Arts & Humanities Vale Fidel Castro.

[little graham]

Nothing else to be said about the bloke.

 

[Plugger35]

I'm going to light up a big fat Cuban cigar in his honour.

 

[Firestarter]

I'm getting the popcorn.

 

[JackOutback]

If Morgan Freeman said it, who am I to argue.

 

[little graham]

 

[Bunk Moreland]

Nothing else to be said about the bloke.

So why did you post again?

 

[little graham]

So why did you post again?

How thick are you mate?

The first post was about the bloke, the second was from the bloke.

You uneducated bogans are getting boring.

 

[Bunk Moreland]

How thick are you mate?

The first post was about the bloke, the second was from the bloke.

You uneducated bogans are getting boring.

Lol, how thick am I?

You know things like high literacy actually applied to Cuba before Castro's revolution?

And that as a nation it largely ground to a halt for his entire reign?

 

[Messenger]

We should gloss over the labour camps and the political executions because Mandela.

 

[Thrawn]

Hopefully Kissenger is next.

 

[Gough]

By my reckoning he was the last of big players in the Bay of Pigs debacle left alive to tell the story, shame he couldn't have lived a couple of months longer and outlasted ten US Presidents.

 

[Gough]

We should gloss over the labour camps and the political executions because Mandela.

To be fair, he could have continued to support Apartheid, or at least block measures in their country to pressure South Africa to end the policy like lauded leaders Thatcher, Reagan, and Howard did. Castro wasn't perfect, but if we hang him out to dry on his actions as leader, lets look at American interference in sovereign countries since 1961, and the lives that have been lost as a result of that, or Thatcher's support of Pinochet, and election winning invasion of the Malvinas in 1982 or Howard's complicity in the ME wars of this century. It's also ironic that Trump was busy condemning him as a brutal dictator while cosying up to Putin. Castro had flaws but let's not think they were unique to his particular brand of politics.

 

[Messenger]

To be fair, he could have continued to support Apartheid, or at least block measures in their country to pressure South Africa to end the policy like lauded leaders Thatcher, Reagan, and Howard did. Castro wasn't perfect, but if we hang him out to dry on his actions as leader, lets look at American interference in sovereign countries since 1961, and the lives that have been lost as a result of that, or Thatcher's support of Pinochet, and election winning invasion of the Malvinas in 1982 or Howard's complicity in the ME wars of this century. It's also ironic that Trump was busy condemning him as a brutal dictator while cosying up to Putin. Castro had flaws but let's not think they were unique to his particular brand of politics.

That's a false equivalency, Gough.

We held a light to Thatcher and Reagan when they died with good reason and John Howard's legacy will be examined when he rolls off the mortal coil (personally for all of Howard's failings, he is not in the league of Maggie and Ronnie). Reagan supported despots and juntas up and down the Americas and Thatcher did give succour to Pinochet (although we'll have to disagree on the Falklands - the Argentines were the invaders) but none of them had as much blood on their hands as Castro. He used political imprisonment, executions and was less circumspect than Nikita Khrushchev in the Bay of Pigs crisis.

I'm all for examining legacies in their entirety. The means Castro used cannot justify the ends.

 

[Gough]

Appreciate what you say, and I do see your point. Perhaps you could say that the blood on Castro's hands was without the degree of separation that was enjoyed by other world leaders.

 

[little graham]

I'm all for examining legacies in their entirety. The means Castro used cannot justify the ends.

I think you're full of shit.

You'ere jealous that Cuba has a better health system than Australia.

 

[little graham]

In October of 1975, South Africa invaded Angola at the behest of the U.S. government to overthrow the left-wing Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in the soon-to-be independent country. Without Cuban assistance, the apartheid army would have easily cruised into Luanda, crushed the MPLA, and installed a puppet government friendly to the apartheid regime.

http://www.mintpressnews.com/MyMPN/fidel-castro-and-the-cuban-role-in-defeating-apartheid/

You want to examine his legacy don't you Messenger ?

“Internationalism — the duty to help others — was at the core of the Cuban revolution,” Gleijeses writes. “For Castro’s followers, and they were legion, this was not rhetoric … By 1975, approximately 1,000 Cuban aid workers had gone to a dozen African countries, South Yemen, and North Vietnam.

In 1976-77, technical assistance was extended to Jamaica and Guyana in the Western Hemisphere; to Angola, Mozambique, and Ethiopia in Africa; and to Laos in Asia. The CIA noted: ‘The Cuban technicians are primarily involved in rural development and educational and public health projects – areas in which Cuba has accumulated expertise and has experienced success at home

What do you say about this?

 

[Gough]

Pwned the US a beauty with the Mariel boatlift it has to be said. Taking advantage of US opposition to Communism to empty the Cuban prisons was a stroke of genius.

 

[little graham]

Cuba’s Chernobyl children’s programme – which until 1992 also received patients from Russia and Belarus – is centred in Tarará, some 20 km east of the capital, and includes a small hospital, a school with Ukrainian teachers and several dozen comfortable housing units.

"From here they move through our entire health system, depending on their needs," said director Julio Medina. That was his explanation for not making dollar estimates of the assistance that Cuba provides free of cost."The important thing is to provide all the medical attention that these children and young people need," he said.The project operates through an agreement between the two countries' health ministries.

Medina also mentioned the participation of the International Fund for Chernobyl, a Ukraine-based non-governmental organisation that estimates Cuba's expenditures to be 350 million dollars in medications alone.

The first 139 were the beginning of a vast aid project that has now benefited more than 24,000 people. According to Cuban authorities, this help will continue as long as Ukraine needs it

http://www.ipsnews.net/2009/05/health-chernobyl-kids-keep-arriving-in-cuba/

.I'm all for examining legacies in their entirety. .

In 1961, when Cuban exiles, with the backing of the US government tried to overthrow him in the Bay of Pigs debacle, the plan was to assassinate Fidel and Raúl Castro along with Che Guevara. At times it seemed as though the US security services were more interested in bumping off the Cuban head of state than protecting their own: on the very day that Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, an agent, who had been given a pen-syringe in Paris, was dispatched on a mission to assassinate Castro.

When Castro travelled abroad, the CIA cooperated with Cuban exiles for some of the more serious assassination attempts. As recently as 2000, when Castro was due to visit Panama, a plot was hatched to put 200lb (90kg) of high explosives under the podium where he was due to speak. Castro’s personal security team carried out their own checks before he arrived and foiled the plot.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/26/fidel-castro-cia-cigar-assasination-attempts

This is why Messenger wants to gloss over political executions.

We should gloss over the labour camps and the political executions because Mandela.

While the CIA used their own operatives and anti-Castro Cubans, they also considered outsourcing the assassination. American underworld figures from the mafia – still smarting at being kicked out of Cuba by Castro – were approached to see whether to would carry out a hit

Are you into organized crime Messenger ? I had to ask because what you're saying in here is protecting them.

the CIA and Cuban exile groups spent nearly 50 years devising ways to kill Fidel Castro. None of the plots, of course, succeeded but one of his loyal security men calculated that a total of 634 attempts,

 

[little graham]

In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92662&page=1

You have to be pretty sick in the head if you criticize Castro for defending his country against this shit. The American justice system spends billions trying to curtail the mafia, but the American military pay the mafia to assassinate Cuban leaders who stand up to drug running. The Americans had more money and power than anyone and would do anything to get their way.You had to have no mercy.

 

[kickazz]

To be fair, he could have continued to support Apartheid, or at least block measures in their country to pressure South Africa to end the policy like lauded leaders Thatcher, Reagan, and Howard did. Castro wasn't perfect, but if we hang him out to dry on his actions as leader, lets look at American interference in sovereign countries since 1961, and the lives that have been lost as a result of that, or Thatcher's support of Pinochet, and election winning invasion of the Malvinas in 1982 or Howard's complicity in the ME wars of this century. It's also ironic that Trump was busy condemning him as a brutal dictator while cosying up to Putin. Castro had flaws but let's not think they were unique to his particular brand of politics.

Maybe not unique, but communist despots have a stranglehold at the top of the ladder when it comes to executions.

 

[Frank Bunn]

So apart from setting up a family-run dictatorship, the labour camps, the political executions, persecuting gays, heavily censored media, restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly, blocked internet - he was a pretty good bloke?

 

[katana]

this is a really orwellian quote.

 

[IKnowtheDog]

does anybody know what happened to the Trillion dollar bill!!

 

[TubbsFarquhar]

does anybody know what happened to the Trillion dollar bill!!

What bill?

 

[Procrastinator35]

this is a really orwellian quote.

Really?.....Then you don''t understand him.

Now, any comment emanating From the Pentagon is Orwellian.