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Fidel Castro has died

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Re: Fidel Castro has died

#161

Post by hal9000xp »

usaphp wrote: post #139
hal9000xp wrote: post #106

As a Russian, who was born in USSR, I regret that CIA has failed to assassinate him 50 years ago. May be Cuba would be liberated from communist/socialist disease. Look at countries who declared a war against free markets - Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea. They are absolutely pathetic.

Look at counties that did not declare war against free markets. Look at mexico, look at Haiti, or some other Caribbean countries, most of them are doing much worse than Cuba. Communism/socialism disease did not harm China that much ether. Embargo is what hurt Cuba

Haiti on the bottom of economy freedom rating [1] and corruption rating [2].

Haiti has huge anti-free market red tape and rampant corruption.

It means that Haiti did declare a war against free markets.

Free market economy is possible only in country with strong property rights, rule of law with no corruption, and no red tape. All countries which adopted these principles are rich and have very high standard of living.

I think 99.999% of folks who like communism/socialism don't understand what free market capitalism IS.

[1] http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking

[2] http://www.transparency.org/cpi2015#results-table

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#162

Post by hawkice »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #121

Has there been a single anti-American dictator who has actually improved the lives of their people? It seems the amount of anti-American rhetoric is directly correlated with how much they screw their country over.

Some of that is just because being an "anti-American dictator" entails not just disagreeing with America but making America-hate a topic you never shut up about. China has done pretty well and disagreed with America on lots of policy issues -- they just don't have the monomania that e.g. North Korea has.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#163

Post by runesoerensen »

elcapitan wrote: post #120
justicezyx wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good joke, but unfortunately, is not an accurate description of communism. As the parent comment suggests, there were no real communism nation on earth ever. """ In political and social sciences, communism (from Latin communis, "common, universal")[1][2] is a social, political, and economic ideology and movement whose ultimate goal is the establishment of the communist society, which is a socioeconomic orde…

That's like saying that there are no capitalist societies by claiming that capitalism is some higher, perfect ideal which has just not been implemented yet perfectly. Or calling the outcome of christian rule in the middle ages "not really christian" by comparing it to a biblical description of heaven. If there are people who call themselves communists and they create societies, then "communism" should be judged on th…

> If there are people who call themselves communists and they create societies, then "communism" should be judged on that.

That's not how it works; some terrorists may call themselves muslims and even form "Islamic" societies, but I hope you'll agree that muslims and Islam shouldn't be judged on their actions. The same goes for Christianity.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#164

Post by kuschku »

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…

> He put nuclear weapons 40 miles away from florida

And the US isn’t putting nukes into NATO states? Italy and Turkey already have had some before Cuba got some, so what’s next? Estonia?

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#165

Post by slau »

My aunt knew him pretty well. She runs a few hotels or resorts in Cuba (I'm quite estranged from that part of the family, so don't have many details), and had to cook for/host him on a regular basis.

I remember stories about how he, or Raul for that matter, would request to have sushi, even though she didn't have access to salmon, tuna nor eel. Even sushi rice was impossible to get by. The classic seaweed another hard to find item. These kind of crazy requests would usually come in a handful of hours, or less, before said meal was due to happen. Her job for many years was to pass off whatever she had access to as the real deal. Call it "tantrum trompe l'œil", if you will.

I remember being surprised when she said it was probably the most fulfilling position to be in as a chef, because of how challenging it was.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#166

Post by raldi »

peterkelly wrote: post #19

Excerpt from the article on CNN (probably edited by the time you read this): http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/26/americas/fidel-castro-obit... "One Castro or another has ruled Cuba over a period that spans seven decades and 11 U.S. presidents. Fidel Castro outlived six of those presidents,[[[NOTE: change to seven if George H.W. Bush dies before Castro]]] including Cold War warriors John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Ro…

The software they use to draft these should be given support for a special tag that it will refuse to publish to prod an article containing.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#167

Post by djsumdog »

gragas wrote: post #53
djsumdog wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The western view of Castro is painted with decades of terrible propaganda. The Cuban people have been placed in their situation, not primarily by the Soviets or Castro, but by the American Hegemony and its unending empire across the globe. Many central and south American heads of state have tried to stand up to that empire, and many have died in plane crashes. Hugh Chavez, demonized in American media, put pieces of t…

They've been isolated for like half a century; they've had more than enough time to implement whatever form of government they want. It's clear that Castro's communism doesn't work. The US didn't cause this. They tried to stop it.

They are less isolated than you think:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTTno8D-b2E

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#168

Post by matt4077 »

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).

Life expectancy:

    USA:  78.74 years
    Cuba: 79.07 years
They must have done something right.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#169

Post by ant6n »

mememachine wrote: post #42
ant6n wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it 'unforgivable' to be communist?

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

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

You're talking about dictatorships that called themselves communist. Some were economically communist, but the governance was never as Marx intended.

Marx envisioned a system of 'councils' that would exist in many aspects of society (e.g. for each factory), each would send a representative to a higher level council. This is what 'soviet' refers to. This system was never really implemented.

Economic system and governance are not the same thing. It's conceivable to implement communism using a proper 'soviet' (council) system, or maybe even using a parliamentary democracy. I don't quite believe this would work that well, but calling the belief itself 'unforgivable' is ...simplistic.

Especially considering that many people who believe in communism do so out of a sense of idealism that is much less selfish than capialists; in some sense communist beliefs stem from a sense of empathy that is much more compatible with evangelical values rather than capitalism.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#170

Post by [deleted] »

bobwaycott wrote: post #160
friendlygrammar wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it's a far cry from a scientific fact, which it seems like not just this comment, but a lot of us in the west (even mainstream academic economics) sell the idea as. Centrally planning an economy is an NP complete problem. Marxism is dumb and if any would be socialist on this forum can explain to me how we as a society can retain the benefits yielded by capitalism without the use of capital and how socialism of such…

You seem to have a very wrong idea of what Marxism is, means, and argues. You also seem to have a deep-seated and emotional hatred for it. That's all well and good, but perhaps you should lay off discussing it. You keep getting all worked up here, which you perhaps would be able to avoid if you had a better understanding of what Marxism is, what it means, what it argues, what it predicts. You're continuing to behave…

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