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Fidel Castro has died

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Re: Fidel Castro has died

#661

Post by hisham_hm »

formula1 wrote: post #492
6t6t6t6 wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are actually descendants of the people who had a good life under the dictatorship of Batista. Cuban Revolution was not for a wimp. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgencio_Batista

Not sure your point. The claims here indicate that most plantations were american owned and that likely frustrated cubans to the point a revolution was intreresting. But immigration from cuba isnt just 1 time. There has been a consistant flood of migrants that risk their lives to escape. Back in the 90's there was the Emilio Gonzolez contreversey where the mom died to get her son to the US.

In every colonial system, the resources were owned by the foreign power, but the management of these resources were made by a privileged class of locals which constituted a local elite. This elite lives a very comfortable life, gives a "local face" to the regime for the population, but ultimately answers to the foreign power who retains the bulk of the profits sent overseas.

It's important to note that even if this elite is the "1%" of the country, this 1% amounts to a significant number of people.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#662

Post by anigbrowl »

cmbailey wrote: post #526
k-mcgrady wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "On the contrary, it's dangerous not to call out evil for what it is." Judging on the comments on this thread most people (I'm not specifically referring to you) are making statements based on what they've heard, not by what they've personally researched, and unfortunately a lot of that information is biased or propaganda. I'm not coming down one way or the other but something I found very interesting was comparin…

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…

You can apply this analysis to anything. The US bills itself as the 'land of the free' while imprisoning more people than any other country, frequently in deplorable conditions by the standards of what we know about human psychology, penal theory and so on. How exactly are you weighting the good and bad factors here? How do you criticize the economic policies that led to doctors being desperately short of supplies without mentioning the bizarre asymmetry of US sanctions on a tiny island with few economic resources of its own? I was not a fan of Castro but to be honest I don't think that Americans have much standing to criticize him given the frequently atrocious nature of their own country.

I have to agree with the poster above in observing that much of the criticism here is nothing more than the regurgitation of propaganda that people have been fed since birth, and I question the ability of many posters here to distinguish between derived and received opinions on this topic.

This is why I ask how you're weighting the good and bad factors. No doubt your feelings are sincerely held, but since we're not privy to your personal moral calculus, how else can we evaluate it, or make meaningful comparisons with prior alternatives? This might seem academic, but it matters. I would likely have done quite badly as an individual in Castro's Cuba and would probably have been in a hurry to leave; on the other hand I can't but be aware of the dreadful conditions there that led to the overthrow of the Batista government in the first place, nor of the US' intransigence in refusing to tolerate a neighboring country following a path of political self-determination on purely ideological grounds, and putting it under extreme economic pressure for doing so. To use a Christian metaphor, don't be in such a hurry to point out the mote in your neighbor's eye that you miss the beam in your own.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#663

Post by tszyn »

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?

The US had had ballistic missiles (Redstone) in European airbases since 1958 -- Kennedy simply continued the existing policy of the US. Kennedy's poor judgment, arguably, consisted in aggressively defending the "rule" that it is acceptable for the US to have nuclear missiles near the Soviet border, but it is not acceptable for the USSR to have nuclear missiles near the US border. While JFK was driven by the need to appear tough, one has to give him credit for not following the advice of the "hawks" (Curtis LeMay) who advocated a preemptive invasion of Cuba, a move that would have almost certainly led to a nuclear exchange, given that the USSR had already placed (unbeknownst to the US intelligence) tactical nuclear weapons in Cuba.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#664

Post by esrauch »

edblarney wrote: post #364
ageofwant wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be a logical fallacy if coldtea actually made that claim. He did not. He simply pointed out that edblamey moral high ground is a fallacy in itself, when so many of those Western nations stand accused of worse.

Western nations have not 'done worse' in modern times. The logical fallacy I think is yours for trying to compare Cuba to the USA in a tit-for-tat comparison of misrepresented facts and issues. Dropping a nuclear bomb seems 'bad' until you put it in the context of what the Japanese were doing, and the costs otherwise. The North Vietnamese that the Americans & South Vietnamese were fighting against were 10x worse than…

> the casualties were mostly American

It isn't really clear if this is true, there is a clear bias of studies to focus on the effect on American veterans, but there are 1-4 million Vietnamese affected depending on what non-American source you believe.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#665

Post by dublinben »

rgbrenner wrote: post #659
sspiff wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're forgetting some details there. In the 1920s, Cuba was a big producer of sugar, and their largest trading partner was the US. US companies owned 60% of the sugar production. But during the great depression, the US introduced tariffs on a wide range of goods (from everywhere), and the Cuban sugar industry collapsed. Then when Fidel came to power one of the things he promised was to reduce the reliance on US trad…

From your description, it actually sounds like the US and its tariffs were responsible for the collapse of the Cuban economy. That happened decades before Castro came into power.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#666

Post by 1_2__3 »

rgbrenner wrote: post #659
sspiff wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're forgetting some details there. In the 1920s, Cuba was a big producer of sugar, and their largest trading partner was the US. US companies owned 60% of the sugar production. But during the great depression, the US introduced tariffs on a wide range of goods (from everywhere), and the Cuban sugar industry collapsed. Then when Fidel came to power one of the things he promised was to reduce the reliance on US trad…

You just said the US caused the sugar trade to collapse and then said Castro destroyed trade himself. Are you referring to trade besides sugar? Why WOULDNT Cuba decide (realize) that they need to protect themselves from the US?

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#667

Post by [deleted] »

rgbrenner wrote: post #659
sspiff wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're forgetting some details there. In the 1920s, Cuba was a big producer of sugar, and their largest trading partner was the US. US companies owned 60% of the sugar production. But during the great depression, the US introduced tariffs on a wide range of goods (from everywhere), and the Cuban sugar industry collapsed. Then when Fidel came to power one of the things he promised was to reduce the reliance on US trad…

[deleted]

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#668

Post by hisham_hm »

Oletros wrote: post #487
sebastianconcpt wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hitler was NOT right-wing, please! His party was national socialist workers party. He learned from the best, his friend Stalin. Then they do what communists do best betray themselves and kill adversaries. Nobody, nobody come even close to kill even a fraction of the number of communists killed by other communists http://louderwithcrowder.com/myth-busted-actually-yes-hitler... So no, nobody is coming for you in a free…

> So no, nobody is coming for you in a free society that is not marxist Then we can tell the people disappeared in militar dictatorships in the Latin countries in the 50s-70s than they were prosecuted by marxist governments. School of the Americas was marxist, was not?

Why was this downvoted? It is historically accurate. The US-sponsored, anti-communist Latin American dictatorships killed and tortured a huge amount of people.

Honest question: is this taught in World History classes in American schools?

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#669

Post by rgbrenner »

dublinben wrote: post #665
rgbrenner wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting some details there. In the 1920s, Cuba was a big producer of sugar, and their largest trading partner was the US. US companies owned 60% of the sugar production. But during the great depression, the US introduced tariffs on a wide range of goods (from everywhere), and the Cuban sugar industry collapsed. Then when Fidel came to power one of the things he promised was to reduce the reliance on US trad…

From your description, it actually sounds like the US and its tariffs were responsible for the collapse of the Cuban economy. That happened decades before Castro came into power.

The tariffs were not Cuba specific. They were part of the US withdraw from the world during that period. Cuba was affected, as were many countries. There's a reason it's called the Great Depression.

Keep in mind the Great Depression was worldwide, not just the US. It affected many countries, including those who did not trade with the US.

And yes, this happened decades before.. but it was one of the reasons Fidel came to power. In other words, there was already a strong anti-US sentiment in Cuba because of this and the forced military leases (which date back to the 1800s).

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#670

Post by mimimimi »

sctb wrote: post #601
mimimimi wrote: post #442

Lots of people followed Fidel probably for similar reasons they followed Trump, their willingness to be easily lied to. Fidel and Trump, same stuff.

This account has been posting primarily political comments, in related and unrelated threads alike. This is an abuse of the site, so we have to ban the account. We're happy to unban accounts if you email us at hn@ycombinator.com and we believe you'll post civilly and substantively in the future. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13042192 and marked it off-topic.

Bah. I'll just create another one. [Evil laugh...] Through a different ip. You Trump supporter you.

Frankly you are just incentivising to use my programing skills for...[is that good or evil? No sure anymore] [Evil Maniacal laugh (Even my cat is looking at me funny now)]

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