babble is rabble.ca's discussion board but it's much more than that: it's an online community for folks who just won't shut up. It's a place to tell each other — and the world — what's up with our work and campaigns.
Fidel Castro dies at 90
November 26, 2016 - 7:13am
!!!
A great visionary. Forever to remembered for his courage to stand up to America and reject the vile disease of capitalism.
Firing squads.
13 de Marzo massacre.
People trying to flee Cuba on rafts made out of garbage.
Political prisoners.
Interamerican Commission for Human Rights extimated up to 30'000 citizens interned in forced labour camps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba
Noble peace prize posthumously I'd say.
@ Paladin
I suppose that's par for the course considering the ongoing war on any kind of complex analysis.
And there are certainly some who agree with you partying down in Miami.
Ehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-wake-of-castros-death-cuban-exiles-cheer-in-miami-while-havana-stays-silent/2016/11/26/e77f0fd4-b3a5-11e6-bc2d-19b3d759cfe7_story.html
Given the circumstances he had to deal with, and what he managed to accomplish I rank him far above par, despite his many shortcomings.
For one thing, the fact that they aren't partying in Havana - and I seriously doubt that is because anyone has a gun to their head - should tell you something.
Nobody celerating in Cuba
http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/cuba-to-observe-9-days-of-mourning-for-fidel...
I'd say his most impressive legacy is that his nation survived both the fall of the Soviet union and the US embargo... Without going where some other nations have in those circumstances.
And this:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/03/fidel-castro-anti-colon...
Many obits and articles will be written about Comandante Fidel. The few I've seen put at the top of the list his stunning and, let's say, unsurpassed anti-imperialist credentials. He was an inspiration for millions, even billions. He fought Yankee imperialism - which tried with might and main to kill him on over 600 different ocassions and failed - and whupped them. That is a very small club.
Fidel falls into the same category as Karl Marx, Simon Bolivar, or, in his own beloved Cuba, Jose Marti and Ernesto "Che" Guevara.
His name will live through the ages.
Paladin, I'm well aware of the negatives in Cuba, but I think you are deliberately darkening the picture. Cuba is not North Korea, or the Soviet Union in the years of the Great Purges. And they have corrected some bad things they did at one point, such as discrimination against LGBT people and people with AIDS. There is a lot of open criticism of the government and society there nowadays.
There would be far more refugees on unseaworthy vessels if Haitians were allowed to stay in the US if they arrived there without a visa or immigrant status.
I've only found gusano sources for the alleged 13 de marzo massacre. The Wikipedia article calls it the name given by Cuban Americans to the incident. The Cuban government has denied responsibility and said it was an accident. You said above boats made of garbage - this was a tugboat, but certainly not designed to carry a group of people who weren't mariners over open seas. We know that many, many people trying to leave their native lands for a variety of reasons have met their deaths at sea in recent years.
Perhaps you recall that the Cuban Revolution did not overthrow a democratic government, but the dictatorial and deeply corrupt Batista régime, when Cuba was the "brothel of the US". Trump is doubtless having wet dreams over the prospects.
No leader is perfect. Nor was Fidel Castro. But what strikes me the most about his time in office is 2 things. He could change bad policy - the homophobia of the early years gave way to better position for gay people than in much of the world. The Cuban revolution was not static, it reinvented and changed itself and coudl admit its mistakes and fix them.
Cuba also did a huge amount to help other countries. It helped Angola defend itself from an invasion by apartheid South Africa. It stood up for unpopular anti-imperialist causes, often as great cost to itself.
Most impressively, to me, Cuba has sent nearly 20,000 doctors and many more medical support staff to less developed countries, where they make a huge difference to millions of people, helping health care at a grassroots level. This is more than the G8 countries combined. And they train thousands of Third World people to become doctors in Cuba. Cuban medical internationalism
Fidel Castro did not do all this by himself. But he set the tone and the direction. All respect to him for that.
Interesting that Justin Trudeau was just in Cuba on a visit. I wonder if he will be at the funeral, like Fidel Castro was at Pierre Trudeau's funeral. I hope that the USA will finally lift the destructive and vindictive embargo they put in place when they were unable to assassinte Castro. And I hope that as Cuba keeps changing in the years to come, the gains of the Cuban revolution will remain.
Seems he's already getting flak just for saying nice things.
I think that's worth noting, both as a tribute to Castro's leadership, and also as a "pro tip" for any other revolutions.
Statement from the Council of State, etc.
That's fair Smith. I'm not above giving credit where it's due. I think it's awesome he quite successfully gave the finger to the US for half a century. I'm just don't turn a blind eye to the shitty stuff people like this do too, like murder.
I think the human rights abuse and murders paint their own picture. I'm just offering a counter POV to some who may want to practically canonize him.
His resistance against the US does make for a great debate and example, no disagreement here.
My boats made of garbage comment was in the context of just people trying to escape paradise cuba. I do remember the Batista being a puppy US government. Castro hardly holds a candle to the crimes committed by the US government. The US government had a plan to kill their own citizens in order to drum up support against Cuba.
Can someone please decode Tom Mulcair's twitter comment on Casto's death. To me it looks indistinguishable from Rona Ambrose's comment but I should admit a slight bias on my part. For a cogent review of Castro, people should read what Eduardo Galeano wrote (spanish only) in
Rebelión, 26-11-2016
http://www.rebelion.org/
Well, here's what I could find on CBC:
I don't think Ambrose's comment needs any unpacking. Admittedly, Tom's (or at least the sentence above) is ambiguous.
So I suppose we could imagine him saying either of the following:
1. "Upon the passing of Fidel Castro let us think of the lives [negatively] impacted by his actions and be hopeful for the future of the Cuban people [after he screwed everything up for them]."
2. "Upon the passing of Fidel Castro let us think of the lives [positively] impacted by his actions and be hopeful for the future of the Cuban people [without his leadership]."
My guess, personally: #2.
ed'd to add: Here's Barack Obama:
And that, my friends, is how you do "ambiguous". That's ambiguous taken to the point of diplomatic.
And just to be fair, here's President-elect Donald Trump:
Already a statesman.
Fuck off Ambrose. We're still shaking off your party's oppression. Mulcair's response was not surprising. Very diplomatic. Trump? What a fuckin' buffoon.
Utopian Socialism surely requires democracy. But historically, state socialism doesn't really seem to have had much interest in it. From state socialism's point of view, giving people a genuine choice means taking the chance that they won't choose state socialism.
To be fair, Cuba does allow the people to choose which representative from the Communist Party they prefer. But do you come to bury Castro, or to praise him?
All of us who happened to live through the Cuban missile crisis will always remember Fidel.
I have always had qualified respect for Castro, and great concern over how the LGBT communities were treated in Cuba. I have nothing but contempt for the right-wing figures in the United States and Canada who are bringing this up today to condemn him (Castro). Especially in the aftermath of the most recent American election with not a single exception that comes to my mind, the Republicans seeking the nomination and the movers and shakers within the party establishment were falling over themselves to court and seek endorsement from the Christian religious fanatics who want to roll back such rights as do exist in the U.S. for the LGBT communities. Their hypocrisy is making me gag.
Castro, at least, evolved and ultimately held himself responsible for the injustices inflicted on the LGBT communities. I recall no such "on the Road to Damascus" revelations striking, say, Harper or Thatcher or Reagan or any other darlings of the Right.
Personally, I have no problem with Trudeau the lesser's expression of sorrow (on behalf of Canadians) at the death of Castro. When I compare it to the rantings of Kellie Leitch or Ben Harper my opinion of Trudeau actually improves a bit (a hard task).
Its all in how you define democracy I guess. Trudeau won a great victory by telling people he would be all things to all people and now he gets to rule as a dictator because he has a majority in parliament. It means he cannot be stopped from implementing draconian security measures that are as bad as the last sycophant or stopped from okaying pipelines despite clearly campaigning in BC in opposition to them. He can make changes to gut defined benefit plans. All this with absolutely no way of stopping him.
In most ridings in Canada the only viable choices are the Liberal Tory same old story. That is not democracy that is a dog and pony show.
Here is an article with a different take on the Cuban electoral system that you dismiss as inferior to our system that gives us Harper and then Trudeau. A change of the waterboy but no change in the controlling hand.
http://www.cubasupport.com/latest/?page_id=29
I actually liked his statement and it is the first time in a long time that anything coming out of his mouth didn't sound like it was written by a spindoctor.
Well said.
The recollections and talk today make fascinating reading. Two of the pieces that I found most interesting:
Black America and the passing of Fidel Castro
Close but no cigar: how America failed to kill Fidel Castro
My understanding of the Cuban electoral system is that there is only one official party. Is that correct?
If so, how is having two (actually, nearly twenty) parties to choose from LESS democratic than having only the one?
See post #24 above and many other sources that actually explain the system. Of course you could just read American reports condemning it instead. When ones mindset is stuck in their own worldview it's hard sometimes to understand that other people do things differently.
From talking to many people who have spent considerable time in Cuba outside of the resort hotels I believe that the government has the support of the majority of a well educated population. Personally I prefer to go with their judgement.
'Dogs Dancing on a Lion's Grave...'
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/368331-those-dancing-on-fidels-grave/