

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#650

Post by CalChris »

sooheon wrote: post #638
peteretep wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that also happens in plenty of democracies.

Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden come to mind. Is the hypocrisy not palpable? Or is the world exactly as simple as America and sanctioned clique good, rest bad?

Chelsea Manning is not in prison for dissent and Edward Snowden is not in prison at all.
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