Silent thread for Fidel Castro. R.I.P

[DonCoquixote]

.

[oberliner]

1. Is this a joke?

Delete this garbage.

[Cooley Hurd]

3. The cold war's over...

Time to put your boots away.

[Act_of_Reparation]

55. The Cold War is irrelevant.

Censorship, repression, institutional homophobia, capital punishment, and torture are not progressive ideals, and I will not honor anyone who deploys them, no matter what side of the left/right paradigm they so happen to fall.

[secondwind]

10. Agree with you 100%... I was in Havana in 2011, saw old people rummaging through garbage, looking

for food. Fidel owns/owned everything, gas stations, hotels, everything. He paid workers a salary, one woman who drove tourists around in a bicycle with a cart attached to the back, told me she was paid 45 pesos a month, sometimes less, depending on what Fidel wanted to give her.. She had two boys, sometimes they could afford to eat breakfast, other times not.

Most people in Cuba have only ONE child, they cannot afford to have large families.. The tourist guide on our bus said "welcome to the largest jail in the world." I could go on, but I won't. RIP my ass.

[Mika]

15. Where the fuck do you come up with this bullshit?

I lived in Cuba, have taken extended trips many many times, worked and played side by side with everyday Cubans. I have family in Cuba.
Your bullshit post is filled with vile lies.

Viva Cuba!

[cwydro]

21. They have better health care than we do. I know that.

WAY ahead of us in that respect.

[Judi Lynn]

49. That's so odd! You are so right. Someone imagines Democrats are stupid, apparently!

"Vile lies" will work just fine!

Quite a few other DU'ers have actually been to Cuba, as well. Needless to say, they never have mentioned anything remotely like that.

[LWolf]

54. I've NEVER seen

"old people" rummaging for food or sleeping in the streets in the U.S., or parents unable to feed their kids breakfast. I've never seen anyone here unable to get a job, or working a job that didn't pay a living wage. Do I really need this?

The world would be a better place if everyone limited the number of kids they have voluntarily; too bad they don't.

I'm not making a comment about Castro one way or another, but I will say that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

[shira]

48. Unreal. And folks wonder what drives people to vote 4 ogres like Trump.

Gee, I wonder....

[HughBeaumont]

53. Anyone who thinks "President Donald Trump" is a great idea . . . .

. . . sorry, we don't get credit for THAT Dunning-Krugery. Their political dumbassedness is entirely their own doing.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. ...

[milestogo]

4. ...

[Warpy]

5. ....

[flamingdem]

6. ...

[ucrdem]

7. ...

[silverweb]

8. ...

[gopiscrap]

9. .....

[William769]

11. It's time to party!

One less evil bastard in the world.

[William769]

14. ...

[Ken Burch]

20. US imperialism caused all of Fidel's choices.

We drove him to what he did.

He was a dictator, but he was also the only leader Cuba's history who ever made life better for anyone but the millionaires.

So it's not so damn simple.

[William769]

22. So people risk thier lives to flee Cuba for no reason?

How very Strange.

I guess the people scaling the Berlin wall to freedom were just as crazy.

[Ken Burch]

23. Some people want to leave.

There were also millions who never wanted to leave. And the US never said "if you'll just have an election and let people come and go as they want, we'll leave you alone and let you develop your country on your own terms".

The only "election" result the US would ever have elected was a right-wing landslide. And then when that right-wing government refused to call any more elections(which is what would have happened), the US would have said...nothing. Just like it said nothing when Batista seized power.

Until our country finally agrees to stop treating the Americas as though it has the natural right to lead the hemisphere, until it admits that it never had any right to treat Latin America as an empire, until it apologizes for every military intervention and economic sabotage campaign it ever inflicted, none of us will have any moral authority to lecture anyone else in the hemisphere on "freedom and democracy".

We "proclaimed" the Monroe Doctrine in 1823

We've now got 193 years worth of blood on our hands, from Tijuana to Tierra Del Fuego.

[pangaia]

25. And we will now pay the price.

Well stated.

[2naSalit]

68. And perhaps...

it is now "karmatime" for our aggression.

[Judi Lynn]

52. From whom do you imagine all the people who die in the desert in Mexico are fleeing?

They die in the mountains, the deserts, the rivers, canals, etc. Once they are here, they will be returned, if they are caught, after living in prisons.

Cubans, on the other hand, are courted by the US Government as political pawns. They are given immediate legal status if they arrive in the country without being caught first. They are given instant work visas, social security, food stamps, Section 8 US taxpayer-financed housing, medical care, financial assistance for education, etc. etc. etc.

They are NEVER rounded up and sent home.

Haitians die in the attempt to come here by boat. While Elian Gonzalez was being fought for by the Miami "exiles" to be kept in the US, a little girl, whose mother brought her from Haiti, then died of cancer soon after, was staying with her aunt, and the US sent her back to Haiti, where she knew NO ONE. This is typical.

When Haiti was having its President overthrown by paramilitary thugs trained by the US in the Dominican Republic, and outfitted, and armed there, those killers went through the country slaughtering Aristide supporters, hacking them in pieces, or shooting them, and leaving their bodies in the streets. People tried to escape by boat, and your President George W Bush surrounded Haiti with US Coast Guard and US Navy ships and corralled all the little boats and funneled them right on back to Haiti to be slaughtered by the same people they were trying to escape.

I ask, again, who are the hundreds who DIE ANNUALLY in the passages across the Mexican border escaping?
Are they fleeing from President Pena Nieto? They have been doing this for so many years. Were they also trying to escape those Presidents?

You just might consider trying to summons your strength and focus on trying to THINK about things, and see if you can finally understand them in your lifetime. It's all up to you. You really need to try.

[burrowowl]

99. Good reply

[hack89]

35. Bull shit

we did not drive him to set up a one party dictatorship. He never intended for Cuba to be truly free.

[shira]

47. Complete bullshit, from healthcare to education too. Defending evil. Gross. n/t

[Judi Lynn]

56. Why not share your secrets of divination?

[center]

[hack89]

66. Show me the election where Castro was nearly voted out of office

Only kings and dictators rule for 50 years.

[Ken Burch]

87. Five years before the Cuban Revolution came to power, our country overthrew Jacobo Arbenz

the left-democratic leader of Guatemala, and replaced him with a right-wing white-supremacist dictatorship(devoted to wiping out virtually all vestiges of indigenous culture in Guatemala), a regime that has killed 200,000 people by a conservative estimate since we put it in power(an act no American president has EVER apologized for). He had allowed a free speech and the existence of an independent military, which was great-except for the fact that the US used that free press and free radio to broadcast propaganda against Arbenz and used the Guatemalan army to overthrow democracy.

You don't see how what happened in 1954 affected the choices Fidel made in 1959?

You don't see how the repeated US coups and destabilization campaigns the US has run in the Americas during Fidel's time in power might POSSIBLY have made him a little bit suspicious of how the US would use "free elections" to restore the old order and turn Cuba back
into our favorite Caribbean brothel and de facto colony?

Would you at least agree that the US should never have intervened to overthrow all of those democratic governments in the Americas?

[hack89]

89. Dictators always have reasons why they should rule forever

They are all bull shit. Evil is rationalize all the time - it still remains evil.

[shira]

46. Pathetic, blaming the USA for Fidel's brutality. Worse is when you demonize Cubans....

....as "rightwingers" who risked all in their escape & made it to America.

Both sides of my family escaped or were murdered in an oppressive communist country (Lithuania) last century. What you're doing here in the service of tyrants and against the thousands or millions of people they (continue) to oppress is nothing short of evil.

[Judi Lynn]

57. Do you have good links for that? All I could find quickly was Wikipedia:

. . . . .

The Second World War and the Holocaust[edit]

Main article: The Holocaust in Lithuania

The Lithuanian Republic was occupied by Soviet Union in June 1940, and one year later, in June 1941, occupied by the Germans. During World War II, 91-95% of Lithuania's Jewish population of Lithuanian Jews were killed – almost all the Jews who had not managed to leave Lithuania and its environs. This was the highest casualty rate of Jews in any nation in the Holocaust.[8]

The Soviet era (1944–1990)[edit]

See also: History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union

Following the expulsion of Nazi German forces in 1944, The Soviets reannexed Lithuania as a Soviet republic, and prosecuted a number of Lithuanians for collaborating with the Nazis. Sites of wartime massacres, such as the Ninth Fort near Kaunas became monuments. To avoid nationalist themes, the memorials were declared in the name of all victims, though the clear majority of them are Jewish. Most survivors never returned, moving to Israel instead. Throughout Soviet rule, there was tension between the Jewish community and the authorities over the right to emigrate to Israel, and how to properly commemorate the Holocaust. The majority of Jews in Soviet Lithuania arrived after the war, with Russian and Yiddish as their primary language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Lithuania

Thanks in advance of your reply.

[shira]

72. Links for what? Russian or Communist rule pre-WW2? n/t

[REP]

81. I suggest you look up Pogrom

There were pogroms against Jews in Tsarist and Soviet times. My father's family escaped Tsarist pograms in 1917.

[Ken Burch]

70. I'm just saying it isn't as simple as "Fidel bad...U.S. good".

If the U.S. had done what it was supposed to do and let Cuba have its independence right after the Spanish-American War(rather than establishing a colonial status we had no right to impose)there probably never would have been a Fidel.

These things happen because the conditions are created for them to happen.

Stalinism is extinct...and while it lived, it as enough to say it was ANOTHER bad system. Its existence never had to be a pretext for a global American military and economic war against every manifestation of the Left.

[shira]

71. He didn't make life better for the people.

Fidel could've called for free elections. He didn't have to rule with an iron fist.

But I get it; in your view, Fidel is better than any American leader during the same time period. No matter what he did for, or to "the people".

Your boy Castro may as well have been a rightwing fascist. It's all the same to the people these anti-western dictators oppress. He's not worthy of any accolades whatsoever.

[Ken Burch]

78. Free education and healthcare didn't make life better for the people?

Pretty sure the people of Cuba would disagree on that.

The place isn't Utopia, but it can't be a good choice to just scrap everything the revolution did. They wouldn't be better off turning into post-1989 Poland or Hungary(which is pretty much what forcing a country to go hardline capitalist in economics has to cause).

Fidel isn't "my boy&quot and it's silly of you to keep trying to make everything into "us" versus some "enemy"-the world doesn't actually work like that).

BTW, in case you haven't noticed, antisemitism is about ninety times worse in "non-communist" Lithuania than it was under the old days(and I say that as an anti-Stalinist who never supported the way the USSR treated the Baltic states-if there was any Soviet leader I liked, it was Gorbachev-I assume you'll agree with me that everything is worse in the world because the U.S. insisted on making Gorby play the role of leader of the vanquished enemy and did all it could to pave the way for Putin coming to power). Most of the Lithuanian "anti-communists" were World War II Iron Guard types-and they've done nothing to protect the remaining Lithuanian Jewish community from persecution(there's an annual anti-semitic festival in Lithuania that is pretty much a real-life version of the "Running of the Jew" sequence in Borat, for example).

I'm against all dictatorships. I'm also against U.S. military interventions in other countries, especially since those interventions have had littlt but reactionary effects since the end of World War II.

[shira]

83. That's like arguing Hitler was good for the German economy.

Seemed to me Castro was your man given the way you demonize "rightwing" Cubans who had the audacity to risk their lives escaping the island.

[Ken Burch]

84. Fidel has nothing in common with Hitler.

He killed a lot of people at the start of the revolution-but he never exterminated an entire community, and he changed his attitude on LGBTQ people a lot quicker than the US did, based on the time the Cuban LGBTQ movement began.

And the Cuban healthcare and education systems are models for the world. No one but millionaires would benefit from "market values" being added to those systems and people having to pay for college individually out of pocket.

Besides which, it would only be disgusting and sadistic to force people out of the homes they've been in since the Fifties, and the return of the homes to the people who only owned them because they screwed over the workers.

Why do you have to make everything Manichean? Why is it always "anyone who's not with us is against us" with you?

And why do you still hold to the outdated and totally discredited belief that the United States wants the world to be free? Our leaders want nothing of the kind. They want the world to be capitalist, and that has NOTHING to do with freedom. If the United States wanted freedom, it would accept the right of the nations of the world to set up whatever economic systems the people want, without exacting retribution on them for not setting them up exactly the way Wall Street and the Calvinist misers of Zurich want?

For the record, I'm neither a Fidelista nor an anti-Fidelista. I'm just trying to avoid the good being thrown out with the bad in Cuba. And I know the truth about our country's foreign policy which is that, with the SOLE exception of World War II, that policy has never been about making life better for the children of the Earth.

[shira]

107. "Cuban healthcare and education systems are models for the world."

Tell that to common people in Cuba or those who have escaped the prison island. Cuba's healthcare is shit if you're not an elite or a tourist. The literacy rate in Cuba is at 1950's levels. Not very good for the people...

It's all smoke and mirrors. Fascist apologists do the same thing with Mussolini and Hitler....trains running on time, German economy a model for the world.

And LGBTQ rights in Cuba? Fidel put them in forced labor concentration camps, FFS. Where's your compassion for all of Castro's victims? Anything the regime does now is simply pinkwashing and you know it.

[EX500rider]

94. Exactly "He made the trains run on time!"

[Ken Burch]

104. That was Mussolini, ffs. And he only did that by making them set the clocks back

at the stations after the trains left.

[shira]

106. Just as Mussolini's trains were an illusion, so is Castro's great healthcare system....

....which is wretched for the vast majority of Cubans. If you're not a tourist in Cuba or part of the elite, your healthcare is atrocious.

Cuba's education system is bullshit too, as their literacy rate is at 1950's levels.

Funny how you can't see the same arguments used praising tyrants like Mussolini are used for pieces of shit like Castro.

[Ken Burch]

110. Neither of those things are true.

The Cuban healthcare system is recognized as a global model. So is the educational system.

Neither would be improved by the introduction of "market forces", and the introduction of heavy fees for the services involved.

And let's face it...if Fidel had done what you thought he was obligated to do(what you think EVERYONE is obligated to do) and given unquestioning support to the West Bank settlements and the perpetual occupation, you'd be praising him to the skies.

[EX500rider]

108. Yeah I know who it was...

....the point is many dictators accomplish something worthwhile, Hitler had the Autobahn and the Volkswagen, but they were still repressive police states run by dictators.

[Ken Burch]

111. Fidel isn't remotely comparable to Hitler or Mussolini.

He never carried out a genocidal project nor tried to create his own global empire.

The guy did a lot of bad things, and I don't actually defend the repressive methods he used, but it's not as simple as just assuming he did what he did out of intentional, knowing evil or saying that he was a dictator and that's all we need to know.

What we all need to do with this is to actually study Latin American history-especially from the Latin American perspective.

[BlueCaliDem]

12. ...

[Mika]

16. R.I.P

[Raine]

17. ...

[lillypaddle]

18. WTF?

What is the matter with you?

[LostOne4Ever]

19. A silent thread for a dictator? Nt

[dumbcat]

41. One man, one vote. His.

We're all for that, right?

[Drunken Irishman]

24. Oh c'mon now.

[cwydro]

26. ...

[VOX]

27. About as silent as a night in October 1962.

When even atheists were praying that it might not be the beginning of WW III.

[Judi Lynn]

58. I was certainly around, then. That was not the case, as most people know. n/t

[malaise]

28. ...

[stonecutter357]

29. one less communist dictatorship.

[Sunsky]

30. ...

[NeoConsSuck]

31. RIP

[pintobean]

32. Fuck that

[Grey Lemercier]

33. Yankee imperialism bad, Batista bad, Castro bad

Sod the lot of 'em.

Fuck if I will honour a murderous thug or the counterpoint that allowed him to come to power.

[hack89]

34. Fuck that shit.

another dictator gone. Now maybe there can be freedom in Cuba.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

36. Fuck Castro. Nt

[jehop61]

37. No

Rest in chaos. He tried to turn nuclear weapons on our country

[Travis_0004]

38. I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.

[kentuck]

39. We choose to believe the government's viewpoint of the Cuban Embargo?

For whatever reason, many have come to believe the government version of the Cuban missile crisis and other seemingly threatening events.

Others see the Cuban fight for independence, from a brutal dictator, supported by the United States, as a fight for social justice.

There are various viewpoints. Perhaps both are correct?

[enid602]

40. Fidel

Poor Fidel; I guess seeing the Kremlin install one of their own in the White House was just too much for him. Bet he died with a smile on his face.

[malaise]

44. Too good

[riverbendviewgal]

42. .....

[Adrahil]

43. Fuck this. I fart in your "silent" thread.

Is a man who installed himself in power in perpetuity a man of the people? Oh yeah, he then passes his power along to his BROTHER when he decides to retire. Screw him. He fought a corrupt system to Become the NEW corrupt system.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

45. Not worth the silence IMHO.

Plenty of more worthy people to get such a treatment.

[Judi Lynn]

50. . . .

[DetlefK]

51. HAHAHAHA! Fuck No.

Fidel Castro was a dictator who imprisoned and killed dissidents. Fuck him and fuck his regime.

What's next? Threads mourning the death of socialist dictator Gaddafi? Oh wait, we had that here on DU.

[malaise]

59. Who was your government trying to kill during the Bay of Pigs attacks?

Who is your government killing right now in GITMO - that fucking war crime?

[DetlefK]

60. First, two wrongs don't make a right.

Second: Castro was persecuting homosexuals to fend off the CIA's attempts to topple him???

from Wikipedia:
The ORI began shaping Cuba using the Soviet model, persecuting political opponents and perceived social deviants such as prostitutes and homosexuals; Castro considered same-sex sexual activity a bourgeois trait.[175] Gay men were forced into the Military Units to Aid Production (Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción – UMAP); after many revolutionary intellectuals decried this move, the UMAP camps were closed in 1967, although gay men continued to be imprisoned.



Poor Fidel Castro. Always fighting back. Always the persecuted, never the persecutor...

[malaise]

61. How many times did your governments try to kill Fidel Castro?

Answer that one

[DetlefK]

62. Honestly? I don't know. How many innocent people did Castro kill as "dissidents"?

[malaise]

63. Yours killed a million Iraqis

and countless others across the globe. Reagan voted against the anti-apartheid bill. Cheney wanted Mandela to remain in prison.

[DetlefK]

64. Yippie!!! That means I can commit any crime I want and there's nothing the US can do about it!!!

If Castro is allowed to kill innocents because of the dirty shit the US did during the Cold War, and if Russia is allowed to manipulate the US-elections because of the dirty shit the US has done recently, then what about me?

Do I get to steal cars, evade taxes and kick old people in the shin? I obviously do, because what the US did is waaaaaay worse.

[malaise]

65. Heal thyself

Fidel was one of the world's great leaders.

[DetlefK]

67. Plus/Minus a few thousand innocent victims he imprisoned and killed.

[shira]

73. Fidel was one of the world's great leaders? Tell that to his people he oppressed/murdered....

The very antithesis of progressive/liberal values.

He was a vile POS, no better to the people he oppressed than any rightwing fascist dictator who could've done the same damned thing.

[Bradical79]

75. No, he wasn't. -nt

[Judi Lynn]

91. That's the way he's seen by the countries which didn't try to assassinate him, overthrow him.

He's respected everywhere else. Only the hard-right fascists get whipped up with hatred about him.

[EX500rider]

95. Sure, who doesn't love a dictator run police state?

[Judi Lynn]

96. Uh, huh. Police state. Just the way you saw for yourself on your many visits from the U.S. n/t

[EX500rider]

98. lol...when were you there? I haven't been to that shithole North Korea either..

.....but I still know it's a repressive dictatorship...

I post all the Human Rights reports about Cuba but you'd say it's a right wing org hitjob.

[2naSalit]

69. ...

[Bradical79]

74. No.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028312190

[mike_c]

76. .

[hrmjustin]

77. May the good Lord find a nice cool spot in hell for him!

[MFM008]

79. um..how about if you wished he would drop dead to?

it just took him way to long?

[sarisataka]

80. What next?

A silent thread for binLadin?

I will not celebrate Castro's death anymore that I celebrated binLadin. I will not celebrate a person's death no matter how awful. They were human and had a potential for good that went unrealized.

I will not however celebrate the life of a murderer or dictator and portray them as a misunderstood victim of circumstances.

[name not needed]

82. Philly DUers: Free cuba libres at Cuba Libre - now through Dec. 4

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/food_department/Free-Cuba-Libre-cocktails-following-Fidel-Castros-death.html

[tenderfoot]

85. He was less evil than any American President

[sarisataka]

88. *

Sarcasm?

[brooklynite]

92. UNREC

[brooklynite]

93. How about, I'll sleep quietly, knowing that he's dead?

[EX500rider]

97. Right, because I remember that police state dictatorship that Jimmy Carter ran...

....oh wait, I don't...

[tenderfoot]

101. so you're unaware of his actions in Central America then?

Of course you are.

[EX500rider]

109. So Castro had no troops in Angola? He was a saint? lol

The Cuban government has been accused of numerous human rights abuses including torture, arbitrary imprisonment, unfair trials, and extrajudicial executions (also known as "El Paredón&quot .[17][133] Human Rights Watch has stated that the government "represses nearly all forms of political dissent" and that "Cubans are systematically denied basic rights to free expression, association, assembly, privacy, movement, and due process of law".[134]
In 2003, the European Union (EU) accused the Cuban government of "continuing flagrant violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms".[135] It has continued to call regularly for social and economic reform in Cuba, along with the unconditional release of all political prisoners.[136] The United States continues an embargo against Cuba "so long as it continues to refuse to move toward democratization and greater respect for human rights",[137] though the UN General Assembly has, since 1992, passed a resolution every year condemning the ongoing impact of the embargo and claiming it to be in violation of the Charter of the United Nations and international law.[138] Cuba considers the embargo itself to be in violation of human rights.[139] On December 17, 2014, United States President Barack Obama announced the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba, pushing for Congress to put an end to the embargo.[140]
Cuba had the second-highest number of imprisoned journalists of any nation in 2008 (China had the highest) according to various sources, including the Committee to Protect Journalists and Human Rights Watch.[141][142]
Cuban dissidents face arrest and imprisonment. In the 1990s, Human Rights Watch reported that Cuba's extensive prison system, one of the largest in Latin America, consists of 40 maximum-security prisons, 30 minimum-security prisons, and over 200 work camps.[143] According to Human Rights Watch, Cuba's prison population is confined in "substandard and unhealthy conditions, where prisoners face physical and sexual abuse".[143]
In July 2010, the unofficial Cuban Human Rights Commission said there were 167 political prisoners in Cuba, a fall from 201 at the start of the year. The head of the commission stated that long prison sentences were being replaced by harassment and intimidation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba#Human_rights

[tenderfoot]

112. You spend a lot of time in Angola...

lol.

[EX500rider]

113. Got it...US takes sides in a civil warBAD Castro does itGOOD lol

[BuddhaGirl]

86. No

[rug]

90. Arriba, parias de la Tierra.

[burrowowl]

100. Amen!!!!!!!!

[kelly1mm]

102. So long as R.I.P. is Rot In Pieces we are good. Dictators suck! nt

[geomon666]

103. Can't wait for the eventual Pat Robertson RIP thread.

I won't be quiet then either. Fuck Fidel Castro.

[SomethingNew]

105. Are you lot the same

ones who praise Chavez and Maduro? Seems like a similar delusion.