Rest in Power Fidel Castro

[clangers]

 

A leader who valued people's health and education above the ability of corporations to flog their toxic shite.

 

In a sane world, that wouldn't mark him out as anything special.

Not too hot on democracy. freedom of speech or not repressing his own population. Funny what you blind lefties will put up with comrade?

[JohnnyH]

Imagine wanting to solve actual problems around the world rather than working to market junk food and toys to kids.

 

A great thing to do, but you can't just refer to that while ignoring how many of the Cuban people were left to live in a squalor we can't even imagine.

 

Theresa May could turn around tomorrow and declare she was putting virtually all monies into free education and proper health care for all, but you can bet your life after 1 week of people living with no electricity, no clean running water, no heating, etc, that many wouldnt see it as the utopia being painted for very long.

[Hades]

A great thing to do, but you can't just refer to that while ignoring how many of the Cuban people were left to live in a squalor we can't even imagine.

 

Theresa May could turn around tomorrow and declare she was putting virtually all monies into free education and proper health care for all, but you can bet your life after 1 week of people living with no electricity, no clean running water, no heating, etc, that many wouldnt see it as the utopia being painted for very long.

 

Has nothing to do with 50 years of sanctions and resisting interference, oh no. 

[jimmycase]

Would be interesting to have a one to one conversation with some of these people. A good age and long life.

[magicrat]

You could have got very longs odds back in the fifties on him dying of old age in 2016.

[Anubis]

Decried apartheid. Good and bad in everyone.

 

[JohnnyH]

Has nothing to do with 50 years of sanctions and resisting interference, oh no.

 

Ok. Castro was great.

[JohnnyH]

Over 640 assassination attempts, but even he couldn't escape 2016.

[Jairzinho]

Great healthcare, people living in poverty, brutal dictator.

 

Thank fuck no-one anywhere else lives in poverty.

[Juniper]

The majority of Cubans over there love and adored him. I visited the place in the summer.

 

He overthrew a worse (US backed I might add) Batista government that was crooked to the core and gave the people more rights and privileges than they had before.

 

A lot of tit for tat with the American government but some of the controversial things he did were for a reason.

 

For a small island who had major restrictions placed on it he also did a lot of goo, but I acknowledge the restrictions he placed on his people also. His brother Raul seems to be gradually reducing restrictions now whilst also looking to improve international relations.

 

Regardless, I'll be smoking a Cohiba cigar tonight in his honour and will be ignoring the US biased opinion on him.

[Rico1304]

Poundland Stalin

 

 

(Stolen from Limmy)

[Babb'sBurstNad]

The short list for cigar smoker of the year just got a little shorter.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

The "brutal dictator" stuff is more than a tad overstated. Amnesty International had a few things to say, but compared to some of the allies of "the West" Cuba was almost utopian. (It's also worth bearing in mind that any country will become less free in a state of emergency; the illegal US blockade takes a hefty share of culpability for oppression in Castro's Cuba.)

 

Cuban democracy under Castro was more participative thank our "tick a box once every five years, then sit down and shut up" model.

 

He was smart enough to step down from the Presidency, at a time when the Bush administration had developed plans for returning the island to Batista-style servitude and grotesque inequality, in the event of Fidel's death in office.

[Bjornebye]

Laters El Jefe. Not enough like you left. 2016 can take its cunt head for a shit.

[SasaS]

The "brutal dictator" stuff is more than a tad overstated. Amnesty International had a few things to say, but compared to some of the allies of "the West" Cuba was almost utopian. (It's also worth bearing in mind that any country will become less free in a state of emergency; the illegal US blockade takes a hefty share of culpability for oppression in Castro's Cuba.)

 

Cuban democracy under Castro was more participative thank our "tick a box once every five years, then sit down and shut up" model.

 

He was smart enough to step down from the Presidency, at a time when the Bush administration had developed plans for returning the island to Batista-style servitude and grotesque inequality, in the event of Fidel's death in office.

Are you sure about that? Wasn't it more like shut up or you go to jail, and no ticking the box whatsoever. And oh, you are not free to leave.

 

Blockade was probably a counterproductive move as he pushed him toward to USSR and gave him a  domestic excuse for limiting freedoms, but ultimately he failed to create a free, just, democratic and economically sustainable society from which people would have no reason fleeing.

 

He succeeded in overthrowing a regime based on social injustice, removed the basic inequalities but then relied on suppression of individual freedoms to stay in power, because he didn't have the answers to questions which come up after you've fixed the obvious wrongs.

[thegreatelephant]

[cloggypop]

Yeah alright I'll meet the cunt but I can't be arsed getting dressed up for it.

 

[Babb'sBurstNad]

Which one's saying that?

[thegreatelephant]

fucking animal didn't have the decency to enforce credit ratings on his people as a tool of control. i'll never forgive that

[VladimirIlyich]

Ok. Castro was great.

No,he was great and terrible in different measures. There's a reasonable argument that the Cuban people are in poverty more to do with the US sanctions than Castro himself. It cannot be ignored,and dissolution of the USSR was probably worse for Cuba than many others.

[polymerpunkah]

An example of progress coming from violence?

 

The question for me will always be what would have happened had the USA  worked with him instead of against him.

 

He wasn't, from all I've read, a die-hard Soviet satellite right from the get-go.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Are you sure about that? Wasn't it more like shut up or you go to jail, and no ticking the box whatsoever. And oh, you are not free to leave.

 

Blockade was probably a counterproductive move as he pushed him toward to USSR and gave him a  domestic excuse for limiting freedoms, but ultimately he failed to create a free, just, democratic and economically sustainable society from which people would have no reason fleeing.

 

He succeeded in overthrowing a regime based on social injustice, removed the basic inequalities but then relied on suppression of individual freedoms to stay in power, because he didn't have the answers to questions which come up after you've fixed the obvious wrongs.

No, it wasn't.

 

Here's an overview of Cuban democracy.

http://www.cuba-solidarity.org.uk/information/facts/

Elections to Cuba’s national parliament (the National Assembly) take place every five years and elections to regional Municipal Assemblies every 2.5 years.

Delegates to theNational Assembly then elect the Council of State which in turn appoints the Council of Ministers from which the President is elected. As of 2018 (the date of the next general election in Cuba), there will be a limit of no more than two five year terms for all senior elected positions, including the President.

The nomination process

The nomination process in Cuba aims to ensure that elected candidates are rooted in and supported by the local community:

• Nominations take place at community meetings where residents select candidates by a show of hands
• Anybody can be nominated to be a candidate. It is not a requirement to be a member of the Communist Party
• Candidates biographies are then displayed on community notice boards before the elections
• No money can be spent promoting candidates and no political parties (including the Communist Party of Cuba) are permitted to campaign during elections
• A minimum of two and maximum of eight candidates may stand in each ward election

National Assembly elections in 2013

The average age of deputies was 48 years old – five years younger than the global average age for MPs of 53

More than 48% of women in parliament are women – placing Cuba third in the world for percentage of female parliamentarians

 

http://peoplesvoice.ca/2016/06/30/cuba-participatory-democracy-in-a-one-party-system/

Democracy in a one-party system is always possible when there is honest political will. Democracy is independent of the number of parties in a country. The US may have two parties, but they hardly represent different options.

[stringvest]

Free health care is brilliant, but do we totally discount all the people living in abject poverty? People he was happy to disregard so he could push the public face of caring by sending out thousands of medical professionals to other parts of the world? A country so reliant on, was it Venezuela, that when the had their downtown Cuba was plunged into literal darkness? Now China props them up.

 

I'm not sure "more of him" is the answer. But he also did good, so less of him might not be the answer either.

 

 

I think Castro's cruelty to his own people was a price he was too readily prepared to pay to try to win the PR war.  Far from a hero for me Clive.

[Strontium]

One universal truth is that no nation with happy citizens needs to bar them from leaving.

[JohnnyH]

No,he was great and terrible in different measures.

That was my point. I was aye girl he was both good and bad. I was questioning the "the world needs more like him" stuff. The amount of political opponents who either ended up in jail, or, more worryingly, disappeared completely, means he is not the type of person we need "more of". Jesus, your life was in real danger in Cuba just for being gay.

 

There's no question the US sanctions, like they have in so many countries, created squalor. But Castro was happy to let it continue for the PR as stringy said above.

 

His free education and health care is something he was to be applauded for though. An educated populace is worth its wait in gold.