Rip Fidel

http://www.firstpost.com/world/rip-...-with-india-since-nehruvian-days-3125636.html

The world mourns for a great man

 

Not sure you are being ironic, sarcastic or not.
This was a man whose people's kids ate grass when not enough food to go around!
Mourns?

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38117068
Some important facts here about education and health care despite being under a brutal economic blockade for....57 years.
Whatever the views of many individuals are, it is amazing that despite the economic blockade Cuba even now has better life expectancy and lower birth and infant mortality rates than the USA even.

 

I think you mean parts of Syria right at this very moment where that really is the case. Never, ever in Cuba though. After the 1959 revolution, Cuba adopted a socialist food production and distribution system that ensured a survival level of heavily subsidised food for everyone. With extra rations for children and the elderly, it helps to account for the country’s impressive levels of longevity and low infant mortality.
Just a shame that post FDR no US administration achieved levels of infant mortality, health care or life expectancy to match Cuba.

 

Talk to some Cubans and/or former Cubans and listen.

 

Actually, I have spoken to many in London who have and still do support what Cuba had achieved. I have also spoken personally to Carlos Acosta probably the most accomplished Cuban ballet dancer from the - still - entirely free Cuban National Ballet School where boys and girls receive entirely free education for eight continuous years. It turns out more professionals every year than most western elite companies. Carlos Acosta loves Cuba, has two foundations there for education and dance. All his family except his wife and children still live in Cuba.
My first teacher of Spanish at University (he is now a senior Professor at University of London) is a Cuban-American, was born in Miami to parents who did leave Cuba shortly after the revolution. In countless conversations with him over several years I learnt a lot about the differences between the standard mainstream media message we all get, even today, and the truth of Cuba and what it was before Castro - a nauseating cess-pit of a playground for rich Latin Americans and US business people.
I have also talked to Doctors who work in the UK National Health Service who, in their birth countries in Latin America and Africa, were taught - free - by Cuban teachers and Doctors who say quite plainly - we wouldn't have this career if it wasn't for Cuban aid.

 

Do you know any of the poor people of/from there?

 

You mean like Carlos Acosta the eleventh and last child in an impoverished Havana family. Pedro Acosta, his father was a truck driver, and Dulce Maria Quesada, his mother, often suffered from health problems. Acosta grew up with no toys, sometimes went shoeless, and did not even have a birthday cake until he turned 23. The streets of his neighbourhood provided plenty of entertrerainment, however, and he spent his time playing football, break-dancing, and raiding nearby mango groves with his friends.
Sounds poor to me.
Ask the Cubans working all over Latin America and Africa who came from impoverished Cuban families fighting to survive against the economic blockade of the richest nation on earth.
In so many ways, for such a tiny country of limited resources, Cuba is a shining model to the whole world, and especially to those in it that profess a belief in Christian values.

 

Well, I talk to some here who don't have such fond memories of the place though they do love their family members who are still there. And some are the most honest and hard working people around. And they do get noticed and rewarded for their dedication and effort put into their work and family life. And are raising some very good children that are learning a different way than their parents knew growing up. But rather than returning to the island would rather see the rest of the family here.

 

I don't know any Cubans myself, but judging from the Cuban/American's reaction in Miami, he was not a well loved little socialist dictator.

"
MIAMI — Within half an hour of the Cuban government’s official announcement that former President Fidel Castro had died, Miami’s Little Havana teemed with life — and cheers.

Thousands of people banged pots with spoons, waved Cuban flags in the air and whooped in jubilation on Calle Ocho — 8th Street, and the heart of the neighborhood — early Saturday. Honking and strains of salsa music from car stereos echoed against stucco buildings, and
fireworks lit up the humid night sky."

“Cuba si! Castro no!” they chanted, while others screamed “Cuba libre!”

http://nypost.com/2016/11/26/cuban-americans-fill-miami-streets-to-cheer-fidel-castros-death/

I think the ones that mourn him are sad because he did not suffer enough.

 

Imandy
Well, I don't see that Fidel, or any leaders of Cuba at any time in the last 57 years have lived remotely like virtually all of the leaders of Latin American countries, Brazil, Iraq, Iran or many other countries (kept in place with arms and money from the USA) and who lived in palatial palaces of breathtaking opulence and who all amassed multi-million personal fortunes, in the very same time period as we are talking.
We already know how right-wing and often rabid the views of some people in Miami are but they are not representative of anything outside that place. The reaction there is unlike anywhere else on this planet where mostly people will see Castro as representing the David v Goliath success.
As for anyone thinking we should condemn murderers and maimers of millions of people we only have to look at 2003 onwards. Nothing to do with Cuba or Castro. He was neither a Bush nor a Stalin or Hitler.

 

If he was such a good leader, why did thousands leave in leaky boats, many of them drowning to flee to another country? Rhetorical question, as I don't think you and I will agree on castro's type of government.

 

Quite a few national leaders around the world have come and gone in my life from Kennedy onward. Can't say that any of them had a direct effect on my life or that their passing did either. Very few I consider good/great. When Princess Diana passed I believe a large part of the world mourned! Not this guy.

 

Well if you look at the verifiable facts at the time of the revolution their was mass poverty in Cuba, illiteracy, no primary health care and low life expectancy, and above those on a very moderate living income was a Cuban elite who worked for the then Cuban leadership, businesses and many foreign businessmen and officials.
That elite formed the bulk of the 'refugees' as the only way to keep all their wealth.
They'll be bitter until they die - as many already have - since they lost materially.
Young Cuban-Americans are now coming to terms with the rubbish they have mostly been told by many of their elders. Polls confirm that.

 

If you were there, could you be having this same discussion on this same forum? Can the people go to Facebook? Can they shop on Amazon. I've seen published articles of entertainers from Cuba that go to other places and on the return trip have their suitcases filled with powered milk to help others. People go to Europe or US or Spain or other and come back with jewelry or furs or some material goods to show where they've been. I did it myself going to Italy and France and Spain. I didn't try to bring back a basic necessity. There's a big difference in how their people and others are treated compared to many other places. I work and live around Cubans, Mexicans, Somilians, Vietnamese, Europeans, white black and Indian Americans. The Cubans and Vietnamese are the ones most likely glad to be gone from their homeland. I've had Iraqis tell me that they couldn't write home because it might put their families in danger. Some places and their leaders are very different from the other parts of the world.

 

You really mean do Cubans, in any number, live from day to day wondering if they'll have enough to live on, end up in crippling debt if they become ill, work 60 hours a week for a pittance while 1000s around them live in obscene wealth?
No they don't, unlike millions in the USA or the 2 million a week that go to food banks to survive in the UK.

 

Interesting 5 min interview about Castro:

 

"You really mean do Cubans, in any number, live from day to day wondering if they'll have enough to live on, end up in crippling debt if they become ill, work 60 hours a week for a pittance while 1000s around them live in obscene wealth?
No they don't, unlike millions in the USA or the 2 million a week that go to food banks to survive in the UK."

Hmm, and thousands of them risked drowning and being eaten by sharks to leave Cuba to 'slave away' in the US. Hmm.... Mass executions, houses, businesses taken by the government... Media totally controlled by the government, any opposition to the little dictator executed. Yeah, I want to live in castro's Cuba.

 

They were the ones trying to get their wealth out of Cuba. There were no 'poor' Cubans trying to get away. But if you want to believe Fox news and the like, carry on.
It's been written about in detail.

 

By the way Fred there have been no executions (mass or otherwise) in Cuba and the surprising thing is - despite all the good reasons for curtailing it - Cuba has a pretty free media.
But then you were probably confused by coups and murders in Iraq (1953 and 2003), Iran in the 50s, Chile in the 1970s, East Timor (about 600,000 murders), Libya 2011 - oops sorry! They were USA funded actions.

 

Nope, not confused. Everyone has their own opinions, obviously ours are a bit different.

 

I came across this Castro bio earlier today:
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/fidel-castro-en/article117186483.html

 

Opinions are not facts Fred.
Life expectancy, pre and post natal mortality, infant mortality, levels of poverty, literacy, educational achievement, per capita incarceration, deaths in custody, executions by the state - luckily for me (and you) facts to show the difference between Cuba 1959 and 2016 prove that your opinions are baseless. Even worse, when you compare those statistics with the rest of Latin America and the USA you should be begging for a Fidel Castro.

 

Miami Herald? No thanks. I prefer media sources with a slightly better reputation - even Democracy Now!
would be a tad less biased.

 

Well, I look at it this way: Thousands risked death to get out, very few fled to castro's little kingdom.

Democracy Now!, ahh, yeah, that looks like unbiased. (note sarcasm)

 

I'm just going to put this here.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CyOmcrIUUAAyMQS.jpg:large

And I will add that if someone genuinely believes that the average Cuban citizen under Castro lived a good life, then that person should perhaps reevaluate what "good life" means. Personal and political freedoms are actually important.

 

Under Castro, Cuba got involved in wars in numerous other countries, especially Africa.
What was the cost to the economies of Cuba and those countries? How many Cubans and Africans died?
This was by far the worst.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_intervention_in_Angola
If anyone wants to dispute the article, start by telling me if you, your family & friends were there...

In the first 3 decades post-1959 more than a million Cubans fled the country. Most of them were from the middle & upper classes, and were labelled "scum" and "lumpen" by Castro.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidel_Castro#Reagan_and_Gorbachev:_1980.E2.80.931989

Since then most Cuban refugees have been the less fortunate.

 

" ensured a survival level of heavily subsidised food for everyone"

I guess you would be satisfied if you and your family was provided with such generous allotments. Of course what your requirements were above that you would be willing to sacrifice that for the betterment of the life style that such a system afforded you. I bet you live beyond most Cubans dreams of just a regular life.

 

“Anyone who trades liberty for security deserves neither liberty nor security” Benjamin Franklin I do believe.

I don't rejoice in his death. But, I hope Cuba can become better now.

 

I continue to find it highly amusing that we agree on so many things.

 

Cuba and Castro's support for Angola was one of the key factors in ending Apartheid in South Africa.
If Castro had been a Catholic he would probably end up shortly being made a Saint.
Facts about what was achieved for Cuban people are very inconvenient for those brainwashed by establishment media as two great American thinkers - Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky - showed in their book 'Manufacturing Consent'.

 

Yet the UN Security Council branded the Apartheid South Africa government as the aggressors in Angola and Castro's 'Operation Carlota' (named after a slave rebellion leader) directly or indirectly, led to the Soweto Uprising and the subsequent fall of Apartheid.

In Angola, the Cubans left medics, clinics and staffed educational facilities, whereas the SA government wanted to increase the spoilheaps and their profits.

The Batista's coveted personal profit, at any cost to ordinary Cubans, over the health, political liberty and security of those ordinary Cubans.



Source: your own links.

 

That's a factually baseless untruth repeated again and again.

 

Or this:

And this love:

 

That is definitely not what I have heard. Throughout the years, my parents have met various Cubans here and there at various churches. Those are Cubans who went through life as it REALLY is for the majority of the people over there, not just the privileged ones. Anyway, those Cubans tell of how there is so little food available that at eateries, the food is really reserved for tourists ... not for residents. They speak of how there is so little availability of food that they basically just have to barter among themselves for whatever they need to barely be able to eat.

Definitely doesn't sound like a good life, a good environment that Castro provided. None of those Cubans had anything good to say about him.

 

It's a fact. What you have heard this past 50+ years in the US media is mostly propaganda based on lies.
The UN agency statistics on mortality, life expectancy, health care, education all prove the opposite to your post.
You obviously haven't read about the nature of the Cubans who left Cuba in 1959 and what wealth they were protecting when they left (with the Cuban government's agreement!). They are mostly extreme right wing not interested in poverty, illiteracy or lack of health care that existed when they made their wealth.
NO Cubans who believed in social justice ever left for Miami, so no you wont find any originals saying anything good. But now in Miami many of the much younger generation think their families lies are just that.

 

Scary ain't it?

 

I would trust little that the state run media from Cuba puts out. Dictators always live in a perfect paradise. If you don't believe it, they just kill you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Cuba

Please note non-Fox source.

 

You really think that the corporate media in the west is even remotely impartial? Please you weren't born yesterday and nor was I.
Every single country that depends on USA/French/UK arms and funding has a press that makes Cuba look like utopia.
Every single country and every single dictatorship in the world, in the last 65 years, that the USA (with help from other countries) has either put in place directly (the Shah in Iran after it funded and organised a coup for him, Egypt where it kept the murdering THUG Mubarak in power until people on the streets rid themselves of him) or supported their illegal existence, have murdered, tortured and maimed incalculable numbers of people and imposed press restrictions that make Cuba look like a fairytale of happiness.
Unfortunately for those brainwashed by western media, every where else in the world people see Fidel Castro as a David.

 

I thought this was about Cuba. The short answer is I never said anything about the western media, simply stated the fact that Cuba has a government controlled media, and the people are jailed for speaking badly about gubement, or even gubment 'heroes'. If you are jailed for speaking against the gubment, and all your media and internet is censored, I doubt anyone in the Cuban media would even think about covering anything that made dear leader look bad.

In post #33, your source for the first image says it if from the Cuban media... So, it is just gubment propaganda.

If Cuba is such a paradise, why are so many leaving?

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-migration-idUSBRE96U1F920130731

As far as the second pict in post 33, heck, when I was a kid, I believed a man drove a sleigh around the world giving toys to all the good boys and girls. I was mistaken.

 

No it's actually about YOUR country - the USA - that from 1961 until more or less a few months ago, imposed on Cuba an economic and political blockade that was ruinous to that place, and the USA forced - and I mean economically, politically and militarily - FORCED most of the rest of the west to do the same. Despite that crime of immense proportions Cuba has survived INTACT.
And who ever said Cuba was a 'paradise'? No one.
BUT it is true that a woman is more likely to DIE while pregnant, or at childbirth and her child die within a year of birth - IN THE USA - than in Cuba. Literacy rates are higher in Cuba than the USA, primary health care in Cuba makes the USA look like an impoverished dump. Education to degree level in every single area is FREE in Cuba, unlike the decades of debt USA students accrue.
Does anyone in Cuba have to go to a food bank or food kitchen? NO. In the USA? MILLIONS.

Cuba is an economic and political miracle. And in greatest part that is down to Fidel Castro.

 

In all of the above exchanges, I forgot to ask you Fred if you remember, or even ever knew, what Cuba was like before Castro?

It was a nauseating cesspit of massive poverty, illiteracy, illness, low life expectancy and widespread malnutrition, while ruled by the fascist Battista. It was a playground for the rich from ALL of Latin America and the USA, and the elite who served the rich and acquired significant wealth were the ones on the boats to Miami!

 

Sounds like the smart ones left. Why no mass immigration to the wonderful socialists paradise of Cuba? And I still wonder why you would believe anything a government controlled media tells you. I don't recall hearing an American congress critter running for re election say they did a horrible job, and they think everyone should vote for the other person.

Ever see a restaurant say their food is just better than edible, but due to low customer count, you can usually park right by the door? Now, imagine prison time if you even offend a 'hero's' memory in a country. Yeah, that is a free press.

 

Max, there must be a lot of rich people in Cuba for them to still be leaving for the last 60 years.
https://s13.postimg.org/5pqcfdj5z/FT_16_08_05_Cuba_Entry_2.png https://s13.postimg.org/5r0a8skzr/FT_16_08_05_Cuba_Entry_1.png
125,000 Cubans came to the US during the Mariel boatlift. None were rich.

Castro was a semi-benevolent dictator who imprisoned and executed his opponents while he ruled with an iron fist and he was the leader who reformed Cuba's educational and healthcare systems.

 

"and he was the leader who reformed Cuba's educational and healthcare systems." - with the help of and financial backing of the Soviet Union. With the Soviet crumble, Cuba economy started to dwindle. Hence the relaxation of the tourism industry to help the faltering economy. Seems Fidel had always played to the money.

 

Where did you get this from?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba#Economy

 

Indeed, Cuba was one of the richest Latin American countries.
It also had some of the worst malnutrition, general poverty, illiteracy and health care.
It was also the single massively rich playground for rich people - hotels, clubs and every other amenity for mostly Latin Amrican business people and USA business people.
Cuba was commonly referred to (among its customers as well as others) as the 'Whorehouse of Latin America'.
None of that money went on the poor.
Castro completely turned that around.
Latin America and Africa in particular is populated by 10s of 1000s of Cuban Teachers, Doctors and Health Care workers - all trained for free in Cuba under Castro.
He and his government should by rights be Nobel Prize winners.
That's evidenced by 1000s of academic studies and reports by UN agencies.

 

Thousands of academic studies, and you did not even link to one... I have to ask, were any of these academic studies done by Cubans, who can be jailed for speaking badly about a 'hero' of castro's Cuba?

And you say "none of the money went to the poor." Is that your opinion, or do you have facts (not studies written by Cuban's under fear of jail)?

 

While it's not exactly the Socialist worker's paradise Max portrays, it was hardly a glittering paradise before the revolution either for most Cubans.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/castro/peopleevents/e_precastro.html

 

Interesting link Just Playin. I never said pre castro Cuba was a paradise. Just suspect some of the 'facts' coming from the workers paradise might be a bit biased. By jail time, or maybe a bullet to the head. During the last presidential election, the US media was hardly un biased, on both sides.