Let’s Bury Fidel
Not the truth.
I come to bury
CaesarFidel, not to praise him;
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones,
So let it be withCaesarFidel …
Drumpf said that Fidel was a ‘brutal dictator’. He was not a nice person in a lot of ways, but he certainly was no where near as brutal as Fulgencio Batista, the fascist dictator he overthrew.
Batista was “anti-communist”, so he got US government support. His brutality, the corruption involving large landowners, US corporations, and the Mafia were ignored. When Castro finally threw Batista out and started giving land to the poor and nationalization, Cuba’s 1% went across the Strait to Florida and immediately started their propaganda & political machine that resulted in a worthless 50-year embargo.
Fidel’s real crime was being a communist, not being a dictator. He was definitely the lesser of two evils.
23 comments
Interesting. I had never paid much attention to Cuba, Fidel, etc. so it’s good to read more about it.
The boats would come in here from Cuba during Prohibition with booze which was transferred to trucks to be hauled North. The Strait between Florida and Cuba is only 90 miles, and Cuba is the reason for the number Air Force bases in Florida.
In addition my Grandfather Dumka served in the Cuba occupation in the Army before World War I and we were going to take a vacation in Cuba, but Fidel interrupted it.
USA has a history of helping or enabling evil bastards to be leaders of assorted Nations. it’s becoming a long list.
The World would be a better place if the USA would just keep to fucking up the USA & leave the rest of the World alone.
I can’t argue with you about that. Almost nothing we have been involved with militarily since WWII was really any of our business, and almost always resulted in blow-back at some point.
Fidel once said that he would not rest until America had been destroyed.
Donald Trump was elected President.
Fidel Castro dies.
There are no coincidences :).
Pretty scary – who thought it would end in suicide?
USA was just pissed @ Castro because Castro didn’t like the USA. 🙂 Though, if that were a valid reason for the USA to embargo Nations, they would embargo most of the World! LOL
Castro wasn’t the greatest, but he was definitely better than Batista. Castro did a lot for his people. Their health care for example is much better than the USA’s for all citizens, not just the top 25%. Maybe that’s the main reason the USA didn’t want Americans dealing with, or knowing much about, Cuba. People may have woken up and got ideas. The USA has a real phobia about it’s citizens thinking or getting *ideas*.
Though, you know how I feel about the USA creating “Pol Pot” (from a no good psychotic bum named Selat Sar) & others, so I am quite unashamedly biased. *shrug*
I grew up with a girl who was Cuban. Her father taught me Castro was a very bad man. Ofcourse I know there is no pure evil or pure good. Unless you are Henry Kissenger. I would love to go to Cuba since in a few years wealthy Americans will probably take over and make it another tacky vacation spot
J
When I was flying around the world on a regular basis I stopped at Franco’s Spain, Greece under the colonels and other garden spots that were favored by the US. I have personal experience with life in fascist dictatorships. Cuba was a target so the lads in the ‘office’ had a lot of background about targets. If you compare what I read to what was being handed out to ordinary US citizens, there was a distinct difference.
Life was good under Batista because people made money … OK some … a few people made a lot of money. There was crime, but it was organized, not random and if you paid your ‘insurance premiums’ you didn’t have problems.
The poor will always be with us so there is no reason to educate them or feed them.
Cuba was a ‘real paradise’ and the Mafia would provide everything you desired.
Like most revolutionaries, Castro was educated and upper middle-class. He knew exactly what ‘the people’ really wanted and didn’t have to waste time asking them. He might have softened towards the US if he didn’t have to put up with an average of one assassination attempt per month for 50 years.
Wealthy Americans took over before and gave rise to Fidel.
The US isn’t exactly a paragon of virtue when it comes to human rights – Torture, Guantanamo, multiple state prison systems, police shootings … I was an intel analyst – I deal with facts, not patriotic ideology. If I needed a babysitter and the choice was between Fidel and a bishop, the choice would be easy. [At no point did I claim to be a nice person.]
Castro executed hundreds, maybe thousands of people. It’s hard to tell because the rich f**ks kicked out of Cuba keep spewing so much propaganda about Castro executing people, that the reality gets buried under the cow flops.
Batista executed thousands of people. This, at least, is documented and indisputable fact.
Of course, the people Batista executed were “Communists”, while the people Castro executed were, by and large, rich people. So since one rich person is worth ten peasants, clearly Castro executed more people than Batista, right?
Despite its economic problems under the Castro regime, Cuba’s GDP looks very similar to that of its neighbor the Dominican Republic, though it is spread more widely amongst the population. So you can’t say that Castro was an economic disaster for Cuba. Well, except for 1993, but who could have predicted that the Soviet Union would simply collapse without a single shot fired?
Fidel Castro was undeniably not a nice man. On the other hand, neither was any other rule of Cuba for the past 400 years. The special vitriol reserved for Castro has always baffled me. I guess that’s what you get when it’s the rich people who get screwed by the government, rather than poor people.
Castro, rich people, multinational corporations, and the Mafioso – It’s hard to find anyone to like on that list. He certainly wasn’t about to lighten up when he had monthly assassination attempts and 24/7 propaganda broadcasts.
Trump thinks he going to scare Raul. Ain’t happening.
That said, I do hope the Cubans figure out a better way of doing things now that the elder Castros are clearly on the way out. Cuba has had 400 years of brutal governments. Maybe it’s time Cubans get a better break?
It seems not everyone hated Castro. 🙂
Fidel Castro: The unlikely relationship he had with an Aussie sportswoman
Of course, she only saw the good side. But at least he had one. 🙂 From long experience, I know not everyone has.
We are all a composite of both good & bad, there are no exceptions. I much prefer someone like Castro who was, fort the main part, honest about who he was; than for pretenders such as many politicians that they are perfect and always do good. Usually, again from experience, the opposite is the truth.
If they attempt to import ‘democracy’, or let the former Cubans from South Florida show them how to run a government, they are screwed. They need to consult with Costa Rica, Canada, Ecuador, other functioning democracies, and transform slowly beginning at the villages and working up.
If they try to do it too quickly, they will end up like Russia.
Yeah, that’s the big fear I think in Cuba, that the neoliberals are going to come in and rape them and then some ass on a white horse is gonna come in and “save” them with yet another brutal government. I don’t think the former Cubans from South Florida are going to get into this picture at all, though. My understanding is that the Cubans who stayed in Cuba view them with more than a little distaste. Machismo is not dead in Cuban culture, just as in most Latin cultures, and people who are viewed as cowards and deserters are not respected.
That was the problem with Chalabi and his collections of ex-pat Iraqis creating a government, the Iraqi people didn’t know him and didn’t want want him [but the Jordanian police did].
The Calle Ocho crowd think they are going to fly back and get all of their ‘looted assets’ back. It is not going to happen. The Cubans could ‘privatize’ by converting banks to the credit union model and most of the other enterprises to employee owned corporations. Agriculture shifts to co-ops.
There are ways of easing into capitalism that don’t destroy the economy.
Trump will probably screw it up and Cuba will go its own way. He will probably force Iran to build nuclear weapons, and relight the Korean conflict.
Speaking of satire (another thread)… Here is one relevant to this thread: 😈
One Last Humiliation: The CIA Just Bungled An Attempt To Drop A Piano On Fidel Castro’s Funeral Procession
So… How many people do you estimate would probably believe this? 😉 😆
The number is depressingly high. The Onion, Newsbiscuit, et alia must get tired of telling people, especially people in the news business that it’s a joke.
Come on, the CIA would have used a trebuchet, not a helicopter. A couple of cows to determine range, and then they would launch the piano ….
For an agency that once tried to assassinate Fidel with an exploding cigar, a trebuchet would have been oddly appropriate….
I do miss northern exposure, and that was one of my favorites –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6zmMWfzv38
It was one of the few shows I watched. It got Alaska mostly right …
Now that was a great show! 😀 One of the few shows I watched during the early 90’s. I was pretty busy then, so TV was rare. I remember the bar… “The Brick”? Looked like a nice place to visit. 😉 😀
That was pretty typical for southern Alaskan towns.