Castro's death changes nothing, he has been away from leading Cuba and decision making for about 8 years. The current president (his own brother) has his very same ideals
Fidel should have made it to the Guinness World Records, he survived more assassination attempts than we can count. I don't think there had been another man that had stood up to an empire for so long and had live to tell the story.
If standing up to an empire means subjecting your country to half a century's worth of squalor and poverty, then...yeah, he really showed us what's what.
I'm not going to get into details but if you take major economic facts about Cuba before the revolution and after it the balance is clear. http://hdr.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/CUB comparatively they do better than most Latin American countries. It's a shame that their leaders weren't more pragmatic and allowed more civil liberties but then again, they always lived under an embargo and a permanent terror campaign from the CIA.
Why Cuba when the richest economy in the world is around the corner? Cuba doesn't have a functional economy for their own citizens let alone for potential immigrants. However, their standard of living is not as bad as people in the west think, that's why I refer to the human development index.
Even so, were would it have been if intervention attempts by Uncle Sam against Cuba succeeded? Name one country that is better of than it was before western intervention.
Does the life quality of populace increase or did it decrease on countries that US of A intervened? I do not understand US fear of communism(by definition ussr did not even have communism, it was something else may be call it ussr-communism?). Both countries were allies in world war. What was the need for a piss of contest between the two? I would say ussr's involvement in cold war was caused by passive aggressive tactics began by USA. It was USA who first deployed nuclear weapons near Russian border. When russia deployed in response in cuba, suddenly that was news and more fear mongering to justify their actions that caused it in the first place. Most americans didn't even know that it was their country that started it. And in the fear of communism, they took destructive actions. Just like they are doing it now in the name of terrorism, but actually making the problem even more worse.
> Does the life quality of populace increase or did it decrease on countries that US of A intervened?
Yes, I understand that's the question at hand. In the case of Korea, there is a good argument to be made that the entire country would have had the quality of life North Korea has if it were not for the intervention.
> by definition ussr did not even have communism
Yes, and neither did China, nor Cuba, nor Vietnam, etc, etc. At some point we end up with a "no true Scotsman" fallacy. In any case, the fear was of "the thing calling itself communism", not "theoretical platonic communism".
The fear, at least for people who actually thought about the matter, was based on the following facts:
1) Communism (as it was being practiced; I will assume this parenthetical henceforth) was incompatible with fundamental aspects of society that were considered important in the US. For a simple example, if you look at the Bill of Rights (first 10 amendments to the US constitution), the only right that was not being actively being violated in the countries that called themselves "communist" was the one granted by the Third Amendment. Well, except it _was_ being violated in the USSR in the early 20s. But generally 20th century nation-states have housed their own soldiers.
2) Communism was actively expansionist when it had the chance to be; see eastern Europe, the Korean peninsula.
3) Communism had as part of its doctrine the goal of fomenting revolutions in countries that were not yet communist.
4) There were communist parties in various countries, including the US, and some of their members (not all, yes) were actively involved in item #3.
5) There were various people in the US who were not members of the communist party but were clearly sympathetic to the idea of the communist party having more power or seizing power altogether. A number of these people were highly placed in the existing US government.
So at least in some quarters there was the perception of a plausible existential threat to the US as currently constituted (literally; throw out the Constitution and replace it with a totally different setup).
In addition to this, there was of course the usual fear of the other, the fear of the labor movement on the part of owners of capital, and so forth. In many cases these various reasons for fear were self-reinforcing.
> Both countries were allies in world war.
Yes. That doesn't always mean much on its own; the USSR and Germany were allies from 1939 to 1941.
> What was the need for a piss of contest between the two?
This is a question without a simple answer.
To some extent, in both cases, it was driven by domestic political considerations. It's a lot easier to maintain power if you keep telling people there are external enemies they need to worry about and hence shouldn't rock the domestic political boat too much. In the case of the USSR this was a quite explicit (and longstanding; it dates back to the 20s) policy of the Communist Party. In the US, I think it was a bit more opportunistic and not as organized.
Add to that concerns regarding the fate of allies, the pre-existing tensions I talk about below, and lots of stuff I am not thinking of right now and may not even know about...
> I would say ussr's involvement in cold war was caused by passive aggressive tactics began by USA.
The tension dates back way longer than that. There were quite a number of people in the US who fundamentally mistrusted the USSR for the reasons listed above, and that distrust went back to the original October Revolution. There were quite a number in the USSR, including in high government positions, who distrusted the US because of its participation in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Rus... . There was tension over the UN declaration of human rights and ...
I meant to take into account all results of US interventions from the end of world war 2. Its a net negative result for affected citizens due to underhanded tactics by US. And for US too. Which is why USA is no more a world leader. It would have had plausibility if it didn't constantly try to undermine other democratic countries atleast. But no, every other country is a possible enemy. Spying even the heads of states of allies only proves that attitude and pushes them to actually become an enemy when these underhanded tactics comes to light.
Interchange usa with ussr and communism with capitalism in the above para. Then read it as if you are from ussr.
What I would strongly advocate for is open governance. That would prevent waging war for profit. Perhaps those who calls for war should lead it like old times. Waging war for profit in the comfort of your home while your soldiers die like expendibles causes career politicians to take that risk. If won its profit, if lost then its just an election for them.
I wonder if law banning hipocracy is the answer. Most Politicians does not experience suffering of commons.I wouldn't have a problem with most politicians if at least half of them displayed an expertise in solving real problems rather than expertise in saving face
Here is a very good article that has many ideas I strongly agree with. It addresses many fundamental problems involved.
> Its a net negative result for affected citizens due to underhanded tactics by US
Net negative compared to the counterfactual of perfect interventions or the counterfactual of no interventions?
Again, I think there were lots of cases in which the US screwed up. That's easier to tell in hindsight in some of those cases. On the ground at the time, was it obvious that the Korean War was a good idea and the Vietnam War a bad one? (I think it _did_ become obvious that the Vietnam War was a bad idea quite a bit before the US actually pulled out of it; again, I won't claim that the US didn't make preventable mistakes!)
What I don't have a good handle on is what the world would look like if the US post WWII had adopted the sort of foreign policy it had in 1910 or 1925 and just minded its own business and ignored the rest of the world. And if you're not suggesting it should have done _that_, then I'm not sure what you're suggesting, exactly.
> Which is why USA is no more a world leader.
Is the USA less of a world leader than in the 1920s or 1930s? I don't think so.
Is it less of one than it was in 1946? Maybe, but that was inevitable, for at least two obvious reasons:
1) Its economic influence decreased as its share of world GDP dropped (which it _had_ to; in 1946 a lot of the rest of the world's industrial capacity was in ruins, and let's not get started on the service sector in most of 1946 Europe, Japan, China, USSR). Also, the dependence of other countries on US exports or aid dropped from 1946 to now, generally speaking. This is, of course, a good thing.
2) The rest of the world caught up to the US in some areas in which it had had moral leadership, thus decreasing the moral leadership aspect. As one example, the non-communist European countries which hadn't done so yet finally got around to introducing women's suffrage (Belgium 1948, France 1944, Greece 1952, Italy 1945, Liechtenstein 1984, Portugal 1976, San Marino 1959, Spain 1976, Switzerland 1971 or 1991 depending on how you count).
Which countries would you consider to be more "world leaders" than the US at the moment? Or is your claim that the US is no longer _the_ world leader (as if it ever were)? I would say that's a very good thing.
> Spying even the heads of states of allies
Do you seriously believe that the US is the only country doing that? I would be quite shocked if this were the case.
> Then read it as if you are from ussr.
I _am_ from the USSR (back when there was one). So yes, I have some idea, both from my reading and from talking to people of my parents' and grandparents' generation of what things looked like from that side. A bit from personal experience as well, but that covers a somewhat small slice of post-WWII history of the USSR.
> What I would strongly advocate for is open governance.
> I wonder if law banning hipocracy is the answer.
I'm not sure whether you mean http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Hipocracy or something else. "Hipocracy" is not a word I've seen before you used it just now, and I can find no other references to it. Not sure whether you mean "hypocrisy", but that wouldn't fit in with the rest of the paragraph that follows the above-quoted sentence...
> Here is a very good article that has many ideas I strongly agree with.
Thank you for the link. I'll need to take some time to read it and think before I can comment on it intelligently.
Now please convince the Latvians of that, say. Seriously, the case that the second half of the 20th century would have turned out better with an isolationist US is a hard case to make.
> Just because other governments do it doesn't make it right.
I'm not entirely convinced. The problem is that alliances are not permanent...
> And I spelled hypocrisy wrong.
Then as I said, I don't understand the rest of your paragraph.
> My understanding is the world would be a better place if everyone works together and live peacefully.
Sure. We'd need no police, no armies, etc. It would be pretty nice.
Not just assassination attempts, but also attempts to undermine his power in general. There was a plan to plant thallium salts in his shoes, which would get absorbed by skin and cause his facial hair to fall out. The hope was that this would lead people to believe that he was sick, and his authority would be weakened.
Is there anyway way that castro could have done his revolution that wasn't opposed to the us? suppose you lived in a country that was ruled by a dictator that was supported by foreign powers, and you wanted to end that dictatorship so the people got freedom? that part seems okay. castro was a communist, that was unforgivable. but think about how the us treated chile and pinochet and other south american leaders. Like most revolutions, there were good and bad things. I don't know enough about castro and cuba to draw conclusions. after he took power, did he become a new dictator himself? what did he do more than be a communist leader?
When you buy a beer for your friends at a bar and maybe next week they buy a round, that's communism. Communism is a central part of western society.
China, the USSA and Cuba were never communism. They varied between heavy socialism (also a pinical of all high income countries: roads, trains, parks, police, fire, airports) and fascism.
A lot of people who just go on about communists, today, in 2016, seemed to have not learned that much of what we learned about the communists was mostly propaganda; same way the US creates enemies out of "terrorists" today.
> When you buy a beer for your friends at a bar and maybe next week they buy a round, that's communism. Communism is a central part of western society.
Communism is when you and your friends go to a bar and there is no beer, because there was not enough grain produced on command of the central planning committee 4 years ago. Now you and your friends are upset and complain about it, so you get arrested and locked up without trial because you are betraying communist ideals.
Sure, communism might be a bad idea, but why is it so unforgivable? specially when is not your country?
And it's not like nobody got locked up in the 50s without a hint of a trial just for the suspicion of being 'communist' and betraying the capitalistic ideals.
This is a good joke, but unfortunately, is not an accurate description of communism. As the parent comment suggests, there were no real communism nation on earth ever.
"""
In political and social sciences, communism (from Latin communis, "common, universal")[1][2] is a social, political, and economic ideology and movement whose ultimate goal is the establishment of the communist society, which is a socioeconomic order structured upon the common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money,[3][4] and the state.[5][6]
"""
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism
That's like saying that there are no capitalist societies by claiming that capitalism is some higher, perfect ideal which has just not been implemented yet perfectly. Or calling the outcome of christian rule in the middle ages "not really christian" by comparing it to a biblical description of heaven.
If there are people who call themselves communists and they create societies, then "communism" should be judged on that.
> If there are people who call themselves communists and they create societies, then "communism" should be judged on that.
That's not how it works; some terrorists may call themselves muslims and even form "Islamic" societies, but I hope you'll agree that muslims and Islam shouldn't be judged on their actions. The same goes for Christianity.
I think christianity should be judged on having overcome those terrible crimes of the past. Islam should be judged on whether it can overcome islamism. And communism should be judged on having failed to deliver a society worth living in.
That sounds more like socialism from what I understand. Communism is more like you and your friends work on a farm, live off what you produce, all do some work, but you are not paid different or receive more or less food/accommodation/luxuries than each other. You are all equal.
Now if one of you gets ill, or decides to slack off then that person will still be supported. If everyone slacks off then the society is f'd.
I'd recommend reading the communist manifesto to understand the issue better.
Buying beer and sharing with friends week after week is a good example of capitalism, as the bar owner is profiting so much from you and your friends buying all this beer.
Communism (of the Marxist variety) would be you and your friends being allocated the same amount of beer by the state, which owns the beer (along with all goods), and deals out the same amount of beer to everyone, regardless of what they do (i.e. what would have corresponded to their class).
I suppose there is another kind of communism where you and your friends live on a commune and some grow hops and some grow barley and some are in charge of fermentation vats and all just relax and drink their beer after a long day. That is, until the tax man cometh...
No, for Marx, there is no individual ownership, as the first, post-capital phase has removed private ownership of the means of production. There is social ownership only. There is individual participation as part of the social whole, but individual ownership and private property of any sort is abolished.
I'd recommend reading far more than The Communist Manifesto to understand the issue better. You're not describing Marx's conception and predictions of communism at all. And you seem to have misunderstood the Manifesto as the definition of communism. That was not its purpose. Its goal is to wake the consciousness of the working class to their condition, explain why this is important in simple terms, and suggest an immediate course of action for helping move society away from capitalism and toward communism. But the Manifesto was not a description of communism itself. For that, you must set the Manifesto aside and dig into Marx's other works. There is no state doling out equal portions of anything to anyone under communism—because, most critically, there is no state.
Just want to mention that actual communism has never been implemented on any significant scale, the Soviet Union for example never reached communism, arguably never even really reached socialism.
Marx suggested that communism will only emerge after the failure of capitalism. Every single communist regime has ignored this idea.
While I agree that many countries who have followed communist ideas have done some horrible things, the same can be said for every other system, including the current system we have now.
Furthermore pure capitalism has never really been tried either, because it begins to fail and government intervention is needed very quickly.
Actual communism doesn't really mean dictatorship, I think we might see a comeback of ideas related to communism & command style economies in the future. Especially if we start implementing Strong AI to better manage resources and trade. I could see a future where free market may not exist in the form we have it now, instead there might be a system focused on harm reduction managed by various planning systems, better and more careful resource allocation, etc.
Let's not forget that communist ideas also allowed many countries to industrialize rather quickly.
Theoretical communism is useless and this "no true Scotsman" argument is useless, at least for the foreseeable future.
How is communism going to handle malicious parties, since there's no ownership? How is communism going to handle needs for abstract needs, such as those for services? Marx didn't really think things through. You don't need strong AI, you need the singularity to centrally plan humanity. Until then you need to allow freedom of action for individual actors, i.e. rule of law + market economies.
The principles of communism aren't that different from capitalism, you work and get rewarded, the same way it happens right now. Communism is simply a system that places limits on individuals so that they do not exploit others and so they do not own the means of production. To avoid a concentration of resources/wealth for a small group of the population, because by just pure ownership and wealth such individuals can enslave humanity.
In my personal opinion, I don't think that if communism ever emerges it will be through forced means as it was before, I think it will occur naturally where Capitalism will simply fail in certain areas and the system will need to change.
For example say in 100 years, climate change causes enormous damage worldwide in various aspects of life. At this point perhaps governments will realize we can't just exploit raw resources, pollute and allow people to do what they want, so new economic systems emerge that utilize central planning and needs based production and distribution as to avoid harm, it will no longer be simply market driven. Just a rough example, of what could happen.
> Because of the incredible harm to humanity done at the hands of communists over just the past 100 years alone
You're talking about dictatorships that called themselves communist. Some were economically communist, but the governance was never as Marx intended.
Marx envisioned a system of 'councils' that would exist in many aspects of society (e.g. for each factory), each would send a representative to a higher level council. This is what 'soviet' refers to. This system was never really implemented.
Economic system and governance are not the same thing. It's conceivable to implement communism using a proper 'soviet' (council) system, or maybe even using a parliamentary democracy. I don't quite believe this would work that well, but calling the belief itself 'unforgivable' is ...simplistic.
Especially considering that many people who believe in communism do so out of a sense of idealism that is much less selfish than capialists; in some sense communist beliefs stem from a sense of empathy that is much more compatible with evangelical values rather than capitalism.
Castro wasn't a Communist, he was a Socialist. But the Americans didn't knew the difference and they probably never will. Castro didn't hate the US and he wasn't the one who cut the ties.
The blockade of Cuba began before Castro nationalized the American-owned oil refineries by Eisenhower drastically reducing the amount of sugar Cuba could export to the US. As the Cuban economy was dependent on sugar exports they didn't have much choice when the Soviet Union stepped in and offered to buy their sugar.
The rest is history. Cuba aligning with the Soviet Union was by force, not by choice. That's why the blockade was such a cluster-fuck from the beginning.
I guess death by old age is definitely an "unnatural" death for a dictator.
When he was very old but still in power, I always wondered if he would just suddenly die one day and his country would descend into chaos. At least that has not happened, what, if you like or dislike him, you should probably still credit him. I hope Cuba will develop into a freer society over time.
Have you ever read anything about Cuban democracy besides the propaganda put out by the US government? If you're actually interested in educating yourself, there's an interesting sociology paper called Representative Government in Socialist Cuba.
"One Castro or another has ruled Cuba over a period that spans seven decades and 11 U.S. presidents. Fidel Castro outlived six of those presidents,[[[NOTE: change to seven if George H.W. Bush dies before Castro]]] including Cold War warriors John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan."
That's exactly one of my main criticisms about Castro - his self-belief that only him could govern Cuba. Was he immortal, he wouldn't have stepped down from power, I believe.
As an African, I'd say the world has lost one of the most influential leaders of the past century.
To pretend here, for me, as if he was cruel to our continent would be both ungrateful and untrue. The man offered free training and medical school for most of our African doctors, he harbored, trained and armed many a guerilla group in our pursuit of independence from colonization. Up until today, Cuba still sends significant numbers of doctors to remote African areas and provide expensive medical procedures for free.
The truth is, if as a continent we are to point at individual world leaders who did the most for African nations, Fidel Castro is very high up that list, if not at the top.
He had his fights and ills, but not with us.
With that, rest in peace Fidel Castro. Your legend lives on.
He was also an evil dictator who silenced any and all opposition. And you can't argue that his political philosophy works either---just look at Cuba today.
> you can't argue that his political philosophy works either---just look at Cuba today.
As someone who studied the subject formally, don't place maximum weight on the success and failures of the (statistically insignificant) rise and fall of modern nation states. This is a very far cry from a controlled experiment to begin with, anyways.
Don't read into that too much. I'm not saying mainstream economics doesn't have compelling arguments to make about the elegant effectiveness of free (properly regulated) markets. I'm just trying to be fair: it's a far cry from a scientific fact, which it seems like not just this comment, but a lot of us in the west (even mainstream academic economics) sell the idea as.
There is not even such thing. There exists no major economy in modern history which is either 100% planned or 100% "free market" (anarchist).
Well anyways, the objective fact here is that Cuba is objectively richer and more successful than some nearby economies that have had more right wing influence in nearby Central America.
>it's a far cry from a scientific fact, which it seems like not just this comment, but a lot of us in the west (even mainstream academic economics) sell the idea as.
Centrally planning an economy is an NP complete problem. Marxism is dumb and if any would be socialist on this forum can explain to me how we as a society can retain the benefits yielded by capitalism without the use of capital and how socialism of such a form can exist without a centrally planned economy, I'm all ears.
Marxism has failed and failed and then failed again, and then it also led to the deaths of 100 million.
You seem to have a very wrong idea of what Marxism is, means, and argues. You also seem to have a deep-seated and emotional hatred for it. That's all well and good, but perhaps you should lay off discussing it. You keep getting all worked up here, which you perhaps would be able to avoid if you had a better understanding of what Marxism is, what it means, what it argues, what it predicts. You're continuing to behave in an insulting manner toward people, calling names, and making antagonistic, simplistic, blanket statements that evince no nuance of understanding.
For a concrete example, someone who is interested cannot really respond to you if they wanted to because you're firing in every direction with very little detail or explanation. How is anyone supposed to guess at what you consider to be the "benefits yielded by capitalism"? What socialism "of such a form" do you mean? Why do you seem blind to the many "dumb" parts of capitalism or liberal democracy? Do you study the various alternatives that have been discussed in the history of political science and theory? What specifically do you find dumb about Marxism, particularly as compared with its counterparts in other economic models and interpretations of human history?
On HN, you'll find emotional, knee-jerk reactions receive a swift, negative response. Especially when they're negative emotions, delivered with insults and anger. You can do much better than this, and you'll find interesting conversations coming your way.
Cuba has been under embargos for decades. You can't blame the current situation on Castro alone. That's like saying the reason your pizza shop was burned to the ground was because you paid protection money to the wrong mafia, and it was the other one that really controlled your neighbourhood.
Cuba can buy absolutely anything it needs - even American products - simply by going through any one of a myriad of interlocutors: Mexico, Canada, Jamaica, Venezuela.
There is absolutely no forgiving Fidel's cruel dictatorship.
US embargo means a lot, not just unable to buy stuff easily. Let's not pretend that US was not the world cop. The embargo definitely has negative impact on Cuba economy.
I fully sympathize with that fact and it's correct.
Just as I understand there is some Cuban goodwill with respect to the doctors they send abroad - and early on Fidel's creation of better literacy/healthcare programs.
But remember this: Fidel worked with the Russians to put nuclear weapons 40 miles away from the USA - and created a crazy situation - the closest the world has ever been to full blown nuclear war. That was this man's hubris - he nearly helped put the world on fire. That kind of existential threat is not easily forgotten. Point being: the 'embargo' is 100% Fidel's fault, and he could have easily taken steps to have it removed, but his ego would not allow it.
> Fidel worked with the Russians to put nuclear weapons 40 miles away from the USA
That's after US did the same to Russia and failed invasion of Cuba.
“In response to the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion of 1961, and the presence of American Jupiter ballistic missiles in Italy and Turkey, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev decided to agree to Cuba's request to place nuclear missiles in Cuba to deter future harassment of Cuba.” [1]
You may want to read [2], which was posted on HN before. In short, US was a real bully back then. Anything did by Cuba and USSR were mostly reactive knee-jerking response to the aggressive stance of US.
"reactive knee-jerking response to the aggressive stance of US."
It was a response to the Cuban revolution, which was Communist, and 'Soviet inspired' from day one - a global movement which was threatening the entire world.
As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, that's not true. As a simple counterexample, Air Canada flies to Cuba and does business with US companies/individuals just fine.
I'm not an expert on the embargo, and it's a bit complicated because it's got multiple pieces of enabling legislation, but at first glance the only one of those that says anything close to what you're saying is Title III of the Helms-Burton act (see http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Documents/... for full text). That explicitly allows companies "trafficking in property which was confiscated by the Cuban Government on or after January 1, 1959", if it was confiscated from a United States national, to be sued in US courts. This obviously only matters to companies doing business in the US, because otherwise they don't care whether they get sued to start with. Note also that certain forms of real estate are excluded from the provisions of this law, again at first glance.
Am I just missing something? Do you have a citation for your claim?
The same happened with MasterCard and VISA, and is part of the reason why I think Germany should continue to keep its own payment system, and just ban MasterCard and VISA and PayPal within the EU.
Or that you can’t technically put apps on the iOS App Store or the Google Play Store if you trade with Cuba.
The Reddit discussion references the Helms-Burton act, and for the case of things like banks and payment processors, I expect the problem is Title I section 103, which prohibits US nationals from extending loans or other financing to anyone for the purpose of financing transactions involving confiscated property as defined elsewhere in the act.
So for the cigar case, if the cigars were grown on land that was confiscated (for example), my reading of it is that processing a payment for the cigars would be prohibited under the act. Certainly so for MasterCard and Visa, which are clearly extending credit.
That's not the same as a blanket ban on both doing business with Cuba and business with US companies, but it does make things very complicated, I agree, especially because there are so many ways of extending credit when companies deal with each other.
That he was a dictator is uncontroversial. The word 'evil' in this context is probably meaningless. Cuba's trajectory through world history under Castro is in turns tragic, heroic, idealistic, and cynical.
The comment you are replying to is embracing that complexity. Paving over it with simplistic thinking "Castro was evil and wrong" does a great deal of violence to the truth.
I am no fan of the shape Fidel Castro's Cuba took, but I think it is more important that we learn from the mistakes of the revolution (which are not a simple matter of being 'evil' or 'wrong') than that we demonize them.
In general, we should learn from history or be doomed to repeat it.
>Paving over it with simplistic thinking "Castro was evil and wrong" does a great deal of violence to the truth.
I honestly agree.
I just think it is ridiculous to claim that Castro was "a great leader" when Cuba has fared very poorly under Castro in almost every respect. I felt obliged to point this out.
>I just think it is ridiculous to claim that Castro was "a great leader" when Cuba has fared very poorly under Castro in almost every respect. I felt obliged to point this out.
Were they given the chance (cold war, embargo, et al)?
Well, they made their choice. They had the actual biggest country doing everything it can to make them succeed. Or is it better to forget because it was a failure?
Communism failed. Mistakes like that are unforgivable.
But it sort of helps that the other biggest country is doing the opposite. Of course, it gets complicated when that country stops existing - in the case of Soviet Union, that was in 1993, IIRC.
These are important lessons, and very well expressed--better than I could say it. I just want to add that I wish more of us felt this way. Everyone community online I find it seems the emotional knee-jerk reaction is very prevalent in the way we think about politics, and I don't see the maturity expressed in this comment very often.
Not sure why this is being downvoted, it adds to the conversation, there is merit to the viewpoint that you can be both terrible to your own people while being generous to the people of other countries. I might not have liked the man but the reasoning behind his interventions in Africa were just as sound as the US interventions.
I think it would be most constructive to provide counterfactual evidence in a comment, and then down vote if so inclined. As a reader, I'd find that most helpful.
And to those who cheer the advent of capitalism in Cuba as a 'freer society', consider that now there's the form of proto-capitalism that existed in Eastern Europe and the former soviet countries after the fall of the wall.
It's the time when society divides into economic winners and losers, and the wealth gap will increase - sometimes dramatically. So yay innovation and (somewhat more) freedom, but woe social tensions.
It's hard to say. Some of the provisions of the pieces of US legislation that establish the US embargo of Cuba only apply while either Fidel or Raul is in power; they are explicitly named in the legislation text, iirc. Of course more legislation could be passed extending those terms to whoever the new leaders end up being, but I suspect (and hope!) it's more likely that the embargo would just end up being loosened somewhat at least by default.
After the fall of the wall, the intelligence officers and highest party officials took control of the economy, the judicial and law enforcement systems and also the media. They people who ruled did not change. Just their methods.
It's also worth bearing in mind that America, the godfather of capitalism, have just had their crazy election. People were saying they as a nation had been left behind due to globalization. Isn't the capitalist market supposed to self regulate and spread the wealth? If US citizens are feeling left behind, how exactly are other nations supposed to feel when western nations "come to liberate them and give them democracy"?
The western view of Castro is painted with decades of terrible propaganda. The Cuban people have been placed in their situation, not primarily by the Soviets or Castro, but by the American Hegemony and its unending empire across the globe.
Many central and south American heads of state have tried to stand up to that empire, and many have died in plane crashes. Hugh Chavez, demonized in American media, put pieces of the bill of rights on all food packaging, stood up for the poor and was opposed by the rich. Those people help him survive a military coupé. I would not be surprised if in 40 years, declassified documented revealed that coupé was US led.
For those who think that's crazy tin foil hat, remember that the US did cause the September 11th 1973 uprising in Chile, which led to the deaths of 11,000 civilians.
In a few hundred years when this era is not covered in the relentless nationalism that paints our view of the world, people will discover how much of our modern world was controlled by so very few.
They've been isolated for like half a century; they've had more than enough time to implement whatever form of government they want. It's clear that Castro's communism doesn't work.
> They've been isolated for like half a century; they've had more than enough time to implement whatever form of government they want. It's clear that Castro's communism doesn't work.
If that wasn't obvious by itself, a brief glimpse at Venezuela and what Chavez/Maduro's regime has accomplished should dispel any remaining doubt.
"The western view of Castro is painted with decades of terrible propaganda."
+ Fidel does not allow his people to leave, with the threat of punishment.
+ Fidel does not allow democracy
+ He does not allow any real internet access
+ Fidel puts political dissidents in jail
+ Fidel's private Army own's 85% of the economy
+ Cuban's live in relative poverty
+ Only the US 'embargos' Cuba, they are free to trade with 167 other nations in the world - and even buy American products from wherever they want - just not America.
> + Only the US 'embargos' Cuba, they are free to trade with 167 other nations in the world - and even buy American products from wherever they want - just not America.
Except, any company making a deal with Cuba is automatically banned from dealing with the US.
To this date, the US even interfers in Europe regarding that: There is a famous case where a German bought Cuban Cigars from a Dane, and the FBI interfered, and seized the funds from their bank accounts.
If any company ever touches the USD, the US claims to have jurisdiction over them.
> + Cuban's live in relative poverty
The median wealth and income in Cuba is higher than most middle american countries.
Cuba is not a great country to live in, but please don’t distort the facts. That doesn’t make you any better than the North Korean propaganda that claims the US president eats babies.
> Except, any company making a deal with Cuba is automatically banned from dealing with the US.
Can you be more precise by what you mean when you say "making a deal"? Does flying to Cuba constitute "making a deal"? Air Canada has flown there for years and still flies to the US.
Half of those you listed are just normal characteristics of communist state, to argue on those would be to argue on whether communism is "evil" in comparison to capitalism or not. This is very much not self-evident as you seem to assume from your post (I'm not interested in said discussion, just pointing out how biased looking your comment reads to me).
Just to put a concrete point, Per capita GDP of Cuba is 4 times the largest democracy country (India).
But even granting 4x, notice that it was 5x back in 1970 (which is as early as the Cuba chart in this dataset goes). And if you look at numbers from right before the Cuban revolution, it was about 6x...
Of course the embargo, the Soviet subsidies, the removal of those subsidies, and the sugar price crash in the 90s make it hard to make much practical sense of Cuban GDP per capita and its evolution.
I _would_ like to respond to your "normal characteristics" point, though. The "people aren't allowed to leave" your country _is_ a normal characteristic of communist states, but that doesn't make it OK. And I would argue that it's not necessarily inherent to "communism", and _is_ "evil" in pretty basic terms: it violates the right of freedom of movement. See also UN declaration of human rights, article 13. I understand the practical reasons such a restriction is instituted, and I can even make some moral arguments for it (e.g. owing a debt to the society that provided your education and hence not being allowed to take your skills elsewhere), but I still don't think the outcome is OK.
> Fidel does not allow his people to leave, with the threat of punishment.
Everybody is (now) free to leave Cuba. But OK, I think that's fairly recent.
> Fidel's private Army own's 85% of the economy
"Fidel's private Army" is just an ugly sound byte. It's the Cuban army and it's not going to be dissolved now that he's dead.
> Cuban's live in relative poverty
While poverty is a problem, it's not a Cuban problem. For instance, Americans also live in poverty (at least 45 millions of them)
On the other side, western propaganda blanks out a lot of facts about Cuba. Among those is the fact that a significant percentage of Cubans approve their government.
No because the US has the resources and wealth to ensure that its citizens do not have to live in poverty and could provide health care and education to everyone (they just choose not to) . In Cuba they don't have the resources or wealth but they still manage on health care and education but are still struggling with poverty.
I can't help but notice that you skipped over the little details about a lack of democracy, a lack of free access to information, and how dissidents are punished.
> On the other side, western propaganda blanks out a lot of facts about Cuba. Among those is the fact that a significant percentage of Cubans approve their government.
I can't help but notice that you skipped over the little details about a lack of democracy, a lack of free access to information, and how dissidents are punished.
> On the other side, western propaganda blanks out a lot of facts about Cuba. Among those is the fact that a significant percentage of Cubans approve their government.
Weird. Then why the resistance to holding elections?
I was pointing out propaganda and those I skipped well, those look like facts unfortunately.
And it is a dictatorship, so no elections. I wrote significant not majority.
Just wanted to point out that it's hard to get a realistic picture in the middle of all the propaganda. For instance, there's no starving in Cuba and health care for everybody. You cant say that about all countries with elections.
You are ignorant of the reality of Cuban society. People have been able to leave Cuba freely since 1980. Cuba is a participatory democracy, with essentially every adult being involved. Internet access was not really a priority with the USSR collapsing and the recovery from that, but it is being quickly broadened. Only those who actively attempt to undermine the Cuban democracy are imprisoned, but people are free to vote for liberal candidates and a minority does. The average Cuban has a better standard of living than the average Oklahoman or Mississippian. Finally, the embargo is not just a ban on trading with Cuba; it's a ban on doing business with anyone who does business with Cuba. That effectively restricts 99% of multinationals from trading with Cuba.
None of that is true. I've been to Havana; I've seen the buildings where 3 families are crammed into an apartment meant for one, where the windows are covered with cardboard because there's no glass, the electricity is on a few hours a day, where the concrete is crumbling so badly you could break it off with your fingers.
And I've seen just outside town the gorgeous villas with manicured gardens and water features, where members of the Party live. There's inequality in the West but nothing like there is in the "worker's paradise".
Cubans do not live in poverty. There are neither rich nor poor. And if you think there's an "efficient" way to escape poverty in the UK, you've never been poor.
Cubans are poor, and even those who are better off (within Cuban legal bounds) still live miserable lives compared to an average UK poor.
Unlike the USA, the UK has efficient universal healthcare and access to quality education, plus working safety net for the citizens. It might not be easy to rise from the poverty, but it is possible and indeed, most Britons are doing OK.
As to your small personal dab, I grew up in a Communist country and am familiar with the package, don't need no lectures from guys in Che t-shirts.
I have and the worst sink estate in London is nothing like as bad as Havana, at least not in terms of the physical infrastructure. Crime is probably worse in London.
And yes I am aware that as a tourist those are the bits I was allowed to see; I'll wager the "real" Cuba is far worse.
Did you know that people can overthrow the government of the United States every 4 years? They actually did a couple weeks ago, and noone had to die or go to prison.
They did, and the world is steel reeling from announcement. There is now a huge change in political course following the election results, no matter how one tires to explain that away with nitpicking.
On Cuba, even suggesting change of leadership is enough to put you in prison.
the only thing they can change is the name of the "president" in the government. There is no way Americans can legally overthrow the government. Overthrowing governments by people is called revolution. This is what Castro did with his people in Cuba.
I've been to Havanna 4 times. The electricity always worked. The room we had at somebodys home had windows but they are not needed anyway. Its so hot there, all you need is some iron in front. Since 2013 at least some had internet and this year there were lots of people at the public wifi hot spots. Yes cuba is not rich and laks many goods but in all my time there in literally all parts of the country I saw nobody suffering on the basics. Absolutemly everbody has enough food, a rooftop, free basic healthcare and money for alcohol and basic pleasures.
It's not comperable to high european standards but I think it could be easily worse there.
Did I mention its secure there? There are no insecure areas to go or bad people to talk to.
Fidel does not allow his people to leave, with the threat of punishment
This is the big one. Many countries have restrictions on people coming, for various reasons, but any country/govt that prevents people leaving knows perfectly well that it's doing something that people want to flee.
Lots of people in Miami consider themselves Cuban and are just waiting for the opportunity to go home and reclaim their family's birthright. Leaving a particular regime doesn't mean abandoning your heritage.
I don't doubt that his doctors may have helped you.
However, the man has committed grievous crimes, keeps 'his people' in abject poverty, on an 'island prison'. More than 85% of the economy is in the control of the military - his private Army.
"Up until today, Cuba still sends significant numbers of doctors to remote African areas and provide expensive medical procedures for free."
This is false and misleading. They do not provide it for free - they are paid by international agencies and it is one of the few real 'exports' that Cuba has.
Most perniciously - the money that is supposed to go to the doctors mostly goes to the military junta - while the doctors themselves receive very little.
Moreover - the Cuban doctors abroad are prisoners. They are held with the threat of violence or internment of their families back home. If they try to escape or leave - they go to prison:
Those doctors that 'helped you' get 5% of their 'salary' - while 95% goes to their captors.
Praise the doctors, not Fidel.
I find it abhorrent that such statements could be made about a cruel dictator, who has done 'some possibly good things' in the name of his legacy, whilst at the same time tormenting millions.
It's sad that people should hold such a tyrant in such esteem - because not only are those medical programs are paid for mostly by 'evil Western Nations' - aid to African nations is overwhelmingly from 'Western nations' (at least in terms of direct/indirect aid - of course China is a huge economic investor).
Let us not make a totem of this man without being cognizant of all the things he has done.
Way less crimes than those who accuse him. Never sprayed Vietnamese with Agent Orange or napalms for one, never dropped nuclear bombs on civilians, never supported Pinochet et co, doesn't have 25% of the world's incarcerated in just 4% of the global population, and lots of other things besides.
>keeps 'his people' in abject poverty
A 40+ years embargo has something to do with that too...
>More than 85% of the economy is in the control of the military - his private Army.
It's in control of the state, which is how things are supposed to work in communist countries. Not necessarily worse than having it in the hands of corporations...
If you have a better word, surely suggest. what is the word for "clinging to power for seven decades and taking the country through economic hell, year after year, all the while jailing political opponents and at times getting rid of them"
Many many words are better than "evil". How about "autocratic" or "dictatorial" or "power-hungry" or "delusional". Or perhaps a phrase like "ruthlessly uncompromising". All of them convey much more actual information and still have your judgemental tone.
For what its worth, I think "evil" is a word that shouldn't be used outside of storybooks. It is a binary word that is far too overgeneralised to the point it is meaningless to ascribe. It doesn't serve any persuasive or descriptive purpose.
I don't know. What is the word for "playing world cop, being full of crazy religious and racist nuts, having created KKK, being the worlds top incarceration rate, still having the death penalty, starting wars and protecting your "interests" right and left all over the globe where you have no place, getting in bed with all kind of dictators and fascist regimes --as long as they were not communist dictators they were ok--
, dropping nuclear bombs on civilians, and having the guts to point a hollier than thou finger on the rest of the world"?
Even that, I wouldn't call "evil" -- self-serving imperialistic and post-colonial would fit better. Evil is a BS biblical notion for pre-modern people. It's no way to look at history with a rational mindset, and doesn't offer any explanation of various acts, nor a historical perspective.
+ "It's in control of the state, " - actually, it's in control of the Army directly.
+ The US sprayed 'agent orange' on trees near their firebases, and the vast majority of the 'victims' were American soldiers, not Vietnamese. Obviously, they didn't know what it would do.
+ The 'embargo' is 100% the fault of Fidel. He put nuclear weapons 40 miles away from florida, from those who backed by the credible threat of using them, thereby putting hundreds of millions of lives at risk. That's why the embargo started - he had ample time to wind it down. Jimmy Carter, Clinton, Obama - and even Bush Sr. would have made a deal of Fidel agreed to have elections.
What do you think about the wisdom of putting nuclear weapons 160 miles away from the USSR in Turkey? The Cuban deployment was a direct response to American provocation.
What's notable about Castro's conduct during the missile crisis is that whilst it was actually Khrushchev that made the decision about locating the missiles in Cuba as an arguably proportionate response to America's own missile locations, it was Castro's private correspondence that urged Khrushchev to be prepared to actually use them.
(Khrushchev, not known as one of the Cold War's more pacifistic figures, responded that he found Castro's suggestion quite disturbing)
> the vast majority of the 'victims' were American soldiers, not Vietnamese.
That's straight up false. Between 3-4 millions Vietnamese suffered from it[1], and its devastating effects are still very relevant today. Concerning US soldiers, "By April 1993, the Department of Veterans Affairs had compensated only 486 victims, although it had received disability claims from 39,419 soldiers who had been exposed to Agent Orange while serving in Vietnam."
Honest question: Where is this coming from? I'd hate to call this war-mongering and spreading misinformation, but this is a great way to polarize a conversation in one fell scoop.
The problem is just that you have to see it a lot more nuanced.
It was the cold war, and the US had already put nukes into Italy and Turkey, well within range of Moscow.
In such a game-theoretical standoff, the USSR had had to react – to keep the balance of power.
It’s a completely crazy situation, and I’d consider both sides of the conflict as Evil, but I’m not sure why so many people try to claim the US was Good, while the USSR was Evil. Both stood for some good, and some very bad principles.
I edited the comment to reduce the conflict potential, but keep the general idea of it.
Please keep in mind I was responding only to the original comment, which I quoted in its full glory. It had nothing to do with what you assert above, just a mistaken assertion that US is keeping (now was implicit in what you said) nukes in the Baltic States.
Given Russias interest in toying and more with its neighbors, misinformation like this goes a long way of "normalizing" those conflicts. It prepares whomever is reading your comment to say, "huh, the both sides here are shades of gray" and just accept that conflict as normal.
So yeah. There are no US nukes in Estonia. If there are, please back up your sources.
Objectively? They were both Evil. If you compare them, the USSR is hands down the evil one. I really hate this whitewashing of USSR's history just to put down the US. I'm pretty sure nobody here defending Castro or Cuba ever had to live under a communist dictatorship.
It's as simple as:
Ask anyone from Eastern Europe or even Cuba on whose sphere of influence would they had rather been. I'm willing to bet everything that 90% of the answers will be NATO.
But comparing the US and USSR isn’t nearly as easy. Both were (and are) horrible to non-citizen. And while the US was mostly okay to the white citizen, minorities had to suffer for quite a while. And nowadays, the US mistreating its own citizen is getting extreme.
> Ask anyone from Eastern Europe or even Cuba on whose sphere of influence would they had rather been
That question isn’t nearly as easy either.
In Germany we’re having a huge group of people who lived under communism – and want it back. In some states (those which lived under communism), up to 20% of the people.
(This also answers the "I'm pretty sure nobody here defending Castro or Cuba ever had to live under a communist dictatorship" question, I guess? I didn’t live myself under communism, but I know quite a few who’d want it back, because they had it better)
> But comparing the US and USSR isn’t nearly as easy. Both were (and are) horrible to non-citizen.
Go ahead and compare how the United States treated the citizens of, say, France, with how the USSR treated the citizens of, oh, say, Czechoslovakia. We'll wait.
> And while the US was mostly okay to the white citizen, minorities had to suffer for quite a while.
It's telling that you are attempting to draw an equality between segregation -- which was legally ended in 1957 as part of an open and democratic process -- with the USSR's extensive gulag system, intricate controls on freedom of expression and freedom of thought, and general lack of civil rights for everyone, which lasted right up until the day it disintegrated.
> In Germany we’re having a huge group of people who lived under communism – and want it back.
If Communism was so great, why did you have to build a wall to keep people from running away from it? That's the unanswerable point here.
>Way less crimes than those who accuse him. Never sprayed Vietnamese with Agent Orange or napalms for one, never dropped nuclear bombs on civilians, never supported Pinochet et co, doesn't have 25% of the world's incarcerated in just 4% of the global population, and lots of other things besides.
That's a logical fallacy. You can't say that Castro's crimes against humanity are okay because the US has committed worse ones.
>A 40+ years embargo has something to do with that too...
Only a US embargo. That leaves more than 80% of the world GDP to interact with.
It's only a fallacy if it is being employed to absolve Castro of every crime. I think the point of the comparison was to remind pots not to call kettles black.
What makes you think it requires a total absolution to be tu quoque? If I murder 100 people and punch a grandma, and I point out it was OK to punch a grandma because I just saw YOU do it, it's still tu quoque despite the fact that nobody discussed the 100 I murdered
> ...and I point out it was OK... because I just saw YOU do it...
This is tu quoque, because you're trying to say bad thing you did was OK because someone else did a bad thing too. However, you'll notice the above poster definitely did not claim what Castro did was OK.
Only the argument is that the US has cause much much much greater mayhem than Castro, domestically AND globally, and yet it has the gal to take the hollier than thou stance.
Heck, US cops alone have probably killed much more people than the Cuban regime in those 50 years. And the place with 25% of the world's prisoners and 4% of the world's population is rich to call other places "police states".
> Only a US embargo. That leaves more than 80% of the rest of the world GDP to interact with.
That's a naive view. Do you really think the rest of the world can just straight up ignore the US's embargo and play nice with Cuba, while still staying on good terms with the US?
I suppose I agree. The US' embargo was probably quite tough on Cuba. But I don't think the state of the economy in Cuba can be entirely pinned on the embargo.
Of course it can. Cuba is an island nation and relies on trade to acquire the vast majority of the goods those of us in the West take for granted. Block that trade and you basically stifle all economic growth.
From wikipedia:
>>Cuba produces sugarcane, tobacco, citrus, coffee, rice, potatoes, beans and livestock.[2] As of 2015 Cuba imported about 70-80% of its food.[51] and 80-84% of the food it rations to the public.[52] Raúl Castro ridiculed the bureaucracy that shackled the agriculture sector.[52] Before 1959, Cuba boasted as many cattle as people. Today meat is so scarce that it is a crime to kill a cow without government permission.[53] Cuban people suffered from starvation during the Special Period.[29]
And of course the Communist economic system -- the one that has led to immiseration and collapse everywhere it has been tried, all over the world -- has nothing to do with this. Must be the embargo!
If Cuba had a capitalist economy the result would be the same. Or do you believe that capitalism has the ability to generate essential goods out of thin air?
China had to abandon the economics of Communism in order to produce an economic boom finally after decades of extreme failure. They had to adopt systems of the market economy: private property, stock exchanges & stock ownership, real estate ownership, privatization of the means of production, wealth accumulation, business formation, etc. etc.
They hold on to the politics of the Communist party dictatorship as a means to continue their power and wealth extraction (China's political elites are by far the wealthiest politicians on earth, they make the US Congress look like paupers).
Trying to apply communist ideology directly in China led to famines nearly as deadly as a decade and a half of war, both civil and against the Japanese.
Yea, it's just Socialism. It's horrid. It's always bad. Capitalism hasen't worked out in the little bit of history we call modern society. So--lets just throw all of the theory out the window. My hands are covering my ears.
The great capitalist country, the great experiment, the almighty America is the only way. I think about our great experiment when I step over the ever increasing number of homeless.
And yes, the great American experiment is still kinda working--for some of you.
But maybe, someday, somewhere, a country just might find a communistic model that does work?
Then, maybe, we won't be so smugly dogmatic about the rightness of our supposedly Capitalistic system?
Hell, my America doesn't feel free anymore. Yes, I can run my mouth, but that's about it.
My ecomonic prospects are dwindling yearly. I'm being fined, and fee'd when I open the door to my for great profit apartment. A chit hole where I am forced to live. I'd rather live in a tee pee by the coast, but I can't legally, without paying huge sums of money. Oh, wait--I might be able to live kida free in Alaska? I can't get a loan. My only successful friends are from wealthy families. I'm not yahoo American anymore. And no, I wouldn't live in any of the other chit holes, with the exception of a lot of European countries, Australia, and maybe Japan.
Yes--we are still winning the war, but some days our experiment doesn't work for dudes like me.
It's always worked for the rich kids though. Why? I can't recall the last Horatio Alger. We had a lot of examples up until the early 80's? We seem to be on the downward slide since though?
Sorry, about venting. It's the holidays the paid dude keeps telling me.
Hacker News is not the place for fighting political battles, which this account has been doing much of. We have to ban accounts that post primarily this way, so please stop.
Fair enough. Can I at least suggest, though, that if you don't want political fights going on at HN it would be a good idea to swiftly remove "stories" such as this one that are purely political and are guaranteed to bring out every ax-grinder on the Internet in the comments?
> Cuba is the 140th largest export economy in the world. In 2014, Cuba exported $1.74B and imported $5.91B, resulting in a negative trade balance of $4.17B.
> The top exports of Cuba are Raw Sugar ($392M), Refined Petroleum ($314M), Rolled Tobacco ($236M), Hard Liquor ($116M) and Raw Nickel ($108M), using the 1992 revision of the HS (Harmonized System) classification. Its top imports are Wheat ($234M), Refined Petroleum ($228M), Concentrated Milk ($207M), Corn ($204M) and Poultry Meat ($196M).
> The top export destinations of Cuba are China ($311M), the Netherlands ($157M), Spain ($141M), Senegal ($92M) and the United Kingdom ($67.3M). The top import origins are China ($1.05B), Spain ($920M), Brazil ($507M), Canada ($389M) and Mexico ($360M).
Of course geography still matters, the US is nearby, large, and rich. Exporting to the US would be a huge plus for the Cuban economy but it wouldn't change everything.
>> My impression was then when America tried to force other countries to participate in the embargo they told them to shove it.
Your impression is wrong.
An example knock-on effect relevant to HN is that as a UK company, we couldn't sell windows software to Cuba because things like windows run-time libraries would be covered by the US export embargo. In theory, they wouldn't even have a legal copy of any US operating system.
I'm sure there were similar knock-on effects across all industries that had US products, suppliers or connections in their business.
Yes, but you don't sell it directly to Cuba, you sell it to $COUNTRY which might eventually sell it to Cuba (and you don't even know about it)
It's not you selling to Cuba, it's Cuba buying through intermediates.
(Of course if you really want you can sell things directly to Cuba, but you need to find a way of disguising it)
You're (or, were) also forbidden from bringing Cuban cigars to the US, but if you arrive from a flight from Panama with a box of unmarked cigars nobody is going to do anything.
What? This was the real world, a matter of first hand experience. We could not consider jeopardising sales to our biggest market (the US) by breaking US embargo for a barely significant market.
You could write your software in another operating system, giving a middle finger to oppressive Uncle Sam. Not doing so shows you did not appreciate Cuban market enough.
Same goes for other products. Don't base them on U.S. technology if you plan to trade with America's enemies.
And their economy wasn't half bad back then (from a communist standard). In Canada we always had a softer tone with Cuba. A lot of the US PoV seems propaganda driven. Sure, there is a vocal expat group that had very good reasons to leave and were definitely harassed/prosecuted/persecuted for their views/lifestyle. The same kind of minorities exists in the US (watch Trump speeches from the last year). On the other side, until the USSR collapsed, it went from the bottom of the list to near top on education, health access and [a few] other areas. Of course it stayed as corrupted as it was for the last 150 years, but don't blame the Castro regime for that, most Latin America and Caribbean nations are as bad in that regard, if not worst. As for the "capitalism is good, communism is evil" propaganda fueled argument, there isn't much to say. I prefer Capitalism. I acknowledge single party is more prone to corruption and nepotism while democracies es is at risk of populism waves, electoral counter intuitive promises and both are just as vulnerable to corporate/power influences. You have to wonder if for lesser economies, you are better off enslaved by landlords like during Batista days or kept poor, but with a proper social net, in the Castro state.
Stating that "lesser economies" should literally be kept as prison states by strongmen. And they say Americans are heartless; we clearly have nothing on Canadians, if you're anything to go by.
" In Canada we always had a softer tone with Cuba."
Partly because we are not the US and did not have a direct confrontation.
But partly because Trudeau Sr. was a communist-revolutionary apologist, in the French intellectual sense - and chilled with Fidel to boost is 'socialist hipster' cred and to thumb the eye of the Americans.
As a young man, I found it admirable. Now that I know many ex-Cubans, I find it utterly repulsive and a stain on our history. It's one thing to have 'relations' or 'diplomacy' with another nation - it's altogether another to chum around with a thug. If it was in the name of getting Fidel to let his people off the island, or encourage democracy... sure ... but it was not that.
>But partly because Trudeau Sr. was a communist-revolutionary apologist, in the French intellectual sense - and chilled with Fidel to boost is 'socialist hipster' cred and to thumb the eye of the Americans.
As opposed to a right-wing capitalist pig, like most other leaders?
It would be a logical fallacy if coldtea actually made that claim. He did not. He simply pointed out that edblamey moral high ground is a fallacy in itself, when so many of those Western nations stand accused of worse.
Western nations have not 'done worse' in modern times.
The logical fallacy I think is yours for trying to compare Cuba to the USA in a tit-for-tat comparison of misrepresented facts and issues.
Dropping a nuclear bomb seems 'bad' until you put it in the context of what the Japanese were doing, and the costs otherwise.
The North Vietnamese that the Americans & South Vietnamese were fighting against were 10x worse than Castro (they executed 100's of thousands in the streets - and put millions in concentration camps after the Americans withdrew) - and using 'agent Orange' was an act of reasonable desperation on the part of the Americans as it was used only to clear foliage near American firebases, the casualties were mostly American and of course it was not done with the knowledge people would be hurt - the author of the note makes it seem like it was used on purpose to hurt Vietnamese which is a gross misrepresentation.
Americas role in the world is fundamentally different than that of Cuba (and of course there is the issue of scale) which makes it futile to compare the USA to Cuba, tit-for-tat in terms of 'things done'.
But the comparison is resolved rather more pragmatically:
People literally risk everything, including their lives to flee Cuba to get to America.
It isn't really clear if this is true, there is a clear bias of studies to focus on the effect on American veterans, but there are 1-4 million Vietnamese affected depending on what non-American source you believe.
>Western nations have not 'done worse' in modern times.
The US has bombed and invaded Afghanistan for the crimes of a handful of (mainly Saudi-backed) loonies (after first sponsoring Bin Laden in the 80s), have invaded Iraq under BS false pretexts (WMDs etc) and created huge losses, chaos, anarchy and civil war, have helped destabilize Libya with the same outcome, have targeted the Syrian regime and in the process helped ISIS grow, and so on. And that's just the open actions since 2001...
>The North Vietnamese that the Americans & South Vietnamese were fighting against were 10x worse than Castro (they executed 100's of thousands in the streets - and put millions in concentration camps after the Americans withdrew) - and using 'agent Orange' was an act of reasonable desperation on the part of the Americans as it was used only to clear foliage near American firebases, the casualties were mostly American and of course it was not done with the knowledge people would be hurt - the author of the note makes it seem like it was used on purpose to hurt Vietnamese which is a gross misrepresentation.
Wow, I am Vietnamese, and this is so shockingly far from the truth. FYI, the total number of American casualties in the Vietnam war amounted to something like ~50,000, while the conservative estimate for the total number of Vietnamese deaths was at least one million- the majority of which were civilian. What's worse, Agent Orange's effects were far reaching. Long after the war had ended it continued creating unimaginable damage, to the environment, to the people, to the economy [1]. Conveniently downplaying this horrible crime (which the US has still not owned up completely) is misrepresenting the facts. And yes, Western nations have done 'worse'. Much of the tragedies around the world in the 20th century had much to do with the Western countries' imperialiastic mindset.
> Only a US embargo. That leaves more than 80% of the world GDP to interact with.
Nope. The US brutally punished countries which traded with Cuba. The best and most macabre example of this would be the 1974 Bangladesh Famine, which had a death toll of 1-1.5 million, and was almost entirely preventable.
After the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation war, when Bangladesh achieved its independence from America-backed Pakistan, US initially refused to recognize Bangladesh as a country and trade with it because Bangladesh wanted to prosecute Pakistani war criminals, responsible for the worst genocide since the Holodomor(and committed using American arms). Infact, Nixon and the US refused to condemn Pakistani actions, and actively worked to suppress evidence of their crimes.
When the famine started in 1974, the US initially promised food aid to Bangladesh, but refused to deliver because Bangladesh exported jute to Cuba(Cuba was one of the first countries to recognize Bangladeshi independence). By the time Bangladesh agreed to stop all trade relations with Cuba, and US aid finally arrived, the famine was pretty much over and had claimed its 1,500,000+ victims. Now, to make it clear, the US had 2 million+ tonnes of grain pretty much ready to deliver, but held back at the last moment while hundreds of thousands were starving to death. This was also while US was giving huge amounts of grain as food aid to surplus food producing South Vietnam, which the Vietnamese traded for weapons.
> Never sprayed Vietnamese with Agent Orange or napalms for one, never dropped nuclear bombs on civilians
Yes, on the North Vietnamese invaders who had a track record of murdering civilians well before the US was ever involved. And the Japanese who perpetrated the Rape of Nanking, etc.
But even so - the US has voted out these previous politicians whereas Cubans were and are not able to do that.
Really? There have been free and fair elections in Cuba, where anyone can start up a political party, campaign for their positions without any fear whatsoever of government retaliation, and successfully get elected to office, even if they have anti-Communist views? Wow, I hadn't heard about this. You seem to be pretty confident about stating it, though, so perhaps you can go into some detail about these elections.
I'm also wondering why so many people were so desperate to leave Cuba in rickety rafts even though they could have just voted out the Castros instead in one of these elections you mention, but I'm sure you can explain that too.
> Way less crimes than those who accuse him. Never sprayed Vietnamese with Agent Orange or napalms for one, never dropped nuclear bombs on civilians, never supported Pinochet et co, doesn't have 25% of the world's incarcerated in just 4% of the global population, and lots of other things besides.
Yes, because comparing the capabilities of a small, poor island nation is the same as comparing the capabilities of the most powerful country in the world.
Castro had no capability to do what the US has done, had he had the chance how would've done much worse.
"Soviet propagandists during the cold war were trained in a tactic that their western interlocutors nicknamed “whataboutism”. Any criticism of the Soviet Union (Afghanistan, martial law in Poland, imprisonment of dissidents, censorship) was met with a “What about...” (apartheid South Africa, jailed trade-unionists, the Contras in Nicaragua, and so forth)." - http://www.economist.com/node/10598774
And why not? Whataboutism is only fair: it means people discuss both sides, and judge things in relation, not in isolation.
A discussion that doesn't contain a "what about" element is one-sided. Those criticizing "whataboutism" only want their own shit to be left out of the discussion.
That some would call whataboutism a bad thing just goes to show how much some pots are used to be the only ones allowed to call the kettle black.
So what's your position on US people responsible for Pinochet?(just to name 1 of so many examples), if we are going to start mentioning crimes, I think Fidel Castro and his brother are pretty down on the list of people that we should be worrying about.
> It's sad that people should hold such a tyrant in such esteem
What is sad is how quickly people reach for a wide, monotone brush they like to paint things with lately. As an american, i have heard roughly your description of castro my entire life. To hear another version, from someone living a life in a continent i have never visited is both refreshing and educational.
" To hear another version, from someone living a life in a continent i have never visited is both refreshing and educational."
I guess it's fair that many Americans don't know a lot about him and don't know about the details of his activities in Africa with doctors (and military, by the way). But that's kind of an American thing ... not enough 'world events' in the American press :), no offense.
I do not agree with most of what you said. You would have to point me to evidence of your claims.
As for the two doctors your pointed to, I am sure they are the exception. I happen to be Zimbabwean, actually, a good number of my childhood doctors were Cuban and they were there happily and willingly. My brother, a doctor himself, has many friends from Cuba who say the same.
You should read this article when you get a chance.
That's right! Fidel was the first world leader to support Nelson Mandela's fight for liberty and Cuba was the first country in the Americas that Mandela visited after his liberation.
You're comparing apples and oranges, Fidel never killed millions, The U.S. government alone has killed far more people in a single day than Cuba under Fidel Castro.
Finding unbiased numbers is hard, obviously. Maybe we'll know more about it 50 years from now, but at the moment our knowledge is approximately what it was for the Soviet Union right after Stalin's death or so, yes?
That said, I have yet to see anything resembling a credible source that claimed more than 10,000 direct deaths caused by the Castro regime. I've seen much higher numbers (50,000 or more) in terms of indirect deaths: people trying to get out of Cuba and drowning in the process.
The population of Cuba around the time of the revolution was about 7 million; now it's around 11 million. The population of the Soviet Union in the 1930s was between 150 and 200 million (good statistics are hard to come by; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Census_(1937) for why). Even if we take the extreme 7 million and 200 million numbers, 10,000 Cuban deaths is equivalent to about 285,000 Soviet deaths on a per-capita basis. And that's over a 50-year or so period. So yes, Stalin killed a lot more people no matter how you count it. Of course, "leader who killed a smaller percentage of the population than Stalin" is a _really_ low bar; pretty much everyone except Pol Pot clears it.
In general, the "Cuba under Castro" numbers for political violence don't seem any worse than other Latin American countries in the 20th century. Again, this isn't _good_, just like it's not good that we can end up talking about "oh, that's equivalent to hundreds of thousands of deaths on a per-capita basis, which is _tiny_". :(
Under those indirect causalities the U.S. has killed millions! even its own population when they get sick and can't afford their drugs. My point is that Cuba under Castro was not -by far- like the Soviet Union under Stalin as some people believe.
10k over 50 years? Wow, that's a lot less than I imagined from how he is described as a mindless killer, and the dictatorship as drenched in blood.
For comparison Puerto Rico have had about 10k murders in the last 15 years alone[1], and that's in less than half the Cuban population.
From 1998 figures[2] and 2002 population numbers I guesstimate that officially about 820 murders occur per year in Cuba, and the 10k in 50 years evens out to 200 per year.
> Wow, that's a lot less than I imagined from how he is described as a mindless killer, and the dictatorship as drenched in blood.
Yep. Would it likewise surprise you to learn that the Pinochet government, which is described in similar ways, killed (at the high end of the estimates; the officially accepted ones are 10-20% lower) about 3200 people and "disappeared" about 1000, over the course of 17 years? Also, about 30,000 tortured, though; I have not seen claims of this for Castro's Cuba. All this out of a population of 10-13 million. It sure surprised me when I looked up the numbers.
I'm not condoning the things either government (Pinochet's or Castro's) did, but they are both nowhere close to being "drenched in blood" the way Stalin's or Pol Pot's or Mao's governments were.
Yeah, 4200 is way less than I expected from Pinochet's reputation. Works out about 50 % worse than Castro on murders alone (counting "disappeared" equally to other killings) on a per year basis. Not sure how to count the torture, maybe as fractions of a killing.
I'm also surprised that the population isn't more, Chile felt like a "big" country to me compared to tiny Sweden, but 11 is not much bigger than 8. Though by now it's 18 and 9 millions, so I child deaths seem to be down in Chile since the 80's.
I'm sure every horrible person did some good and charitable things sometimes. Hitler started the first anti smoking campaigns, was opposed to animal cruelty and did many charitable works to help the poor in his nation. That doesn't change that he was a very oppressive leader and the mere fact that we can find some good things he did doesn't make Hitler a Legend who lives on.
No I'm not denying that providing hospitals and doctors to Africa is a good thing, but America, and even ordinary Americans like Bill Gates have done so much more for Africa than Castro ever did, and it seems rather unfair that Western efforts are neglected and we are seen as colonizers to seek independence from whereas brutal and oppressive dictators such as Castro are presented as honored crusaders for throwing a smidgen of help to Africa.
> The truth is, if as a continent we are to point at individual world leaders who did the most for African nations, Fidel Castro is very high up that list, if not at the top.
Many don't know this, but George W. Bush had quite an impact:
Cuba also sent lots of soldiers to foment revolutions and enforce dictatorships in African countries. It's pretty rich to thank him for sending doctors when he's also sending the people creating more injuries.
> He had his fights and ills, but not with us.
Yeah, generally with his own citizens who he stomped on for decades. But hey, at least you got a couple free doctors out of it so screw those guys.
He has certainly led one of the most exciting lives of our times...
And despite his flaws (and/or crimes against humanity) I can't help but wonder how Cuba would have faired under different leadership. Looking at the next-island neighbors in Haiti, or any number of comparable African countries, it seems the Cubans got the better deal. Just one example: life expectancy is 15 years higher than Haiti, and actually even a bit higher than in the US.
Organizing the necessities for life on this island, with a superpower fixated on killing you (and ruining you economy) next door, and keeping it peaceful for 50 years must be some sort of high score.
I know there'll be many Americans dancing on his grave (once the Trump International Hotel Havanna has opened). They may not even be wrong in an absolute sense. But there have been dozens of leaders in South America, Africa and Asia in the last 50 years much worse than Castro who don't seem to trigger the reflexes of righteousness. Actual mass-murdering sadists like Manuel Noriega, throwing living people into the ocean, from airplanes paid for by the CIA.
Let's hope for a bright future for Cuba – I met many people there who felt paralyzed by the stagnation, the constant scarcity. The beginning of the end of the embargo may turn out to be one of the most significant legacies of President Obama.
>with a superpower fixated on killing you (and ruining you economy) next door
Look at how awful the quality of life in Cuba is today. Look at its people's lack of basic freedoms. Look at its awful economy. The US tried to save Cuba from itself.
There are no good guys. There are just interest. The US protects its interests. Embargo on oil exports to the US? Fuck up your whole region so bad that this can't happen again. Divide and concur. Communism on its shore? Well, nobody goes on this forsaken place or else...
That's how you keep power and that's why you have such a high standard of living. You think it's because you work hard but it's not. At least not primarily.
And Germany and Japan. If the U.S. Had a bit of sanity they could have saved Iraq if they were willing to accept that it should have been split into three countries rather than a pointless attempt to create a country that inky existed as part of the British/French carving up the middle East.
> It also ended up a lot better than non-intervention in Syria.
It ended marginally better because NATO's intervention decisively tipped the scales against Gaddafi's regime.
The Syrian civil war has been in a stalemate for years, and only recently has Assad's regime been making inroads due to Russia's decisive and no-holds-barred military intervention.
> If by marginally we mean a difference of half million dead and three million seeking refuge, I beg to disagree.
Now, factor in the fact that Libya is now a failed state and the refugee crisis is largely caused by human traffickers using Libya as a staging area to send those countless lifeboats packed with countless unwitting victims, a great number of which end up dead in the Mediterranean.
There is still civil war in Libya, it barely gets any mentioning so I don't know how much less the killings are.
Furthermore, non-intervention only meant no actual American troops in Syria, not staying out of the conflict: the US has funded, armed and trained much of the opposition from the start of the conflict, and US made and supplied anti-tank weapons are prominent in the rebels ability to counter the armoured forces of the Syrian army.
Victims of Libyan conflicts are still counted in thousands (which is huge still when viewed alone), and there is no refugee crisis thus far.
Any of the US involvement to Syria beyond verbal support occurred only years into the conflict, and even then it was minimal compared to meddling of Turkey, Arab states or Russia.
I'm with you up until "the US tried to save Cuba from itself". Castro was an awful dictator but the US embargo not only didn't save Cuba from itself, it made things worse for ordinary Cuban citizens. I wouldn't be proud of it.
Like I said: Compared to Haiti, or Venezuela, or Panama, or Simbabwe, or Ruanda, they did pretty well. Depending on the point in time over the last 50 years and your position in society, even Mexico (Drug wars, now), Argentina (during the dictatorship), or Brasil (born into the wrong class, today) may not be clearly superior in every regard.
I've been to Cuba, and life there is somewhat boring, and the standard of living is obviously low. But it's not the kind of poverty you seen many other countries. No starving old people and children in the streets, also no gang violence ruling your block.
Streetlife in general seemed quite happy – old people playing chess, young girls playing soccer (in school uniforms, no less), groups of three or four neighbors fixing one of those old cars etc.
Now it sounds too much like glorification – I also listened to 6 hours of Castro's labor day sermon in 2003 and most people around me felt I was insane for attending it voluntarily – they only went because somebody, somewhere had to check their name of a list or they may get into trouble. That's a price I wouldn't be willing to pay.
I hope Cuba will find a way to preserve a bit of what made it bearable in its worst times.
Why not compare to the Dominican Republic, say? That seems like a much closer comparison in so many ways - capitalism under a ruthless dictator, a long history of US intervention etc.
The problem with the US model is it leaves no room for other/different ideas. It is all consuming. Now that it has no competition to keep itself in check it is well on the way to consuming itself.
> Looking at the next-island neighbors in Haiti, or any number of comparable African countries, it seems the Cubans got the better deal.
Why didn't you compared Cuba before the coup, and after Fidel Castro established his dictatorship?
Comparing Cuba to one of the lowest developed nations on earth, particularly while ignoring the other half of the island (Dominican republic) is a tad disingenuous.
I'm also not a "fan" of Castro and don't identify with socialist politics, but comparing Cuba before Castro and after Castro wouldn't be fair. Pre-Castro there was a lot of foreign investment, post-Castro there was an embargo.
You can argue whether that's something that can be blamed on him, but if we were to give him the benefit of the doubt I wouldn't call that a fair comparison.
For example, there was a story posted on HN long ago about a Soviet dissident who had his life ruined because he was known to be a dissident. They didn't imprison him and torture him, they just got him fired, made sure he couldn't find any but the most menial work, discredited him, etc. Would we say that it was his fault for adopting a pro-Western position? That it was "his policies" that ruined his life, family? Or that an external force opposed to his views and more powerful than him punished him for his views?
> but comparing Cuba before Castro and after Castro wouldn't be fair. Pre-Castro there was a lot of foreign investment, post-Castro there was an embargo.
Seems to be a direct consequence of Fidel Castro's political initiatives. I'm sure we can agree that Castro's regime has at least some responsibilities in this outcome.
> You can argue whether that's something that can be blamed on him, but if we were to give him the benefit of the doubt I wouldn't call that a fair comparison.
That assumption is rather disingenuous. There's a clear before/after period in Cuba. I'm sure you agree that Fidel Castro is the direct responsible for this revolution. If he is responsible for this change, what exactly leads you to believe that he holds no responsibility in any negative consequence that arose naturally from his direct political actions and planning?
Well, it's weird to call the foreign policy decisions of bordering nations "naturally arising". They are quite obviously very different consequences compared to pollution or traffic jams following heavy car subsidies.
> Well, it's weird to call the foreign policy decisions of bordering nations "naturally arising".
So, you believe that the Cuban missile crisis was yet another misunderstanding that Fidel Castro had absolutely no say in the subject, do you?
What an unfortunate saint, Fidel Castro has been. Those countless political asylum-seekers risking their lives in makeshift boats must be a whole bunch of ungrateful fools for not enjoying living in Castro's paradise on earth.
No, that is obviously a mischaracterization of my statement. Not only is the missile crisis a quite separate event than the imposition of sanctions, I was not discussing the agency of Castro but your assertion that the US had no agency over its foreign policy towards Cuba once Castro had power.
Back in power, Batista suspended the 1940 Constitution and revoked most political liberties, including the right to strike. He then aligned with the wealthiest landowners who owned the largest sugar plantations, and presided over a stagnating economy that widened the gap between rich and poor Cubans.[4] Batista's increasingly corrupt and repressive government then began to systematically profit from the exploitation of Cuba's commercial interests, by negotiating lucrative relationships with the American Mafia, who controlled the drug, gambling, and prostitution businesses in Havana, and with large US-based multinationals who were awarded lucrative contracts.[4][5] To quell the growing discontent amongst the populace—which was subsequently displayed through frequent student riots and demonstrations—Batista established tighter censorship of the media, while also utilizing his Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities to carry out wide-scale violence, torture and public executions; ultimately killing anywhere from hundreds to 20,000 people.[6][7][8] For several years until 1959, the Batista government received financial, military, and logistical support from the United States.[9]
The one word I'd like to quibble with here is "comparable".
Cuba was twice as rich as Haiti (see graph at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Cuba#/media/File:GD... for example) even before the revolution and had a lot more social capital. Yes, there was a good bit of inequality. Yes, the Batista regime was not great in all sorts of ways. But I expect Cuba would have been better off than Haiti even without the revolution happening.
What African countries are you thinking of that you consider comparable to Cuba in 1958?
Yes, when the Soviet Union collapsed Cuba went through a huge economic contraction including food shortages. Without virtually no international trade whatsoever, they had to become completely self-sufficient for all the goods and expertise they needed.
The United States subsidizes many government within its sphere of influence, too. In turn it also trades with them and gains significant sway over the economic affairs of those countries for the benefit of US markets. Cuba had none of this for the last 25 or so years.
Compare Cuba when he took over to Cuba now: the first a reasonably prosperous country (on a par with Southern Europe), the second a poor, stagnant third world nation.
How am I going to comment civilly? This is a dictator and there are people praising him here! WTF. This might be easy for you to comment on when you didn't lose your entire life because of this man but people have.
It's possible to comment civilly on difficult topics. It just requires that you choose to.
HN is a place to gratify one's intellectual curiosity. Part of the fabric of the community is that we engage in a civil, substantive way. There are various topics that don't always make that easy, but it's important that we try.
I just have to ask, at what point does praise becomes uncivil? Is it when you praise Fidel who has stifled freedom of speech and condemned his people to a life of economic stagnation? What about Chavez who has condemned his people to starvation? Or is it praising Kim Jong Un? Or is it praising Hitler? Or is it praising Stalin? Or is it praising the KKK?
There is only 1 ideology responsible for killing more than 100 million people in the existence of human civilization. Try considering that for a second.
We will likely not understand what Fidel has done to the Cuban people for a few more decades but I will take the role of oracle and tell you. 100 years from now Cuba will still be poor and it will still be an inexpensive tourist destination for rich white people from Canada and Europe.
The decisive difference between HN and other sites is that here, it almost doesn't matter what you believe, so long as you express your beliefs in a thoughtful and constructive way. You can still challenge beliefs you disagree with. But if you're looking to express outrage or if you're showing up to do ideological battle, you should be aware that it won't be tolerated here.
Please understand, HN has been around for about a decade. The community is the sole distinction between here and other sites. And as soon as the community consists of people commenting in anger rather than in thoughtful critique, the more thoughtful people will move elsewhere. We have to make it a priority to defend ourselves from that outcome.
Try to have the spirit of being among trusted friends, searching for the truth in a topic. It's not easy, especially when someone says something controversial. But HN is all about good conversation. That doesn't mean you have to be nice, but it means you have to be thoughtful and substantive. It's almost always better to say nothing than to convey anger.
if your so tired of silicon valley you're free to leave. kinda sad how people just hear the word "communism" and can't think logically and start frothing at the mouth with anger and hate.
Anticommunist propaganda? You realize that the man killed thousands, imprisoned tens of thousands for their beliefs and condemned the entire island to poverty.
What is misleading about anything I've just stated? Because that is one of the requirements for something to be propaganda.
I think what the parent commenter is referring to is your insistence on staying on the same 4 or so talking points without actually listening to others and their opinions.
HN is a place for discussions. That means being open to people having ideas other than your own, and acknowledging that those ideas may have merit. You don't have to agree with them; I don't agree with everything said on HN. That said, you do have to be open to accepting that others have different viewpoints and that they're not crazy for doing so.
That's why there's policies in place for civil commenting, and the like. To foster a discussion between people with potentially opposing viewpoints without devolving into a personally-charged argument.
It's crucial to remember that Castro silenced all who disagreed with him. He condemned an entire nation to poverty! His most notable achievement with regards to Africa was sending soldiers to extend the life of wars.
It's stripped of the insults to those that disagree with you and complaints of down voting. In my experience users on HN will down vote tone more often than they will down vote disagreement.
I agree it doesn't have the punch of your original post. I don't have much experience writing emotionally charged comments, though I'm sure there are ways of doing that without resorting to insults.
It sounds like you may have some personal stories to share. These would definitely add to the power of your comment, if you chose to include them.
That's more because of the embargo than anything Cubans did. And even given that, they do way better than most latin american "free" nations.
>His most notable achievement with regards to Africa was sending soldiers to extend the life of wars.
Let's not go into which country, besides Germany and USSR, started more wars, meddled in more places, held more peopls down by installing friendly dictators in power, and caused more hurt in the 20th/21st century...
>That's more because of the embargo than anything Cubans did
I just have to ask, does communism require trading with capitalist nations to be successful? Because there are many nations under embargo by the US that are significantly more prosperous.
But clearly, when Marx was talking about a communist revolution he clearly meant that you should allow yourself to be exploited by your nearest capitalist neighbor.
> does communism require trading with capitalist nations to be successful?
You keep on going back to this. No, they don't. But an island nation does. It's ridiculously hard to produce literally all the things your country needs when it's 100x smaller than the US, and it's even harder when you have no land borders. Trading with other nations becomes ridiculously important at that point.
Clearly double standards. It's not as if Cuba has been ruled by a strongman and all decisions of the state can be solely attributed to him while the US is ruled by a system where attribution of fault is significantly less clear.
I agree. It's absolutely insane to side with Castro. Even if you agree with his political philosophy, there is overwhelming objective evidence of how awful it is:
- Cuban economy
- Cuban quality of life
- basic Cuban freedoms (like supporting parties other than the one in power)
Considering economic sanctions and political isolation in the region, it actually appears they're not doing too bad actually, eh?
With economics and politics, the story is always more complicated than it appears, and science can't save us, so we should be hesitant to form strong opinions. I'm just supporting open-minded thinking, not saying I agree with everything Castro/Cuba (I don't).
Actual communism tends to keep wealth fairly uniform.
Cuba's Gini coefficient is fairly low, at around 0.38 in 2000 [1], although the data quality might be poor. Most of Latin America is substantially less equal. The US's was around 0.4-0.45 during that time frame [2].
That's the same for any country, not just Cuba. The wealth distribution of the US or any other western society is not evenly distributed and the pay gap is growing even more rapidly.
People complaining about low metrics in Cuba (quality of life, income, etc.). When being offered other metrics as counterpoints (like life expectancy) they conveniently dismiss it as being made up by the state. Really Cuba can't win.
Ok let's take GDP numbers at face value and let's assume this says much about daily life.
Basically, you're stating that 50+ years of Marxist order imposed by the Castro regime has managed to keep up with countries plagued by 50+ years of general chaos in the form of pathologically corrupt regimes, nepotism, inflation, rampant violent crime, civil war, guerilla movements and narcoterrorism.
Hmmm... I will contemplate the US embargo argument tonight, as I light up one of my precious Cuban cigars to honor the old commie bastard and to celebrate this great achievement of dialectical materialism. Hasta la victoria siempre!
People in communist countries trade in some of the classical liberties, to make a higher level of economic planning possible.
In one form or another, this is the “trade-off” believed in by most genuine communists. The classical liberties are just a lie anyway, and this trade-off will result in a kind of progress and general wellbeing that would far surpass anything seen in backwards, private capital-oriented economies driven by the profit motive.
Castro was not like Pol Pot or the Kim dynasty. The Cuban regime had a shot at enforcing progress for 50+ years. Cuba appears reasonably stable; although the real test of this will come in the post-regime era. It has managed to keep some of its charm, despite truly being a police state.
But some people here on HN are suggesting Cuba is not doing so badly (and by extension, the trade-off proposed by communism), because Cuba’s self-stated numbers have kept up with countries that are plagued by bouts of deep, crippling political and social malaise.
I think that’s a terrible argument for obvious reasons. Especially in the case of GDP and in light of what most communists believe their system can achieve. The comparison just proves there are many ways you can screw a population.
So once again: why does pointing this out have to get downvoted?
And for the record, about the embargo: I am staring at Cuban cigars right now. I will light one up tonight to honor Castro, because as far as commie bastards go, he wasn’t the worst.
> basic Cuban freedoms (like supporting parties other than the one in power)
To be fair in the US there are also attacks for supporting political parties. Yes it's a different degree of extremism entirely.
For example the terrorist/riot/civil activist group (whatever you want to call them) By Any Means Necessary violently attacked white nationalist parties (they claim they're not white nationalists, but media says they are, I don't know anything about them beyond that) at rallies without legal consequence. No I'm not defending white nationalists, I'm defending right to assembly. What I'm saying is that if that's your argument for why Cuba is terrible then it's not consistent unless you are making the same argument about America as well. If you just happen to agree that they're a "bad party," so you it's OK here, not there, that's exactly what authoritarian government is.
Claiming Cuba and the US are comparable in the respect is absurd. Castro killed thousands of his own civilians to stay in power. Here in the US, you can literally disavow the president (c.f. #NotMyPresident) without any consequence.
>To be fair in the US there are also attacks for supporting political parties.
There is a HUGE difference between your government killing you for your political beliefs and a member of the opposing political party "attacking" you for your political beliefs. People break the law all the time. It's a whole other level of unfair when the government murders you.
I would never trade the freedoms I have in the US for the "freedoms" seen in Cuba.
I agree with you, but if your argument for why Cuba is bad is based on a principle that you can be oppressed for political views, then you should still be consistent about it and not selectively apply that principle to only Cuba.
Even if it's only a minority that is being oppressed, and even if both you and I don't agree with their awful politics, it doesn't make it any less wrong to attack them.
Both are way better than most Latin American countries that US has meddled with and have friendly terms with. And they would be even better if it wasn't for the embargo and the whole cold war play against Cuba.
>- basic Cuban freedoms (like supporting parties other than the one in power)
Like being able to support two parties that alternate in power, like you are free to do in the US?
>Like being able to support two parties that alternate in power, like you are free to do in the US?
My point is that Castro kills people who support opposition parties. You aren't free to support parties other than the one in power if you are in Cuba.
Ah, so it's okay for the US to have gone into Iraq and destroyed the country, killing hundreds of thousands in the process, then abandoning it, all to shore up support for a shaky election for an incumbent president at home... because you live a cushy SV lifestyle?
If you really are as sick as you emote about these kind of atrocities, then move away from the US, because the US hurts a lot of people to maintain its high standard of living. New Zealand is a pretty ethical place that doesn't kill either it's own citizens or those abroad. Its economy doesn't rely on abusing migrant workers. It has a decent tech scene. Go there.
Or you could just do the usual counter-counter-culture blather while not actually changing your life to suit your stated morals.
If I had the chance to do so I would, but I'm currently committed to do other things first.
Or do you believe that if someone wanted to go to Cuba that must be their sole and only motivation from that point on? You should't simplify people like that. It's rude.
Can you name a single leader of any stripe anywhere, in the last 50 years, whose results exceeded their intentions? Isn't it the very definition of a politician that they over-promise and under-deliver?
I don't see how a leader that 'cares about his people' would not allow them to leave their island prison, not have democracy, not have access to the internet, not trade with one another.
I don't think he cared about them in any way. He had a totalitarian view of how they should be, and he forced that upon them.
> not have democracy, not have access to the internet,
So foreign countries’ propaganda can overthrow your democracy and put up a complete crazy, due to fake news?
The US has seen how much Russia Today and fake news have influenced this presidential election. Would you want that to become an issue in your country?
This is a serious problem one has to ask themselves.
Nah, the Cuban revolution is dead. Get ready for A. Further integrations with the capitalist US or B. Fall of the Cuban economy because they are definitely not getting support from venezuela which propped up their economy in the first place.
Cuba is basically an autarky, for all intents and purposes, so they're not going anywhere on that front, and I think Diaz-Canel will help to steer Cuba away from liberalism/revisionism. But I've been wrong before.
I wonder if Raul (since he seems a bit more relaxed) will hold general elections or stay in power till he too passes (which doesn't seem that far since he's only 4 years younger than his brother )
Growing up in a northern US state Cuba and the US policies affecting it always seemed remote. Besides studying the facts in school I never gave the Cuban Revolution, Cuba, or Castor much thought until I played "Cuba Libre: Castro's Insurgency (1957-1958)" this summer.
Reading the historical/design notes in the player's guide and watching events unfold while playing as M26 brought history to life in a very visceral way. I spent the week after playing obsessively reading about modern Cuban history.
Cuba Libre is part of a game series on COunter-INsurgencies (COIN). "Liberty or Death: The American Insurrection" covers the American Revolution using the same system.
Yes! There is nothing like a video game ability to spark interest in history, at least for me. I experienced the same thing after playing "Empire: Total War. Napoleon."
After reading some of the comments here, my fath in the human race is not enhanced.
Castro was a genuine hero and a great man; indeed among the top 10 greatest individuals of the 20th century. He believed in freedom and dignity. He saw the US government as the enemy of progress everywhere in the world; he wanted people to be free and he devoted his life to that ideal.
How many people can you say that of?
> He was also an evil dictator...
Lol @ evil dictator. Fidel Castro never killed as many people as Nixon, Reagan, Bush or Blair. He did not go half way around the world as Thatcher did to claim an Island 4,000 km away from home (Falklands).
>...who silenced any and all opposition
What opposition? Imperialists and mafia members who wished to turn Cuba into an enclave for gambling? CIA operatives who tried to return Cuba to its occupied past?
> just look at Cuba today
Just look at Iraq, Libya,Syria today. And while you are at it; look also at Iran, China, Russia (which evaded western occupation). Indeed, look at Mexico which is friendly terms and has not been invaded yet by the US and tell me how much they have gained from that relationship.
I detest the hypocrisy I see in many (not all) western commentators. The spin and one sided arguments, the glossing over historical truths. Cuba is behind in development because of the American embargo.Simple. Not because the regime had no plan for economic development. In healthcare, this small nation with a health care budget 0.001% of the US beats the USA hands down in universal coverage and access to health. Who knows what would have happened if previous administrations had left them alone.
Finally, Castro sent troops to Africa to fight against colonial occupiers. He sent armies to harass the apartheid regime at the Angolan/ Namibian border. This counts as a plus in my book.
Rest on Fidel. You have fought the fight and lived like a man. I will pray for you. May heaven receive your soul.
I'm actually quite surprised by the amount of people in this thread highlighting the nuances, the "50 shades of gray – elder statesmen edition" if you will.
There's a lot of positive things to be said about Castro. But your unqualified hymn isn't going to help your cause. Just the number of people making the rather dangerous journey to the US proves how misguided your comparisons are.
>Cuba is behind in development because of the American embargo.
American embargo was put in place because the US can't afford communist fools on its border. Simple. You swing at the big guy and you lose. That is war. Mistakes are unforgivable.
>"In the USA, you can stand in front of the White House in Washington, DC, and yell, "Down with Reagan!", and you will not be punished. Equally, you can also stand in Red Square in Moscow and yell, "Down with Reagan!", and you will not be punished.
I do not know about a specific instance of someone holding up a sign like the one in the photo I linked to, but I also sincerely doubt anyone in their right mind would attempt such a thing.
The closest recent example I can find is someone painting the names of the Castro brothers on a pair of pigs and being thrown in prison for it (in 2015):
Far worse things happened during the early days of the revolution. I was going to link them but I changed my mind because I don't want to weaken my point. Freedom of speech is far stronger in a place like the US than in a place like Castro's Cuba.
> Maybe Americans value their rights more than anything else
I certainly do, but sadly not every American agrees. There are many "law and order" types who would have that person arrested and beaten if they could. Fortunately our rights are still intact, even after all this time. People can do such things without fear. Far from being "laughable and disrespectful", I consider it a sign of a healthy, functioning society. "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism", as the saying goes.
The true issue is not the "rights" of American citizens in their own country (thats of no concern to most people around the world) but how the US government systematically and perennially denies other people these same "rights" or "rights" of their choosing. That is the point.
Leave other people alone to determine their own fate and destiny that's what the world asks
Its too late to edit my prior post so I'll just stick these Castro quotes in here:
" They talk about the failure of socialism, but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?"
" ...I began a revolution with 82 men.
If I had to do it again, I do it with 10 or 15
and absolute faith.
It does not matter how small you are if you have faith
and a plan of action."
Fidel Castro 1926 - 2016
Where is the success of capitalism? It's in the rapidly falling global extreme poverty rate, soon to be below 10% for the first time in human history. It's in the cell phone networks blanketing Africa and Asia, giving people access to easy communication and banking. It's in the rapidly rising standards of living throughout Asia and Africa and parts of Latin America not under the communist thumb. Capitalism is the greatest force for improving people's lives that has ever been, and likely to be the greatest that ever will be.
> ... where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?
When Castro asked that question in 1991, around 60% of people in East Asia were living in extreme poverty. Today it is 3.5% [1]. The change is mostly due to China switching from a socialist to capitalist economy.
Funny diagram in your source. They compare 1990 dollar with 2013 dollar directly without reference to purchasing power, adjusted to local market indexes. Classy example of propaganda. But you know, people over here generally can understand what they read.
To be honest, if you're willing to make arguments that sending troops 4000km to protect your own citizens from Galtieri's invading military junta was a more dictatorial act than, say, rounding up homosexuals, hippies and clergy and incarcerating them in UMAP forced labour camps - something even Castro conceded was a "great injustice" - then there's literally no reasoning with you...
Who should? I mean, the place was literally unoccupied at the point the distant ancestors of the Falklands population first turned up, sitting off a thinly populated part of Patagonia whose indigenous population was - decades later - subject to repeated invasion and eventual colonisation by the European-descended leadership of an expansionist Argentine Republic situated thousands of miles to the north.
Nice to see you put the territorial ambitions of a literal fascist like Galtieri on a higher pedestal than the right of the people that have lived there to self governance though...
Look I don't think Fidel was as black and white as most Americans make him out to have been, but people trying to just say "American presidents are worse" are just hilariously obtuse.
Like comparing Nixon and Castro. Nixon's most famous scandal was when he tried to wiretap his political opponents. It ended with his resignation. Castro outright killed his political opponents, and had the rest thrown in prison. He continued to rule for decades. There is absolutely no comparison.
Yes, I understand that U.S. foreign policy played a huge role in shaping the revolution. But let Castro's legacy stand on what he actually did, not on trying to throw shade on everyone else.
Nixons most famous scandal was the illegal carpet bombing of Cambodia and Laos effectively bringing the Khmer Rouge to power [1]. Watergate was a drop in the ocean compared to this.
Nixon was a piece of shit masquerading as a man. His most famous scandal does not even begin to shed light on his psychopathic tendencies.
Apart from carpet bombing Laos And Cambodia as hackeboos has pointed out, he engaged the Vietcong leadership in secret discussions to prolong the war so that Democrats would lose the '74. Elections. Think on that. Killing your fellow soldier citizens for political power.
I'm from an Argentine family, and I'll be blunt: the people of las Malvidas are Britons. Period. The people of Israel are Israelis, the people of the Gaza Strip and the west bank are Palestinian, the people of North Iraq are Kurds, etc.
Letting historical arguments about borders override the basic question if the culture of the people living there right now is stupid, 18th-century thinking.
I'm sympathetic to Argentina's arguments about resource rights to the water surrounding the island, but the nationality of the island itself is not in question, and Thatcher was right to protect British people.
> the people of las Malvidas are Britons. Period. The people of Israel are Israelis, the people of the Gaza Strip and the west bank are Palestinian, the people of North Iraq are Kurds, etc
Israel Gaza and Iraq are not thousands of miles from the original home countries.
But I am genuinely curious that you answer these:
1.How can the nationality of the Island not be in question and at the same time Argentina have valid claims to the resources? It must be one or the other else there is a contradiction there.
2.There were Britons living in enclaves in South Africa during the Thatcher era.Some of these dated back 400 years. Would the UK have been justified in sending troops to defend their land claims?
As a Russian, who was born in USSR, I regret that CIA has failed to assassinate him 50 years ago. May be Cuba would be liberated from communist/socialist disease.
Look at countries who declared a war against free markets - Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea. They are absolutely pathetic.
Look at counties that did not declare war against free markets. Look at mexico, look at Haiti, or some other Caribbean countries, most of them are doing much worse than Cuba. Communism/socialism disease did not harm China that much ether. Embargo is what hurt Cuba
Haiti on the bottom of economy freedom rating [1] and corruption rating [2].
Haiti has huge anti-free market red tape and rampant corruption.
It means that Haiti did declare a war against free markets.
Free market economy is possible only in country with strong property rights, rule of law with no corruption, and no red tape. All countries which adopted these principles are rich and have very high standard of living.
I think 99.999% of folks who like communism/socialism don't understand what free market capitalism IS.
Those three words are where things get complicated. In a general sense red tape is the difference between a laissez faire economy and a free market economy, if you mean government regulation when you say red tape. Though by red tape you might also mean anti-competitve regulations implemented at the behest of a firm or sector of the economy. In that case it is still very important to acknowledge that free markets are not a natural state, and require regulation of some form to remain functional or even exist.
By red-tape I mean anti-market/anti-business laws. I was born in Uzbekistan, I know how system works in such countries. You can't do business there without making bribes. Countries like Uzbekistan intentionally create such laws which is impossible to follow and stay in business. Red tape decrease competition, increase favouritism which leads to pro-government monopolies which keep control over big chunk of market.
Free markets do require very strong laws but these laws should be:
1) In favour of strong property rights;
2) Equally friendly to new enterprises/small business/big business;
3) Lean, not over-complicated;
Basically role of the government is to keep highly competitive economic enthronement without favouritism.
> As a Russian, who was born in USSR, I regret that CIA has failed to assassinate him 50 years ago.
Your problem is thinking that covered operations make the world better. It obviously didn't work in Iran, Vietnam, Cambodia, Congo, Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia and many others countries. In fact it made the situation worse in most cases.
Because just topping dictator is not enough, you also have to manage coup and support right side (i.e. those who are in favour democracy, secularism and market economy).
US sucks at finding and supporting right side.
If US just assassinated Castro but did nothing else communist regime won't fall, it can even gain stronger support from masses. The coup should be well prepared and US should feel responsibility about what will happen after.
Coup is definitely very difficult and complicated surgery.
No, they do a perfect job at finding the right side. They always install, whatever is best for them, ie. American Corporations.
The US does not care about human rights, it's all just used to legitimize their position. Capitalism has no conscious, it ONLY does what is most profitable, whatever it might be. What should they gain by having a democracy somewhere else? "Free Markets", is another topic. The US loves those, especially if their companies can expand their "market" or, even better, use the locals to produce under inhuman circumstances.
Considering that, I believe the US is a "great" imperialist power, and really good at choosing their puppets. What a pity those "stupid cubans", didn't give the US a second chance to exploit them under a different puppet. It would have been a lot better.
To be fair Russia was doing pretty well around 2005/2010 , so much that people from Europe were actually moving for work and investing heavily in Russia. The confrontation against US an Europe and oil prices tanking made the situation difficult again. But no one wants to go back to USSR, aside from a few nostalgic politicians.
841 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 371 ms ] threadLooking back, it will be crazy to think, I went to Cuba while Fidel Castro was still alive.
It's always amazing when something becomes history so suddenly.
That explains why you see so many people from surrounding Latin America countries flocking to Cuba, right?
Yes, I understand that's the question at hand. In the case of Korea, there is a good argument to be made that the entire country would have had the quality of life North Korea has if it were not for the intervention.
> by definition ussr did not even have communism
Yes, and neither did China, nor Cuba, nor Vietnam, etc, etc. At some point we end up with a "no true Scotsman" fallacy. In any case, the fear was of "the thing calling itself communism", not "theoretical platonic communism".
The fear, at least for people who actually thought about the matter, was based on the following facts:
1) Communism (as it was being practiced; I will assume this parenthetical henceforth) was incompatible with fundamental aspects of society that were considered important in the US. For a simple example, if you look at the Bill of Rights (first 10 amendments to the US constitution), the only right that was not being actively being violated in the countries that called themselves "communist" was the one granted by the Third Amendment. Well, except it _was_ being violated in the USSR in the early 20s. But generally 20th century nation-states have housed their own soldiers.
2) Communism was actively expansionist when it had the chance to be; see eastern Europe, the Korean peninsula.
3) Communism had as part of its doctrine the goal of fomenting revolutions in countries that were not yet communist.
4) There were communist parties in various countries, including the US, and some of their members (not all, yes) were actively involved in item #3.
5) There were various people in the US who were not members of the communist party but were clearly sympathetic to the idea of the communist party having more power or seizing power altogether. A number of these people were highly placed in the existing US government.
So at least in some quarters there was the perception of a plausible existential threat to the US as currently constituted (literally; throw out the Constitution and replace it with a totally different setup).
In addition to this, there was of course the usual fear of the other, the fear of the labor movement on the part of owners of capital, and so forth. In many cases these various reasons for fear were self-reinforcing.
> Both countries were allies in world war.
Yes. That doesn't always mean much on its own; the USSR and Germany were allies from 1939 to 1941.
> What was the need for a piss of contest between the two?
This is a question without a simple answer.
To some extent, in both cases, it was driven by domestic political considerations. It's a lot easier to maintain power if you keep telling people there are external enemies they need to worry about and hence shouldn't rock the domestic political boat too much. In the case of the USSR this was a quite explicit (and longstanding; it dates back to the 20s) policy of the Communist Party. In the US, I think it was a bit more opportunistic and not as organized.
Add to that concerns regarding the fate of allies, the pre-existing tensions I talk about below, and lots of stuff I am not thinking of right now and may not even know about...
> I would say ussr's involvement in cold war was caused by passive aggressive tactics began by USA.
The tension dates back way longer than that. There were quite a number of people in the US who fundamentally mistrusted the USSR for the reasons listed above, and that distrust went back to the original October Revolution. There were quite a number in the USSR, including in high government positions, who distrusted the US because of its participation in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_intervention_in_the_Rus... . There was tension over the UN declaration of human rights and ...
Interchange usa with ussr and communism with capitalism in the above para. Then read it as if you are from ussr.
What I would strongly advocate for is open governance. That would prevent waging war for profit. Perhaps those who calls for war should lead it like old times. Waging war for profit in the comfort of your home while your soldiers die like expendibles causes career politicians to take that risk. If won its profit, if lost then its just an election for them.
I wonder if law banning hipocracy is the answer. Most Politicians does not experience suffering of commons.I wouldn't have a problem with most politicians if at least half of them displayed an expertise in solving real problems rather than expertise in saving face
Here is a very good article that has many ideas I strongly agree with. It addresses many fundamental problems involved.
https://medium.com/rethinking-security/the-problem-with-nati...
Net negative compared to the counterfactual of perfect interventions or the counterfactual of no interventions?
Again, I think there were lots of cases in which the US screwed up. That's easier to tell in hindsight in some of those cases. On the ground at the time, was it obvious that the Korean War was a good idea and the Vietnam War a bad one? (I think it _did_ become obvious that the Vietnam War was a bad idea quite a bit before the US actually pulled out of it; again, I won't claim that the US didn't make preventable mistakes!)
What I don't have a good handle on is what the world would look like if the US post WWII had adopted the sort of foreign policy it had in 1910 or 1925 and just minded its own business and ignored the rest of the world. And if you're not suggesting it should have done _that_, then I'm not sure what you're suggesting, exactly.
> Which is why USA is no more a world leader.
Is the USA less of a world leader than in the 1920s or 1930s? I don't think so.
Is it less of one than it was in 1946? Maybe, but that was inevitable, for at least two obvious reasons:
1) Its economic influence decreased as its share of world GDP dropped (which it _had_ to; in 1946 a lot of the rest of the world's industrial capacity was in ruins, and let's not get started on the service sector in most of 1946 Europe, Japan, China, USSR). Also, the dependence of other countries on US exports or aid dropped from 1946 to now, generally speaking. This is, of course, a good thing.
2) The rest of the world caught up to the US in some areas in which it had had moral leadership, thus decreasing the moral leadership aspect. As one example, the non-communist European countries which hadn't done so yet finally got around to introducing women's suffrage (Belgium 1948, France 1944, Greece 1952, Italy 1945, Liechtenstein 1984, Portugal 1976, San Marino 1959, Spain 1976, Switzerland 1971 or 1991 depending on how you count).
Which countries would you consider to be more "world leaders" than the US at the moment? Or is your claim that the US is no longer _the_ world leader (as if it ever were)? I would say that's a very good thing.
> Spying even the heads of states of allies
Do you seriously believe that the US is the only country doing that? I would be quite shocked if this were the case.
> Then read it as if you are from ussr.
I _am_ from the USSR (back when there was one). So yes, I have some idea, both from my reading and from talking to people of my parents' and grandparents' generation of what things looked like from that side. A bit from personal experience as well, but that covers a somewhat small slice of post-WWII history of the USSR.
> What I would strongly advocate for is open governance.
Do you mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_government or something else? If that's what you mean, then I'm all in favor.
> I wonder if law banning hipocracy is the answer.
I'm not sure whether you mean http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Hipocracy or something else. "Hipocracy" is not a word I've seen before you used it just now, and I can find no other references to it. Not sure whether you mean "hypocrisy", but that wouldn't fit in with the rest of the paragraph that follows the above-quoted sentence...
> Here is a very good article that has many ideas I strongly agree with.
Thank you for the link. I'll need to take some time to read it and think before I can comment on it intelligently.
Just because other governments do it doesn't make it right.
Open governance that I suggested is very similar to Open government wiki link you linked.
And I spelled hypocrisy wrong.
My understanding is the world would be a better place if everyone works together and live peacefully.
Now please convince the Latvians of that, say. Seriously, the case that the second half of the 20th century would have turned out better with an isolationist US is a hard case to make.
> Just because other governments do it doesn't make it right.
I'm not entirely convinced. The problem is that alliances are not permanent...
> And I spelled hypocrisy wrong.
Then as I said, I don't understand the rest of your paragraph.
> My understanding is the world would be a better place if everyone works together and live peacefully.
Sure. We'd need no police, no armies, etc. It would be pretty nice.
The question is how we get there.
In any case, Fidel lived long enough to see the American overreaction through most of it's shelf life.
http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/cuba/dictatorship.html
The man was an evil murderous dictator, and the world - and his subjects - are better off without him.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/11/wont-jeremy-corbyn-like...
China, the USSA and Cuba were never communism. They varied between heavy socialism (also a pinical of all high income countries: roads, trains, parks, police, fire, airports) and fascism.
A lot of people who just go on about communists, today, in 2016, seemed to have not learned that much of what we learned about the communists was mostly propaganda; same way the US creates enemies out of "terrorists" today.
Communism is when you and your friends go to a bar and there is no beer, because there was not enough grain produced on command of the central planning committee 4 years ago. Now you and your friends are upset and complain about it, so you get arrested and locked up without trial because you are betraying communist ideals.
And it's not like nobody got locked up in the 50s without a hint of a trial just for the suspicion of being 'communist' and betraying the capitalistic ideals.
""" In political and social sciences, communism (from Latin communis, "common, universal")[1][2] is a social, political, and economic ideology and movement whose ultimate goal is the establishment of the communist society, which is a socioeconomic order structured upon the common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money,[3][4] and the state.[5][6] """ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism
If there are people who call themselves communists and they create societies, then "communism" should be judged on that.
That's not how it works; some terrorists may call themselves muslims and even form "Islamic" societies, but I hope you'll agree that muslims and Islam shouldn't be judged on their actions. The same goes for Christianity.
Now if one of you gets ill, or decides to slack off then that person will still be supported. If everyone slacks off then the society is f'd.
The initial concept is very theoretical, there are many gaps left.
Buying beer and sharing with friends week after week is a good example of capitalism, as the bar owner is profiting so much from you and your friends buying all this beer.
Communism (of the Marxist variety) would be you and your friends being allocated the same amount of beer by the state, which owns the beer (along with all goods), and deals out the same amount of beer to everyone, regardless of what they do (i.e. what would have corresponded to their class).
I suppose there is another kind of communism where you and your friends live on a commune and some grow hops and some grow barley and some are in charge of fermentation vats and all just relax and drink their beer after a long day. That is, until the tax man cometh...
Marx suggested that communism will only emerge after the failure of capitalism. Every single communist regime has ignored this idea.
While I agree that many countries who have followed communist ideas have done some horrible things, the same can be said for every other system, including the current system we have now.
Furthermore pure capitalism has never really been tried either, because it begins to fail and government intervention is needed very quickly.
Actual communism doesn't really mean dictatorship, I think we might see a comeback of ideas related to communism & command style economies in the future. Especially if we start implementing Strong AI to better manage resources and trade. I could see a future where free market may not exist in the form we have it now, instead there might be a system focused on harm reduction managed by various planning systems, better and more careful resource allocation, etc.
Let's not forget that communist ideas also allowed many countries to industrialize rather quickly.
How is communism going to handle malicious parties, since there's no ownership? How is communism going to handle needs for abstract needs, such as those for services? Marx didn't really think things through. You don't need strong AI, you need the singularity to centrally plan humanity. Until then you need to allow freedom of action for individual actors, i.e. rule of law + market economies.
People aren't going to say "I want more loli hentai".
In my personal opinion, I don't think that if communism ever emerges it will be through forced means as it was before, I think it will occur naturally where Capitalism will simply fail in certain areas and the system will need to change.
For example say in 100 years, climate change causes enormous damage worldwide in various aspects of life. At this point perhaps governments will realize we can't just exploit raw resources, pollute and allow people to do what they want, so new economic systems emerge that utilize central planning and needs based production and distribution as to avoid harm, it will no longer be simply market driven. Just a rough example, of what could happen.
You're talking about dictatorships that called themselves communist. Some were economically communist, but the governance was never as Marx intended.
Marx envisioned a system of 'councils' that would exist in many aspects of society (e.g. for each factory), each would send a representative to a higher level council. This is what 'soviet' refers to. This system was never really implemented.
Economic system and governance are not the same thing. It's conceivable to implement communism using a proper 'soviet' (council) system, or maybe even using a parliamentary democracy. I don't quite believe this would work that well, but calling the belief itself 'unforgivable' is ...simplistic.
Especially considering that many people who believe in communism do so out of a sense of idealism that is much less selfish than capialists; in some sense communist beliefs stem from a sense of empathy that is much more compatible with evangelical values rather than capitalism.
The blockade of Cuba began before Castro nationalized the American-owned oil refineries by Eisenhower drastically reducing the amount of sugar Cuba could export to the US. As the Cuban economy was dependent on sugar exports they didn't have much choice when the Soviet Union stepped in and offered to buy their sugar.
The rest is history. Cuba aligning with the Soviet Union was by force, not by choice. That's why the blockade was such a cluster-fuck from the beginning.
When he was very old but still in power, I always wondered if he would just suddenly die one day and his country would descend into chaos. At least that has not happened, what, if you like or dislike him, you should probably still credit him. I hope Cuba will develop into a freer society over time.
"One Castro or another has ruled Cuba over a period that spans seven decades and 11 U.S. presidents. Fidel Castro outlived six of those presidents,[[[NOTE: change to seven if George H.W. Bush dies before Castro]]] including Cold War warriors John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan."
To pretend here, for me, as if he was cruel to our continent would be both ungrateful and untrue. The man offered free training and medical school for most of our African doctors, he harbored, trained and armed many a guerilla group in our pursuit of independence from colonization. Up until today, Cuba still sends significant numbers of doctors to remote African areas and provide expensive medical procedures for free.
The truth is, if as a continent we are to point at individual world leaders who did the most for African nations, Fidel Castro is very high up that list, if not at the top.
He had his fights and ills, but not with us.
With that, rest in peace Fidel Castro. Your legend lives on.
As someone who studied the subject formally, don't place maximum weight on the success and failures of the (statistically insignificant) rise and fall of modern nation states. This is a very far cry from a controlled experiment to begin with, anyways.
Don't read into that too much. I'm not saying mainstream economics doesn't have compelling arguments to make about the elegant effectiveness of free (properly regulated) markets. I'm just trying to be fair: it's a far cry from a scientific fact, which it seems like not just this comment, but a lot of us in the west (even mainstream academic economics) sell the idea as.
I guess that destroys my argument that there hasn't been a single successful planned economy in history so far.
Well anyways, the objective fact here is that Cuba is objectively richer and more successful than some nearby economies that have had more right wing influence in nearby Central America.
Centrally planning an economy is an NP complete problem. Marxism is dumb and if any would be socialist on this forum can explain to me how we as a society can retain the benefits yielded by capitalism without the use of capital and how socialism of such a form can exist without a centrally planned economy, I'm all ears.
Marxism has failed and failed and then failed again, and then it also led to the deaths of 100 million.
For a concrete example, someone who is interested cannot really respond to you if they wanted to because you're firing in every direction with very little detail or explanation. How is anyone supposed to guess at what you consider to be the "benefits yielded by capitalism"? What socialism "of such a form" do you mean? Why do you seem blind to the many "dumb" parts of capitalism or liberal democracy? Do you study the various alternatives that have been discussed in the history of political science and theory? What specifically do you find dumb about Marxism, particularly as compared with its counterparts in other economic models and interpretations of human history?
On HN, you'll find emotional, knee-jerk reactions receive a swift, negative response. Especially when they're negative emotions, delivered with insults and anger. You can do much better than this, and you'll find interesting conversations coming your way.
Cuba has been embargoed only by the USA.
Cuba can buy absolutely anything it needs - even American products - simply by going through any one of a myriad of interlocutors: Mexico, Canada, Jamaica, Venezuela.
There is absolutely no forgiving Fidel's cruel dictatorship.
Just as I understand there is some Cuban goodwill with respect to the doctors they send abroad - and early on Fidel's creation of better literacy/healthcare programs.
But remember this: Fidel worked with the Russians to put nuclear weapons 40 miles away from the USA - and created a crazy situation - the closest the world has ever been to full blown nuclear war. That was this man's hubris - he nearly helped put the world on fire. That kind of existential threat is not easily forgotten. Point being: the 'embargo' is 100% Fidel's fault, and he could have easily taken steps to have it removed, but his ego would not allow it.
That's after US did the same to Russia and failed invasion of Cuba. “In response to the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion of 1961, and the presence of American Jupiter ballistic missiles in Italy and Turkey, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev decided to agree to Cuba's request to place nuclear missiles in Cuba to deter future harassment of Cuba.” [1]
You may want to read [2], which was posted on HN before. In short, US was a real bully back then. Anything did by Cuba and USSR were mostly reactive knee-jerking response to the aggressive stance of US.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis
[2] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-real...
It was a response to the Cuban revolution, which was Communist, and 'Soviet inspired' from day one - a global movement which was threatening the entire world.
I'm not an expert on the embargo, and it's a bit complicated because it's got multiple pieces of enabling legislation, but at first glance the only one of those that says anything close to what you're saying is Title III of the Helms-Burton act (see http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Documents/... for full text). That explicitly allows companies "trafficking in property which was confiscated by the Cuban Government on or after January 1, 1959", if it was confiscated from a United States national, to be sued in US courts. This obviously only matters to companies doing business in the US, because otherwise they don't care whether they get sued to start with. Note also that certain forms of real estate are excluded from the provisions of this law, again at first glance.
Am I just missing something? Do you have a citation for your claim?
The same happened with MasterCard and VISA, and is part of the reason why I think Germany should continue to keep its own payment system, and just ban MasterCard and VISA and PayPal within the EU.
Or that you can’t technically put apps on the iOS App Store or the Google Play Store if you trade with Cuba.
(As you technically need an export declaration, as described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10835045 )
The Reddit discussion references the Helms-Burton act, and for the case of things like banks and payment processors, I expect the problem is Title I section 103, which prohibits US nationals from extending loans or other financing to anyone for the purpose of financing transactions involving confiscated property as defined elsewhere in the act.
So for the cigar case, if the cigars were grown on land that was confiscated (for example), my reading of it is that processing a payment for the cigars would be prohibited under the act. Certainly so for MasterCard and Visa, which are clearly extending credit.
That's not the same as a blanket ban on both doing business with Cuba and business with US companies, but it does make things very complicated, I agree, especially because there are so many ways of extending credit when companies deal with each other.
An embargo sparked by Castro. Just saying.
The comment you are replying to is embracing that complexity. Paving over it with simplistic thinking "Castro was evil and wrong" does a great deal of violence to the truth.
I am no fan of the shape Fidel Castro's Cuba took, but I think it is more important that we learn from the mistakes of the revolution (which are not a simple matter of being 'evil' or 'wrong') than that we demonize them.
In general, we should learn from history or be doomed to repeat it.
I honestly agree.
I just think it is ridiculous to claim that Castro was "a great leader" when Cuba has fared very poorly under Castro in almost every respect. I felt obliged to point this out.
Were they given the chance (cold war, embargo, et al)?
I feel obliged to point this out too.
Communism failed. Mistakes like that are unforgivable.
But I'd say its factually incorrect.
Should incorrect statements be downvoted even if it shows an interesting state of mind?
It's the time when society divides into economic winners and losers, and the wealth gap will increase - sometimes dramatically. So yay innovation and (somewhat more) freedom, but woe social tensions.
Many central and south American heads of state have tried to stand up to that empire, and many have died in plane crashes. Hugh Chavez, demonized in American media, put pieces of the bill of rights on all food packaging, stood up for the poor and was opposed by the rich. Those people help him survive a military coupé. I would not be surprised if in 40 years, declassified documented revealed that coupé was US led.
For those who think that's crazy tin foil hat, remember that the US did cause the September 11th 1973 uprising in Chile, which led to the deaths of 11,000 civilians.
In a few hundred years when this era is not covered in the relentless nationalism that paints our view of the world, people will discover how much of our modern world was controlled by so very few.
The US didn't cause this. They tried to stop it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTTno8D-b2E
If that wasn't obvious by itself, a brief glimpse at Venezuela and what Chavez/Maduro's regime has accomplished should dispel any remaining doubt.
+ Fidel does not allow his people to leave, with the threat of punishment.
+ Fidel does not allow democracy
+ He does not allow any real internet access
+ Fidel puts political dissidents in jail
+ Fidel's private Army own's 85% of the economy
+ Cuban's live in relative poverty
+ Only the US 'embargos' Cuba, they are free to trade with 167 other nations in the world - and even buy American products from wherever they want - just not America.
This is not 'propaganda'.
Except, any company making a deal with Cuba is automatically banned from dealing with the US.
To this date, the US even interfers in Europe regarding that: There is a famous case where a German bought Cuban Cigars from a Dane, and the FBI interfered, and seized the funds from their bank accounts.
If any company ever touches the USD, the US claims to have jurisdiction over them.
> + Cuban's live in relative poverty
The median wealth and income in Cuba is higher than most middle american countries.
Cuba is not a great country to live in, but please don’t distort the facts. That doesn’t make you any better than the North Korean propaganda that claims the US president eats babies.
Can you be more precise by what you mean when you say "making a deal"? Does flying to Cuba constitute "making a deal"? Air Canada has flown there for years and still flies to the US.
Just to put a concrete point, Per capita GDP of Cuba is 4 times the largest democracy country (India).
I'm seeing it at closer to 3x based on <http://www.tradingeconomics.com/india/gdp-per-capita> and <http://www.tradingeconomics.com/cuba/gdp-per-capita>.
But even granting 4x, notice that it was 5x back in 1970 (which is as early as the Cuba chart in this dataset goes). And if you look at numbers from right before the Cuban revolution, it was about 6x...
Of course the embargo, the Soviet subsidies, the removal of those subsidies, and the sugar price crash in the 90s make it hard to make much practical sense of Cuban GDP per capita and its evolution.
I _would_ like to respond to your "normal characteristics" point, though. The "people aren't allowed to leave" your country _is_ a normal characteristic of communist states, but that doesn't make it OK. And I would argue that it's not necessarily inherent to "communism", and _is_ "evil" in pretty basic terms: it violates the right of freedom of movement. See also UN declaration of human rights, article 13. I understand the practical reasons such a restriction is instituted, and I can even make some moral arguments for it (e.g. owing a debt to the society that provided your education and hence not being allowed to take your skills elsewhere), but I still don't think the outcome is OK.
> Fidel does not allow his people to leave, with the threat of punishment.
Everybody is (now) free to leave Cuba. But OK, I think that's fairly recent.
> Fidel's private Army own's 85% of the economy
"Fidel's private Army" is just an ugly sound byte. It's the Cuban army and it's not going to be dissolved now that he's dead.
> Cuban's live in relative poverty
While poverty is a problem, it's not a Cuban problem. For instance, Americans also live in poverty (at least 45 millions of them)
On the other side, western propaganda blanks out a lot of facts about Cuba. Among those is the fact that a significant percentage of Cubans approve their government.
> On the other side, western propaganda blanks out a lot of facts about Cuba. Among those is the fact that a significant percentage of Cubans approve their government.
I can't help but notice that you skipped over the little details about a lack of democracy, a lack of free access to information, and how dissidents are punished.
> On the other side, western propaganda blanks out a lot of facts about Cuba. Among those is the fact that a significant percentage of Cubans approve their government.
Weird. Then why the resistance to holding elections?
And it is a dictatorship, so no elections. I wrote significant not majority.
Just wanted to point out that it's hard to get a realistic picture in the middle of all the propaganda. For instance, there's no starving in Cuba and health care for everybody. You cant say that about all countries with elections.
And I've seen just outside town the gorgeous villas with manicured gardens and water features, where members of the Party live. There's inequality in the West but nothing like there is in the "worker's paradise".
Unlike the USA, the UK has efficient universal healthcare and access to quality education, plus working safety net for the citizens. It might not be easy to rise from the poverty, but it is possible and indeed, most Britons are doing OK.
As to your small personal dab, I grew up in a Communist country and am familiar with the package, don't need no lectures from guys in Che t-shirts.
You went on a tourists' visit of poverty. Try doing the same in London, and let's see how you do there, bruv.
And yes I am aware that as a tourist those are the bits I was allowed to see; I'll wager the "real" Cuba is far worse.
You really haven't bruv.
On Cuba, even suggesting change of leadership is enough to put you in prison.
Ha ha ... haha hah .... ha
This is the big one. Many countries have restrictions on people coming, for various reasons, but any country/govt that prevents people leaving knows perfectly well that it's doing something that people want to flee.
Lots of people in Miami consider themselves Cuban and are just waiting for the opportunity to go home and reclaim their family's birthright. Leaving a particular regime doesn't mean abandoning your heritage.
I don't doubt that his doctors may have helped you.
However, the man has committed grievous crimes, keeps 'his people' in abject poverty, on an 'island prison'. More than 85% of the economy is in the control of the military - his private Army.
"Up until today, Cuba still sends significant numbers of doctors to remote African areas and provide expensive medical procedures for free."
This is false and misleading. They do not provide it for free - they are paid by international agencies and it is one of the few real 'exports' that Cuba has.
Most perniciously - the money that is supposed to go to the doctors mostly goes to the military junta - while the doctors themselves receive very little.
Moreover - the Cuban doctors abroad are prisoners. They are held with the threat of violence or internment of their families back home. If they try to escape or leave - they go to prison:
http://www.cubanet.org/htdocs/CNews/y00/jun00/06e4.htm
Those doctors that 'helped you' get 5% of their 'salary' - while 95% goes to their captors.
Praise the doctors, not Fidel.
I find it abhorrent that such statements could be made about a cruel dictator, who has done 'some possibly good things' in the name of his legacy, whilst at the same time tormenting millions.
It's sad that people should hold such a tyrant in such esteem - because not only are those medical programs are paid for mostly by 'evil Western Nations' - aid to African nations is overwhelmingly from 'Western nations' (at least in terms of direct/indirect aid - of course China is a huge economic investor).
Let us not make a totem of this man without being cognizant of all the things he has done.
Way less crimes than those who accuse him. Never sprayed Vietnamese with Agent Orange or napalms for one, never dropped nuclear bombs on civilians, never supported Pinochet et co, doesn't have 25% of the world's incarcerated in just 4% of the global population, and lots of other things besides.
>keeps 'his people' in abject poverty
A 40+ years embargo has something to do with that too...
>More than 85% of the economy is in the control of the military - his private Army.
It's in control of the state, which is how things are supposed to work in communist countries. Not necessarily worse than having it in the hands of corporations...
For what its worth, I think "evil" is a word that shouldn't be used outside of storybooks. It is a binary word that is far too overgeneralised to the point it is meaningless to ascribe. It doesn't serve any persuasive or descriptive purpose.
Even that, I wouldn't call "evil" -- self-serving imperialistic and post-colonial would fit better. Evil is a BS biblical notion for pre-modern people. It's no way to look at history with a rational mindset, and doesn't offer any explanation of various acts, nor a historical perspective.
+ The US sprayed 'agent orange' on trees near their firebases, and the vast majority of the 'victims' were American soldiers, not Vietnamese. Obviously, they didn't know what it would do.
+ The 'embargo' is 100% the fault of Fidel. He put nuclear weapons 40 miles away from florida, from those who backed by the credible threat of using them, thereby putting hundreds of millions of lives at risk. That's why the embargo started - he had ample time to wind it down. Jimmy Carter, Clinton, Obama - and even Bush Sr. would have made a deal of Fidel agreed to have elections.
(Khrushchev, not known as one of the Cold War's more pacifistic figures, responded that he found Castro's suggestion quite disturbing)
That's straight up false. Between 3-4 millions Vietnamese suffered from it[1], and its devastating effects are still very relevant today. Concerning US soldiers, "By April 1993, the Department of Veterans Affairs had compensated only 486 victims, although it had received disability claims from 39,419 soldiers who had been exposed to Agent Orange while serving in Vietnam."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange#Effects_on_the_Vi...
And the US isn’t putting nukes into NATO states? Italy and Turkey already have had some before Cuba got some, so what’s next? Estonia?
> And the US isn’t putting nukes into Estonia?
Honest question: Where is this coming from? I'd hate to call this war-mongering and spreading misinformation, but this is a great way to polarize a conversation in one fell scoop.
It was the cold war, and the US had already put nukes into Italy and Turkey, well within range of Moscow.
In such a game-theoretical standoff, the USSR had had to react – to keep the balance of power.
It’s a completely crazy situation, and I’d consider both sides of the conflict as Evil, but I’m not sure why so many people try to claim the US was Good, while the USSR was Evil. Both stood for some good, and some very bad principles.
I edited the comment to reduce the conflict potential, but keep the general idea of it.
Given Russias interest in toying and more with its neighbors, misinformation like this goes a long way of "normalizing" those conflicts. It prepares whomever is reading your comment to say, "huh, the both sides here are shades of gray" and just accept that conflict as normal.
So yeah. There are no US nukes in Estonia. If there are, please back up your sources.
Objectively? They were both Evil. If you compare them, the USSR is hands down the evil one. I really hate this whitewashing of USSR's history just to put down the US. I'm pretty sure nobody here defending Castro or Cuba ever had to live under a communist dictatorship.
It's as simple as:
Ask anyone from Eastern Europe or even Cuba on whose sphere of influence would they had rather been. I'm willing to bet everything that 90% of the answers will be NATO.
But comparing the US and USSR isn’t nearly as easy. Both were (and are) horrible to non-citizen. And while the US was mostly okay to the white citizen, minorities had to suffer for quite a while. And nowadays, the US mistreating its own citizen is getting extreme.
> Ask anyone from Eastern Europe or even Cuba on whose sphere of influence would they had rather been
That question isn’t nearly as easy either.
In Germany we’re having a huge group of people who lived under communism – and want it back. In some states (those which lived under communism), up to 20% of the people.
(This also answers the "I'm pretty sure nobody here defending Castro or Cuba ever had to live under a communist dictatorship" question, I guess? I didn’t live myself under communism, but I know quite a few who’d want it back, because they had it better)
Go ahead and compare how the United States treated the citizens of, say, France, with how the USSR treated the citizens of, oh, say, Czechoslovakia. We'll wait.
> And while the US was mostly okay to the white citizen, minorities had to suffer for quite a while.
It's telling that you are attempting to draw an equality between segregation -- which was legally ended in 1957 as part of an open and democratic process -- with the USSR's extensive gulag system, intricate controls on freedom of expression and freedom of thought, and general lack of civil rights for everyone, which lasted right up until the day it disintegrated.
> In Germany we’re having a huge group of people who lived under communism – and want it back.
If Communism was so great, why did you have to build a wall to keep people from running away from it? That's the unanswerable point here.
That's a logical fallacy. You can't say that Castro's crimes against humanity are okay because the US has committed worse ones.
>A 40+ years embargo has something to do with that too...
Only a US embargo. That leaves more than 80% of the world GDP to interact with.
Tu quoque fallacy, for the record
This is tu quoque, because you're trying to say bad thing you did was OK because someone else did a bad thing too. However, you'll notice the above poster definitely did not claim what Castro did was OK.
Heck, US cops alone have probably killed much more people than the Cuban regime in those 50 years. And the place with 25% of the world's prisoners and 4% of the world's population is rich to call other places "police states".
That's a naive view. Do you really think the rest of the world can just straight up ignore the US's embargo and play nice with Cuba, while still staying on good terms with the US?
From wikipedia:
>>Cuba produces sugarcane, tobacco, citrus, coffee, rice, potatoes, beans and livestock.[2] As of 2015 Cuba imported about 70-80% of its food.[51] and 80-84% of the food it rations to the public.[52] Raúl Castro ridiculed the bureaucracy that shackled the agriculture sector.[52] Before 1959, Cuba boasted as many cattle as people. Today meat is so scarce that it is a crime to kill a cow without government permission.[53] Cuban people suffered from starvation during the Special Period.[29]
They hold on to the politics of the Communist party dictatorship as a means to continue their power and wealth extraction (China's political elites are by far the wealthiest politicians on earth, they make the US Congress look like paupers).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
The great capitalist country, the great experiment, the almighty America is the only way. I think about our great experiment when I step over the ever increasing number of homeless.
And yes, the great American experiment is still kinda working--for some of you.
But maybe, someday, somewhere, a country just might find a communistic model that does work?
Then, maybe, we won't be so smugly dogmatic about the rightness of our supposedly Capitalistic system?
Hell, my America doesn't feel free anymore. Yes, I can run my mouth, but that's about it.
My ecomonic prospects are dwindling yearly. I'm being fined, and fee'd when I open the door to my for great profit apartment. A chit hole where I am forced to live. I'd rather live in a tee pee by the coast, but I can't legally, without paying huge sums of money. Oh, wait--I might be able to live kida free in Alaska? I can't get a loan. My only successful friends are from wealthy families. I'm not yahoo American anymore. And no, I wouldn't live in any of the other chit holes, with the exception of a lot of European countries, Australia, and maybe Japan.
Yes--we are still winning the war, but some days our experiment doesn't work for dudes like me.
It's always worked for the rich kids though. Why? I can't recall the last Horatio Alger. We had a lot of examples up until the early 80's? We seem to be on the downward slide since though?
Sorry, about venting. It's the holidays the paid dude keeps telling me.
My impression was then when America tried to force other countries to participate in the embargo they told them to shove it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helms%E2%80%93Burton_Act
Also yes Cuba has trade with the rest of the world
http://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/cub/
> Cuba is the 140th largest export economy in the world. In 2014, Cuba exported $1.74B and imported $5.91B, resulting in a negative trade balance of $4.17B.
> The top exports of Cuba are Raw Sugar ($392M), Refined Petroleum ($314M), Rolled Tobacco ($236M), Hard Liquor ($116M) and Raw Nickel ($108M), using the 1992 revision of the HS (Harmonized System) classification. Its top imports are Wheat ($234M), Refined Petroleum ($228M), Concentrated Milk ($207M), Corn ($204M) and Poultry Meat ($196M).
> The top export destinations of Cuba are China ($311M), the Netherlands ($157M), Spain ($141M), Senegal ($92M) and the United Kingdom ($67.3M). The top import origins are China ($1.05B), Spain ($920M), Brazil ($507M), Canada ($389M) and Mexico ($360M).
Of course geography still matters, the US is nearby, large, and rich. Exporting to the US would be a huge plus for the Cuban economy but it wouldn't change everything.
Your impression is wrong.
An example knock-on effect relevant to HN is that as a UK company, we couldn't sell windows software to Cuba because things like windows run-time libraries would be covered by the US export embargo. In theory, they wouldn't even have a legal copy of any US operating system.
I'm sure there were similar knock-on effects across all industries that had US products, suppliers or connections in their business.
As even you said, Cuba was not supposed to have Windows copies, but I'm sure they had
Iran theoretically couldn't have access to Boeing parts (and this was a stricter embargo), but they had
There's always a way of solving things.
Most of Cuban problems were caused by themselves, not the embargo.
Except, not really.
You can’t put any app using any encryption technology up on the Google Play Store or the iOS App Store, if you also distribute anything to Cuba.
For the first you need to get an approval from the US DoD, which requires that you never interact with Cuba.
It's not you selling to Cuba, it's Cuba buying through intermediates.
(Of course if you really want you can sell things directly to Cuba, but you need to find a way of disguising it)
You're (or, were) also forbidden from bringing Cuban cigars to the US, but if you arrive from a flight from Panama with a box of unmarked cigars nobody is going to do anything.
That’s part fo the issue.
What? This was the real world, a matter of first hand experience. We could not consider jeopardising sales to our biggest market (the US) by breaking US embargo for a barely significant market.
But see my other comment.
(However, I don't think Cuba has qualms about pirating software, if this was hw it would have been a different issue)
Same goes for other products. Don't base them on U.S. technology if you plan to trade with America's enemies.
Partly because we are not the US and did not have a direct confrontation.
But partly because Trudeau Sr. was a communist-revolutionary apologist, in the French intellectual sense - and chilled with Fidel to boost is 'socialist hipster' cred and to thumb the eye of the Americans.
As a young man, I found it admirable. Now that I know many ex-Cubans, I find it utterly repulsive and a stain on our history. It's one thing to have 'relations' or 'diplomacy' with another nation - it's altogether another to chum around with a thug. If it was in the name of getting Fidel to let his people off the island, or encourage democracy... sure ... but it was not that.
As opposed to a right-wing capitalist pig, like most other leaders?
The name-calling can go both ways.
The logical fallacy I think is yours for trying to compare Cuba to the USA in a tit-for-tat comparison of misrepresented facts and issues.
Dropping a nuclear bomb seems 'bad' until you put it in the context of what the Japanese were doing, and the costs otherwise.
The North Vietnamese that the Americans & South Vietnamese were fighting against were 10x worse than Castro (they executed 100's of thousands in the streets - and put millions in concentration camps after the Americans withdrew) - and using 'agent Orange' was an act of reasonable desperation on the part of the Americans as it was used only to clear foliage near American firebases, the casualties were mostly American and of course it was not done with the knowledge people would be hurt - the author of the note makes it seem like it was used on purpose to hurt Vietnamese which is a gross misrepresentation.
Americas role in the world is fundamentally different than that of Cuba (and of course there is the issue of scale) which makes it futile to compare the USA to Cuba, tit-for-tat in terms of 'things done'.
But the comparison is resolved rather more pragmatically:
People literally risk everything, including their lives to flee Cuba to get to America.
Never the other way around.
It isn't really clear if this is true, there is a clear bias of studies to focus on the effect on American veterans, but there are 1-4 million Vietnamese affected depending on what non-American source you believe.
The US has bombed and invaded Afghanistan for the crimes of a handful of (mainly Saudi-backed) loonies (after first sponsoring Bin Laden in the 80s), have invaded Iraq under BS false pretexts (WMDs etc) and created huge losses, chaos, anarchy and civil war, have helped destabilize Libya with the same outcome, have targeted the Syrian regime and in the process helped ISIS grow, and so on. And that's just the open actions since 2001...
Wow, I am Vietnamese, and this is so shockingly far from the truth. FYI, the total number of American casualties in the Vietnam war amounted to something like ~50,000, while the conservative estimate for the total number of Vietnamese deaths was at least one million- the majority of which were civilian. What's worse, Agent Orange's effects were far reaching. Long after the war had ended it continued creating unimaginable damage, to the environment, to the people, to the economy [1]. Conveniently downplaying this horrible crime (which the US has still not owned up completely) is misrepresenting the facts. And yes, Western nations have done 'worse'. Much of the tragedies around the world in the 20th century had much to do with the Western countries' imperialiastic mindset.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange#Effects_on_the_Vi...
Correct, but it can help a lot of people come down off of their high horse.
Nope. The US brutally punished countries which traded with Cuba. The best and most macabre example of this would be the 1974 Bangladesh Famine, which had a death toll of 1-1.5 million, and was almost entirely preventable.
After the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation war, when Bangladesh achieved its independence from America-backed Pakistan, US initially refused to recognize Bangladesh as a country and trade with it because Bangladesh wanted to prosecute Pakistani war criminals, responsible for the worst genocide since the Holodomor(and committed using American arms). Infact, Nixon and the US refused to condemn Pakistani actions, and actively worked to suppress evidence of their crimes.
When the famine started in 1974, the US initially promised food aid to Bangladesh, but refused to deliver because Bangladesh exported jute to Cuba(Cuba was one of the first countries to recognize Bangladeshi independence). By the time Bangladesh agreed to stop all trade relations with Cuba, and US aid finally arrived, the famine was pretty much over and had claimed its 1,500,000+ victims. Now, to make it clear, the US had 2 million+ tonnes of grain pretty much ready to deliver, but held back at the last moment while hundreds of thousands were starving to death. This was also while US was giving huge amounts of grain as food aid to surplus food producing South Vietnam, which the Vietnamese traded for weapons.
Yes, on the North Vietnamese invaders who had a track record of murdering civilians well before the US was ever involved. And the Japanese who perpetrated the Rape of Nanking, etc.
But even so - the US has voted out these previous politicians whereas Cubans were and are not able to do that.
BTW, you are wrong: cubans do vote, too.
I'm also wondering why so many people were so desperate to leave Cuba in rickety rafts even though they could have just voted out the Castros instead in one of these elections you mention, but I'm sure you can explain that too.
Yes, because comparing the capabilities of a small, poor island nation is the same as comparing the capabilities of the most powerful country in the world.
Castro had no capability to do what the US has done, had he had the chance how would've done much worse.
A discussion that doesn't contain a "what about" element is one-sided. Those criticizing "whataboutism" only want their own shit to be left out of the discussion.
That some would call whataboutism a bad thing just goes to show how much some pots are used to be the only ones allowed to call the kettle black.
What is sad is how quickly people reach for a wide, monotone brush they like to paint things with lately. As an american, i have heard roughly your description of castro my entire life. To hear another version, from someone living a life in a continent i have never visited is both refreshing and educational.
I guess it's fair that many Americans don't know a lot about him and don't know about the details of his activities in Africa with doctors (and military, by the way). But that's kind of an American thing ... not enough 'world events' in the American press :), no offense.
I didn't really want to comment in this thread but to be clear, the US embargo has kept Cuba in abject economic poverty not Castro.
As for the two doctors your pointed to, I am sure they are the exception. I happen to be Zimbabwean, actually, a good number of my childhood doctors were Cuban and they were there happily and willingly. My brother, a doctor himself, has many friends from Cuba who say the same.
You should read this article when you get a chance.
http://qz.com/846337/cuban-leader-fidel-castro-was-a-liberat...
There really is nothing disturbing about my opinion. At least on the African continent that is. Perspectives differ, I guess.
[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba#Political...)
That said, I have yet to see anything resembling a credible source that claimed more than 10,000 direct deaths caused by the Castro regime. I've seen much higher numbers (50,000 or more) in terms of indirect deaths: people trying to get out of Cuba and drowning in the process.
The population of Cuba around the time of the revolution was about 7 million; now it's around 11 million. The population of the Soviet Union in the 1930s was between 150 and 200 million (good statistics are hard to come by; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Census_(1937) for why). Even if we take the extreme 7 million and 200 million numbers, 10,000 Cuban deaths is equivalent to about 285,000 Soviet deaths on a per-capita basis. And that's over a 50-year or so period. So yes, Stalin killed a lot more people no matter how you count it. Of course, "leader who killed a smaller percentage of the population than Stalin" is a _really_ low bar; pretty much everyone except Pol Pot clears it.
In general, the "Cuba under Castro" numbers for political violence don't seem any worse than other Latin American countries in the 20th century. Again, this isn't _good_, just like it's not good that we can end up talking about "oh, that's equivalent to hundreds of thousands of deaths on a per-capita basis, which is _tiny_". :(
For comparison Puerto Rico have had about 10k murders in the last 15 years alone[1], and that's in less than half the Cuban population.
From 1998 figures[2] and 2002 population numbers I guesstimate that officially about 820 murders occur per year in Cuba, and the 10k in 50 years evens out to 200 per year.
[1] http://www.estadisticas.pr/iepr/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=nf...
[2] http://www.sld.cu/sitios/dne/buscar.php?id=3297&iduser=4&id_...
Yep. Would it likewise surprise you to learn that the Pinochet government, which is described in similar ways, killed (at the high end of the estimates; the officially accepted ones are 10-20% lower) about 3200 people and "disappeared" about 1000, over the course of 17 years? Also, about 30,000 tortured, though; I have not seen claims of this for Castro's Cuba. All this out of a population of 10-13 million. It sure surprised me when I looked up the numbers.
I'm not condoning the things either government (Pinochet's or Castro's) did, but they are both nowhere close to being "drenched in blood" the way Stalin's or Pol Pot's or Mao's governments were.
I'm also surprised that the population isn't more, Chile felt like a "big" country to me compared to tiny Sweden, but 11 is not much bigger than 8. Though by now it's 18 and 9 millions, so I child deaths seem to be down in Chile since the 80's.
No I'm not denying that providing hospitals and doctors to Africa is a good thing, but America, and even ordinary Americans like Bill Gates have done so much more for Africa than Castro ever did, and it seems rather unfair that Western efforts are neglected and we are seen as colonizers to seek independence from whereas brutal and oppressive dictators such as Castro are presented as honored crusaders for throwing a smidgen of help to Africa.
Many don't know this, but George W. Bush had quite an impact:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President's_Emergency_Plan_for...
> He had his fights and ills, but not with us.
Yeah, generally with his own citizens who he stomped on for decades. But hey, at least you got a couple free doctors out of it so screw those guys.
What do you have to say, as an African, to Fidel Castro's role in the Angolan civil war, and in establishing Angola's dictatorship?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_intervention_in_Angola
And despite his flaws (and/or crimes against humanity) I can't help but wonder how Cuba would have faired under different leadership. Looking at the next-island neighbors in Haiti, or any number of comparable African countries, it seems the Cubans got the better deal. Just one example: life expectancy is 15 years higher than Haiti, and actually even a bit higher than in the US.
Organizing the necessities for life on this island, with a superpower fixated on killing you (and ruining you economy) next door, and keeping it peaceful for 50 years must be some sort of high score.
I know there'll be many Americans dancing on his grave (once the Trump International Hotel Havanna has opened). They may not even be wrong in an absolute sense. But there have been dozens of leaders in South America, Africa and Asia in the last 50 years much worse than Castro who don't seem to trigger the reflexes of righteousness. Actual mass-murdering sadists like Manuel Noriega, throwing living people into the ocean, from airplanes paid for by the CIA.
Let's hope for a bright future for Cuba – I met many people there who felt paralyzed by the stagnation, the constant scarcity. The beginning of the end of the embargo may turn out to be one of the most significant legacies of President Obama.
Look at how awful the quality of life in Cuba is today. Look at its people's lack of basic freedoms. Look at its awful economy. The US tried to save Cuba from itself.
That's how you keep power and that's why you have such a high standard of living. You think it's because you work hard but it's not. At least not primarily.
Libya was a NATO intervention that was pushed and led by France, specifically Sarkozy's government.
It ended marginally better because NATO's intervention decisively tipped the scales against Gaddafi's regime.
The Syrian civil war has been in a stalemate for years, and only recently has Assad's regime been making inroads due to Russia's decisive and no-holds-barred military intervention.
And yes Syria is an intangible mess now, probably the same would have been in Lybia if it was left to own civil war for 5 more years.
Now, factor in the fact that Libya is now a failed state and the refugee crisis is largely caused by human traffickers using Libya as a staging area to send those countless lifeboats packed with countless unwitting victims, a great number of which end up dead in the Mediterranean.
Furthermore, non-intervention only meant no actual American troops in Syria, not staying out of the conflict: the US has funded, armed and trained much of the opposition from the start of the conflict, and US made and supplied anti-tank weapons are prominent in the rebels ability to counter the armoured forces of the Syrian army.
Any of the US involvement to Syria beyond verbal support occurred only years into the conflict, and even then it was minimal compared to meddling of Turkey, Arab states or Russia.
I've been to Cuba, and life there is somewhat boring, and the standard of living is obviously low. But it's not the kind of poverty you seen many other countries. No starving old people and children in the streets, also no gang violence ruling your block.
Streetlife in general seemed quite happy – old people playing chess, young girls playing soccer (in school uniforms, no less), groups of three or four neighbors fixing one of those old cars etc.
Now it sounds too much like glorification – I also listened to 6 hours of Castro's labor day sermon in 2003 and most people around me felt I was insane for attending it voluntarily – they only went because somebody, somewhere had to check their name of a list or they may get into trouble. That's a price I wouldn't be willing to pay.
I hope Cuba will find a way to preserve a bit of what made it bearable in its worst times.
Why didn't you compared Cuba before the coup, and after Fidel Castro established his dictatorship?
Comparing Cuba to one of the lowest developed nations on earth, particularly while ignoring the other half of the island (Dominican republic) is a tad disingenuous.
You can argue whether that's something that can be blamed on him, but if we were to give him the benefit of the doubt I wouldn't call that a fair comparison.
For example, there was a story posted on HN long ago about a Soviet dissident who had his life ruined because he was known to be a dissident. They didn't imprison him and torture him, they just got him fired, made sure he couldn't find any but the most menial work, discredited him, etc. Would we say that it was his fault for adopting a pro-Western position? That it was "his policies" that ruined his life, family? Or that an external force opposed to his views and more powerful than him punished him for his views?
How is the fact that they've done relatively well in spite of the embargo supposed to make the comparison not fair?
Seems to be a direct consequence of Fidel Castro's political initiatives. I'm sure we can agree that Castro's regime has at least some responsibilities in this outcome.
> You can argue whether that's something that can be blamed on him, but if we were to give him the benefit of the doubt I wouldn't call that a fair comparison.
That assumption is rather disingenuous. There's a clear before/after period in Cuba. I'm sure you agree that Fidel Castro is the direct responsible for this revolution. If he is responsible for this change, what exactly leads you to believe that he holds no responsibility in any negative consequence that arose naturally from his direct political actions and planning?
So, you believe that the Cuban missile crisis was yet another misunderstanding that Fidel Castro had absolutely no say in the subject, do you?
What an unfortunate saint, Fidel Castro has been. Those countless political asylum-seekers risking their lives in makeshift boats must be a whole bunch of ungrateful fools for not enjoying living in Castro's paradise on earth.
Does this sound better?
Back in power, Batista suspended the 1940 Constitution and revoked most political liberties, including the right to strike. He then aligned with the wealthiest landowners who owned the largest sugar plantations, and presided over a stagnating economy that widened the gap between rich and poor Cubans.[4] Batista's increasingly corrupt and repressive government then began to systematically profit from the exploitation of Cuba's commercial interests, by negotiating lucrative relationships with the American Mafia, who controlled the drug, gambling, and prostitution businesses in Havana, and with large US-based multinationals who were awarded lucrative contracts.[4][5] To quell the growing discontent amongst the populace—which was subsequently displayed through frequent student riots and demonstrations—Batista established tighter censorship of the media, while also utilizing his Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities to carry out wide-scale violence, torture and public executions; ultimately killing anywhere from hundreds to 20,000 people.[6][7][8] For several years until 1959, the Batista government received financial, military, and logistical support from the United States.[9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgencio_Batista
Cuba was twice as rich as Haiti (see graph at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Cuba#/media/File:GD... for example) even before the revolution and had a lot more social capital. Yes, there was a good bit of inequality. Yes, the Batista regime was not great in all sorts of ways. But I expect Cuba would have been better off than Haiti even without the revolution happening.
What African countries are you thinking of that you consider comparable to Cuba in 1958?
Fully agreed on your last paragraph, though.
The United States subsidizes many government within its sphere of influence, too. In turn it also trades with them and gains significant sway over the economic affairs of those countries for the benefit of US markets. Cuba had none of this for the last 25 or so years.
HN is a place to gratify one's intellectual curiosity. Part of the fabric of the community is that we engage in a civil, substantive way. There are various topics that don't always make that easy, but it's important that we try.
There is only 1 ideology responsible for killing more than 100 million people in the existence of human civilization. Try considering that for a second.
We will likely not understand what Fidel has done to the Cuban people for a few more decades but I will take the role of oracle and tell you. 100 years from now Cuba will still be poor and it will still be an inexpensive tourist destination for rich white people from Canada and Europe.
If you're curious about the philosophy here, have a look at https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
The decisive difference between HN and other sites is that here, it almost doesn't matter what you believe, so long as you express your beliefs in a thoughtful and constructive way. You can still challenge beliefs you disagree with. But if you're looking to express outrage or if you're showing up to do ideological battle, you should be aware that it won't be tolerated here.
Please understand, HN has been around for about a decade. The community is the sole distinction between here and other sites. And as soon as the community consists of people commenting in anger rather than in thoughtful critique, the more thoughtful people will move elsewhere. We have to make it a priority to defend ourselves from that outcome.
Try to have the spirit of being among trusted friends, searching for the truth in a topic. It's not easy, especially when someone says something controversial. But HN is all about good conversation. That doesn't mean you have to be nice, but it means you have to be thoughtful and substantive. It's almost always better to say nothing than to convey anger.
What is misleading about anything I've just stated? Because that is one of the requirements for something to be propaganda.
HN is a place for discussions. That means being open to people having ideas other than your own, and acknowledging that those ideas may have merit. You don't have to agree with them; I don't agree with everything said on HN. That said, you do have to be open to accepting that others have different viewpoints and that they're not crazy for doing so.
That's why there's policies in place for civil commenting, and the like. To foster a discussion between people with potentially opposing viewpoints without devolving into a personally-charged argument.
It's crucial to remember that Castro silenced all who disagreed with him. He condemned an entire nation to poverty! His most notable achievement with regards to Africa was sending soldiers to extend the life of wars.
It's stripped of the insults to those that disagree with you and complaints of down voting. In my experience users on HN will down vote tone more often than they will down vote disagreement.
I agree it doesn't have the punch of your original post. I don't have much experience writing emotionally charged comments, though I'm sure there are ways of doing that without resorting to insults.
It sounds like you may have some personal stories to share. These would definitely add to the power of your comment, if you chose to include them.
That's more because of the embargo than anything Cubans did. And even given that, they do way better than most latin american "free" nations.
>His most notable achievement with regards to Africa was sending soldiers to extend the life of wars.
Let's not go into which country, besides Germany and USSR, started more wars, meddled in more places, held more peopls down by installing friendly dictators in power, and caused more hurt in the 20th/21st century...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13042013
The embargo was with the US. Other countries (as long as the company doesn't do business in the US) were free to trade with Cuba.
Sure the embargo didn't help, but the poor state of the Cuba economy mostly lies at the feet of the Castro.
I just have to ask, does communism require trading with capitalist nations to be successful? Because there are many nations under embargo by the US that are significantly more prosperous.
But clearly, when Marx was talking about a communist revolution he clearly meant that you should allow yourself to be exploited by your nearest capitalist neighbor.
You keep on going back to this. No, they don't. But an island nation does. It's ridiculously hard to produce literally all the things your country needs when it's 100x smaller than the US, and it's even harder when you have no land borders. Trading with other nations becomes ridiculously important at that point.
Tons of people have lost their entire life because of US actions. And in places the US had no role to be at all, to boot.
It's beyond double standards...
- Cuban economy
- Cuban quality of life
- basic Cuban freedoms (like supporting parties other than the one in power)
Mexico $9,909 Guatamala $3,666 Honduras $2,495
I'd say Cuba is in the mix GDP-wise.
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD
With economics and politics, the story is always more complicated than it appears, and science can't save us, so we should be hesitant to form strong opinions. I'm just supporting open-minded thinking, not saying I agree with everything Castro/Cuba (I don't).
That does not mean anything if the wealth is not well distributed (which is the case when elites keep the wealth and everyone else is poor).
Cuba's Gini coefficient is fairly low, at around 0.38 in 2000 [1], although the data quality might be poor. Most of Latin America is substantially less equal. The US's was around 0.4-0.45 during that time frame [2].
[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-reform-inequality-idU...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...
Sometimes financial crises can force lifestyle changes for the better.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/04/how-cubans...
Basically, you're stating that 50+ years of Marxist order imposed by the Castro regime has managed to keep up with countries plagued by 50+ years of general chaos in the form of pathologically corrupt regimes, nepotism, inflation, rampant violent crime, civil war, guerilla movements and narcoterrorism.
Hmmm... I will contemplate the US embargo argument tonight, as I light up one of my precious Cuban cigars to honor the old commie bastard and to celebrate this great achievement of dialectical materialism. Hasta la victoria siempre!
People in communist countries trade in some of the classical liberties, to make a higher level of economic planning possible.
In one form or another, this is the “trade-off” believed in by most genuine communists. The classical liberties are just a lie anyway, and this trade-off will result in a kind of progress and general wellbeing that would far surpass anything seen in backwards, private capital-oriented economies driven by the profit motive.
Castro was not like Pol Pot or the Kim dynasty. The Cuban regime had a shot at enforcing progress for 50+ years. Cuba appears reasonably stable; although the real test of this will come in the post-regime era. It has managed to keep some of its charm, despite truly being a police state.
But some people here on HN are suggesting Cuba is not doing so badly (and by extension, the trade-off proposed by communism), because Cuba’s self-stated numbers have kept up with countries that are plagued by bouts of deep, crippling political and social malaise.
I think that’s a terrible argument for obvious reasons. Especially in the case of GDP and in light of what most communists believe their system can achieve. The comparison just proves there are many ways you can screw a population.
So once again: why does pointing this out have to get downvoted?
And for the record, about the embargo: I am staring at Cuban cigars right now. I will light one up tonight to honor Castro, because as far as commie bastards go, he wasn’t the worst.
"Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."
To be fair in the US there are also attacks for supporting political parties. Yes it's a different degree of extremism entirely.
For example the terrorist/riot/civil activist group (whatever you want to call them) By Any Means Necessary violently attacked white nationalist parties (they claim they're not white nationalists, but media says they are, I don't know anything about them beyond that) at rallies without legal consequence. No I'm not defending white nationalists, I'm defending right to assembly. What I'm saying is that if that's your argument for why Cuba is terrible then it's not consistent unless you are making the same argument about America as well. If you just happen to agree that they're a "bad party," so you it's OK here, not there, that's exactly what authoritarian government is.
>To be fair in the US there are also attacks for supporting political parties.
There is a HUGE difference between your government killing you for your political beliefs and a member of the opposing political party "attacking" you for your political beliefs. People break the law all the time. It's a whole other level of unfair when the government murders you.
I would never trade the freedoms I have in the US for the "freedoms" seen in Cuba.
Even if it's only a minority that is being oppressed, and even if both you and I don't agree with their awful politics, it doesn't make it any less wrong to attack them.
Both are way better than most Latin American countries that US has meddled with and have friendly terms with. And they would be even better if it wasn't for the embargo and the whole cold war play against Cuba.
>- basic Cuban freedoms (like supporting parties other than the one in power)
Like being able to support two parties that alternate in power, like you are free to do in the US?
My point is that Castro kills people who support opposition parties. You aren't free to support parties other than the one in power if you are in Cuba.
I'm not arguing Castro was a saint, far from it. But you cannot lay blame of the suffering of Cuba at the feet of Castro only.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index
If you really are as sick as you emote about these kind of atrocities, then move away from the US, because the US hurts a lot of people to maintain its high standard of living. New Zealand is a pretty ethical place that doesn't kill either it's own citizens or those abroad. Its economy doesn't rely on abusing migrant workers. It has a decent tech scene. Go there.
Or you could just do the usual counter-counter-culture blather while not actually changing your life to suit your stated morals.
You asked if I would, not if I will.
If I had the chance to do so I would, but I'm currently committed to do other things first.
Or do you believe that if someone wanted to go to Cuba that must be their sole and only motivation from that point on? You should't simplify people like that. It's rude.
I don't think he cared about them in any way. He had a totalitarian view of how they should be, and he forced that upon them.
So foreign countries’ propaganda can overthrow your democracy and put up a complete crazy, due to fake news?
The US has seen how much Russia Today and fake news have influenced this presidential election. Would you want that to become an issue in your country?
This is a serious problem one has to ask themselves.
But hopefully the foolishness of the embargo can really end now.
Reading the historical/design notes in the player's guide and watching events unfold while playing as M26 brought history to life in a very visceral way. I spent the week after playing obsessively reading about modern Cuban history.
http://www.gmtgames.com/p-497-cuba-libre-reprint-edition.asp...
Cuba Libre is part of a game series on COunter-INsurgencies (COIN). "Liberty or Death: The American Insurrection" covers the American Revolution using the same system.
http://www.gmtgames.com/p-582-liberty-or-death-the-american-...
Afterwards, I inhaled biographies on him. My favorite was the Felix Markham book: https://www.amazon.com/Napoleon-Signet-Classics-Felix-Markha...
I have Command & Colors: Napoleonics and a biography of Napoleon sitting next to my desk as I type this.
http://www.gmtgames.com/p-576-commands-colors-napoleonics-3r...
I think I've only seen him in the green military uniform. But at the congress he wore an Adidas jacket!
It would be interesting to know the story behind that.
Edit: Naturally, a half hour after posting this, I realized there was probably a way to find out...
https://www.google.com/search?q=fidel+castro+adidas
Castro was a genuine hero and a great man; indeed among the top 10 greatest individuals of the 20th century. He believed in freedom and dignity. He saw the US government as the enemy of progress everywhere in the world; he wanted people to be free and he devoted his life to that ideal.
How many people can you say that of?
> He was also an evil dictator...
Lol @ evil dictator. Fidel Castro never killed as many people as Nixon, Reagan, Bush or Blair. He did not go half way around the world as Thatcher did to claim an Island 4,000 km away from home (Falklands).
>...who silenced any and all opposition
What opposition? Imperialists and mafia members who wished to turn Cuba into an enclave for gambling? CIA operatives who tried to return Cuba to its occupied past?
> just look at Cuba today
Just look at Iraq, Libya,Syria today. And while you are at it; look also at Iran, China, Russia (which evaded western occupation). Indeed, look at Mexico which is friendly terms and has not been invaded yet by the US and tell me how much they have gained from that relationship.
I detest the hypocrisy I see in many (not all) western commentators. The spin and one sided arguments, the glossing over historical truths. Cuba is behind in development because of the American embargo.Simple. Not because the regime had no plan for economic development. In healthcare, this small nation with a health care budget 0.001% of the US beats the USA hands down in universal coverage and access to health. Who knows what would have happened if previous administrations had left them alone.
Finally, Castro sent troops to Africa to fight against colonial occupiers. He sent armies to harass the apartheid regime at the Angolan/ Namibian border. This counts as a plus in my book.
Rest on Fidel. You have fought the fight and lived like a man. I will pray for you. May heaven receive your soul.
There's a lot of positive things to be said about Castro. But your unqualified hymn isn't going to help your cause. Just the number of people making the rather dangerous journey to the US proves how misguided your comparisons are.
Well, yeah. After all, they have been fed anti-fidel/anti-communist propaganda for half a century.
American embargo was put in place because the US can't afford communist fools on its border. Simple. You swing at the big guy and you lose. That is war. Mistakes are unforgivable.
> I detest the hypocrisy I see in many (not all) western commentators.
A counterexample: this photo was taken in NYC after the most recent US presidential election:
http://i.imgur.com/DcVbqAm.jpg
It's a picture of someone standing in front of Trump Tower holding a sign that says "You're not my president. Fuck you."
Can you imagine someone getting away with that in Castro's Cuba?
I'm genuinely asking. Not from the US and just today found out (by curiosity) where Cuba is.
>"In the USA, you can stand in front of the White House in Washington, DC, and yell, "Down with Reagan!", and you will not be punished. Equally, you can also stand in Red Square in Moscow and yell, "Down with Reagan!", and you will not be punished.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba#Contempor...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Cuba
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2016/03/six-fact...
I do not know about a specific instance of someone holding up a sign like the one in the photo I linked to, but I also sincerely doubt anyone in their right mind would attempt such a thing.
The closest recent example I can find is someone painting the names of the Castro brothers on a pair of pigs and being thrown in prison for it (in 2015):
http://www.newsweek.com/cuban-protest-artist-el-sexto-you-ha...
Far worse things happened during the early days of the revolution. I was going to link them but I changed my mind because I don't want to weaken my point. Freedom of speech is far stronger in a place like the US than in a place like Castro's Cuba.
Maybe Americans value their rights more than anything else, but to me as a Chinese citizen, this is both laughable and disrespectful.
I certainly do, but sadly not every American agrees. There are many "law and order" types who would have that person arrested and beaten if they could. Fortunately our rights are still intact, even after all this time. People can do such things without fear. Far from being "laughable and disrespectful", I consider it a sign of a healthy, functioning society. "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism", as the saying goes.
Leave other people alone to determine their own fate and destiny that's what the world asks
When Castro asked that question in 1991, around 60% of people in East Asia were living in extreme poverty. Today it is 3.5% [1]. The change is mostly due to China switching from a socialist to capitalist economy.
[1] http://www.vox.com/world/2016/10/2/13123980/extreme-poverty-...
You mean, the colonialists sent by the UK government?
They shouldn't have been there in the first place.
Nice to see you put the territorial ambitions of a literal fascist like Galtieri on a higher pedestal than the right of the people that have lived there to self governance though...
Like comparing Nixon and Castro. Nixon's most famous scandal was when he tried to wiretap his political opponents. It ended with his resignation. Castro outright killed his political opponents, and had the rest thrown in prison. He continued to rule for decades. There is absolutely no comparison.
Yes, I understand that U.S. foreign policy played a huge role in shaping the revolution. But let Castro's legacy stand on what he actually did, not on trying to throw shade on everyone else.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Menu
Apart from carpet bombing Laos And Cambodia as hackeboos has pointed out, he engaged the Vietcong leadership in secret discussions to prolong the war so that Democrats would lose the '74. Elections. Think on that. Killing your fellow soldier citizens for political power.
Letting historical arguments about borders override the basic question if the culture of the people living there right now is stupid, 18th-century thinking.
I'm sympathetic to Argentina's arguments about resource rights to the water surrounding the island, but the nationality of the island itself is not in question, and Thatcher was right to protect British people.
Israel Gaza and Iraq are not thousands of miles from the original home countries.
But I am genuinely curious that you answer these:
1.How can the nationality of the Island not be in question and at the same time Argentina have valid claims to the resources? It must be one or the other else there is a contradiction there.
2.There were Britons living in enclaves in South Africa during the Thatcher era.Some of these dated back 400 years. Would the UK have been justified in sending troops to defend their land claims?
Look at countries who declared a war against free markets - Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea. They are absolutely pathetic.
Haiti has huge anti-free market red tape and rampant corruption.
It means that Haiti did declare a war against free markets.
Free market economy is possible only in country with strong property rights, rule of law with no corruption, and no red tape. All countries which adopted these principles are rich and have very high standard of living.
I think 99.999% of folks who like communism/socialism don't understand what free market capitalism IS.
[1] http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking
[2] http://www.transparency.org/cpi2015#results-table
Those three words are where things get complicated. In a general sense red tape is the difference between a laissez faire economy and a free market economy, if you mean government regulation when you say red tape. Though by red tape you might also mean anti-competitve regulations implemented at the behest of a firm or sector of the economy. In that case it is still very important to acknowledge that free markets are not a natural state, and require regulation of some form to remain functional or even exist.
Free markets do require very strong laws but these laws should be:
1) In favour of strong property rights;
2) Equally friendly to new enterprises/small business/big business;
3) Lean, not over-complicated;
Basically role of the government is to keep highly competitive economic enthronement without favouritism.
It's hard to build a free market when you have an embargo and a huge pressure from the outside world
Your problem is thinking that covered operations make the world better. It obviously didn't work in Iran, Vietnam, Cambodia, Congo, Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia and many others countries. In fact it made the situation worse in most cases.
US sucks at finding and supporting right side.
If US just assassinated Castro but did nothing else communist regime won't fall, it can even gain stronger support from masses. The coup should be well prepared and US should feel responsibility about what will happen after.
Coup is definitely very difficult and complicated surgery.
No, they do a perfect job at finding the right side. They always install, whatever is best for them, ie. American Corporations.
The US does not care about human rights, it's all just used to legitimize their position. Capitalism has no conscious, it ONLY does what is most profitable, whatever it might be. What should they gain by having a democracy somewhere else? "Free Markets", is another topic. The US loves those, especially if their companies can expand their "market" or, even better, use the locals to produce under inhuman circumstances.
Considering that, I believe the US is a "great" imperialist power, and really good at choosing their puppets. What a pity those "stupid cubans", didn't give the US a second chance to exploit them under a different puppet. It would have been a lot better.