Note the way the reporter states it...Castro is merely accused of "stifling dissent"...as if 10 years in a dungeon after a kangaroo-court is "stiffling"...if that is to just be stiffled, then I guess to be torn limb from limb can be called "getting scratched"...typical, though; that pig-fucker is still a hero to a good deal of the American press.
DeGaulle was President of France, Winston Churchill had just turned 75, Eisenhower was President, Kruschev was dictator of something called the USSR, Mao was ruling China, Ho Chi Minh was plotting war in South Vietnam, Pol Pot was an unknown communist functionary, Mandella hadn't been sent to jail, Nasser was President of Egypt, Israel was 11 years old...and the "West Bank" was merely part of Jordan, man hadn't gone into space, hardly anyone had flown in a jet airliner, TV was black and white, Ma Bell was in her heyday....I was five years from being born...all when Castro latched on to the poor, miserable people of Cuba...and none of our domestic pinkos think it amiss that he's still there...
It's the domestic pinkos I hate the most, the One-Worlders, the "humanitarians", their hearts bleeding all over with "compassion" for "the wretched of the earth", the Communists who scream "McCarthy!" if you call them Communists -- and who give their sanction and support to this pig-fucker and so many like him. Without them, he would have been gone long ago.
When he dies (finally), I'm sure there will be massive conversions to Islam because they just _have_ to hate the West, the culture that nurtured them. Those who bite the hand that feeds them also lick the boot that kicks them.
But, Steven, without someone to hate or blame (like the U.S.), they'd have to accept responsibility for their own fate and look no futher than their mirror to figure out why their population is suffering.
wow. of course you realize that it was america who struck the first blow in the war with cuba. when the revolution happened, we could have been nice, but instead we gave them a big fat embargo, leaving them with only russia to trade with. and that's not to mention the decades prior where american corporations occupied basically the same role that castro is now. for liberals, you seem surprisingly intolerant. marxism is an outmoded system, to be sure, but i don't think slander or finger-pointing is helping the cubans at all.
Fidel Castro to other countries' governments is like that old aunt with a lot of money- just play nice and wait for them to die. "How are you feeling, Auntie? Good? Oh..."
It reminds me of something Dave Barry once said. "The company existed to take over Cuba once Fidel was dead. Many organizations in Floria, let alone Cuba, were planning to do this. One thing about post-Castro Cuba- it will not lack for leadership."
Let's see now...Its the height of the cold war and a small country 90 miles away goes through a "revolution" and it's leader declares himself a communist. Maybe we should have called FTD and sent him a friendship bouquet?
Also, american corporations supplied cubans with jobs and even back then, over 45 years ago, the average cuban was making more money than ones of today. And I assure you, this is not the embargo's fault. Other countries pay relatively fair market value for Cuban labor, except of course, that the payments are made to the Castro regime, who in turn fill their coffers and basically economically stifle their own.
okay, it looks like my comments got a little misinterpreted. of course i'm not siding in any way with castro's regime. i don't believe in any communist ideals, and as far as pure marxism goes, i don't view it as anything more than a ludicrous utopian ideology. my point was simply this: it is that those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. we should generalize our distaste for totalitarian regimes beyond those which are communist. there are certainly plenty of totalitarian states which hate communism as much as you do. does that make them any better? of course not. and let's also keep in mind that the united states *installed* many horrible regimes, simply in the name of stopping the spread of communism ("gee, bin laden's against the soviets? must be a stand-up guy, let's train him so he can fight the russians, and then let's abandon afghanistan as fast as possible afterwards."). i don't think pointing out our own country's faults and missteps in world affairs amounts to being a "moronic pinko," nor does it mean i in any way shape or form am trying to defend or make excuses for those who would persecute and slaughter people simply for their opinions.
and to dean's comment of being intolerant to mass-murdering regimes, you know the u.s. had a nasty little genocide at one point in its history, too. have you ever heard of the trail of tears, or wounded knee? or how the united states at one point institutionalized kidnapping native american children, sending them to english language schools, and beating them if they spoke their native language? i realize that that is long-dead history, but our system today is fundamentally not that much different than it was then, and would still allow for such an event to take place. a current, much smaller-scale example of this are people being held in guantanamo bay without being charged of any crimes, completely denied the civil rights we guarantee our citizens.
I personally think evaluating 150 year old atrocoties with no ties to modernity is different from evaluating a system with current adherent and advocates, don't you?
And secondly, you said "("gee, bin laden's against the soviets? must be a stand-up guy, let's train him so he can fight the russians, and then let's abandon afghanistan as fast as possible afterwards."). "
We didn't "abandon" Afghanistan, we left them to develop themselves as we should have. Anything else would have been colonialism. You have a strange set of glasses that reflect our actions with bizarrely negative intentions.
mj, a valid criticism on your first point. but certainly you can agree with me that guantanamo bay, and also the imprisonment of japanese immigrants during WWII are more recent, relevant examples of what i'm talking about (though, of course in our defense i don't think we actually killed anyone intentionally then. and certainly not 30 million people).
as to your second point, no, i don't think that helping afghanistan to develop themselves would have been necessarily colonialism. while a full-scale military presence there, such as we had in germany or now in iraq, would have been wrong (since we hadn't actually committed troops to helping them repel the communists), i think it's possible to lend both civil and monetary aid to a developing country without economically exploiting them.
i also understand that hindsight is 20/20, and that, at the time, we were doing what we truly thought was best for both ourselves and for afghanistan. and, had democracy arose rather than fundamentalism in afghanistan, we would have been right. but, unfortunately, at the time people believed that fundamentalism was better than democracy at keeping communism in check in the middle-east, which gets back to my point about people stigmatizing communists to the point of actually *accepting* other totalitarian regimes simply because they're anti-communist.
Zach, we did not train or fund Osama. The CIA had no contact with the groups in Afghanistan, they simply provided funds and arms to the ISI. The ISI then distributed those funds, they chose which groups got them, the CIA had no say. The CIA let the ISI do what they wanted because: a)the CIA had basically no assets in Afghanistan and didn't know anything, the ISI had better intel, and b)the CIA didn't dare let one of their officers be caught inside Afghanistan by the Soviets.
The ISI, although now Osama friendly, did not give him funds during the war. They gave funds to the native Afghans, not the visiting Arabs. The Arabs were funded by their fellow Arabs, Saudi Arabia especially. Osama didn't get CIA training either. Again, the CIA provided funds, not training. It wasn't until '84 that OBL arrived in the area. He built a support base in Pakistan. It wasn't until '86 that he founded a camp inside Afghanistan, and didn't have his first "baptism by fire" until '87, eight years after the invasion. By this time there were plenty of experienced mujahideen to give him training. And probably not extensive training either, just because he was the leader doesn't mean he was a military expert.
Considering his father was once head of the CIA, Dubya has had more CIA training than Osama.
"i think it's possible to lend both civil and monetary aid to a developing country without economically exploiting them."
If we had given them monetary aid the only current difference is that we would hear twice a day about how we supported Saddam AND the Taliban in the 80's. Aid doesn't help third world countries, it only leads to a wealthy class of thieves.
I wouldn't say we accepted totalitarianism. We fought the biggest threat first with whatever tools were available. Communism was the world's biggest threat because it had the international backing of the Soviets and Chinese, and the resources of half the planet. The local authoritarian regimes we tolerated had no capacity to export their rule in any way analogous to the communists.
The communists were far more dangerous, and if faced with the same choices we'd make most of the same decisions again.
I hate what they did to the Native Americans. I condemn all the crimes committed by Christians and the Christian churches since the Roman Empire. I condemn all the crimes of Islam. I hate Pinochet and other dictators we (our government) supported. But none of the injustices in our own society nor any of our foreign policy blunders begins to compare with what the Communists did. I hate Communists the same way I hate Nazis.
I've never understood why people seem to argue that because our country (or any other) committed some heinous act in the past, it's no longer able to condemn current attocities. If that's the case, then let's hang all the Germans! Or at least never, ever, ever let any of them speak about human rights or whatnot. But we don't. Because people (and nations) can be redeemed.
Did the US commit crimes in the past? It sure did. Does that make Castro, Kim Jong Il, Mugabe, bin Laden, Hussein, and the rest of the scum of human existance exusable? No. Because if we have to excuse them because of our past actions, then we have to excuse our past actions because of their current ones. Tit for tat.
When did the hawks become progressives? When did the left become conservative and nationalist? I'm so confused. I see leftwingers opposing globalization in the name of xenophobic nationalism (what happened to socialist internationalism?). I'm tired of leftists parading through my Latin America (my Bolivia, damn it!) using jackboot fascist tactics to silence their opponents. What's so God damned progressive about that?!
I've never understood why people seem to argue that because our country (or any other) committed some heinous act in the past, it's no longer able to condemn current attocities. If that's the case, then let's hang all the Germans! Or at least never, ever, ever let any of them speak about human rights or whatnot. But we don't. Because people (and nations) can be redeemed.
Hear, hear! If Americans can't talk about other nation's mistakes, it also means no other nation can talk about our mistakes. The UN would just be a weekly encounter-group meeting where each nation indulges in a session of "self-criticism" because one's own mistakes would be the only permissible topic.
What's really ironic is that Castro didn't start out as a professed Communist. In fact, I bet you can find a fair number of favorable comments in US papers right after he threw out the Batistas.
So it really wasn't as cut & dried as zach seems to think. Castro chose his Communist alliance.
I hate him, too. Communist pig-fucker.
Note the way the reporter states it...Castro is merely accused of "stifling dissent"...as if 10 years in a dungeon after a kangaroo-court is "stiffling"...if that is to just be stiffled, then I guess to be torn limb from limb can be called "getting scratched"...typical, though; that pig-fucker is still a hero to a good deal of the American press.
DeGaulle was President of France, Winston Churchill had just turned 75, Eisenhower was President, Kruschev was dictator of something called the USSR, Mao was ruling China, Ho Chi Minh was plotting war in South Vietnam, Pol Pot was an unknown communist functionary, Mandella hadn't been sent to jail, Nasser was President of Egypt, Israel was 11 years old...and the "West Bank" was merely part of Jordan, man hadn't gone into space, hardly anyone had flown in a jet airliner, TV was black and white, Ma Bell was in her heyday....I was five years from being born...all when Castro latched on to the poor, miserable people of Cuba...and none of our domestic pinkos think it amiss that he's still there...
Revolucion: evolucion en reversa.
True, Val, though with at least one exception.
Remember: hyperbole kills.
It's the domestic pinkos I hate the most, the One-Worlders, the "humanitarians", their hearts bleeding all over with "compassion" for "the wretched of the earth", the Communists who scream "McCarthy!" if you call them Communists -- and who give their sanction and support to this pig-fucker and so many like him. Without them, he would have been gone long ago.
When he dies (finally), I'm sure there will be massive conversions to Islam because they just _have_ to hate the West, the culture that nurtured them. Those who bite the hand that feeds them also lick the boot that kicks them.
But, Steven, without someone to hate or blame (like the U.S.), they'd have to accept responsibility for their own fate and look no futher than their mirror to figure out why their population is suffering.
wow. of course you realize that it was america who struck the first blow in the war with cuba. when the revolution happened, we could have been nice, but instead we gave them a big fat embargo, leaving them with only russia to trade with. and that's not to mention the decades prior where american corporations occupied basically the same role that castro is now. for liberals, you seem surprisingly intolerant. marxism is an outmoded system, to be sure, but i don't think slander or finger-pointing is helping the cubans at all.
what! How depressing. I have to share my birthday with this nefarious anniversary. It's bad enough i have to take the trash out on my birthday....
(ooh, and it looks like zach is a new visitor). Surprisingly intolerant. What a larf!
"Intolerant?" Sure. I'm intolerant of oppressive, torturing, mass-murdering regimes. Guilty as charged.
Now why aren't you equally intolerant, moron?
Fidel Castro to other countries' governments is like that old aunt with a lot of money- just play nice and wait for them to die. "How are you feeling, Auntie? Good? Oh..."
It reminds me of something Dave Barry once said. "The company existed to take over Cuba once Fidel was dead. Many organizations in Floria, let alone Cuba, were planning to do this. One thing about post-Castro Cuba- it will not lack for leadership."
zach,
Let's see now...Its the height of the cold war and a small country 90 miles away goes through a "revolution" and it's leader declares himself a communist. Maybe we should have called FTD and sent him a friendship bouquet?
Also, american corporations supplied cubans with jobs and even back then, over 45 years ago, the average cuban was making more money than ones of today. And I assure you, this is not the embargo's fault. Other countries pay relatively fair market value for Cuban labor, except of course, that the payments are made to the Castro regime, who in turn fill their coffers and basically economically stifle their own.
Puleeeze.
If you admire the Third Reich, you are a Nazi. If you admire a Communist regime, you are a Communist. If that makes me another McCarthy, so be it.
okay, it looks like my comments got a little misinterpreted. of course i'm not siding in any way with castro's regime. i don't believe in any communist ideals, and as far as pure marxism goes, i don't view it as anything more than a ludicrous utopian ideology. my point was simply this: it is that those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. we should generalize our distaste for totalitarian regimes beyond those which are communist. there are certainly plenty of totalitarian states which hate communism as much as you do. does that make them any better? of course not. and let's also keep in mind that the united states *installed* many horrible regimes, simply in the name of stopping the spread of communism ("gee, bin laden's against the soviets? must be a stand-up guy, let's train him so he can fight the russians, and then let's abandon afghanistan as fast as possible afterwards."). i don't think pointing out our own country's faults and missteps in world affairs amounts to being a "moronic pinko," nor does it mean i in any way shape or form am trying to defend or make excuses for those who would persecute and slaughter people simply for their opinions.
and to dean's comment of being intolerant to mass-murdering regimes, you know the u.s. had a nasty little genocide at one point in its history, too. have you ever heard of the trail of tears, or wounded knee? or how the united states at one point institutionalized kidnapping native american children, sending them to english language schools, and beating them if they spoke their native language? i realize that that is long-dead history, but our system today is fundamentally not that much different than it was then, and would still allow for such an event to take place. a current, much smaller-scale example of this are people being held in guantanamo bay without being charged of any crimes, completely denied the civil rights we guarantee our citizens.
Zach,
I personally think evaluating 150 year old atrocoties with no ties to modernity is different from evaluating a system with current adherent and advocates, don't you?
And secondly, you said "("gee, bin laden's against the soviets? must be a stand-up guy, let's train him so he can fight the russians, and then let's abandon afghanistan as fast as possible afterwards."). "
We didn't "abandon" Afghanistan, we left them to develop themselves as we should have. Anything else would have been colonialism. You have a strange set of glasses that reflect our actions with bizarrely negative intentions.
mj, a valid criticism on your first point. but certainly you can agree with me that guantanamo bay, and also the imprisonment of japanese immigrants during WWII are more recent, relevant examples of what i'm talking about (though, of course in our defense i don't think we actually killed anyone intentionally then. and certainly not 30 million people).
as to your second point, no, i don't think that helping afghanistan to develop themselves would have been necessarily colonialism. while a full-scale military presence there, such as we had in germany or now in iraq, would have been wrong (since we hadn't actually committed troops to helping them repel the communists), i think it's possible to lend both civil and monetary aid to a developing country without economically exploiting them.
i also understand that hindsight is 20/20, and that, at the time, we were doing what we truly thought was best for both ourselves and for afghanistan. and, had democracy arose rather than fundamentalism in afghanistan, we would have been right. but, unfortunately, at the time people believed that fundamentalism was better than democracy at keeping communism in check in the middle-east, which gets back to my point about people stigmatizing communists to the point of actually *accepting* other totalitarian regimes simply because they're anti-communist.
Agreed
Now let's go back to hating Fidel
Zach, we did not train or fund Osama. The CIA had no contact with the groups in Afghanistan, they simply provided funds and arms to the ISI. The ISI then distributed those funds, they chose which groups got them, the CIA had no say. The CIA let the ISI do what they wanted because: a)the CIA had basically no assets in Afghanistan and didn't know anything, the ISI had better intel, and b)the CIA didn't dare let one of their officers be caught inside Afghanistan by the Soviets.
The ISI, although now Osama friendly, did not give him funds during the war. They gave funds to the native Afghans, not the visiting Arabs. The Arabs were funded by their fellow Arabs, Saudi Arabia especially. Osama didn't get CIA training either. Again, the CIA provided funds, not training. It wasn't until '84 that OBL arrived in the area. He built a support base in Pakistan. It wasn't until '86 that he founded a camp inside Afghanistan, and didn't have his first "baptism by fire" until '87, eight years after the invasion. By this time there were plenty of experienced mujahideen to give him training. And probably not extensive training either, just because he was the leader doesn't mean he was a military expert.
Considering his father was once head of the CIA, Dubya has had more CIA training than Osama.
"i think it's possible to lend both civil and monetary aid to a developing country without economically exploiting them."
If we had given them monetary aid the only current difference is that we would hear twice a day about how we supported Saddam AND the Taliban in the 80's. Aid doesn't help third world countries, it only leads to a wealthy class of thieves.
I wouldn't say we accepted totalitarianism. We fought the biggest threat first with whatever tools were available. Communism was the world's biggest threat because it had the international backing of the Soviets and Chinese, and the resources of half the planet. The local authoritarian regimes we tolerated had no capacity to export their rule in any way analogous to the communists.
The communists were far more dangerous, and if faced with the same choices we'd make most of the same decisions again.
well said. and, given the tone of dean's recent post on the subject, i guess i'll take the hint and shut the hell up.
Sorry Zach. I get emotional on this subject.
I hate what they did to the Native Americans. I condemn all the crimes committed by Christians and the Christian churches since the Roman Empire. I condemn all the crimes of Islam. I hate Pinochet and other dictators we (our government) supported. But none of the injustices in our own society nor any of our foreign policy blunders begins to compare with what the Communists did. I hate Communists the same way I hate Nazis.
I've never understood why people seem to argue that because our country (or any other) committed some heinous act in the past, it's no longer able to condemn current attocities. If that's the case, then let's hang all the Germans! Or at least never, ever, ever let any of them speak about human rights or whatnot. But we don't. Because people (and nations) can be redeemed.
Did the US commit crimes in the past? It sure did. Does that make Castro, Kim Jong Il, Mugabe, bin Laden, Hussein, and the rest of the scum of human existance exusable? No. Because if we have to excuse them because of our past actions, then we have to excuse our past actions because of their current ones. Tit for tat.
When did the hawks become progressives? When did the left become conservative and nationalist? I'm so confused. I see leftwingers opposing globalization in the name of xenophobic nationalism (what happened to socialist internationalism?). I'm tired of leftists parading through my Latin America (my Bolivia, damn it!) using jackboot fascist tactics to silence their opponents. What's so God damned progressive about that?!
I've never understood why people seem to argue that because our country (or any other) committed some heinous act in the past, it's no longer able to condemn current attocities. If that's the case, then let's hang all the Germans! Or at least never, ever, ever let any of them speak about human rights or whatnot. But we don't. Because people (and nations) can be redeemed.
Hear, hear! If Americans can't talk about other nation's mistakes, it also means no other nation can talk about our mistakes. The UN would just be a weekly encounter-group meeting where each nation indulges in a session of "self-criticism" because one's own mistakes would be the only permissible topic.
What's really ironic is that Castro didn't start out as a professed Communist. In fact, I bet you can find a fair number of favorable comments in US papers right after he threw out the Batistas.
So it really wasn't as cut & dried as zach seems to think. Castro chose his Communist alliance.
The sooner that pig-fucker Castro dies, the better.