Rumors of Castro's death sweep Miami-Dade -- again

[Goldust]

Uncorroborated rumors that Cuban President Fidel Castro had died or suffered a stroke buzzed around Miami-Dade County on Friday, with anxious callers inundating police departments, media outlets and exile groups.

"We've gotten hundreds of calls, mostly from the media, but also from our own officers and some members of the public," said Miami-Dade police spokesman Randy Rossman. "At this point, we are not mobilizing anyone for anything special at this time."

The latest rumor -- something that has occurred frequently over the years -- appear to have been spawned from comments published Wednesday from Luis Eduardo Garzón, the leftist mayor of Bogota, Colombia. He said that Castro appeared to be "very sick" during their talks in late December.

<snip>

''It's a rumor that started yesterday,'' CANF executive director Joe Garcia said Friday afternoon. ``It's wishful thinking. I don't have anything on it. But it's gotta be right some time.''


Article at http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/7729760.htm

[funkyflathead]

1. Man I don't like Castro but I do think communism is a good idea n/t

[YankeeFan]

2. Don’t Look Now…

But communism has been discredited world wide. China is becoming more and more capitalist. I read in a Recent newspaper that talked about China’s Multi- millionaires. Yes, that’s what the article was all about; China and its millionaires.
There is no true Communist Nations anywhere in the world.
And anywhere communism existed, civil rights were trampled. If you think Bushes Patriot Act was bad, give thanks next Thanksgiving you never lived under even the most benign communist regime.
And don’t even get me started about communism and Cambodia.:nuke:
This place is for Liberals. Communism is Conservatism in its worse form.

[IndianaGreen]

3. The United States supported the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia

It was the US that supported the deposed Pol Pot regime after the Communist Vietnam intervened to save the Cambodian people from the Khmer Rouge.

On the Side of Pol Pot: U.S. Supports Khmer Rouge
by Jack Colhoun
Covert Action Quarterly magazine, Summer 1990

For the last eleven years the United States government, in a covert operation born of cynicism and hypocrisy, has collaborated with the genocidal Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. More specifically, Washington has covertly aided and abetted the Pol Potists' guerrilla war to overthrow the Vietnamese backed government of Prime Minister Hun Sen, which replaced the Khmer Rouge regime.

The U.S. government's secret partnership with the Khmer Rouge grew out of the U.S. defeat in the Vietnam War. After the fall of Saigon in 1975, the U.S.-worried by the shift in the Southeast Asian balance of power-turned once again to geopolitical confrontation. It quickly formalized an anti-Vietnamese, anti-Soviet strategic alliance with China-an alliance whose disastrous effects have been most evident in Cambodia. For the U.S., playing the "China card" has meant sustaining the Khmer Rouge as a geopolitical counterweight capable of destabilizing the Hun Sen government in Cambodia and its Vietnamese allies.

When Vietnam intervened in Cambodia and drove the Pol Potists from power in January 1972, Washington took immediate steps to preserve the Khmer Rouge as a guerrilla movement. International relief agencies were pressured by the U.S. to provide humanitarian assistance to the Khmer Rouge guerrillas who fled into Thailand. For more than a decade, the Khmer Rouge have used the refugee camps they occupy as military bases to wage a contra-war in Cambodia.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/US_PolPot.html

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[IndianaGreen]

8. The US supported the ones that committed genocide in Cambodia

as we did the ones that committed genocide in Iraq (who gave Saddam WMDs in the first place?), and in Chile, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Colombia, El Salvador, Indonesia (Sukarno was our guy), etc.

I won't mention the many instances in which the US itself committed genocide, that would fill this board.

[David Zephyr]

14. Yes, They Did, IndianaGreen.

And let's not forget some other "non-communist" genocide while we are at it:

Not to mention the U.S Government direct holocaust against Native Americans and African slaves and their American children.

At least 100 million there alone.

[Dirk39]

11. Just like the U.S. didn't care about 500.000 dead children in...

Iraq, if it's for "democrazy" (-> free market, torture, exploitation, if you need a translation).

Just like Brzezinski never said, who cares about some 100.000 dead people in Afghanistan, if it serves destroying the Soviet Union. Just like you never heard someone talking about "but it's our bastard"...
So many bastards, to support...
So many choices between Bush and Bush and Bush and Clark.
Batista, Coca-Cola, cheap prostitutes, a bit to torture here a bit of torture there,
Welcome to democratic liberated Cuba,
Dirk

[LibInternationalist]

17. You're right -- but the Khmer Rouge was ALSO COMMUNIST

and Vietnam hardly intervened to save the Cambodian people, but to protect their own borders -- witness how the Cambodian people were not saved

[IndianaGreen]

20. Pol Pot was not a Communist, and neither were the Khmer Rouge

Here is an interesting 1986 essay that discusses whether or not Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge were communists. This begs the question, why did Vietnam topple Pol Pot if he was a fellow communist?

Who Is and Was Really Responsible for Genocide in Cambodia?
Pol Pot Was Not and Is Not A Communist
(originally published in Challenge-Desafio, PL Magazine Supplement, February 19, 1986)

Apologists for capitalism are always inventing lies to "prove" how terrible communism is. In recent years one of their favorite tales concerns the mass killings in Cambodia by the supposedly "communist" Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot. Lots of articles, a couple of books and at least one major movie, "The Killing Fields," have focused on the Khmer Rouge atrocities. Pol Pot has almost replaced Joseph Stalin as number one on the capitalists' all-time hate list.

But there's a big difference. Comrade Stalin was a great communist. Pol Pot, however, never was one. Some recent books, written by Western experts on Cambodia and using evidence obtained after the fall of Pol Pot, show this clearly. These books must be used with care; the authors are either pro-Vietnamese revisionists (Vickery, Chandler, Thion) or liberal imperialists (Shawcross). It's the facts they have uncovered that are valuable, not their own opinions and analyses of these facts, which are ruined by their anti-Communist values.

"Khmer Rouge" (KR), or "Red Khmers" (Khmer is the major ethnic group of Cambodia) was the name given to the peasant rebels under the leadership of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (native name of Cambodia), or CPK. In order to see how the CPK turned into a bunch of anti-Communist murderers, a little history is essential.

http://www.lossless-audio.com/usa/indexD.php?page=1691886008.htm

[VelmaD]

19. That's pretty funny.

It's impossible for Communism to have been discredited since it's never actually been practiced by the governments you listed. Hell, it's never really been practiced by any government.

Instead of spewing the same Cold War propaganda you've heard from the media and US government all your life, go read up a little bit on what communism actually is and then how the governments of China and the old Soviet Union and Cambodia were actually run and see if you really believe they were ever "communist". :eyes:

[Dirk39]

6. Help me...

but I'm somehow 100% sure, if you would ask Cuban citizens about capitalism and democrazy and compare it, to what the average U.S. citizen has to say about Communism. Any alien would draw the conclusion that U.S. citizens live in a totalitarian dictatorship, where they've been told 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, what they have to think, while Cubans must live in a somehow pluralistic society.

Or maybe the prostitutes in the USA simply became too expensive and you want Cuba to be the cheap brothel again, it was before the revolution.

Hello from Germany,
Dirk

[Mika]

9. Funny thing about that, Dirk

Funny thing about that, Dirk, is that Americans, who consider themselves to be the most free people on the planet, are banned from travelling to Cuba by their own US government - so we can't simply go to Cuba to ask Cubans anything nor can we easily go there to see the place for our own eyes.


Freedom for Americans? Not yet. And.. the majority of Dem presidential candidates do not support the end to the abrogation of our travel rights.

----

Poll: Americans on Cuban Sanctions
http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=770
-
Poll: Cuban-Americans focus is local
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/cuba/6269237.htm

Sadly, only ONE candidate for
US president openly states that he
would end this unjust and insane
policy against Cuba AND Americans.

That candidate is Dennis Kucinich.

-The Democratic Presidential Candidates on Cuba-
http://www.lawg.org/pages/new%20pages/Misc/prez-candidates1.htm

[IndianaGreen]

10. In Cuba, the candidate with the most votes wins

In America, the candidate with the most votes lost in 2000!

Cuba is more democratic than the US!

[Dirk39]

15. Hi,

I was travelling through Cuba last year. No, I didn't book a travel into one of those tourist-camps. I simply did fly to Cuba and I was going wherever I wanted to go. You couldn't even dream of doing such a thing in the Soviet Union, no way.
I was simply looking for places to stay.
Noone in Cuba is afraid of saying what he or she wants to say.
All of them are complaining about things that could be improved or don't work at all. A lot of them are mad about Euros or Dollars to buy things, they otherwise couldn't afford. But this is one thing, even the officials or Castro don't deny.
You might find a lot of people in Cuba, who don't exactly like Bush, but you would have a hard time, finding any cuban citizen, who would post that he wants Bush to be dead in order to liberate the USA.


It's not a communist paradise and not even Castro never said so. It's just about the best that's possible in a nation like Cuba, considering the world we live in.
And it's so far far far away from the idiotic propaganda and empy brain-washing that happened in the Soviet Union and their "communist" allies. Even, when the SU did still exist, Cuba was always different.
They discussed their mistakes.
It's such a wonderfull country with so wonderfull people and if there's anything they don't need, then it's to be liberated by the USA again.

I talked to one old guy from Cuba and he told me, that the government of Cuba has done a lot of mistakes in the past and a lot of things are wrong. "But Castro and Guevara gave us back our dignity as people. Noone in Cuba hates the USA, but the way, U.S. citizens behaved here and treated us, when Cuba was a dictatorship before Castro, is something people like me, who did experience this will never forget."

After making a lot of jokes about Castro and Cuba and things, that don't work. And he did it loud and in a pub and with many people, listening to him and replying to him.

I guess it would be more dangerous to say some of the things about Bush in an american pub, he and other people did say about Castro in a cuban pub.

Who needs a dictator, if you have Fox-TV.
Hello Mika,
Dirk

[Judi Lynn]

18. Super post, Dirk39, to Mika

This is one great post. It's refreshing that we know you don't have to worry about being called anti-American, which would be only hilarious since you don't live here.

Your observations are excellent, and actually coincide with much we have read from real American Cuba travellers, like Mika, and some others who post at D.U. regularly.

Particularly interesting is your ability to actually contrast travel to Cuba to travel to the old Soviet Union. This is extremely interesting, and something we really never hear about. We are kept in the dark, deeply, about Cuba, in case you haven't noticed, while the propaganda spins like crazy. Only first hand accounts can shed the vital light we need.

[TheRock]

7. I'm curious what is inviting about communism

What is such a good idea about communism? How does the middle class fare under communism?

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[not systems]

12. Your moral blight is showing. n/t

[IndianaGreen]

13. Do you wish that Cubans become wage slaves again?

Do you wish that Cubans become wage slaves again, so that they provide low priced rum and cigars to American consumers? Do you wish that Cuba goes back to being a gambling and prostitution mecca for American tourists?

Do you think that Cubans will give up their universal health care system for an American HMO? Or their educational system for an American-style education that cares only about training future generations of obedient consumers?

[Mika]

16. Cubans are not as disengaged as Americans

Citizen turnout is in the upper 70 percentile at the biannual Accountability Sessions (one element of Cuba's representational parliamentary democracy), where the elected officers of the various districts and positions face their constituents (and neighbors) to hear their ideas and interact, and/or to account for their representation. At those meetings a secret ballot is used to determine if the elected official is satisfactory to the majority of voters. If less than 50% support is given to the officer, then a new election is called. New nominations (which are fully open) and elections and then ratification election in that district will occur within 6 weeks. Voter turnout for Cuban elections and ratifications is in the mid to upper 90 percentile range.