CASTRO DEAD AT 90


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Without Castro's revolution, we wouldn't have had Trini de Soto... and possibly not Izzy either... :p

But anyway, I guess Miami would certainly look different today if it hadn't been for the sizeable Cuban exile community.

I was in Cuba in 2000. By then, it already seeemed like the Cuban government was struggling to maintain its former degree of absolute power. The younger generation was certainly going its own way. They were into the latest Western pop music and aspiring to Western consumerism.

If travel restrictions from the U.S. to Cuba continue to be lifted, you guys should definitely go to Cuba some time soon. In some ways, when I was there, it was simply a land that time forgot. It's probably a good idea to sample authentic Cuban culture before there's a Starbucks and McDonald's on every other street corner there.

Varadero near Havana is nice for a beach holiday. Fine coral sand that goes on literally for miles, and crystal clear water.  And  the old town of Santiago de Cuba has some pretty nice Colonial architecture. And the Vinales Valley National Park is full of natural landmarks and stunning scenery. Just to give you a few travel suggestions ;)

Edited by Daytona74
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We wouldn't have Trini/Izzy, we wouldn't have the Scarface remake... Cuba also wouldn't be an awesome time capsule, Havana will instead basically just be another Las Vegas.

RIP Fidel. He lived a long and eventful life.

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This will sound harsh.........but Castro should have died 50 yrs. ago!!

He was a Communist dictator who killed many innocent Cuban people. Thanks to Pres. John F. Kennedy, we didn't get into a possible missile war with Castro's Cuba.  JFK didn't send enough air support & the effort was considered a failure. But U.S. involvement showed how dangerous Castro was to the world & America, 90 miles off our coast. Read the "Bay of Pigs" crisis for the accurate details.

Many Cuban people fled from Cuba to the U.S. to get away from Castro's dictatorship.

Unless he repented of his crimes & sins against the Catholic Church..............I don't think he is resting in peace. :evil:

Edited by Tony D.
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1 hour ago, Tony D. said:

This will sound harsh.........but Castro should have died 50 yrs. ago!!

He was a Communist dictator who killed many innocent Cuban people. Thanks to Pres. John F. Kennedy, we didn't get into a possible missile war with Castro's Cuba.  JFK didn't send enough air support & the effort was considered a failure. But U.S. involvement showed how dangerous Castro was to the world & America, 90 miles off our coast. Read the "Bay of Pigs" crisis for the accurate details.

Many Cuban people fled from Cuba to the U.S. to get away from Castro's dictatorship.

Unless he repented of his crimes & sins against the Catholic Church..............I don't think he is resting in peace. :evil:

^That's a fair opinion. Alright, the communist revolutions weren't as successful as many of us would've hoped but I can't imagine the hardship of running a small socialist country when you have the world's greatest superpower breathing down your neck, actively interfering with your politics and not exactly being discrete with their assassination attempts. Castro would not have lasted very long if he was Mr Nice Guy, he was forced into being "Napoleon the Pig".

We're always told that the US stands for democracy and peace but they've shown time and time again to back far right groups/dictators, then then actively hinder and supress the left-wing revolutionaries who try to attain freedom like the Sandinistas. etc How is one supposed to run an extremely poor country when the opposing faction are backed by the US with pretty much limitless wealth?

Also Cuba did have some positive aspects like universal healthcare and relatively good education compared to other less developed countries. The socialist countries in South America seem to being good at the moment and the populations are better off now than if they were still ruled by the right wing counterparts of these leaders.

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It is worth remembering what led up to Castro's revolution in Cuba. Before Castro, the country was ruled by an immensely corrupt dictator called Fulgencio Batista. Who, although he didn't start out that way, became a major ally both of the U.S. government and U.S. organized crime. Many illustrious figures of the North American mob invested their illegally gained wealth in casinos and night clubs in Cuba. At the same time, Cubans were ruthlessly suppressed under Batista. His regime had thousands of Cuban citizens tortured and imprisoned, and another few thousand were killed, some even estimate that latter number to be as high as 20,000. Even John F. Kennedy called the Batista regime, although it was widely backed by the U.S. government, one of the most ruthless in the history of Latin America.

U.S. mobsters and corrupt U.S. politicians of those days had the Batista government in their back pockets, and most private sector companies in Cuba were either owned by American corporations or de facto financially controlled by them. Cuba had a sizeable GDP in those days for a Latin American country, but the people of Cuba saw next to nothing of it, because all the revenue that was generated was transfered straight to the U.S. to whoever owned all those Cuban businesses. And American corporations were effectively dictating domestic economic policy in Cuba.

Older people in Cuba still remember the Batista regime vividly, and even those who are not in line with government ideology will tell you that the Cuban revolution started out with the best intentions, of ridding Cuba of a disastrous dictatorship and returning power, and the country's economic assets, to the people. And Castro had huge support among the people after the revolution (which is also one reason why the Bay of Pigs invasion failed). This was not just a Communist coup, it was a revolution that was wholly backed by the people. Also, Castro and his companions may always have leaned socialist, but it was only when they realized that the U.S. wasn't just going to put up with them hat they developed stronger ties to the Soviet Union.

As for the Cuban missile crisis... well, it is an often omitted fact that the Soviet Union didn't just one day out of the blue and unprovoked decide to station nuclear missiles in Cuba. On the contrary, it was a response to the U.S. having a whole battery of PGM-19 Jupiter nuclear missiles stationed near Izmir, Turkey, just a few hundred miles south of the Soviet Union. Which could have reached Russian cities about as quickly as the Cuban missiles could have destroyed New York or Chicago. And it's also an often omitted fact that as part of the deal reached with Khrushchev to take down the Russian missiles in Cuba, the U.S. quietly agreed to remove all of its Jupiter missiles from Turkey.

In the end, the situation with Castro as Cuba's communist leader was not ideal. Not even for Castro himself when you think about it. But there's a lot of history to be remembered here. And considerable parts of that history do not shed the best light on the United States.

Edited by Daytona74
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21 hours ago, Tony D. said:

This will sound harsh.........but Castro should have died 50 yrs. ago!!

He was a Communist dictator who killed many innocent Cuban people. Thanks to Pres. John F. Kennedy, we didn't get into a possible missile war with Castro's Cuba.  JFK didn't send enough air support & the effort was considered a failure. But U.S. involvement showed how dangerous Castro was to the world & America, 90 miles off our coast. Read the "Bay of Pigs" crisis for the accurate details.

Many Cuban people fled from Cuba to the U.S. to get away from Castro's dictatorship.

Unless he repented of his crimes & sins against the Catholic Church..............I don't think he is resting in peace. :evil:

Gotta agree with you, Tony.

Edited by mvnyc
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Well Cuba wasn't living in the 50s anymore when I was there sixteen years ago, I imagine they haven't gone fifty years back in time since then. Even the 1950s cars on every other street corner there now have 1980s Lada engines.  ;) 

Cuba didn't look vastly different to me than other Latin American places I've visited, to tell you the truth. Maybe people were a little poorer in Cuba  than in Venezuela or Mexico. But not by much. Well, ok, many buildings in downtown Havana are a bit more run down and shaky. And in Venezuela and Mexico, every second car was  a 1980s Caprice Classic... :p

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Saw a guy on TV that they interviewed. He told of how Castro took his Father's business, his car and pretty much whatever else he wanted. Drove his family into poverty until they were lucky enough to escape to the U.S.  Easy to see why the man had no sympathy for him. They were dancing in the streets in Miami!

If there is a hell, you can rest assured that he's in it!

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1 hour ago, Ferrariman said:

Saw a guy on TV that they interviewed. He told of how Castro took his Father's business, his car and pretty much whatever else he wanted. Drove his family into poverty until they were lucky enough to escape to the U.S.  Easy to see why the man had no sympathy for him. They were dancing in the streets in Miami!

If there is a hell, you can rest assured that he's in it!

To agree with you, Ferrariman, If Castro was so wonderful, why were so many Cuban people risking their lives in small boats and rafts trying to get from Cuba to the United States? Once here they got jobs and most importantly, Freedom!

Yes, there are celebrations among Cubans over Castro's death.....but now his brother Raul is still in charge. :evil:

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Castro wasn't wonderful. In the end, Cuba was and still is an isolated undemocratic communist state which grants its citizens only a bare minimum of personal and economic freedom. And it's a pretty difficult country to live in if you don't want to put up with that. And a lot of people are justifiably angry at the Castro regime.

That said, things aren't as grim in Cuba as the media would have you believe. 

http://hdr.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/CUB

http://hdr.undp.org/en/countries/profiles

 

Among Latin American countries, Cuba is actually one of the more developed ones. Again, when I was there, it didn't strike me as vastly poorer than Venezuela or Mexico. Yes, it's less developed than the U.S. or Europe, but it's not just another third world sh*thole either.

 

Edited by Daytona74
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Don't always agree with Trump but he got this one right.  I'll never forget the Muriel boatlift where good folks escaped along with about 24,000 criminals that Castro loosed on Miami causing chaos and murder.

 

 

Capturen.JPG

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It is mildly ironic that Trump is the one to lambaste the guy. I can only imagine the atrocities that would occur if Donald J Trump was the man in charge of a small nation and could do pretty much anything he pleased.

Pot calling the kettle black.

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Donald Trump has shown numerous times in his short political career that he is dangerously out of his depth and just has a terrible grasp of even the simplest foreign policy issues. He may not be the slow witted hillbilly that George W. Bush was, but in his own way, he is just as dangerous.

And Cuba isn't a horribly gone wrong Disneyfied 1950s time capsule, even if the pretty 1950s American cars on every other street corner might mislead you that way. I visited Cuba during college, as part of an economic science seminar. We spent three weeks visiting places literally up and down the country. We met low-level government officials, we visited cooperatives, farms, rum distilleries and businesses. Cuba lacks very gravely in some of the most basic personal and economic freedoms that people in other countries take for granted. But it is not a communist house of horrors. Even in 2000, the country was quite modern in many ways. It had a surprisingly high standard of free healthcare for a Latin American country, and higher education was also pretty much free for everybody, although the country only has a handful of universities. Some of the housing infrastructure in the cities here and there was literally falling apart, while public infrastructure like roads and bridges often seemed surprisingly advanced.

I'm not worried about Cuba eventually returning to democracy. That day will come. In the long run, it will be inevitable, and that's a good thing. I am more worried what will happen if the U.S. starts treating Cuba like a colony again like it did in the first half of the 20th century.

Edited by Daytona74
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I tend to agree with Vincent and Daytona as they make very accurate and truthful claims. It's so nice to hear from the intelligencia of this board.

It's sad that many Americans only get revisionist history when it comes to these things and it's all ra-ra and flag waving for America! Many Americans don't know of the powers that be in the American Government who were influenced by big money from the Cuban exiles to be brutally isolationist with Cuba for decades. Obama was the first man to realize that this really wasn't working and he tried a friendlier approach.

Our first Canadian "Trudeau" (the father of our present day Prime Minister) had warm relations with Cuba for decades. Trudeau's son is taking up the reins. Canadian business has been good over decades of friendship, and so has the travel industry.  America has always looked down their noses at Canada for having trade relations and tourism with Cuba. Why do you think so many old cars are still in running condition in Cuba...Canadian parts! My buddy in Kitchener did business there for decades. He showed us a slide show presentation of the REAL Cuba, not the tourist brochures. It is a great place with palm trees and a good way of life. Free health care, which is also available in Canada, and a laid back way of life in the Carribean. Beer is 30 cents!  We are common in the fact we don't treat health care as a profit based economic travesty like you do in America.

Nothing is perfect in life and yes Castro did some nasty things. How many people were out to get him? He at least travelled to so called "Friendly" countries and did press interviews and spoke eloquently, even for a dictator. No man who walks through life doesn't have shit on his shoes.

Castro had ideology of taking away all the things the rich corrupt mob and governments had put in place and had land reformation where he gave the land back to the peasant farmer. Sure life was tough in Cuba, but who made it that way for decades? Look north 90 miles and find a nation who causes despair every where on earth it goes to, beit Vietnam, the Middle east, Granada or any "banana republic"  Today in Cuba only one out of five people have internet, yet the free education system in Cuba has created more doctors per capita per population there, anywhere else in the world. Even other Latin countries look to Cuba with distain and jealousy! Democracy will come but at it's own pace and time.

Cuba may not be perfect but Che, Castro's finance minister later in life, said something very profound in 1953 in Venezuela to all Latin countries and he said something to the effect of "Lets stop this provincialism of the Latin culture" which apparently was a cry to unite all Latin's and overlook their differences. This scared the hell out of America! They couldn't stand the thought of a Latin nation stretching from Texas to Straights of Magellan.

Quite frankly Tony I am surprised at your remarks as they seem very narrow minded and focused? You should try to look at the big picture. Castro, beit good or bad, ruled a country for over a half century, and in relative peace, with relatively good economic stability with the bag of crap he was handed. Don't think the U.S. hasn't got their hands dirty!!! What about drone war-fare and when the U.S.bombed a hospital a few months ago in Syria. They said "oops... our bad" and it was forgotten yet they bash the Russians for doing the exact same thing? Every government on earth does atrocities. Please don't play the "holier than thou" card.  

CASTRO deserves the respect of a dignitary and should be remembered for the good he did for his peasant people. It's always the rich allegory that bitches about repression, as their assets were taken away, and rightly so. Why do you think there was a revolution? It was to remove the American puppet Batista who was raping the economy of the tiny island, so yes, America got pissed off and held a grudge for a half century.

Get over it.....................

Edited by Stinger390X
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I'm surprised the topic has been so divisive tbh. There wasn't even this much dissension during the presidential race and when Trump won:D..but this is all in good fun, other boards turn nasty pretty quickly.

 

 

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@Stinger:

Interesting... I wasn't aware that Canada supplies parts for the 1950s American cars in Cuba... as far as we were told, Cuban car mechanics have become sheer masters of their trade by being able to fix those American cars almost literally with a piece of string and a banana skin. Also, a lot of those cars there now have newer engines because at some point, the factory engines in them were simply at the end of their humanly possible lifespan, or spare parts just weren't available or couldn't be hammered together from something else. These cars aren't display pieces maintained by enthusiasts, but they have been everyday workhorses for over 60 years. So now those cars run with anything from 1970s to 1980s Lada engines that were taken out of Russian-imported cars from that time, to converted tractor or boat engines.

The Russian Ladas proved to be very inadequate for the tropical Cuban weather; they were made from very poor quality steel as it is, and the constant damp heat and salty air made them rust away in no time. But the Lada engines turned out to be very robust.

And as far as U.S. foreign policy, well... you can't be a true Miami Vice fan and be oblivious to the adverse effects that U.S. foreign policy has had around the world. Those adverse effects weren't just plot devices in "Back In The World", "Stone's War" and "Freefall". That kind of stuff really happened.

It's not ideal that Castro and his regime essentially expropriated American businesses in Cuba. Something like that always causes grief, and a lot of Cuban Americans and American companies were understandably angry at the Castro regime. But again, you have to keep in mind how the situation was before the revolution. The U.S. practically owned Cuba. It was practically a U.S. colony. The economy was controlled by American corporations, to the point that they dictated Cuba's domestic economic policy. The North American mob was making a fortune with casinos and all kinds of organized crime activity while police and government were completely looking the other way. While average Cubans saw nothing of the enormous wealth that was being generated. They increasingly lived in great poverty. And all this was overseen by the increasingly tyrannical dictator Fulgencio Batista. If you think Castro was a bad guy, which you could argue he was, then just read up on what Batista did during his second presidency in the 1950s right up to the revolution, during which he was deposed.

I'm no fan of communism; it's not a good way at all to run a country. Cuba deserves a chance at democracy. And that will likely not happen with the current powers that be. But I think the U.S. needs to tread very carefully in order to not screw Cuba up again. Or just plain screw Cuba again.

Edited by Daytona74
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12 hours ago, Stinger390X said:

I tend to agree with Vincent and Daytona as they make very accurate and truthful claims. It's so nice to hear from the intelligencia of this board.

It's sad that many Americans only get revisionist history when it comes to these things and it's all ra-ra and flag waving for America! Many Americans don't know of the powers that be in the American Government who were influenced by big money from the Cuban exiles to be brutally isolationist with Cuba for decades. Obama was the first man to realize that this really wasn't working and he tried a friendlier approach.

Our first Canadian "Trudeau" (the father of our present day Prime Minister) had warm relations with Cuba for decades. Trudeau's son is taking up the reins. Canadian business has been good over decades of friendship, and so has the travel industry.  America has always looked down their noses at Canada for having trade relations and tourism with Cuba. Why do you think so many old cars are still in running condition in Cuba...Canadian parts! My buddy in Kitchener did business there for decades. He showed us a slide show presentation of the REAL Cuba, not the tourist brochures. It is a great place with palm trees and a good way of life. Free health care, which is also available in Canada, and a laid back way of life in the Carribean. Beer is 30 cents!  We are common in the fact we don't treat health care as a profit based economic travesty like you do in America.

Nothing is perfect in life and yes Castro did some nasty things. How many people were out to get him? He at least travelled to so called "Friendly" countries and did press interviews and spoke eloquently, even for a dictator. No man who walks through life doesn't have shit on his shoes.

Castro had ideology of taking away all the things the rich corrupt mob and governments had put in place and had land reformation where he gave the land back to the peasant farmer. Sure life was tough in Cuba, but who made it that way for decades? Look north 90 miles and find a nation who causes despair every where on earth it goes to, beit Vietnam, the Middle east, Granada or any "banana republic"  Today in Cuba only one out of five people have internet, yet the free education system in Cuba has created more doctors per capita per population there, anywhere else in the world. Even other Latin countries look to Cuba with distain and jealousy! Democracy will come but at it's own pace and time.

Cuba may not be perfect but Che, Castro's finance minister later in life, said something very profound in 1953 in Venezuela to all Latin countries and he said something to the effect of "Lets stop this provincialism of the Latin culture" which apparently was a cry to unite all Latin's and overlook their differences. This scared the hell out of America! They couldn't stand the thought of a Latin nation stretching from Texas to Straights of Magellan.

Quite frankly Tony I am surprised at your remarks as they seem very narrow minded and focused? You should try to look at the big picture. Castro, beit good or bad, ruled a country for over a half century, and in relative peace, with relatively good economic stability with the bag of crap he was handed. Don't think the U.S. hasn't got their hands dirty!!! What about drone war-fare and when the U.S.bombed a hospital a few months ago in Syria. They said "oops... our bad" and it was forgotten yet they bash the Russians for doing the exact same thing? Every government on earth does atrocities. Please don't play the "holier than thou" card.  

CASTRO deserves the respect of a dignitary and should be remembered for the good he did for his peasant people. It's always the rich allegory that bitches about repression, as their assets were taken away, and rightly so. Why do you think there was a revolution? It was to remove the American puppet Batista who was raping the economy of the tiny island, so yes, America got pissed off and held a grudge for a half century.

Get over it.....................

I wasn't going to comment any more on Castro's death, Topic.....but since you dragged me in saying my remarks were very narrow minded and focused, I will respond.

The U.S. bombing of a hospital in Syria wasn't intentional....it was an accident!! 

Castro wanted Russia to start a nuclear war with the U.S.......fortunately Russia had more brains than Fidel.

Castro was a Communist Dictator who is responsible for many people's deaths. Thousands of Cubans in Miami are celebrating the death of this tyrant.

If you love Cuba, which is 50 yrs. behind the times for their people, go live there!

I doubt you will be able to enjoy your Stinger, over there.

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19 minutes ago, Tony D. said:

Castro wanted Russia to start a nuclear war with the U.S.......fortunately Russia had more brains than Fidel.

I thought it was because the US had nuclear missiles in Turkey, so it was in the best interests of Russia to have ICBM's on Cuba to act as a stalemate, which also gave Castro leverage and protection.

20 minutes ago, Tony D. said:

Castro was a Communist Dictator who is responsible for many people's deaths. Thousands of Cubans in Miami are celebrating the death of this tyrant.

Yes he was a dictator but surely there are degrees of "evilness". :)I think "Tyrant" is a little too strong and is reserved for guys like Stalin and Pol Pot. etc The Mariel Boat lift is perfect example that separates Castro from the genuinely sadistic leaders of the 20th century. He let thousands of dissenters/undesirables just leave the country whereas lesser men would've just murdered them.

Castro did questionable things like suppress freedom of speech/free press and lock up political refugee's indefinitely but that's the nature of the beast I'm afraid. If the US hadn't sequestered Cuba then I think there would've been democratic elections in Cuba by now just like every Socialist South-American country has. I can't see how Castro is any worse than elected leaders like Daniel Ortega, Hugo Chavez etc.

 

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