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[TempAcc]

Ye, even if he hated homosexuals to the bone and murdered tons of people simply for not fitting into his plans for Cuba (with the volunteering help of Guevara and other similar trash), he will be remembered in a good light by idiots worldwide, because genocide is ok as long as its well presented.

[ChairmanPoo]

It's undeniable that Fidel had a dark side. He had a bright one, too ( public healthcare and education for all, etc...)

I think he was a nuanced figure, and that is precisely why these kind of controversies arise: some people focus in one side or the other, and the thing is both have a point. At any rate it's obvious that he was a key figure in the 20th century, and one that leaves noone indifferent, at that.

[Sergarr]

Ye, even if he hated homosexuals to the bone and murdered tons of people simply for not fitting into his plans for Cuba (with the volunteering help of Guevara and other similar trash), he will be remembered in a good light by idiots worldwide, because genocide is ok as long as its well presented.

Yes, genocide is actually okay as long its well presented - at least for a majority of population, that is - and here's a little quiz to prove it: who was the victim of the, unarguably intentionally committed, de-facto biggest ethnic cleansing in modern era (i.e from the beginning of 20th century)?

It was Germans, after WW2. 12 million people were forcibly relocated from their ancestral homes, on which they and their families lived for centuries before, with estimated 500 000 dying on the way.

But because Germans were the "bad guys", it wasn't labelled as ethnic cleansing (just look at that Wikipedia's article name), and it is certainly not remembered as one, even though it fit the definition to a T.

Feelings do trump facts, TempAcc. You should remember this well, because this paradigm will only continue to grow stronger in the future years, what with the world-wide rebellion of conservative movements against the foundation of the modern liberal world that is currently ongoing.

[TempAcc]

By the way, the same rethoric being used right now to enlighten fidel's "good side" could also be used (and would suit much better) hitler.

"Did what felt right at the time"

"What he did wasn't exactly illegal at his time"

"His background made it inevitable"

"He had the hopes of millions backing him"

"He had a darker side but did good things also"

"He had the initiative to do something when he felt his nation was at peril"

So yea, if people want to masturbate to dead dictators, hey, I'm not one to question anyone's fetishes, lel.
What I'm saying is, regardless of what anyone might have done to his people or himself, that does absolutely nothing to justify his action. An injustice doesn't correct another injustice, and such actions are not deserving of respect.

[Kot]

Spoiler: Heh. (click to show/hide)

[TheBiggerFish]

Spoiler: Heh. (click to show/hide)

Ohhhh, wow.

[Reelya]

A lot of articles are talking about the "abject poverty" that Cuba was in due to Castro. The problem with that narrative is a little thing called "checkable facts", such as the World Bank's calculations on GDP per capita vs cost of living (which is the most accurate you're going to get on poverty).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita

Trinidad and Tobago, ~$32K
Saint Kitts and Nevis ~$24K
Antigua and Barbuda    ~$23K
Panama $22K
Cuba ~$20K
Suriname    $17K
Barbados $16K
Costa Rica $15K
Brazil $15K
World $15K
Dominican Republic $14k
Colombia $13K
Grenada $13K

So, not only is in the top 5 nations in the Caribbean for GDP per capita, they're actually above the world average in terms of cost of living vs income. They're also doing a lot better per person that "success stories" such as Brazil and (favorite of the right wing capitalists) Colombia.

Maybe the journalists are defining "abject poverty" some other way, that includes Cuba but somehow excludes a large number of countries with lower wages and higher prices, but it's hard to see how that could work.

[Kot]

Castro was a leader of Communist country with all it's pros and cons. And, in comprasion to many other Communist leaders, he did a pretty good job actually. His country still standing, unlike Soviet Russia.

[ChairmanPoo]

I've been to Cuba. And not on a guided visit, mind you, we went off the tour and walked around the less-touristical areas of Havana, had lunch in the fast-food restaurants where Cuban workers do.  All in all, it was neither as dark and poor as conservative pundits like to preach, nor as pretty as some apologetics would paint it. Many buildings were poorly conserved, and you did see poverty, though not misery (or "abject poverty"). If I had to make a comparison, it oddly reminded me of Lisbon in the late eighties.


I think I have pics around from that trip, in one of my hard-drives....

Castro was a leader of Communist country with all it's pros and cons. And, in comprasion to many other Communist leaders, he did a pretty good job actually.

Yeah, pretty much this. He was a complex character, and had both virtues and flaws.

[Reelya]

i wrote in another thread about how the coverage of the problems with Communism is heavily distorted. Sure, there were problems but they tend to be wildly different to the ones that the free-market obsessed corporate media want to tell you about.

e.g. the "long queues" in Russia in the 1970s and TV footage of shops with nothing but "plastic buckets" etc left, is meant to tell us that central planning doesn't work, as they under-produced needed things and over-produced buckets. So it gets turned into a simplistic "capitalism is the answer!" mantra when the real event was actually about different government responses to externally-caused inflation, and how they can backfire. What actually happened in Russia is this:

OPEC raised the price of oil (AKA the 1973 oil crisis), this causes the Russian currency to devalue, as at the time they were a big oil importer. this caused strong inflation. The government was worried the inflation would erode popular support, so they implemented price controls. But the currency was still devaluing, so store-bought goods became ridiculously cheap. People started hoarding goods, which causes shortages in the shops. This then lead to a black market, and people hoarded even more. Eventually, everything with black market resale value was out of stock. The "plastic buckets" etc were the only things left in shops not because they "over-produced" buckets, but because people don't hoard stuff like buckets, not matter how cheap they are.

Obviously I'm only skimming the surface of the events, but what really happened was a much more interesting and complex chain of events that teaches you something about real economic impacts of decisions, and human behavior, compared to the knee-jerk "capitalism rocks!" version. Price controls aren't a specifically "communist" thing.

[Teneb]

I think one of the main problems with Castro is that people either see the good things he did, or the bad things. Never both. He created the best health system on the planet. He also mass-executed anyone who went against him, especially when he was still consolidating his power.

It's really easy to bash him as literally Hitler, or sing his praises as you canonize him. It's way harder to take everything into account and decide how the hell you handle the memory of a person who transformed his nation from what was basically an island casino for rich american tourists into a place where you could get the best healthcare and education on the planet... while killing a whole lot of innocent and not-so-innocent people on the way.

[misko27]

It was Germans, after WW2. 12 million people were forcibly relocated from their ancestral homes, on which they and their families lived for centuries before, with estimated 500 000 dying on the way.

The problem is that your definition of Ethnic Cleansing is specific to the point of uselessness. Genocide is very much a form of ethnic cleansing, and under that definition you are very much wrong: comparing 12 million jews and Slavs killed in the Holocaust with 12 million germans relocated does not make one's heart go out to the poor germans.

Of course everything is Austria's fault (Österreich Unter Alles), but that is neither here nor there.

Spoiler: Heh. (click to show/hide)

My mother already showed this meme to me, and its punchline was a little better ("Fidel: Adios").

Yeah, Raul Castro (who's 85) has taken over as leader for the past 8 years. I read somewhere that he was going to step down at the end of his term (whenever that is) and allow elections, but nothing's a given (or guarantee) with a dictatorship.

2018 is when he pledges to step down. For what it's worth, Raul's son Alejandro Castro Espín (he's no liberal, but it's speculated he represented Cuba in the agreement with the US) seems most likely to have the biggest role in the new government, but no one knows whether it will be a dictatorship, a coalition, or something else. Even just guessing Raul's son is just that: a guess, based on what we know. Raul's daughter, Mariela Castro Espin, also seems likely to have some influence; she's a sexologist and a defender of LGBT rights, and cast one of the few no votes Cuba's rubber-stamp parliament has ever seen whne she opposed a labor law bill for insufficiently strong protections for LGBT rights. Beyond that we have only speculation.

[smjjames]

The quotes got messed up on the last one Misko, just letting you know.

[ChairmanPoo]

For what I've heard the current VP is a more likely successor...

[misko27]

The quotes got messed up on the last one Misko, just letting you know.

fixed

For what I've heard the current VP is a more likely successor...

My source indicated that he was regarded as President in waiting, yes; should have mentioned that, but couldn't remember his name. My bit about Castro's kids was only to point to people who might have a big part in the new government.