Fidel Castro Is Dead

[LA Ute]

He deserves a thread because of his significance, sort of like Stalin would if he died now. Here's a sports-related and compelling perspective on the man:

http://www.miamiherald.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/armando-salguero/article117033883.html

[Solon]

He deserves a thread because of his significance, sort of like Stalin would if he died now. Here's a sports-related and compelling perspective on the man:

http://www.miamiherald.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/armando-salguero/article117033883.html

ESPN.com had a write-up on his use of sport to create a national identity.
(http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/18138276/former-cuban-leader-fidel-castro-dies-age-90)

Castro encouraged elite sport and elite competition, I suppose, but data suggests that a nation's Unified Democracy Score correlates to the amount of its ordinary population that is regularly engaged in sport. (See Paul Christesen's book for a summary: http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/classical-studies/ancient-history/sport-and-democracy-ancient-and-modern-worlds?format=HB&isbn=9781107012691). Clearly, Cuba's Unified Democracy Score would be pretty low, if it had made the list: (http://pan.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2010/08/26/pan.mpq020/F3/graphic-3.large.jpg)

On the other hand, sport has been used extensively in the 20th century (and the 21st, I guess) to build totalitarian societies and a sense of national superiority - not exactly "democratic" (e.g., Nazi Germany, contemporary China; Putin's Russia: see this challenge to Christesen's thesis for examples: http://ancienthistorybulletin.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/AHBReviews201332.UslanerOnChristesen.pdf).

I suspect that Castro had this second sense in mind in supporting sport at a national level.

By all accounts, Castro was an important person, but also a terrible person.
He seemed to have lacked firm resolve and commitment to the Socialist ethos, and his revolution devolved - like all the other communist revolutions - into strongman rule. Indeed there's a reason that Che bailed out of Cuba.

I don't believe in hell, and I am more sympathetic than most to socialist ideology, but Castro probably belongs in a special ring of the Inferno for the misery that he brought to his own people.

Addendum: I really enjoyed the NYT's obit.: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/26/world/americas/fidel-castro-dies.html?_r=0

[LA Ute]

Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau's statement:

“Fidel Castro was a larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century. A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr. Castro made significant improvements to the education and healthcare of his island nation.

“While a controversial figure, both Mr. Castro’s supporters and detractors recognized his tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people who had a deep and lasting affection for “el Comandante”.

“I know my father was very proud to call him a friend and I had the opportunity to meet Fidel when my father passed away. It was also a real honour to meet his three sons and his brother President Raúl Castro during my recent visit to Cuba.

“On behalf of all Canadians, Sophie and I offer our deepest condolences to the family, friends and many, many supporters of Mr. Castro. We join the people of Cuba today in mourning the loss of this remarkable leader.”

Frankly, that's embarrassing.

http://pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2016/11/26/statement-prime-minister-canada-death-former-cuban-president-fidel-castro

[Solon]

Frankly, that's embarrassing.

http://pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2016/11/26/statement-prime-minister-canada-death-former-cuban-president-fidel-castro

Totally agree. Castro imprisoned and tortured his own people, becoming the thug that he overthrew in Batista. He's not "legendary". He was, unfortunately, all too real.

[tooblue]

Totally agree. Castro imprisoned and tortured his own people, becoming the thug that he overthrew in Batista. He's not "legendary". He was, unfortunately, all too real.

It is an embarrassment. But he's handsome and he's got great hair, so he'll continue to get a pass from most Canadians. The twitter hashtag is pretty funny #TrudeauEulogies

https://twitter.com/hashtag/TrudeauEulogies?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

2029

[Rocker Ute]

Wow, what in the world?? Maybe Canada is planning on the collapse of the US. "I for one welcome our alien overlords..."


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[LA Ute]

Excellent obituary in the Miami Herald:

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/fidel-castro-en/article117186483.html


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[SeattleUte]

Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau's statement:

“Fidel Castro was a larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century. A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr. Castro made significant improvements to the education and healthcare of his island nation.

“While a controversial figure, both Mr. Castro’s supporters and detractors recognized his tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people who had a deep and lasting affection for “el Comandante”.

“I know my father was very proud to call him a friend and I had the opportunity to meet Fidel when my father passed away. It was also a real honour to meet his three sons and his brother President Raúl Castro during my recent visit to Cuba.

“On behalf of all Canadians, Sophie and I offer our deepest condolences to the family, friends and many, many supporters of Mr. Castro. We join the people of Cuba today in mourning the loss of this remarkable leader.”

Frankly, that's embarrassing.

http://pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2016/11/26/statement-prime-minister-canada-death-former-cuban-president-fidel-castro

Canada is the country that is most lacking in self-awareness.

[LA Ute]

Fidel Castro’s Horrific Record on Gay Rights

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/27/don-t-forget-fidel-castro-s-brutal-oppression-of-gay-people.html

[LA Ute]

Fidel lived well.

http://nypost.com/2015/05/10/inside-fidel-castros-luxurious-life-on-his-secret-island-getaway/


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[tooblue]

Canada is the country that is most lacking in self-awareness.

So says the man living in the country that just elected Donald Trump as president.

[Applejack]

So says the man living in the country that just elected Donald Trump as president.


You were a Hillary supporter? Miracles never cease.

[tooblue]

You were a Hillary supporter? Miracles never cease.

Nope. According to Rachel Maddow, I wasted my vote.

[LA Ute]

Canada's Trudeau to skip Castro funeral after backlash

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN13N1UO



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[Ma'ake]

I studied Economics and Latin American history at the U. Castro had a few positive points, and several very large bad points. For their healthcare and educational progress, there was a paranoid repression of opponents, justified by the Bay of Pigs and mutiple assassination attempts.

Most Americans today would be stunned that some clinical trials for cancer medications originate in Cuba.

Learning of Castro meant getting educated on other "unpleasant" US foreign policy adventures in Latin America.

- The Somoza family in Nicaragua, and their overthrowing by the Castro-supported Sandinistas, who actually honored their vow to abide by electoral decision, and stepped down. It's highly ironic - and instructive - that the other hot spots of Central America - Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras - are all arguably worse off than Nicaragua, today, particularly Honduras, where we armed the "Contras" to fight against the Sandinistas. Honduras today is a hellhole, the highest murder rate in the world.

- Pinochet in Chile. The teletype communiques from Kissinger to the US embassy in Santiago instructing the downfall of Allende are haunting. Kennecott Copper was one of the corporations pushing to have Allende ousted. Highly ironic for the US that Allende was toppled on Sept 11, with about 3000 Chileans rounded up and executed... roughly what we lost on 9-11.

- the Dirty War in Argentina. 30,000 "desaparidos" ("disappeared").

- Watching the US press pressure the US Army to alter the curricula at the "School of the Americas" at Fort Benning, Georgia, which included assassination, psychological warfare, etc.

Things got so bad in Latin America, American tourists learned to tell people they were Canadians, to avoid harassment.

To be sure, there have been left-wing tyrants and ruthless guerrilla movements. Chavez in Venuzuela, the FARC group in Colombia, etc. But the Cold War twisted our thinking into some really bad decisions.

Today, as Trump inadvertently opens the door to China cultivating strong economic ties in Latin America - which may be followed by military connections - the Moral of the Story of Breaking Bad applies: "Actions have consequences"

[Rocker Ute]

There were some "good things" about Hitler too, none of which overrode the incredible attrocities that he committed. The same for Castro. A number of years back I was at my brother's for the 4th of July. His neighbor came by, he lived in Nazi Germany and was even forced into fighting in the war on the German side. (A quick side note: he got his draft papers but there was no date stamped on them on when he was to show up, so he avoided the draft for almost the entire duration of the war. Finally it caught up to him, he got sent out to - I believe - Romania and the war ended shortly after. They were instructed to lay down their weapons and surrender to the Allied forces. He and the other German soldiers were held in a concentration camp for about 4 years after the war had ended).

Hitler created a program a lot like the LDS fast offering where people were required to donate one day's worth of food a month to a German welfare system. This guy also talked about how Hitler got them out of the depression caused by WWI and how he created jobs and affordable cars. We all cringed when he said, "You know Hitler wasn't all bad."

I have a friend who escaped from Cuba. His story is fascinating and sad. Family members disappeared. Neighbors would spy on neighbors and if there was any signs of opposition to Castro they'd suddenly disappear. It took him 4 years to make the vessel that he escaped on. They collected basically milk jugs which they had to do slowly to avoid suspicion. The fastened them to a motorcycle and basically drove it out to sea. They had to fight others off who tried to jump aboard with them, his brother drowned. Contrary to what I thought at least, most Cubans didn't try to float from Cuba to Florida, but they would float around to Guantanamo Bay and seek asylum with the soldiers (or at least that is what they were doing at the time when he escaped).

Castro deserves to be vilified. Just like Hitler, there is nothing good that should be said of him. Obama's mealy-mouthed response to his death is shameful. Trudeau's is outright embarrassing. My favorite #TrudeauEulogy was "Hanibal Lecter was many things, but nobody could question his commitment to be around people of good taste."

[Applejack]

Nope. According to Rachel Maddow, I wasted my vote.
You voted? Trump was right; millions of illegals cast ballots.

[LA Ute]

John Podhoretz writes in Commentary:

"Cuba was a nation of 7 million people when Fidel Castro took it over on New Year’s Eve 1960, and with a tiny economy—although its economy was one of the strongest in Latin America. So why did this tin-pot totalitarian become one of the most important, most destructive, and most evil leaders in the world for more than half a century?

"Cuba mattered for two reasons.

"First, it emerged in the first year of Castro’s reign that Cuba was a client state of the Soviet Union and, since it sat 90 miles from Miami, an island of casinos and sugar suddenly posed both a tactical and strategic military risk to the continental United States. This wasn’t a matter of paranoid fantasy. It had only been 18 years since the near-destruction of the Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbor, which was American territory but not (obviously) attached to the continent—a wound as fresh, if not fresher given the sheer size of what was to follow, than 9/11 is to us today. More important, the various protocols and theories governing the Atomic/Nuclear Age designed to prevent the outbreak of a hyper-destructive war had yet to harden into place. (To give you one example, the most important early effort to imagine and plan against such a thing, Herman Kahn’s On Thermonuclear War, was published after Castro’s takeover in 1960.)

"The idea of an active enemy whose patron possessed nukes was terrifying, so much so that the inconsequential island became one of the two central foreign-policy concerns of the Kennedy administration and the epicenter of the most confrontational moment between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the 45-year history of the Cold War. After Kennedy’s assassination, which was directly related to his Cuba policy, Cuba would never again play so key a role in American life or foreign policy—but Castro himself would serve both as an example for and a tool of the export of communism to the Third World, and a disruptive force throughout the Americas specifically.

"Second, Castro mattered because he was an enemy of the United States—and as such quickly became the darling of intellectual and ideological forces in the West who actively wished harm on the United States. In their hunger to celebrate any counterexample to the American experiment, these haters of liberal freedoms turned a blind eye then (and, in the case of British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, continue to turn a blind eye now) to the Gulag nation Castro was systematically constructing. As long as he was a foe of the United States, he was a hero to them.

"Their despicable apologetics for totalitarianism will be studied in the future the way bacteria and viruses are studied, to break down their workings and come up with treatments and vaccines to prevent them from ever infecting the world’s body politic again.

"As for Castro himself, today is a day to wish devoutly that there is a Hell."

[tooblue]

You voted? Trump was right; millions of illegals cast ballots.

Nope:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZD4ezDbbu4

[Ma'ake]

John Podhoretz writes in Commentary:

"Second, Castro mattered because he was an enemy of the United States—and as such quickly became the darling of intellectual and ideological forces in the West who actively wished harm on the United States. In their hunger to celebrate any counterexample to the American experiment, these haters of liberal freedoms turned a blind eye then (and, in the case of British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, continue to turn a blind eye now) to the Gulag nation Castro was systematically constructing. As long as he was a foe of the United States, he was a hero to them.

"Their despicable apologetics for totalitarianism will be studied in the future the way bacteria and viruses are studied, to break down their workings and come up with treatments and vaccines to prevent them from ever infecting the world’s body politic again.


This reminds me of the apologetics from the 1980s about Authoritarianism being preferable to Totalitarianism, because via private property eventually democracy may arise.

I think the reality is democracy sort of ebbs and flows, depending on social and economic stability.

When I was at the U we had the "shanty town" built up to protest investing in South Africa. I had a Poli Sci class with J.D. Williams, who had us break into groups and learn about an issue of the day. My group had a young lady from South Africa, who was very quiet. Her name was Nelisile. We went on a "field trip" to interview a local expert on South Africa, an old guy who had been a mission president there. He showed us his souvenirs and then went on to tell us the blacks of South Africa couldn't be trusted with the right to vote, because they were a primitive, tribal people. That was a real baddy.

Back then I could understand how the rise of people like Castro was seen as a desirable thing, for a lot of people, like Nelisile, who admired that avowed communist Nelson Mandela.

[LA Ute]

This reminds me of the apologetics from the 1980s about Authoritarianism being preferable to Totalitarianism, because via private property eventually democracy may arise.

I think the reality is democracy sort of ebbs and flows, depending on social and economic stability.

When I was at the U we had the "shanty town" built up to protest investing in South Africa. I had a Poli Sci class with J.D. Williams, who had us break into groups and learn about an issue of the day. My group had a young lady from South Africa, who was very quiet. Her name was Nelisile. We went on a "field trip" to interview a local expert on South Africa, an old guy who had been a mission president there. He showed us his souvenirs and then went on to tell us the blacks of South Africa couldn't be trusted with the right to vote, because they were a primitive, tribal people. That was a real baddy.

Back then I could understand how the rise of people like Castro was seen as a desirable thing, for a lot of people, like Nelisile, who admired that avowed communist Nelson Mandela.

Podhoretz is a neoconservative at heart.