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.
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.
"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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> + 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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:
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 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"?
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.
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...
>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.
> 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.
> 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?
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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?
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.
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?
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.
" 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.
>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.
>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...
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.
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
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".
> ...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.
> 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.
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"
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.
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.
> 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.
+ "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.
> 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."
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)
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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)?
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.
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.
> 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 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.
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.