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Fidel Castro has died

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Re: Fidel Castro has died

#771

Post by laura2013 »

mrleinad wrote: post #745
laura2013 wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't let Communist propaganda blind you. The blockade did not stop Spanish hotels from settling on the island (taxed at 50% by the state), or dealings with Russia or the Chinese, or gas trades with Venezuela. Do you know where all the wealth from those dealings ended up? The top ranking officials and their families.

Yeah, it ended up feeding millions that live in the island, training thousands of doctors, and providing all that's required for all the cubans. And it's not enough to live up to the standars of the rest of the world, which could live far better with better distribution of wealth.

The Castro family can travel the world and enjoy a lavish lifestyle while most of the population lives in poverty and are not allowed to leave the country. Your naivete is cute.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#772

Post by edblarney »

IslaDeEncanta wrote: post #254
edblarney wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The western view of Castro is painted with decades of terrible propaganda." + Fidel does not allow his people to leave, with the threat of punishment. + Fidel does not allow democracy + He does not allow any real internet access + Fidel puts political dissidents in jail + Fidel's private Army own's 85% of the economy + Cuban's live in relative poverty + Only the US 'embargos' Cuba, they are free to trade with 167 ot…

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…

"Cuba is a participatory democracy, with essentially every adult being involved. "

Ha ha ... haha hah .... ha

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#773

Post by Lordarminius »

mrleinad wrote: post #404

His enemies claim he was a king without a crown, mistaking unity for unanimity. And in that his enemies were right. His enemies say if Napoleon had had a newspaper similar to the «Granma», no french would have ever heard about Waterloo. And in that his enemies were right. His enemies say he used power by talking and not listening, because he was more comfortable with echoes than with voices. And in that his enemies w…

> His enemies claim he was a king without a crown, mistaking unity for unanimity ...

Thank you for posting this.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#774

Post by Daishiman »

bad_user wrote: post #732
samirillian wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'it's dangerous not to call out evil for what it is' Really have to question this reification of "evil" per se. Evil is most immediately a religious construct. Or, in the words of Hannah Arendt, it is "banal." When did calling people evil ever lead to more justice in the world? As if George W Bush having the courage to call Iran and Iraq and Libya the "Axis of Evil" led to the US promoting peace in those countries? N…

> Evil is most immediately a religious construct. No dude, "evil" is a social and cultural construct. We are doing this as a species, as in relying on taboos and moral rules, in order to survive. It's why we don't fuck our relatives, kill our children or eat our dead. This inherited culture is how 7 billion of us live on this earth without killing each other. And we need it because frankly many of us are too stupid t…

> I don't even care what Fidel's dream was for Cuba because the end never justifies the means IMO.

Well, history is effectively written by the victors, so it will be written so that the ends will retroactively justify the means, or at the very least will be scrutinized far enough into the future that we can disengage emotionally.

If Castro's dream was to avoid Cuba from turning into a Haiti or a Honduras, it was a resounding success. If it was about turning it into a socialist utopia where people lived as if was the first world, it would probably be unrealistic in the first place but things remain to be seen.

The point is that, in fact, we do justify evil when it aligns with our policies and goals, because a lot of our well-being depends on it. The American quality of life depends a great deal on the intervention and installment of puppet regimes in countries that provide natural resources to guarantee a steady stream of supplies for manufacture; that was the basis of the Monroe Doctrine and it justifies atrocities to a level where Castro's worst was just baby play.

I actually do agree that there is evil in the repression of the country, but at the same time good is not the absence of evil either, and you can't talk about the evil without recognizing the successes of the Cuban regime. Otherwise you cannot even begin to make a single claim on the good things of the US because it has been based, to a great degree, on the control and oppression if millions of innocent people through projected global power.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#775

Post by Daishiman »

berntb wrote: post #486
bnegreve wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dictators that prosecute and murder their opponents, Sorry, this is not a discriminative feature of dictators, non-dictators also prosecute and murder their opponents. (e.g. see any government involved in a war) The difference is that you feel like they are right to do it.

You seriously argue that there is no difference between a democracy and a dictatorship. A trivial counter example -- if you causally dismissed your government as a Cuban in Cuba online, what happens? (Since Cuba has a really, really strict control of the Internet last I looked, it is of course a bit of an academic question...) Edit: This comment is really jumping up and down in votes... :-)

Well, ask people in Honduras or Nicaragua, which are "free" countries, effectively how much better they have it than Cubans. Hint: they don't, because their countries are "democratic" in theory yet they're overrun by gang violence, misery to a level that makes the worst of Cuba a paradise, and have state actors that claim democracy in theory yet will do what they need to keep their power.

If anything, the history of Cuba's attempted overruns by the US only serve to justify the regime's paranoia.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#776

Post by Daishiman »

yks wrote: post #553
finid wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dictators that prosecute and murder their opponents, like Castro did,... The US govt has done that too, so US presidents are no different from people like Castro, Franco, etc. We have just been brainwashed that our leaders are the good guys and the other guys are the bad guys.

If everything is equally bad, would you prefer to be brainwashed in North Korea or South Korea?

If North Korea were a wealthier country because of extensive natural resources, an established industrial base, and distributed the money more reasonably, then you're making an actual dilemma.

Why, instead of taking a comically bad example, you don't pick a more controverte place like Singapore, an organized state where drug consumption leads to the death penalty and you will be suppressed it dissent is attempted, yet has one of the highest standards of living in the world?

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#777

Post by Daishiman »

67726e wrote: post #718
sooheon wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Droning doesn't kill only terrorists. There's plenty of collateral deaths (what do you think the ratio is, 1:10 intended targets to unintended when explosives are involved in civilian settings?) not to mention the labeling of who is and isn't a terrorist is hardly infallible. Of course those giving the go ahead are so far removed from the consequences that it must become easier and easier to order drone strikes when…

Again, Castro went about killing or jailing all those who opposed him. My original statement was that no US president has done so.

I think that considering just how much "droning" is basically inneffective in its purpose and just ends up killing thousands, it's really not any worse morally.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#778

Post by Daishiman »

laura2013 wrote: post #771
mrleinad wrote: post #745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it ended up feeding millions that live in the island, training thousands of doctors, and providing all that's required for all the cubans. And it's not enough to live up to the standars of the rest of the world, which could live far better with better distribution of wealth.

The Castro family can travel the world and enjoy a lavish lifestyle while most of the population lives in poverty and are not allowed to leave the country. Your naivete is cute.

This applies to literally every head of state that every country's had. It's a tired line of reasoning. I hope you start demanding humility of your own leaders too.

But no, we hold Cuba to a standard that no country on Earth has achieved. Maybe except for the Germans, since Merkel is keen on doing her own groceries.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#779

Post by Daishiman »

bad_user wrote: post #728
hisham_hm wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it's mindboggling, but really there aren't. This is one thing that Westerners typically don't get about the Communist-bloc countries, or don't seem to care. Whereas in average the standard of living was always much higher in Capitalist countries, if you looked at the Eastern European Communist bloc for example, there's no extreme poverty, because the state takes care of that (and it's an extremely important th…

I was born in Romania under communism, which fell in December 1989. We didn't have children living on the streets either. But the reason for that was that giving children up for adoption was essentially illegal, the women of our country being denied contraception, having a mandate to reproduce and raise offsprings. And also foster homes were essentially prisons, some in really poor conditions; at least those that had…

But this is no different than what happens in capitalist nations, which show a constellation of different policies as well. Romania was different from Yugoslavia, which was different from Cuba or Hungary.

Re: Fidel Castro has died

#780

Post by mzw_mzw »

sctb wrote: post #720
mzw_mzw wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And of course the Communist economic system -- the one that has led to immiseration and collapse everywhere it has been tried, all over the world -- has nothing to do with this. Must be the embargo!

Hacker News is not the place for fighting political battles, which this account has been doing much of. We have to ban accounts that post primarily this way, so please stop.

Fair enough. Can I at least suggest, though, that if you don't want political fights going on at HN it would be a good idea to swiftly remove "stories" such as this one that are purely political and are guaranteed to bring out every ax-grinder on the Internet in the comments?
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