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Fidel Castro has died

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Re: Fidel Castro has died

#141

Post by akubera »

djsumdog wrote: post #52
mememachine wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of the incredible harm to humanity done at the hands of communists over just the past 100 years alone

When you buy a beer for your friends at a bar and maybe next week they buy a round, that's communism. Communism is a central part of western society. China, the USSA and Cuba were never communism. They varied between heavy socialism (also a pinical of all high income countries: roads, trains, parks, police, fire, airports) and fascism. A lot of people who just go on about communists, today, in 2016, seemed to have no…

I'd recommend reading the communist manifesto to understand the issue better.

Buying beer and sharing with friends week after week is a good example of capitalism, as the bar owner is profiting so much from you and your friends buying all this beer.

Communism (of the Marxist variety) would be you and your friends being allocated the same amount of beer by the state, which owns the beer (along with all goods), and deals out the same amount of beer to everyone, regardless of what they do (i.e. what would have corresponded to their class).

I suppose there is another kind of communism where you and your friends live on a commune and some grow hops and some grow barley and some are in charge of fermentation vats and all just relax and drink their beer after a long day. That is, until the tax man cometh...

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#142

Post by thesimpsons1022 »

friendlygrammar wrote: post #62
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible to comment civilly on difficult topics. It just requires that you choose to. HN is a place to gratify one's intellectual curiosity. Part of the fabric of the community is that we engage in a civil, substantive way. There are various topics that don't always make that easy, but it's important that we try.

I just have to ask, at what point does praise becomes uncivil? Is it when you praise Fidel who has stifled freedom of speech and condemned his people to a life of economic stagnation? What about Chavez who has condemned his people to starvation? Or is it praising Kim Jong Un? Or is it praising Hitler? Or is it praising Stalin? Or is it praising the KKK? There is only 1 ideology responsible for killing more than 100 m…

if your so tired of silicon valley you're free to leave. kinda sad how people just hear the word "communism" and can't think logically and start frothing at the mouth with anger and hate.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#143

Post by frozenport »

gragas wrote: post #117
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…

>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. That's a logical fallacy. You can't say that Castro's crimes against humanity are okay because the US has committed worse o…

Further they received significant aid from the USSR.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#144

Post by gragas »

chinhodado wrote: post #140
gragas wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. That's a logical fallacy. You can't say that Castro's crimes against humanity are okay because the US has committed worse o…

> Only a US embargo. That leaves more than 80% of the rest of the world GDP to interact with. That's a naive view. Do you really think the rest of the world can just straight up ignore the US's embargo and play nice with Cuba, while still staying on good terms with the US?

I suppose I agree. The US' embargo was probably quite tough on Cuba. But I don't think the state of the economy in Cuba can be entirely pinned on the embargo.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#145

Post by tekni5 »

bbcbasic wrote: post #110
djsumdog wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you buy a beer for your friends at a bar and maybe next week they buy a round, that's communism. Communism is a central part of western society. China, the USSA and Cuba were never communism. They varied between heavy socialism (also a pinical of all high income countries: roads, trains, parks, police, fire, airports) and fascism. A lot of people who just go on about communists, today, in 2016, seemed to have no…

That sounds more like socialism from what I understand. Communism is more like you and your friends work on a farm, live off what you produce, all do some work, but you are not paid different or receive more or less food/accommodation/luxuries than each other. You are all equal. Now if one of you gets ill, or decides to slack off then that person will still be supported. If everyone slacks off then the society is f'd…

It's more like everything is owned by society, people do what they can based on their ability & all their needs are met.

The initial concept is very theoretical, there are many gaps left.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#146

Post by [deleted] »

friendlygrammar wrote: post #132
coldtea wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This might be easy for you to comment on when you didn't lose your entire life because of this man but people have. Tons of people have lost their entire life because of US actions. And in places the US had no role to be at all, to boot. It's beyond double standards...

Clearly double standards. It's not as if Cuba has been ruled by a strongman and all decisions of the state can be solely attributed to him while the US is ruled by a system where attribution of fault is significantly less clear.

[deleted]

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#147

Post by justicezyx »

edblarney wrote: post #98
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…

+ "It's in control of the state, " - actually, it's in control of the Army directly. + The US sprayed 'agent orange' on trees near their firebases, and the vast majority of the 'victims' were American soldiers, not Vietnamese. Obviously, they didn't know what it would do. + The 'embargo' is 100% the fault of Fidel. He put nuclear weapons 40 miles away from florida, from those who backed by the credible threat of usin…

Could you add references? Not accusing any credibility, I'd just want to learn more details.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#148

Post by chinhodado »

edblarney wrote: post #98
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…

+ "It's in control of the state, " - actually, it's in control of the Army directly. + The US sprayed 'agent orange' on trees near their firebases, and the vast majority of the 'victims' were American soldiers, not Vietnamese. Obviously, they didn't know what it would do. + The 'embargo' is 100% the fault of Fidel. He put nuclear weapons 40 miles away from florida, from those who backed by the credible threat of usin…

> the vast majority of the 'victims' were American soldiers, not Vietnamese.

That's straight up false. Between 3-4 millions Vietnamese suffered from it[1], and its devastating effects are still very relevant today. Concerning US soldiers, "By April 1993, the Department of Veterans Affairs had compensated only 486 victims, although it had received disability claims from 39,419 soldiers who had been exposed to Agent Orange while serving in Vietnam."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange#Effects_on_the_Vi...

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#149

Post by MarkMc »

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 the 1960's. Half of US voters think life was better then than now [3]. Really? To me, there's no level of job security that could possibly compensate for such a high chance of nuclear catastrophe.

[1] Reported in https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00RKO6MS8/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...

[2] As described by Robert McNamara in 'The Fog of War'

[3] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/20/6-charts-tha...

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#150

Post by smallnamespace »

ekianjo wrote: post #96
CalChris wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per capita GDP for Cuba is $6,789 Mexico $9,909 Guatamala $3,666 Honduras $2,495 I'd say Cuba is in the mix GDP-wise. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD

> Per capita GDP for Cuba is $6,051.22 That does not mean anything if the wealth is not well distributed (which is the case when elites keep the wealth and everyone else is poor).

Actual communism tends to keep wealth fairly uniform.

Cuba's Gini coefficient is fairly low, at around 0.38 in 2000 [1], although the data quality might be poor. Most of Latin America is substantially less equal. The US's was around 0.4-0.45 during that time frame [2].

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-reform-inequality-idU...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...

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