hahaha
Cuban revolution ended hunger, and brought education to the Cuban People.
Land was owned by a few, Castro gave the chance to workers of the rural areas to own the fields!
Cuba exports doctors, vaccinations and hope to other african/latin american nations.
Fidel set example! Fidel VIVE!! Hasta la victoria!
MAMBAWAMBA wrote:
hahaha
Cuban revolution ended hunger, and brought education to the Cuban People.
Land was owned by a few, Castro gave the chance to workers of the rural areas to own the fields!
Cuba exports doctors, vaccinations and hope to other african/latin american nations.
Fidel set example! Fidel VIVE!! Hasta la victoria!
-.000001/10
Viva la Revolucion! wrote:
What a great loss.
Castro changed Cuba and the world for the better.
The Southern African region is especially indebted to Fidel Castro for his major role in defeating the CIA and Mossad.
I missed a few history lessons participating in duck and cover drills during the Cuban Missile Crisis, so I was wondering if you would please me tell how Castro changed Cuba and the world for the better.
Please give credit to whom you cut and pasted that list from, please.
Ask Cubans how they feel about the oppressive regime of the Castro Brothers before you laud a despot. SMDH
Why do libtaahhds celebrate Che Guevara? I forget.
Go away, you pinko wrote:
Murder Dubs wrote:This isn't a response to what I wrote. You are literally telling me to tell dispossessed Cuban-Americans that the American gov't has supported numerous dictators in Latin America around the world. You are telling me to tell them that at the same time they were doing this, they placed an embargo against Cuba and tried to kill Castro. You are telling me to tell them that Castro instituted a literacy campaign, universal health care and a pretty good education system. You're telling me to tell them that Castro was a dictator who kept the trains running on time.
All these are facts, so, sure, I'll tell them. In fact, they've told me this. They'll tell you this. I've lived in Cuba and South Florida. I've had these conversations countless times.
Your point is, exactly?
You are just a another propaganda believing libtaaaard.
ALL celebration, NO mourning for this oxygen thief who took over land, riches, families, memories by force, torture and imprisonment. Injustice and oppression will be his memory.
Some facts for you to ponder:
â—He turned Cuba into a colony of the Soviet Union and nearly caused a nuclear holocaust.
â—He sponsored terrorism wherever he could and allied himself with many of the worst dictators on earth.
â—He was responsible for so many thousands of executions and disappearances in Cuba that a precise number is hard to reckon.
â—He brooked no dissent and built concentration camps and prisons at an unprecedented rate, filling them to capacity, incarcerating a higher percentage of his own people than most other modern dictators, including Stalin.
â—He condoned and encouraged torture and extrajudicial killings.
â—He forced nearly 20 percent of his people into exile, and prompted thousands to meet their deaths at sea, unseen and uncounted, while fleeing from him in crude vessels.
â—He claimed all property for himself and his henchmen, strangled food production and impoverished the vast majority of his people.
â—He outlawed private enterprise and labor unions, wiped out Cuba’s large middle class and turned Cubans into slaves of the state.
â—He persecuted gay people and tried to eradicate religion.
â—He censored all means of expression and communication.
â—He established a fraudulent school system that provided indoctrination rather than education, and created a two-tier health-care system, with inferior medical care for the majority of Cubans and superior care for himself and his oligarchy, and then claimed that all his repressive measures were absolutely necessary to ensure the survival of these two ostensibly “free†social welfare projects.
â—He turned Cuba into a labyrinth of ruins and established an apartheid society in which millions of foreign visitors enjoyed rights and privileges forbidden to his people.
â—He never apologized for any of his crimes and never stood trial for them.
You seem unable to grasp that mine is not an either/or, black/white, yes/no argument. I'm not arguing that Castro was a great supreme ruler, or whatever straw man you have in your head. Also, as someone else noted, I highly suspect that you've copied and pasted your list from some South Florida anti-Castro propaganda sheet. Anyway, I'll waste my time with a few of your points:
1- He did make Cuba a "colony" of USSR, true. He did not "almost cause" a nuclear holocaust. The culprits there would be, primarily, the USSR and, second, USA.
2- Castro did sponsor several terrorist operations and did ally himself with dictators. In this thread, I have provided a list of some of the dictators the U.S. has allied with in the same period of time. It's just as bad as whatever list you can make for Castro.
3- Why is it that we have fairly precise numbers of deaths for far more murderous regimes like the Khmer Rouge, Stalinist Russia, the Nazis, Assad, etc., but all we have with Cuba are these wildly divergent figures? Cuba is NOT more secretive than the USSR.
4- Unfortunately, the USA currently imprisons (and has built more prisons) more people than any country in the history of the world. That said, Castro's human rights abuses against Cuban political dissidents are not to be discounted. They are the major black mark against his regime.
5- True. Again, these are hardly practices limited to Castro's Cuba. What is President-elect Trump's position on torture and extrajudicial killing?
6- Your figures are probably off, by a lot. But, see #4.
7- Your language twists the actual system of a centrally planned economy. While I think that Castro's communism was economically disastrous, your language intentionally distorts it.
8- Most of this is true, except the part about the middle class. Cuba did not have a "large middle class" by our standards. They had quite a planter class, though, much like the American South.
9- I won't claim knowledge of things I don't know about. You should try that some time.
10- By the time, I came to Cuba this was not true. There remain some restrictions on free speech and definitely major restrictions on freedom of the press.
11- This just isn't true. I have numerous friends, Cubans on the island, immigrants in other countries, and even defectors who will tell you that this assertion is total BS.
12- Cuba was pretty terrible before Castro took power. They just had a couple levels of upper class Cubans who were quite wealthy and privileged, who Castro ran out of the country when he socialized everything. The bit about an "apartheid society" is rich: Only you political con-servatives can say this type of stuff with a straight face. Cuba was literally segregated Jim Crow-style in all aspects of daily life prior to Castro. That was apartheid. That said, it is true that tourists have many privileges that average Cubans do not. You've probably never been a poor black kid in a big urban metropolis in America. Try getting stopped and frisked and run out of stores due to your race every time you go downtown. That was the kind of culture I grew up in, in good old America. If you had my experience, you'd know you don't need to live in Cuba to experience this "tourist apartheid."
13- Fair enough. Maybe if the U.S. had brought Samoza, Pinochet, the Duvaliers, Trujillo, etc. to justice instead of making them the most powerful men in the Caribbean while they terrorized their people, they would have had the moral high ground to rally the people of the region against Castro. But they didn't.
My aunt penned a great piece on FB not to forget his brutality - his killing of thousands (including one of my aunts); the dismemberment and mutilation of many; the taking of private property and imprisonment (my grandfather for 16 years); the immersion into poverty.
Do not forget he was an evil man, led astray.
What's with your inability to respond specifically to what I've written? This is what I did, responding specifically to the specific points you've made. You have repeatedly failed to extend me the same courtesy. You just make broad claims about why Castro is terrible without ever responding to anything that I've specifically written. Due to your unwillingness to argue in the specific, I'm going to end my participation in this exchange.
Murder Dubs wrote:
As for colonialism: Of course it worked better in certain situations than others. But if you are trying to argue that it is not responsible for great amounts of evil, you can't really pick and choose so selectively. The colonialism practiced in the Belgian Congo under King Leopold, the French colonization of Haiti, the colonization of Jamaica; the abuses committed in these and many, many other instances boggle the mind. If the death toll is lower than under Communist regimes, it is only because the weaponry during those pre-20th century epochs was less lethal.
Evil has been done uncountable times by predatory nations to other peoples. King Leopold is excellent as an example of the worst predations of mankind. Murderers like that should be exposed and condemned in the strongest ways possible, even though the remote nature of the African jungle made it easier to hide the barbarity that brought him so much wealth. The King extracted large amounts of ivory and rubber from the Congo by setting up a system that made his colony a vast slave camp as it killed millions (maybe 10 million.) The crimes in the Congo are not well known, but are stunning in their vastness and sheer brutality.
Very similar to the soul crushing behemoth of communism. It's hidden for different reasons, usually willful blindness by the Left. But the actual mechanism of the theft through Communist slavery was, in its own way, just as brutal.
In Russia, Stalin set up a vast apparatus of slave labor camps that destroyed multiple tens of millions of people while giving the Soviet leaders billions of dollars in commodities, especially gold from Kolyma. The system wasn't fully dismantled until almost the end of the Soviet era. The Cuban communist elite was given a portion of those proceeds. The Castros used them to put a boot in the face of the Cuban people as they attempted to enslave other peoples throughout the world through the armed violent spread of communism.
So if YOU want to be consistent, condemn in the strongest terms the evil of men like Stalin, Castro, Lenin, Mao, the Kims, Pol Pot, etc.
True justice would see them all pass from our world the way of the Ceausescus.
So who's the leader of Cuba now, Teofilo Stevenson or Alberto Juantorena?
http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/latin/7588833/gloria-estefan-reacts-to-fidel-castro-death-cubahttp://variety.com/2016/film/news/fidel-castro-dead-andy-garcia-cuba-1201927199/The real story wrote:
Ask Cubans how they feel about the oppressive regime of the Castro Brothers before you laud a despot. SMDH
Murder Dubs wrote:
You've probably never been a poor black kid in a big urban metropolis in America. Try getting stopped and frisked and run out of stores due to your race every time you go downtown. That was the kind of culture I grew up in, in good old America. If you had my experience, you'd know you don't need to live in Cuba to experience this "tourist apartheid."
Which city, Dubs, and how old are you?
Fat Boy, Soros and Mugabe Next wrote:
Murder Dubs wrote:As for colonialism: Of course it worked better in certain situations than others. But if you are trying to argue that it is not responsible for great amounts of evil, you can't really pick and choose so selectively. The colonialism practiced in the Belgian Congo under King Leopold, the French colonization of Haiti, the colonization of Jamaica; the abuses committed in these and many, many other instances boggle the mind. If the death toll is lower than under Communist regimes, it is only because the weaponry during those pre-20th century epochs was less lethal.
Evil has been done uncountable times by predatory nations to other peoples. King Leopold is excellent as an example of the worst predations of mankind. Murderers like that should be exposed and condemned in the strongest ways possible, even though the remote nature of the African jungle made it easier to hide the barbarity that brought him so much wealth. The King extracted large amounts of ivory and rubber from the Congo by setting up a system that made his colony a vast slave camp as it killed millions (maybe 10 million.) The crimes in the Congo are not well known, but are stunning in their vastness and sheer brutality.
Very similar to the soul crushing behemoth of communism. It's hidden for different reasons, usually willful blindness by the Left. But the actual mechanism of the theft through Communist slavery was, in its own way, just as brutal.
In Russia, Stalin set up a vast apparatus of slave labor camps that destroyed multiple tens of millions of people while giving the Soviet leaders billions of dollars in commodities, especially gold from Kolyma. The system wasn't fully dismantled until almost the end of the Soviet era. The Cuban communist elite was given a portion of those proceeds. The Castros used them to put a boot in the face of the Cuban people as they attempted to enslave other peoples throughout the world through the armed violent spread of communism.
So if YOU want to be consistent, condemn in the strongest terms the evil of men like Stalin, Castro, Lenin, Mao, the Kims, Pol Pot, etc.
True justice would see them all pass from our world the way of the Ceausescus.
I had to scan it more than read it in detail; my apologies, kinda busy. But upon my first glance, your post is fair-minded and well-informed by LRC standards.
"So if YOU want to be consistent, condemn in the strongest terms the evil of men like Stalin, Castro, Lenin, Mao, the Kims, Pol Pot, etc."
Fair point. I really don't think Castro is in the same ballpark as those others, but I do know him to be a dictator, a pretty brutal one. And I do feel he should have been unseated for the good of the Cuban people decades ago.
Your post is fair-minded and well-informed. Not just by LRC standards. But the fact that you've posted it to LRC is unique considering the usual level of discourse on this site.
And, for the record, I do condemn the butchery that various leftist dictators, Mao, Pol Pot, etc., have committed just as much as the Leopolds and right-wing butchers. Personally, I feel that raw power is more important to such men than is political ideology. At a certain point, genocide is just genocide, evil is evil. One cannot blame communism or capitalism or white supremacy or leftist resentment for the murder of millions. Ideological extremes play a part, but so does evil.
Fat Boy, Soros and Mugabe Next wrote:
Murder Dubs wrote:As for colonialism: Of course it worked better in certain situations than others. But if you are trying to argue that it is not responsible for great amounts of evil, you can't really pick and choose so selectively. The colonialism practiced in the Belgian Congo under King Leopold, the French colonization of Haiti, the colonization of Jamaica; the abuses committed in these and many, many other instances boggle the mind. If the death toll is lower than under Communist regimes, it is only because the weaponry during those pre-20th century epochs was less lethal.
Evil has been done uncountable times by predatory nations to other peoples. King Leopold is excellent as an example of the worst predations of mankind. Murderers like that should be exposed and condemned in the strongest ways possible, even though the remote nature of the African jungle made it easier to hide the barbarity that brought him so much wealth. The King extracted large amounts of ivory and rubber from the Congo by setting up a system that made his colony a vast slave camp as it killed millions (maybe 10 million.) The crimes in the Congo are not well known, but are stunning in their vastness and sheer brutality.
Very similar to the soul crushing behemoth of communism. It's hidden for different reasons, usually willful blindness by the Left. But the actual mechanism of the theft through Communist slavery was, in its own way, just as brutal.
In Russia, Stalin set up a vast apparatus of slave labor camps that destroyed multiple tens of millions of people while giving the Soviet leaders billions of dollars in commodities, especially gold from Kolyma. The system wasn't fully dismantled until almost the end of the Soviet era. The Cuban communist elite was given a portion of those proceeds. The Castros used them to put a boot in the face of the Cuban people as they attempted to enslave other peoples throughout the world through the armed violent spread of communism.
So if YOU want to be consistent, condemn in the strongest terms the evil of men like Stalin, Castro, Lenin, Mao, the Kims, Pol Pot, etc.
True justice would see them all pass from our world the way of the Ceausescus.
Excellent points. I agree with the vast majority of this post. It's refreshing to hold a smart, rigorous, fair, hard-nosed discussion with someone who is capable of considering serious arguments and is willing to hold me to the same tough ethical standards I hold him/her to.
Oakland. LA. I'm 35.
Rot in hell you b@stard. Che will have stunk up hell real nice for you.
I'm a non-Cuban Latino, former Miami resident and also celebrating the death of scum Castro. It is a great day for South FL and the for American Cubans.
The main reason people hate Castro and Guevara is because they wish they had the cojones(kahunas to letsrun) to do what those guys did.
Jealousy.