Fidel Castro, RIP

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ecdh

climber
the east
Nov 26, 2016 - 02:44pm PT
One needs to discern what 'rates' of literacy and infant mortality are measured by. Not always consistent. Easily manipulated. relative to other factors. usually a red herring.
Escopeta

Trad climber
Idaho
Nov 26, 2016 - 03:29pm PT
I think this thread is starting to give me understanding of the so-called logic behind the progressive idiots in our country. And I like it even less now.

yanqui

climber
Balcarce, Argentina
Nov 26, 2016 - 03:37pm PT
I think it's important to realize that, to a large extent, Castro was a creation of American policy in Cuba. He never would have come to be, maintained power for more than two generations and ended up as the single most influential political symbol in all of Latin America since independence from Spain, had the US not planted the seeds and then continued to fertilize them for years. He was just about everything everyone says here: a brutal dictator, a man obsessed with eternal power at all costs, a leader who oversaw real advances in medicine, education, and art for the common man in Cuba, a friend of the Soviets who sought to violently export revolution, a leader who sent doctors and teachers to help out his tribe of Latin Americans. Whether the symbol is right or wrong, to a huge part of Latin America, Castro is the emblem of how the little guy can make good on his own, hold out against the awesome might of the US and give the finger to Uncle Sam. Like it or not, that fact is real. Sure, the Cubans in Miami danced on his grave. For the most part they are descendents of people who benefited from Batista's policies and US imperialism or groups who were persecuted by Castro. Castro still had plenty of fans, especially amongst the older generation, in Cuba. Not to mention his massive influence in the rest of Latin America. I think it's just too bad that the US stood alone for so long, forbidding it's citizens to visit Cuba.

Ding dong the witch is dead. Let's hope the scars heal.
couchmaster

climber
Nov 26, 2016 - 03:52pm PT
Here are some more eulogies to follow up on Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada's recent kind words about Castro:



“While a controversial figure, even detractors recognize Pol Pot encouraged renewed contact between city and countryside.” #trudeaueulogies— Andrew Coyne (@acoyne) November 26, 2016



“While a controversial figure, General Tojo brought America into World War II and ultimately helped shorten the war.” #trudeaueulogies
— Andrew Coyne (@acoyne) November 26, 2016


Today we mourn the loss of Norman Bates, a family man who was truly defined by his devotion to his mother. #trudeaueulogies
— Mike Hogan (@tsnmikehogan) November 26, 2016



“Today we say goodbye to Mr. Mussolini, the former Italian prime minister best known for his competent train-management.”
— J.J. McCullough (@JJ_McCullough) November 26, 2016



While Emperor Nero was controversial, his dedication to song and writing poetry signaled a Roman artistic renaissance." https://t.co/67oGEgZgDi
— Jason Hickman (@jasonhickman) November 26, 2016


Today we mourn painter and animal rights activist, Adolf Hitler. His death also highlights the need for suicide awareness"#TrudeauEulogies
— Curtis (@FowlCanuck) November 26, 2016


'Though not universally liked by his compatriots, Mr. Ceausescu was a leader in urban design and affordable housing' #trudeaueulogies
— Cam Vidler (@camvidler) November 26, 2016

SteveW

Trad climber
The state of confusion
Topic Author's Reply - Nov 26, 2016 - 04:21pm PT

How many have the dictators killed in the Philippines?
East Timor?
Escopeta

Trad climber
Idaho
Nov 26, 2016 - 04:44pm PT
Kingtut
esco is too busy nuzzling up to the warm bossom of a desired trumpian utopia, he's drunk on the thought that the mothers milk of tax cuts for the 1% will somehow make his lot better.


Naw, just hoping he misses his mark and includes tax cuts for the 2 and 3 percenters also.....
survival

Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
Nov 26, 2016 - 04:54pm PT
So glad the conversation arrived in this thread.
The bland and meaningless "goodbye as#@&%e" and yuk yuk jokes ignore layers upon layers of complexity, and what this person's life was about.
I agree with those that say he can't hold a candle to the big bad boys. Too much good, not enough evil for him to play.
Trump's minions should love him. He told the USA to f*#k off and ruled with an iron fist, just like Donald wants to do.
thebravecowboy

climber
The Good Places
Nov 26, 2016 - 05:02pm PT
You have to give credit to a man that hold the helm amidst the overwhelming tide of Coca-Cola and RockFord Fosgate Punch brand subwoofers. Great guy, strong arm.
10b4me

Mountain climber
Retired
Nov 26, 2016 - 05:43pm PT
Trump wants to end relations with Cuba(before they get started). . . . . . .until he can get his hotel built.
nah000

climber
no/w/here
Nov 26, 2016 - 06:39pm PT
yeah doesn't get anymore metaphorically grey than ole fidel...

anybody who gets in a boat with 81 other men... and then sets sail from another country in order to "invade" their home country... and then starts a guerrilla war [with the 19 men who make it through the first onslaught] in order to overthrow a dictator propped up by [one of, if not] the most powerful empires the world has ever seen... and then proceeds to not only overthrow the existing dictator but then manages to successfully avoid hundreds of assassination attempts by said empire to the north during the decades that follow... has to be admired for the incredibly visionary and committed human that he was.

otoh...

anybody who then installs himself as lifetime dictator... and then proceeds to murder and/or imprison at least tens of thousands of his political opponents... and then ultimately causes around 10% of his countrymen to get in whatever boat, no matter how unseaworthy, and set sail towards said empire to the north... has to be despised for the catastrophic failure that he also was.
10b4me

Mountain climber
Retired
Nov 26, 2016 - 09:55pm PT
https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=RDEMB7bVKF5LrUg1Wj28VdVVmQ¶ms=OAFIAVgR&v=J6ZjnxnDSOM&mode=NORMAL
i-b-goB

Social climber
Wise Acres
Nov 26, 2016 - 10:01pm PT
Gnome Ofthe Diabase

climber
Out Of Bed
Nov 26, 2016 - 10:20pm PT
The idea that any thing that was told to us was real back then is now hard to belive.
There were those with vast wealth that never stopped enjoying Cuba.

Question everything that was not directly evident in the actions that took place around the world.
Fidel Castro Predicts Nuclear War

by Humberto Fontova


The dictator who came the closest in history to igniting a nuclear war made several public appearances this week to predict imminent nuclear war. The cataclysm he craved in Oct. 1962 will erupt, he warned on Cuban TV this week, when the Israelis and their Yankee vassals, provoke Iran in the straits of Hormuz.

That’s not a typo above. Castro, who co-sponsored the famous 1975 UN resolution equating Zionism with Racism, says the Israeli tail wags the Yankee dog. Those Yankees are certainly powerful, Castro explained, but also a bit naïve and docile. The main instigators, the ones carefully setting the trap to ignite nuclear war are those crafty Israelis. "The control that Israel has over the United States is enormous," he revealed last week.

Fidel Castro, that sentimental old fool, has excellent reason to bask in the fond memory of imminent nuclear war. “Of course I knew the missiles were nuclear- armed,” responded Fidel Castro to Robert McNamara during a meeting in 1992. “That’s precisely WHY I urged Khrushchev to launch them. And of course Cuba would have been utterly destroyed in the exchange.”

"If the missiles had remained, we would have fired them against the very heart of the U.S., including New York. The victory of socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims.” (Che Guevara, November 1962.)

“My dream is to drop three Atomic Bombs on New York City (Raul –not Fidel—Castro, Nov. 1960.)

But “Hay Caramba!” the Stalinist trio fumed and raged for years afterwards. “Nikita Khruzchev, that sniveling maricon, snatched that magic button-pushing moment from our eager fingers!”

“We should deliver a nuclear first strike,” read the telegram from Castro to Khrushchev on Oct. 28 1962.

“What!” Khrushchev gasped, as recalled by his son Sergei. “Is he (Fidel Castro) proposing that we start a nuclear war? That we launch missiles from Cuba?”

“Apparently.”

“Yesterday the Cubans shot down a plane (U-2 with) without (Soviet) permission.

Today they’re preparing a nuclear attack.”

“But that is insane!...Remove them (our missiles) as soon as possible! Before it’s too late. Before something terrible happens!” instructed the Soviet premier.

So much for the gallant Knights of Camelot standing up to the Russians and forcing their retreat during the Cuban missile crisis!” In fact, it was the Castro brothers and Che Guevara’s genocidal lusts that prompted the Butcher of Budapest to get those missiles out of their reach.

“We ended up getting exactly what we'd wanted all along," later snickered Nikita Khrushchev in his memoirs, "security for Fidel Castro’s regime and American missiles removed from Turkey. Until today the U.S. has complied with her promise not to interfere with Castro and not to allow anyone else to interfere with Castro. After Kennedy's death, his successor Lyndon Johnson assured us that he would keep the promise not to invade Cuba."

"Kennedy pulled defeat out of the jaws of victory,” Nixon wrote about the Bay of Pigs and Missile Crisis.

“Then (he) gave the Soviets squatters rights in our backyard."

"We locked Castro's communism into Latin America and threw away the key to its removal," observed Barry Goldwater in 1964. "I would help Cuban exiles OPENLY. I’d give them the guns and ammunition to blast Castro out of his island stronghold now defended with Soviet arms."

In his memoirs the Butcher of Budapest further twisted the knife and snickered yet again: "it would have been ridiculous for us to go to war over Cuba--for a country 12,000 miles away. For us, war was unthinkable.

So the threat that so rattled the Knights of Camelot and inspired such cinematic and literary epics of drama and derring-do by their court scribes and cinematographers, were pure hooey. The threat came, not from the Soviets, but from the Stalinist regime hailed to the high heavens by the Congressional Black Caucus, befriended by Democratic Presidential candidates (“Fidel Castro is very shy and sensitive, a man I regard as a friend," George Mc Govern) and preparing for a windfall of U.S. dollars, courtesy of the U.S. Congress. (More on that shortly)

Considering the U.S. Nuclear superiority over the Soviets at the time of the (so-called) Missile Crisis (five thousand nuclear warheads for us, three hundred for them) it's hard to imagine a president Nixon—much less Reagan—quaking in front of Khrushchev's transparent ruse a la JFK.

The Crisis “resolution” bestowed upon Castro a new status. Let's call it MAP, or “mutually-assured-protection,” assured by the two most powerful countries on earth, including the one whose president had recently declared freedom “indivisible,” and more: “We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty,"

JFK's Missile crisis “solution” also pledged that he immediately pull the rug out from under Cuba's in-house freedom fighters. Raul Castro himself admitted that at the time of the Missile Crisis his troops and their Soviet advisors were up against 179 different "bands of bandits" as he labeled the thousands of Cuban anti-Communist rebels then battling savagely and virtually alone in Cuba's countryside, with small arms shipments from their compatriots in south Florida as their only lifeline.

Kennedy's deal with Khrushchev cut this lifeline. The Cuban freedom-fighters working from South Florida were suddenly rounded up for "violating U.S. Neutrality laws." The Coast Guard in Florida got 12 new boats and seven new planes to make sure Castro and his Soviet patrons remained utterly unmolested as they consolidated Stalinism 90 miles from U.S. shores. Think about it: here's the U.S. Coast Guard and Border patrol working 'round the clock arresting Hispanics in the U.S. who are desperate to return to their native country.

This ferocious guerrilla war, waged 90 miles from America's shores, might have taken place on the planet Pluto for all you'll read about it in the MSM and all you'll learn about it from those illustrious Ivy-League Academics. To get an idea of the odds faced by those betrayed rural rebels, the desperation of their battle and the damage they wrought, you might revisit Tony Montana during the last 15 minutes of "Scarface."

Most of these thousands of fighters died as Tony Montana died. Surrender wasn't an option. When their bullets ran out, their lives ran out.


(Every item above is fully documented in the books, Fidel Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant and in Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him)
http://www.autentico.org/oa19003.php
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Nov 26, 2016 - 10:22pm PT
He really did wonders with the Cuban economy. Their chief exports were
lip cancer and assassins. Strong work!
Sierra Ledge Rat

Mountain climber
Old and Broken Down in Appalachia
Nov 26, 2016 - 10:47pm PT
You have to have a Cuban cigar once in your life. A night of good company, strong liquor, fine food and a Cohiba, will never be forgotten.
Hear, hear! I had my first Cuban cigar back in 1987, while dining with my best friend on giant 8-inch long shrimp at a beach-side restaurant in Kenya. I think the whole meal and Cuban cigars cost about $15. Back then, I spent some time as the skipper of an old, rusty 350-ton freighter, running in and out of the Kenyan port of Mombasa. My boat was kinda of like the freighter shown below. Those big Indian Ocean swells were something else....

Those were some good times, and good Cuban cigars.

Hail Castro!
R.I.P.

donini

Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
Nov 26, 2016 - 11:20pm PT
Come on Reilly....in terms of intelligence and character he was FAR better then what we will soon be saddled with.
bluering

Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
Nov 26, 2016 - 11:24pm PT
You have to give credit to somebody who can oppress and execute so many people for so long. Rest in peace, you commie f-ck! May God have mercy on your soul.
Sierra Ledge Rat

Mountain climber
Old and Broken Down in Appalachia
Nov 27, 2016 - 01:05am PT
You have to give credit to somebody who can oppress and execute so many people for so long.

bluering,
Are you talking about George HW Bush or George W Bush?
Or are you talking about Obama?
Or all three?

survival

Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
Nov 27, 2016 - 05:39am PT
Relax SLR, that's the smell of freedom, not rotting corpses.

The idea that he was the worst of the worst, and that our hands are all sparkly clean with the bright sheen of democracy is just utter bullsh#t.
AP

Trad climber
Calgary
Nov 27, 2016 - 06:38am PT
Fidel was certainly one of the most divisive leaders ever.
For the good things he did, such as education and health, there was the negative human rights side. What is the point of good education when there are very few jobs and opportunities? Where a person with a PHD in Physics has to drive a cab?
I have been to Cuba and the experience can be summed up as great people who like to have fun living in a Twilight Zone of an economy.
Imagine an island with fertile soils and good rain that can't feed itself. Where do they import beans from? The Navaho reservation near Farmington!
I think Fidel was proof that the people who lead a revolution should step down within a few years and let someone else take power.
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