RIP Fidel Castro

Wibbs

brickmauser wrote: »

You have zero credibility.

Zero

Says the man who considers Trump "left wing". :pac:

yo soy carlos

brickmauser wrote: »

I notice that you are well fed and free to use the internet. Luxuries denied to the denizens of Castro's workers utopia.

You are utterly deluded if you actually believe Cuba's brutal regime has anything to offer.

Funny how you forgot Costa Rica and Panama!!!!! Ah but those democracies enjoy far superior standard of living than Cuba.

Special Circumstances

Jawgap wrote: »

Was there a few years ago (in Havana and Santiago) and it is an amazing place. The myth of the health system needs to be addressed though - yes, they have much better, quicker and freer access to doctors and a basic level of medical treatment than we have, but outside the cities health provision is patchy in terms of access to facilities. Their preventative and community care schemes were superb (and we could learn truckloads from them), but I wouldn't want to have a road traffic collision and scooped up for a trip to their hospitals.

You've never been to limerick a&e I'd say!


As for the lack of facilities outside cities... I think we have that nailed here too!

I'm not painting their system as any golden example, more like holding the disaster of the HSE up for comparison.

But apparently I want a sinn fein dictatorship in Ireland for pointing out that some things the Cuban's do/have could be argued to be better than here. LOL.

Nekarsulm

Finian McGrath to propose a National day of mourning.......

FA Hayek

Wanderer78 wrote: »

Understandable opinion but unfortunately western investment has a tendency to become malignant and predatory over time

Like in Ireland? :roll eyes:
We have the 6th highest standard of living in the world according the the HDI index, which is thanks to 'Western Investment'. We could on the other hand just closed ourselves off from the world like we did when Dev was around. They were great times.... right? :cool:

Still remember David Hickey, the former Dublin player and doctor in Cuba, appearing with the 1974 team at the 1999 All-Ireland Football Final with the t-shirt declaring End Cuban Blockade on it. Huge respect. Nice to see we don't all take the soup as we get older and can still empathise with a people suffering because of the policies of their bastard neighbour.

Viva Cuba Libre!

Special Circumstances

brickmauser wrote: »

You want Ireland to be run by a dictator and a single party state?

You have zero credibility.

Zero

Grand yeah. There are absolutely no good aspects to Cuba when compared to Ireland. It's a sunny version of North Korea while we are a less mountainous version of Switzerland?

Jawgap

Deleted User wrote: »

Maybe if your neighbouring country didn't try to invade you and reinstall their preferred puppet dictator in the name of US democracy you wouldn't have to spend so much?

Or did the Bay of Pigs, Batista and all the rest of the glory from Uncle Sam not get a telling in your history book?

Indeed, but I'm guessing that while it's appropriate to spend on your military to protect your sovereignty, inviting the Sovs to install nukes wasn't exactly a move designed to encourage de-escalation?

Nor was demonstrating their own propensity for meddling in other countries affairs - 25,000 troops to Angola? The adventures in Eirtrea? 15,000 troops in Ethiopia? Algeria? Guinea-Bissau?

They may have, in many cases, sent their military to fight in anti-colonial wars but Fidel wasn't beyond a bit of foreign adventuring himself - including the 1,500 tank and heli crews he sent to fight in the Yom Kippur War.

FA Hayek

We will have the usual people fawning over him now, but that is a knee jerk reaction.

This man was a dictator, plain and simple. He ruled a country with a iron fist and consigned them to poverty all in the name of an ideology, an ideology that has failed time and again. He never sought to reform it, not when the USSR fell, not when China ditched the marxist rhetoric and opened up its country to investment, a decision that brought 400 million people from abject poverty into the middle class. Even with these self evident facts, Cuba still harks back to the communism of the 1950's, because of this man and his god.

The only reason this man is popular with the usual middle class Irish hipster is because a) He was a communist (his heart was in the right place even though he was a dictator so he gets a pass) b) he stood up to America. Thats.is.it

Strip away his Latin beard and cigars he was a Eamon de Valera. Dev with his social conservatism and economic polices consigned two generations of Irish people to poverty due to protectionism and the the moral authority of the Church. Castro did the same under the moral Authority of Communism.

I hope now the people of Cuba embrace western liberalism, liberalism in terms of the free exchange of ideas, free trade and strong independent institutions who can raise the living standards of all Cubans.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Atoms for Peace wrote: »

A true legend and icon of history, RIP.

Perhaps to the ignorant but he left Cuba in a much worse state than he found it.

He was an icon for idealists but his policies failed and he became like every other communist dictator.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Away From Home wrote: »

Sad news Fidel Castro has passed away.



I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.
Fidel Castro

What's sad about the death of a dictator who drove his country and people into poverty?

Jawgap

Jawgap wrote: »

Indeed, but I'm guessing that while it's appropriate to spend on your military to protect your sovereignty, inviting the Sovs to install nukes wasn't exactly a move designed to encourage de-escalation?

Nor was demonstrating their own propensity for meddling in other countries affairs - 25,000 troops to Angola? The adventures in Eirtrea? 15,000 troops in Ethiopia? Algeria? Guinea-Bissau?

They may have, in many cases, sent their military to fight in anti-colonial wars but Fidel wasn't beyond a bit of foreign adventuring himself - including the 1,500 tank and heli crews he sent to fight in the Yom Kippur War.

Indeed nothing. The US was being the bully and they failed to overthrow little Cuba and reinstall their preferred puppet dictator who could once again make Cuba a US colony with the people kept faoi chois to US interests in perpetuity.


If the US didn't threaten that society its development would have been considerably different. Cut the pathetic excuses for what the United States did, and wanted to continue to do, to those people.

MadDog76

RayM wrote: »

Oh, 2016.

At this rate, there'll be nobody left.

Calm down, there's plenty of people left ..........

Guy:Incognito

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

Yeah , but what do they know. Load of Irish lads one a forum know better about how great he was.

Chuchote

America's southern neighbours have since the 1960s been riven by a savage war between right-wing nationalist Catholic regimes allied to the US (eg Contras) and left-wing insurgencies and governments which the US and its right-wing Catholic allies destabilised.

Think about Argentina under the Generals, where 30,000 students and working people 'disappeared', kidnapped by CIA-backed military and police https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_War - think about Nicaragua, Guatemala… throughout Central and South America terrible things were done by the right.

This area is still riven by conflict between white, ultra-Catholic, US-allied, wealthy landowners, politicians and gangsters; and mestizo and native poor farmers, working people and students.

You choose your side.

Richard Hillman

Communism/Socialism is a sickness derived from jealousy and lazyness. It is morally wrong

But

The one (and only) benefit from having a regime like that in that part of the world is that they are not under threat from the drug cartels. Cuba could easily turn into a mixed version of Mexico and Jamaica, where cartels and gangs are constantly at war.

But that is the only inadvertent benefit from what is in place in Cuba.

FA Hayek

FA Hayek wrote: »

This man was a dictator, plain and simple. He ruled a country with a iron fist and consigned them to poverty all in the name of an ideology, an ideology that has failed time and ag

Yeah, "ideology" - isn't that always what the other fella has, as Groucho Marx observed. Nice to see, though, that when the US ran Cuba through their dictator Batista that the people were not "consigned to poverty in the name of an ideology". Completely ahistorical but sure post-truth and all that...

Special Circumstances

Richard Hillman wrote: »

Communism/Socialism is a sickness derived from jealousy and lazyness. It is morally wrong

But

The one (and only) benefit from having a regime like that in that part of the world is that they are not under threat from the drug cartels. Cuba could easily turn into a mixed version of Mexico and Jamaica, where cartels and gangs are constantly at war.

But that is the only inadvertent benefit from what is in place in Cuba.

"So you want a single party dictator state? You have zero rabble rabble. .."

Jawgap

Deleted User wrote: »

Indeed nothing. The US was being the bully and they failed to overthrow little Cuba and reinstall their preferred puppet dictator who could once again make Cuba a US colony with the people kept faoi chois to US interests in perpetuity.


If the US didn't threaten that society its development would have been considerably different. Cut the pathetic excuses for what the United States did, and wanted to continue to do, to those people.

Excuses? I think I was fairly definitive in my statement that the US should have stayed out of Cuban affairs.

I'm just pointing out that Cuba under Castro was not exactly whiter than white when it came to meddling in other people's affairs.

Indeed, checking the figures I see I was wrong - at it's height the Cuban force in Angola number 45,000 (not 25,000) and over 400,000 (mostly conscripts) Cubans served at one time or another in that war. While the Ethiopian adventure peaked at 24,000.

Castro also imprisoned, by his own admission, at least 30,000 young men for refusing to go Angola - and shipped off the entire Grenada garrison to Angola, demoting its commander to private, because of their failure to repel the US invasion of that island.

I know it's fashionable to criticise the US for their interventions (which are many and unjustified) but Fidel and Cuba weren't exactly slouches in this area either.

smelly sock

Castro was to cuba what stalin was to the ussr.

Guy:Incognito

If the place was so great, what had he to fear from free elections..............?

BoJack Horseman

The Guardian must be in shock at the loss of one of their favourite murderous communist dictators.

RIP Fidel.... Hell has received another devil today.

smelly sock

The horror stories will start to emerge soon.

Guy:Incognito

Guy:Incognito wrote: »

Yeah , but what do they know. Load of Irish lads one a forum know better about how great he was.

Susej. Yet evidence speaking of the for more Irish English benefits the of.

Chuchote

BBC World Service Radio (you can get it on TuneIn Radio app) has an interesting programme now with all kinds of people - pro and anti - talking about Cuba and Fidel.

degsie

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Susej. Yet evidence speaking of the for more Irish English benefits the of.

Huh?

Thargor

I never understood how the guy who let the Soviets place nukes within striking distance of Washington survived. By the way that's the reason for the blockade to all the people saying America is the reason Cuba is poor, they're not exactly innocent.

Chuchote

Thargor wrote: »

I never understood how the guy who let the Soviets place nukes within striking distance of Washington survived. By the way that's the reason for the blockade to all the people saying America is the reason Cuba is poor, they're not exactly innocent.

Umm, not nukes, I think?

Wiki… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis (Spanish: Crisis de octubre), the Caribbean Crisis (Russian: Карибский кризис, tr. Karibskij krizis), or the Missile Scare, was a 13-day (October 16–28, 1962) confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union concerning American ballistic missile deployment in Italy and Turkey with consequent Soviet ballistic missile deployment in Cuba.

Oh, wait, yes, you're right, they were nuclear, reading on. But the thing is, America put missiles within spitting distance of the USSR, and the Cuban missiles were a poker-player's response. "You point your missiles at us, we point our missiles at you". Crazy stand-off, but both sides were waving guns at each other.

degsie

A former dictator has died.

And in other news....

Pherekydes

Away From Home wrote: »

Sad news Fidel Castro has passed away.



I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.
Fidel Castro

I should be euthanized when I reach 60? :eek: