BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)

Subject: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 29 Nov 16 - 09:40 PM

Somebody sent me this as a personal message, and gave me permission to share:

Hi Joe. I may be addressing the wrong person here, so apologies for that in advance.
Feel free to pass this on. First, an observation. I really think we should be able to discuss Fidel Castro. Another observation: the latter reaches of the thread attracted idiocy of the highest order, I'll not deny.

Yeah, we need to discuss Fidel Castro. It's a pressing issue right now, and we Americans have a President-elect who will no doubt respond to the death of Castro in ways that will be distressing to many of us. I think it was wise to close the previous thread, but we need to continue the discussion. Bobad and others, if you get out out of hand, we'll have to shut you down so that others can continue the discussion. The usual way we do that, is with a one-week suspension of your membership. If you want to consider that a threat, feel free.
This thread is about Fidel Castro. Messages on other subjects will be deleted. And that's a threat, too. What's wrong with threats? They explain beforehand the consequences of your actions.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 29 Nov 16 - 10:27 PM

Wikipedia says Fidel Castro was born in 1926. He died last Friday, November 25. He tried to overthrow Cuban President Fulgencio Batista in 1953. He failed, and ended up in jail. He and his allies succeeded in overthrowing Batista in 1959, and Castro then ruled Cuba until he resigned due to ill health in 2008. His brother Raúl has ruled Cuba since then.

In many ways, I think Castro followed the Communist model far more closely than did the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact countries, and China and North Korea. Under Castro, Cuba achieved one of the highest levels of literacy in the world, and the Cuban system of medical care is admirable in many ways. Collective enterprises in Cuba followed the Communist ideal very closely - with varying levels of success.

I think the presence of Castro in Cuba prevented Cuba from becoming an American resort, a suburb of the United States. On the other hand, it prevented Cuba from enjoying the many benefits of free trade with the United States. Castro restricted life in many ways, but there are many ways that Castro's oppressive regime allowed Cuba to remain Cuban, instead of becoming a vassal of the United States. If Batista had remained in power, is there any chance that Cuba today would be completely free of Starbucks and WalMart?

Mudcat is still a music forum, so I have to bring up the Buena Vista Social Club in this thread. As Wikipedia says,

The original Buena Vista Social Club held dances and musical activities, becoming a popular location for musicians to meet and play during the 1940s. In the 1990s, nearly 50 years after the club was closed, it inspired a recording made by Cuban musician Juan de Marcos González and American guitarist Ry Cooder with traditional Cuban musicians, some of whom were veterans who had performed at the club during the height of its popularity.

If Batista had retained power with American support, what would have happened to Cuban music? what DID happen to Cuban music under Castro?

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 29 Nov 16 - 10:42 PM

He did follow the Communist model of the Soviet Union as far as oppression and terror go. He stifled the human spirit by turning neighbour against neighbour and made Cubans prisoners in their own homes. Thousands died and many more rot in prisons, gulags modeled on those of his Soviet sponsors.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: akenaton
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 02:52 AM

Bobad, I don't know if what you are saying is accurate, but don't you accept that in some circumstances there can be too much freedom?

If a truly nationalised health or education system is too be created, something must be done to affect the power of private capital.

It is really a war between the two systems.....not the sham of left and right that we are presented with, but differing economic goals.

Personal financial aspiration is a wonderful driving force for capitalism, but a huge obstruction if the goal is in forming an equitable society.
Joe is right, corporate capitalism is a wrecking ball and the "freedom" it presents leads to the ultimate destruction of society.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Teribus
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 03:06 AM

True Cuba under Fidel Castro has followed the old Soviet Marxist-Leninist model closer than any other satellite communist state. During his time in power ~1,500,000 Cubans fled the country to escape the excesses of the regime he brought to power and presided over.

Some 11.39 million people live in Cuba which allows only one political party to campaign. In all communist countries and as described in Orwell's "Animal Farm", some animals are more equal than others, Communist Party Membership is the thing that makes a person more equal than his fellow citizens, their access to better services right across the board and to better job opportunities is guaranteed - the only thing is that membership is granted by birth or invitation only. The Communist Party in Cuba numbers 800,000 - 7% of the population.

Joe above states that "we need to discuss Fidel Castro. It's a pressing issue right now" - I would doubt very much if the average American citizen is even remotely interested in Fidel Castro or in Cuba. I think that right at this moment American citizens have got far more pressing fundamental and important domestic issues on their minds right now.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 04:03 AM

Three totally unqualified and basically inaccurate accounts of what has happened to Cuba since it lifted itself out of being "America's open sewer'
Cuba has been in a state of siege for half a century, under constant attack from an aggressively warlike neighbour with a record of invading, manipulating and illegally interfering with any State that threatens its own well-being - ALL ON RECORD
The President of Cuba has been subject to over 300 assasination attemps by the security forces of the U.S.
That is surely worth a mention - in the list of crimes the Cuban leadership is supposed to have committed - or maybe not!!
Those who have left Cuba can be summed up by their objectives - "to return Cuba back to it rightful owners and to dismantle the welfare, education and health system these "tyrants" have set up and get rid of the free-loaders"
Something else worth a mention - or maybe not!!
This garbage is straight out of the John Birch Society, Cold-War handbook
Him Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: akenaton
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 04:15 AM

Teribus, Orwell's world can exist in any political grouping, that's why I have cited him in my posts against "liberal" ideology
The "liberal" media and "liberal" political elite can be just as dangerous as any totalitarian regime.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 05:22 AM

Many of those who fled Cuba after the fall of Batista, were those who had accumulated wealth during the Batista regime. It would have been impossible for Castro to build a communist government and allow these people to retain their wealth. When they moved to Florida, the refugees formed a formidable right-wing political force. This has affected politics in Florida ever since.
It seems to me that the Cuban people have a genuine affection for Fidel. that being the case, I suspect that the Castro regime was far more effective than Americans thought it to be.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 05:29 AM

Teribus says Americans have no need to concern themselves with Castro. Maybe so, maybe not. I am afraid that Trump will try to take advantage of the death of Castro and will do something rash toward Cuba.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 05:31 AM

"I suspect that the Castro regime was far more effective than Americans thought it to be."
It is interesting to remember that the U.S. was the first nation to recognise Cuba after the revolution.
I remember being extremely influenced as a young man by a wonderful analysis of what had happened in a book entitled 'Listen Yankee', by American sociologist, C Wright Mills.
Hope to read it again if I can lay my hands on it
""liberal" ideology"
There goes you re-nvention of the English language again Ake
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 07:04 AM

Odd that Teribus should be trying to sideline Castro almost right out of history as far as America goes, being such an aficionado of history himself. Whatever you think of Castro, he is unarguably a giant political figure of the 20th century. When giant figures die, tradition dictates that there's a massive assessment/reassessment of their place in history. That is what's happening right now (and why it's right that there should be a thread - cheers, Joe). It can be a learning curve for those who relegated Castro to the backs of their minds once he'd lost influence after the collapse of the Soviet Union, even more so when he became old and unwell.

Joe is quite right in putting the flight of the rich from Cuba to Florida once Batista was gone into proper context. You have to wonder how some of the bitter expats and their descendants who form that right-wing political force in Florida came upon their family money. The bare stats don't tell the whole story, do they, Teribus?

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: akenaton
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 09:05 AM

By way of explanation to the politically challenged, yes I do mean you Jim....and your coterie :0)

Fidel Castro was a Socialist, he was never and never claimed to be a "liberal".   Maybe that illustrates your problems with language.

To effect meaningful change in society demands a good dose of "smeddum".......As Meg Menzies said in Lewis Grassic Gibbon's fine short story of the same name....."YE need smeddum, tae be richt coorse....or richt kind!"


Fidel Castro had Smeddum in cartloads    RIP.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Greg F.
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 11:17 AM

Trump will try to take advantage of the death of Castro and will do something rash toward Cuba.

Trump will do something rash toward everything he touches. End of story.
He will be the most loathed President the U.S. has ever had the misfortune to suffer under.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 11:24 AM

"Fidel Castro was a Socialist, he was never and never claimed to be a "liberal""
Who on earth said he did - certainly not me.
Castro and Guevara were national liberationists who were driven into the arms of Marxism by the behaviour of the US and the preparedness of The Soviet Union to offer them assistance
Call me 'politically challenged' when you have read up the subject
Castro kept the faith with Cuba despite the U.S.'s attempts to bring it down
For the record - the only Cuban Gulag is still operating in Guantanamo.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Teribus
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 11:51 AM

"I am afraid that Trump will try to take advantage of the death of Castro and will do something rash toward Cuba." - Joe Offer

One question: WHY?

I believe that the USA has problems enough of it's own.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Greg F.
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 12:10 PM

One question: WHY?

Perhaps because he's an loud-mouthed ignorant buffoon with a Cabinet of idiots and worse behind-the-scenes advisors??

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 12:23 PM

"Perhaps because he's an loud-mouthed ignorant buffoon "
Perhaps it's because Cuba has always remained a goal to be aspired to py progressive South American leaders who wished to get from under the U.S. thumb -
One of the reasons we are arguing against this garbage and why the U.S. put in so much effort into denigrating the Cuban leadership and making sure their policies were spancilled was their fear of the 'Domino effect'
THere are a hell of a lot of S.A. countries very near to the situation Cuba was in pre-Castro - that's why they made sure Guevara was murdered
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 12:30 PM

The proportion of people in prison in Cuba is far far fewer than in the United States. So of course is the rate of gun killings. The most recent execution in Cuba was in 2003, the most recent in the US was last week.

The thing is you can cherry pick statistics to prove Cuba is a far more civilised country than the USA, or the other way round.

Which country is the less free is open than question. Freedom is made up of all kinds of different aspects.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 12:56 PM

From Pope Francis "On receiving the sad news of the death of your dear brother, His Excellency Mister Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz, former president of the State Council and of the Government of the Republic of Cuba, I express my sentiments of sorrow to Your Excellency and other family members of the deceased dignitary, as well as to the people of this beloved nation. At the same time, I offer prayers to the Lord for his rest and I entrust the whole Cuban people to the maternal intercession of Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre, patroness of that country."

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 01:05 PM

"Freedom is made up of all kinds of different aspects."
It is, of course Dave
We have freedom of speech, but we have lass and less actual say in our lives.
We have freedom to choose our leaders, but we have no control over what they do when they are elected.
Our freedom of choice is very much governed by what access we have to information, which is largely controlled by a media which supports the status quo.
Our freedom to elect our leaders was shred by the people of pre-war Germany - not forgetting the electorate who put Trump into power
Mention a 'freeedom' and there is not an establishment on the planet who is not prepared to manipulate it for their own ends.
This is why I suggested that any 'ideal' government musty be subject to recall if they don't come uop with the goods
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: keberoxu
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 01:32 PM

This development summons childhood memories.

I was a child in elementary school when Castro and Kennedy faced each other. I'm not that old now; and a number of the then-adults who, when I was a child, could opine loud and long on the subject of Castro, are alive yet, still giving their opinions, and still registered to vote.

So, with respect, Teribus, this is partly a generational thing, as in older white males in the US. I guess you would like me to recall the choice of words with which we children were harangued, in the elementary-school classroom, about Fidel Castro? Too bad, it won't come from me. It is the emotion and the tone I recall better than the words. There remains, I repeat, a generation of elders (not me, an older generation) in the US who have waited all these years for Castro to die. And they will take their position on Castro, and Cuba, to their own graves.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 01:39 PM

Teribus asks why I fear that Trump will do something rash in Cuba. When U.S. Presidents have problems at home, they often shore up their popularity by sending troops overseas - and it works. The Bush war in Iraq is what got "W" elected to a second term.

The U.S. owned Cuba from 1898 to 1959. The Cuban-American community in South Florida has had amazing political strength for decades - and many of them want Cuba to be under American control again.

For over a century, at least until the end of the Reagan Administration, the U.S. did its best to control every government in the Americas - and remember that Republicans consider the Reagan years to be the Glory Days of the Republican Party. I think that a return to interventionism was a strong undertone in the rhetoric of the Trump campaign. "Making America Great Again" implies regaining control of ALL the Americas.

Make no mistake. The Republicans will again use the CIA to conquer the Americas in a heartbeat, given half an opportunity. Castro was respected as an international leader by most nations in the Americas, and his leadership played a very important part in stopping American interventionism.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 02:00 PM

I looked up the Spanish-American War in Wikipedia when I was writing my last post. I knew the war was in 1898, hadn't known it lasted only ten weeks. As a result, the U.S. won Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippine islands. Pretty rich booty, I'd say. I'm sure Trump would do it again, given half a chance. It would assure him election to a second term.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: meself
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 02:57 PM

Yikes. And here I thought that the one thing that could be said in Trump's favour is that he seems more isolationist than interventionist. I hope you're wrong, Joe!

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 03:02 PM

How's Trump going to get Mexico to pay for his Wall, meself? He'll revive interventionism, of course.

Next question: Who will Trump get to select the Wall-paper, Ivanka or Melania? He's also out to revive male chauvinism, so of course wallpaper selection will be an appropriate job for his ladies.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Greg F.
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 03:19 PM

wallpaper selection will be an appropriate job for his ladies.

Stand by for barefoot and pregnant.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: akenaton
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 04:22 PM

Joe, I think you are becoming too partisan. The history of the Democrats in office is no better....Kennedy, LBJ, even Obama in Libya and Iraq.

It is not a party issue and I think Mr Trump will be less interventionist in office.....Regulating immigration is a domestic matter, not foreign affairs. Mrs Clinton would have ushered in another decade of Cold War rhetoric and possibly a serious confrontation with Russia over Syria by attempting to set up a "no fly zone" which, just as it did in Libya, would signal the defeat of the official government.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 04:40 PM

Oh, I wouldn't give the Democrats a free pass, Ake. As I said, American interventionism in the Americas began in the late 1800s, before they even finished conquering the "lower 48." It continued through the Reagan Administration, but dwindled after that - partly due to Castro's opposition, I believe.

I do recall that there were a few Democrats elected President between 1850 and 1990 - and they were certainly involved in American interventionism in the Americas. Kennedy was particularly deep in it, but LBJ was distracted by Vietnam. Yes, there was American interventionism in other parts of the world, but not as solidly motivated by "manifest destiny" as it was in the Americas.

The Reagan Administration was the last American Presidency that was deeply involved in interfering with governments in the Americas. Remember El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Grenada? Those were only the tip of the iceberg. And the Republicans have canonized Reagan. Now that they have control of the Presidency and both houses of Congress, they yearn to go back to Reagan's glory days - "when the U.S. was respected," they say.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 04:47 PM

"Teribus asks why I fear that Trump will do something rash in Cuba. When U.S. Presidents have problems at home, they often shore up their popularity by sending troops overseas - and it works. The Bush war in Iraq is what got "W" elected to a second term."

Exactly. Thatcher got re-elected in 1983, despite the Tory administration being a total economic basket case, on the back of the Malvinas "war." She managed it again in '87 after beating the miners (and wrecking our manufacturing industry), but that's another story. Orwell foretold it well in "1984." A good strong government needs a constant enemy without. He wasn't being cynical back in 1948, was he. A scenario in which Trump is such an impending failure at home, which he's almost certain to be, driving him to irresponsible adventurism overseas, is hardly improbable, is it?

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 05:01 PM

The U.S. owned Cuba from 1898 to 1959.

Before Castro, Cuba was one of the richest of the 47 Caribbean and Latin American countries, with a Gross Domestic Product that tied with Guatemala's for sixth place. A half-century after the 1959 revolution, Cuba was the third poorest country in Latin America.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 05:05 PM

Would you care to give us your suggested reasons for that? As it's you, we don't expect you to employ the term "embargo" in your response.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Greg F.
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 05:17 PM

Reagan's glory days

Uh Hunh.

The triumph of dementia. Iran Contra. Cold, dead brains. Trickle-down bullshit.

Of course, the logical successor to a third-rate actor playing president would be tenth-rate a "reality[sic] TV" actor .

Now THERE'S something worth aspiring to.

(vide also "post-truth")

God Help America.

Heil Trump!

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 05:20 PM

The economic statistics come from Solidarity: "an independent socialist organization dedicated to forming a broad regrouping of the U.S. left."

This also from Solidarity: "Cuba and the United States have been economically isolated from each other but, despite the strenuous efforts of the U.S. government, Cuba has not been isolated from most of the rest of the globe. The main causes of Cuba's poverty must surely be domestic."

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Greg F.
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 05:23 PM

HEIL BUBO!

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 05:24 PM

(Gosh, Stevieboy, that wasn't very kind to one of our needy, was it?) So here's a spot of info for bobad about Cuba in the 1950s, the country he thinks was so wonderful before Castro in 1959. Of course, you don't HAVE to believe wiki.

Cuba had a one-crop economy (sugar cane) whose domestic market was constricted. Its population was characterized by chronic unemployment and deep poverty. United States monopolies like Bethlehem Steel Corporation and Speyer gained control over valuable national resources. The banks and the country's entire financial system, all electric power production and the majority of industry was dominated by US companies. US monopolies owned 25 percent of the best land in Cuba. More than 80 percent of farmland was owned by sugar and livestock-raising large landowners. 90 percent of the country's raw sugar and tobacco exports was exported to the US.

In the 1950s, most Cuban children were not in school. 87 percent of urban homes had electricity, but only 10 percent of rural homes did. Only 15 percent of rural homes had running water. Nearly half the rural population was illiterate as was about 25 percent of the total population. Poverty and unemployment in rural areas triggered migration to Havana despite high levels of crime and prostitution. More than 40 percent of the Cuban workforce in 1958 were either underemployed or unemployed. Schools for blacks and mulattoes were inferior to those for whites. Afro-Cubans had the worst living conditions and held the lowest paid jobs.

Yeah, great place to live, bobad. Bring back the Batistas!

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 05:34 PM

the country he thinks was so wonderful before Castro in 1959.

Yeah, great place to live, bobad. Bring back the Batistas!

Putting words in my mouth again eh Shaw, but that is what creeps like you do to demonize others isn't it? It won't work, we're on to you.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Greg F.
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 05:59 PM

Yeah, great place to live, bobad. Bring back the Batistas!

Well, let's not forget Machado, either- another exemplar of freedom and democracy.

And more slander/blather (blander/slather?) from Bubo- in the absence of substantive dialogue. No surprises there "trolling - its what he does" - see prior threads.

To reprise Tom Paxton, god love him and preserve him; we need him NOW !!

Gotta bomb Castro
Gotta bomb him flat
He's too damned successful
And we can't risk that
How do I know?
Read it in the Daily [Bubo] News

What's old is new again-

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 06:25 PM

As for the oft heard claim of a 99% literacy rate, those unfamiliar with the concept of state propaganda might wish to consider this list of states that make the same claim; Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 06:36 PM

Yep, Greg, Reagan's Glory Days. Think about that time and how Republicans talk about it. I thought it was the End of the World, but earnest Republicans thought it was the Second Coming of the Messiah - and they still do. And some of them talk about it in apocalyptic terms, which is why I use that language.
It stinks.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 06:38 PM

Bobad, I think all of us will admit to the problems of the Castro regime. But I think there's plenty of evidence to prove that Cuba's claimed successes in literacy and medical care, are true.

Take a look at the Wikipedia article on the Cuban Literacy Project, which began in 1961. I think it's something that just about any nation could do.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 06:42 PM

No surprises there "trolling - its what he does"

This is what passes for "substantive dialogue" from the likes of Greg, the master of substantive dialogue.......lol.

I note that whenever someone challenges the dearly held ideologies of some of our more ideologically driven posters with facts, the rebuttal always comes in the form of personal putdown or the charge of trolling. I love it because it tells us that they have no counter argument.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 06:47 PM

Hmmm. Methinks bobad and Greg_F are near-perfect mirrors of each other - almost caricatures of the extremes.

So, you two, don't talk about each other. Talk about the subject of discussion, or find yourselves suspended for a week.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 06:48 PM

Cuba's claimed successes

Well that's the kicker, ain't it Joe?

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 06:56 PM

Well, bobad, here's what you said. I'll just put your own words back in your own mouth if that's all right with you.

"Before Castro, Cuba was one of the richest of the 47 Caribbean and Latin American countries, with a Gross Domestic Product that tied with Guatemala's for sixth place."

Now, instead of spewing out your bile before you've engaged your brain, read the wiki extract I included in my last post. Tell me which bits lead you to think that Cuba was such an amazing place for the ordinary people of Cuba before Castro. Oh yes, the pimps and the spivs and the exploitative yank corporations had it good, I won't deny. You are aligning yourself with them. Personally, I'd rather not.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 07:09 PM

Tell me which bits lead you to think that Cuba was such an amazing place for the ordinary people of Cuba before Castro

Again putting words in my mouth. I put up some hard economic facts, make of them what you will but don't try to demonize me by inferring what I make of them.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Nov 16 - 11:48 PM

So you are not saying that Cuba under Batista was not a much better place than under Castro, bodad? It is rather hard to understand your words in any other way.

"Gross Domestic Product" is an extremely unreliable and controversial measure of how a society is functioning. For example it typically includes the illegal drug industry and prostitution.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 12:13 AM

Bobad - I think you're correct that Cuba had a very strong economy during the Batista regime. It's just that the economy was owned by U.S. corporations, who took all the profits back to the U.S.
Yes, there was a wealthy middle class of Cubans who fled after Castro took over - they followed their employers to the U.S.
According to this article (click) the claims of U.S. corporations against Cuba remain unsettled. The were valued at $1.9 billion when they were certified in the 1960s.
And another article from the Boston Globe.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 05:15 AM

PRE-REVOLUTIONARY CUBA
LAND REFORM
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 05:15 AM

Long after the revolution, large numbers of Cubans, at great risk, sought to leave.
Remember the Camarioca boatlift and airlift, and the Mariel boatlift.

Such desperation was not seen in other Caribbean states.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 06:09 AM

"Such desperation was not seen in other Caribbean states.
Not many Carribean states whose president has undergone 330 plus assassination attempts and whose country has lived under a half-century long embargo.
Some people are bound to crack under such strain
PROPAGANDA
PROPAGANDA

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 06:14 AM

PERMANENT THREATS
ZUN ZUNEO
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 08:16 AM

Cuban boat people have been given a very different reception by the USA from that given to those from other places, notably Haiti. Haitians get treated as economic migrants, and are liable to be deported back to Haiti. Cubans have a much better chance of being defined as political refugees and allowed to stay.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 08:58 AM

So you are not saying that Cuba under Batista was not a much better place than under Castro, bodad?

Absolutely, I am simply presenting the other side of a dictatorship which I refuse to romanticize. Cuba is basically East Germany with palm trees and I don't think too many people romanticize East Germany so why Cuba? I don't romanticize dictators who rule by decree and kill or imprison dissidents and put homosexuals into labour camps. YMMV.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Greg F.
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 11:18 AM

Yep, Greg, Reagan's Glory Days. Think about that time and how Republicans talk about it.

Yep, delusional clowns, Joe, every last one of 'em; no facts need apply. The warm-up act for Trump.

Think about it? Rather not, likely to bring on an episode clinical depression. But them "Glory Days" ain't gonna hold a candle to the obscene garbage of the next four years.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Greg F.
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 11:20 AM

... who rule by decree and kill or imprison dissidents

Rather like Trump and flag burners?

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: robomatic
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 11:30 AM

I'm amazed that purported health care and literacy rates are isolated and used to justify the 50 year reign of a demagogue.

Next comes the argument that North Korea has done the same and the deprivations of its chunky hairball of a dictator are worth the brutalization, starvation, and subjugation of its population.

And Zimbabwe has done such a lot to liberate the land from white-held ownership. Leading to the long reign of another freedom-fighter/ demagogue.

All those regimes and more are built on one of the most reprehensible of human traits, the personality cult.

I visited the Soviet Union and noticed that as far as I could tell, every citizen's teeth were looked after. They had nice stainless teeth instead of gaps. It didn't occur to me at the time to wonder how many of those teeth had been knocked out first.

This hagiography of dictators overlooks that the people of said countries are looked after like cattle. They have been medicated and organized for the good of the herd, and the herder. Those who could not be better or act better are in mass graves or the bellies of their owners.

This applies equally to fascists and communists. The extreme right and left wings meet behind the founders' backs and shake hands.

The Tsars and their Orthodox priests kept the Russian people in a state of peasantry for centuries. What freedom lover could be against bringing them down? Who could have foreseen Stalin, mass starvation by the government, and the show trials?

Having seen them, who could support Communism as a road to human progress.

The hardest and best thing to be is a rationalist who can speak to power no matter what color it wears. There was a good line in the BBC's "I Claudius" series about the importance of mankind not losing its sense of smell.

Castro smelled long before he assumed room temperature.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 12:14 PM

"purported health care and literacy rates"
Accepted facts throughout the world, not 'purported'
Cuba has done this despite taking over an open sewer and cleaning it up and having an extremely aggressive neighbour who has imposed a half-century long blockade, carried out a terrorist campaign against the President with a view to overthrowing him and furnishing an armed invasion which turned into a debacle.
One of the first acts was to distribute the land that had been shared by a tiny handful of families and (over half) by American companies - for the first time, many thousands of Cuban families worked their own lands
Despite the efforts of the U.S. to starve the Cubans into submission, the Government distributed what wealth there was so nobody starved.
Cuba remains on a Cold War footage to the present day - no government in the world could operate openly given that situation.
Your claims of "terrorism" totally ignore the facts of how Castro was regarded - there was no sign of popular revolt throughout Castro's lifetime and his death has no been greeted by rejoicing - rather - he is being mourned, in contrast to the celebrations among those who did a runner to the U.S.
The only Gulag in Cuba at present is at Guantanamo, where the neighbour from hell continues to hold uncharged and untried prisoners in inhuman conditions.
The same neighbor has been found to be using torture on similar prisoners elsewhere and has a past reputation of massacring Third World peasants using burning petrol and carcinogenic chemical sprays - not that's what I call demagogy and terrorist despotism - don't you - or does the U.S. have a dispensation from The Pope??
Answers on a postcard please - I don't think!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 01:00 PM


Cuban boat people have been given a very different reception by the USA from that given to those from other places

But why did so many want to escape?

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Greg F.
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 01:07 PM

But why did so many want to escape?

Why are people all over the face of the globe flocking to ISIS, Profssor?

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 01:20 PM

Yes, there was a wealthy middle class of Cubans who fled after Castro took over - they followed their employers to the U.S.

And who could blame them. My wife's own mother and her sisters were orphaned as babies because their parents were murdered by the Bolsheviks for the crime of being the owners of a gristmill. Those who fled Cuba learned well the lessons of history when it came to Communists seizing power by revolution.

Here's what a UNESCO report from 1957 said: "One feature of the Cuban social structure is a large middle class. Cuban workers are more unionized (proportional to the population) than U.S. workers....the average wage for an 8-hour day in Cuba 1957 is higher than for workers in Belgium, Denmark, France and Germany. Cuban labor receives 66.6 per cent of gross national income. In the U.S. the figure is 68 per cent. 44 per cent of Cubans were covered by Social legislation, that's a higher percentage than in the U.S. at the time."

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 01:20 PM

Access to good free health care is about the most important freedom there is.

How much did the freedom to vote really add up to when it came down to a choice between Trump and Clinton? With the winner being the one who got two million fewer votes.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 01:24 PM

"But why did so many want to escape?
Because of the propaganda which offered a better life and the fact that the US had imposed a state of Siege lasting fifty years.
Isn't it far more revealing to ask who so many chose to stay - there is no record of massive attempts to either escape or revolt?
Why do so many people emigrate - to get a better life - that's why
America has made sure that Cuba would never be able to provide that and the "free" world stood by and either participated in the blockade or turned a blind eye to what America was doing to an already impoverished (under U.S. influence) Latin American Country for political gain
Surely all this is self-evident?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Greg F.
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 01:36 PM

Well, Bubo, then there's those Batista tocheslekkers and their fellow travellers who fled Cuba learned well the lessons of history when it came to colonialism and corruption and organized crime and skedaddled before the chickens came home to roost.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 01:51 PM

......corruption and organized crime and skedaddled before the chickens came home to roost.

Only to be replaced by another organized gang of thieves. A decade ago, Forbes estimated Fidel Castro's personal net worth at $900 million. That's a lot of socialist rationing for one person.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: robomatic
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 02:09 PM

"Your claims of "terrorism" totally ignore the facts of how Castro was regarded - there was no sign of popular revolt throughout Castro's lifetime and his death has no been greeted by rejoicing - rather - he is being mourned, in contrast to the celebrations among those who did a runner to the U.S."

I did not use the word terrorism despite your "quote".

How Castro was regarded: You make my point for me when you remark that those still in Cuba, in bondage, are constrained to a mourning attitude while those in freedom are free to rejoice.

Remember that after Stalin died, no one celebrated. The miasma of fear surrounding the Soviet Government included that government. There is a reason why Communism has been regarded as "The God That Failed" or why a book on Communist Show Trials was titled as: "Darkness at Noon."

The death of Hugo Chavez, who beggared his country of Venezuela has not resulted in freedom, his party still has a stranglehold on his country. He is still a 'hero'. Venezuela is poorer than ever.

"I'm doing this for the little crippled boy . . . that I crippled!"
-Homer Simpson

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 02:43 PM

there was no sign of popular revolt throughout Castro's lifetime

Of course not, an example was made early on of what happens to those who oppose the regime.

The Archive Project can be likened to the 1999 "Black Book of Communism," which documented the world-wide cost of communism, noting that "wherever the millenarian ideology of Communism was established it quickly led to crime, terror and repression." The Castro methodology, Cuba Archive finds, was much like that used in Poland and East Germany, less lethal than Stalin's purges, but equally effective in suppressing opposition.

In the earliest days of the revolution, summary executions established a culture of fear that quickly eliminated most resistance. In the decades that followed, inhumane prison conditions often leading to death, unspeakable torture and privation were enough to keep Cubans cowed.

Counting Castro's Victims


his death has no been greeted by rejoicing - rather - he is being mourned

He is being mourned by government decree and Cubans know well enough by now the consequences of disobeying official government decrees.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 03:28 PM

"Of course not, an example was made early on of what happens to those who oppose the regime."
So the coasts, beaches and roads were over-rum with armed guards keeping dissidents in order
If you claim that to be the case - prove it.
"Archive project"
You put up a site based in Washington run by a group of untraceable people as evidence to counteract the facts you have been given
Give us a break!!
Annswer the points I have made rather than linking us to a propaganda site based in the Capital of a country that has been persecuting Cuba for fifty years.
"He is being mourned by government decree "
Hat is not how it is being reported on your televisions
This is straight out of the 1960 Cold War
You have the situation as documented - disprove it with facts not American propaganda
Which of the faxcts I have outlined are untrue - if they are - prove they are.
The facts man- the facts, both of you - I've linked you to plenty - where are yours
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 04:30 PM

Bobad says: Cuba is basically East Germany with palm trees and I don't think too many people romanticize East Germany so why Cuba?

I think that's a pretty good comparison, Bobad. I spent two years studying East Germany in the 1970s as an intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army, and I have studied Communist governments for personal interest ever since. I don't think anyone here romanticizes Communist nations, but the reality is nowhere near as bad as anti-Communist propaganda seeks to convince us. Life in East Germany in the 1970s, was not awful. Most people told jokes and loved their families and went on picnics and rode bicycles, and had a reasonably good quality of life. Communist Party officials were not evil people, and they had a concern for the welfare of citizens of their nation. Life was about as regimented as my life in the U.S. Army was at the time. Life in East Germany wasn't any worse than the lives of most people in the U.S. and Europe at the time. Yes, it was tough on those who wanted to fight against the government. Yes, there were human rights abuses against dissenters.

Go to Standing Rock and see what's done to dissenters in the U.S. THEN let's see who's romanticizing.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 04:42 PM

I'm not actually seeing anyone romanticising Cuba here.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Greg F.
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 05:09 PM

Well,Bubo, if Cuba 1957 was such a capitalist pardise, and the people there were all living la vida bueña, how is it that Castro & his program had any traction with the populace (aside from the Batista gangsters, that is?)

Or are you suggesting that they were all as ignorant and stupid as the current crop of Trumpistas?

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: robomatic
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 05:24 PM

Life in East Germany in the 1970s, was not awful.

Life in a paddock is not awful, unless and until. . .

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: akenaton
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 05:31 PM

I've always held the view that if we adopt a Socialist(as opposed to a "liberal" Capitalist system), we will all be worse off financially than we are now.
That does not take into account that Western Capitalism is in decline and even if we retain the status quo we will certainly get much poorer, without the positives of proper nationalised services.

Furthermore, the two options above are not really options at all, as we are being systematically deserted by Capitalism...All investment is moving to the East, that was always the purpose of globalisation. The corporate Capitalists realised long ago that the Western "liberal" democracies were no longer able to compete ...and acted accordingly

I feel very sorry for our young people, whom I see stacking shelves and collecting shopping trolley's most of them quite well educated and intelligent, but bereft of any sort of future.

Socialism could provide that future though it would not provide many millionaires....but the right would always cry about personal freedom and the useful idiots of the "liberal" left would cry Fascism and minority rights.   

Meanwhile the shelves will be stacked while the food is available and the rumble of the trolley wheels will be a requiem for a lost generation.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 05:59 PM

A question
If america or Britain had been blockaded for half a century and if there had been 365 attempts on the President and the Pime Minieterss lives - how "free would these countries have been?
Can't be to difficult to answer
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 06:17 PM

This from Solidarity: "an independent socialist organization dedicated to forming a broad regrouping of the U.S. left.": "Cuba and the United States have been economically isolated from each other but, despite the strenuous efforts of the U.S. government, Cuba has not been isolated from most of the rest of the globe. The main causes of Cuba's poverty must surely be domestic."

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Greg F.
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 06:33 PM

Rave on, Bubo - now what about

01 Dec 16 - 05:09 PM

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: robomatic
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 06:44 PM

We know Cuba wasn't isolated from the Soviets, they were the ones who paid for Castro's vaunted programs. Castro may have cheered members of this forum by his cocking a snook at the U.S. but he toadied to the USSR right enough. And then the Soviets fell, which kind of makes it hard to argue that the only thing to ruin Castro's big idea was his ill mannered neighbor to the north.

P.S. Didn't Canada trade with Cuba? I thought Havana cigars were available there, tho I could be wrongo.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 07:15 PM

Well Joe, I had family living under Communism in Eastern Europe and, of course they "told jokes and loved their families and went on picnics and rode bicycles, and had a reasonably good quality of life." I think they might have taken issue with your "reasonably good quality of life" though. The most common themes we invariably heard from them were fear and scarcity.

The fear was of being turned in to the authorities for being overheard saying something negative about the regime which would get you labelled as a dissident and possibly disappeared into the gulags. This had the population living under a constant cloud of suspicion of their friends, neighbours and even family members as no one knew who might be an informant. An interesting outgrowth of the oppression was the development of a vocabulary of euphemisms, often quite creative and comical, used when discussing politics amongst friends.

The lineups and empty store shelves of food, toiletries and other items of daily living have been well documented. This naturally gave way to a black market economy and created a class divide between those with "connections" and those without. Those without were often exploited by those with just to have access to common everyday items like laundry soap or flour.

So like you say Joe they "told jokes and loved their families and went on picnics and rode bicycles" mostly to maintain a semblance of normality while awaiting the end of Communism which they hoped and prayed for every day.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 07:15 PM

Ake says: I've always held the view that if we adopt a Socialist(as opposed to a "liberal" Capitalist system), we will all be worse off financially than we are now.

Capitalism and socialism are both logical, comprehensive economic systems. Either one will work pretty well, and neither is inherently better or worse. But both must be tempered by community spirit and a concern for the common good - one might call it patriotism. At least, that's what I think patriotism ought to be.

But if socialism or capitalism are overwhelmed by selfishness, neither one with work very well. Trust and generosity are essential for a workable society.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: akenaton
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 07:36 PM

Capitalism, especially Capitalism in decline, has no redeeming features.

All nods to patriotism, granting of minority rights, limited personal freedom(at a price), are a sham to hide the dirty face of financial aspiration.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 07:41 PM

I dunno, ake. I guess it's impossible for me to take such a negative view of human nature. Yes, when society gets complex, society's systems begin to fail - that happens under every economic and political system. But that presents a challenge for somebody to meet. People meet those challenges on a small scale every day. The "tipping point" to bring about substantial change, is often not all that great.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 07:48 PM

People should be aware that that quote by bobad from Solidarity gives a very misleading picture of the nature of that website.

Apart from which it's a very misleading quote so far as the facts go. The US did not restrict its efforts to hit the Cuban economy and the Cuban people to embargoing trade between the two countries. It strenuously attempted to force other countries to do the same. It was only in 2008 that the EU ended years of sanctions against Cuba, and US afiliated companies in all countries have consistently been compelled to be part of the embargo, both directly and indirectly.

And now it seems very much on the cards that the partial easing of the embargo in recent years will be put into reverse. Indeed there is a real posssibility of direct efforts by the new US administration to bring to an end Cuba's intransigence, and to impose a client regime.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Greg F.
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 08:14 PM

that quote by bobad from Solidarity gives a very misleading picture of the nature of that website.

Bubo? Misleading??? Heaven forfend!!! Whooda thunkit!!

---

Be nice, Greggie... -Joe O-

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 08:21 PM

"Capitalism and socialism are both logical, comprehensive economic systems."
Capitalism (Capital) has nothing to do with community or people - it is based entirely on economy - the power ranks of society survive from "the leavingss from the rich man's table" -as the Bible puts it.
Socialism iws what it says it is - a philosophy in which wealth is distributed for the benefit of the whole community - it is a philosophy rather than an economic system.
Bobad - your description is a caricature dreamed up in Cold War times and bears no relation to what happens - certainly in the half dozen I spent time in
I was in Russia in 1964 - 47 years after the Revolution.
Since that time it had overcome the results of World War One, had fought a civil War in which 14 Countries had intervened, has survived the German invasion of World War Two in which they lost 20 million people and in which two of their Major Cities, Moscow and Lenigrad had suffered devastating destructive sieges and had survived the ravages of Stalinism.
In that period, they had developed from being a series of semi Feudal states into a wealthy world power, challenging the world both economically and scientifically.
One of the trips we were invited on by friends we made was to the concentration camp where Jews, Communists, Trades Unionists and Gypsies were gassed to death - by Capitalis Nazi Germany
The idea that any Government could possibly suppress and terrorise such a people who had suffered so much - largely at the hands of right-wing capitalism, it utter nonsense.
The people we met still referred to the war as "the Great Patriotic War".
Sure - there was poverty, but none of the grinding and degrading poverty you can find in the Appalachians.
What has it gained since getting its freedom - PUTIN.
The elderly people we visited in the Arbat in Moscow were all evicted when "freedom" came - to make room for luxury homes for the new rich.
I was in Prague on the day the Czech border was opened after the Russian invasion.
The students there found us somewhere to stay and we went with them each night to argue with the Russian troops still billeted in the Park
The Students were not demanding the end of communist rule but an acceleration of it under Dubcék
I have thought about going back, but I have deliberately not done so since a workmate told me of how he was crossing Wenceslas Square when he was approached by of a girl of about twelve who put her hand in his pocket, started playing with his prick and asked him for money - free Czechoslovakia
Four of us drove across Yugoslavia and spent time in Belgrade and eventually in the countryside - no great difference to Czechoslovakia and Russia - both recovering from a devastating war, with a growing economy and a relatively happy people
What dide "freedom" bring - a horrific genocidal war between people Tito had kept apart throughout the time of his rule.
Hungary - a beutiful city full of warm friendly people - Bulgaia the same.
Today's Hungart=y has a Fascist Prime Minister.....
You people are characters from spy fiction or comic books - s.f.a. to do with real life.
"they were the ones who paid for Castro's vaunted programs. "
The Soviet Union bought part of the sugar crop which barely helped the people stay alive, far from paying for programmes
Cuba needed to industrialise - The United States ascertained that it did not.
You are as much of a caricature as your trollish mate.
I never went to Cuba - I ahd planned to go, but cancelled when my father died.
Four of The Critics Group went - your description of what Cubal was like, is a joke - an American Dream for the gullible.
The "vaunted programmes" you disparage were to feed the Cuban people who were driven into poverty by the U.S. blockade
Isdn'tr it strange how none of you people ever mention the State Cuba was in under the influence of the U.S., the attempts to starve the people into submission, the hundreds of attempts on the pesident, th Pig's ear invasion at the aptly named Bay of Pigs and the ongoing attempts to interfere in another nation's freedoms - it's as if it never happened - or didn't happen - any takers on that one lads??
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 09:10 PM

My, my, Jim. That sounds so ideological. Now, see if you can make sense out of what I have to say. IF capitalism is tempered by concern for the common good, it can work pretty well.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 01 Dec 16 - 09:23 PM

Is bobad really so delicate as to need you to defend him against a pretty anodyne post by the standards of this forum, Joe? Just thinking of the times you haven't defended ME against him when he calls me a Jew-hater...

Or maybe you just know that I don't want you to...

---

No, it's a matter of keeping the peace at Mudcat. Petty personal attacks are repulsive to all but a very few. We lose customers when we let the Usual Suspects take over with their tedious pettiness. I have no reason or desire to take sides in their squabbles. They're both wrong.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 04:14 AM

"IF capitalism is tempered by concern for the common good, it can work pretty well.
-Joe-"
I have little doubt that many of the people who founded Capitalism - the people who put into motion the Industrial Revolution - had the common good in mind.
Capitalism has moved away from that, has abandoned any pretence of operating for people as a whole, and is now dedicated to betting the lot of the very wealthy
Most of the things working people fought for over the centuries to better their lot have now gone - the right to work, the right to have a degree of security of employment, a voice in the workplace, social housing, a reasonably comfortable standard of living after retirement... all gone or going, despite the fact that technology has put it all within our grasp.
The only thing that remains is our (Britain's) health service, which is constantly under threat, and even staying healthy has become divided on a class basis again, as it was before the war,
Society is moving backward as technology advances - we have become victims of progress rather than beneficiaries.
The Communist Dream failed - for a whole bunch of reasons, internal as well as external, but the people of extremely poor and repressed countries like Cuba benefited from a watered-down version of it.
Bobad and the like point to Stalin as an example of Communism - he wasn't - he was an extreme example of what was going wrong and his victims were just as much of the left as they were of the right.
Stalin's greatest opponent was a socialist dreamer who ended up with an ice-pick buried in his head in Mexico - these people of the right conveniently forget that when they are defending their own deformed and decayinbg system.
They also forget that the Right had their own version of Stalin -in Nazi Germany - a product of German Industrial Capitalism seeking to expand.
But as they say here "don't mention the war"
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 05:14 AM

Hope to see more of you, then, Joe!

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 05:29 AM

Life in East Germany was not awful, but a wall such as Trump could only dream of had to be built to stop them escaping, and many were killed trying.

Access to good free health care is about the most important freedom there is.

I value it above most things my country has to offer, but few countries provide it.

It was not enough to stop large numbers of Cubans seeking to escape.

US did not trade with Cuba, but neither did it blockade it.
It had another super power supporting it and free trade with most of the world.
But still they sought to escape.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 05:56 AM

"but a wall such as Trump could only dream of had to be built to stop them escaping, and many were killed trying."
A similar wall now exists in Israel - is that to keep people in or out?
East Germany was a poor country that never really got over the war.
It was also on the borders of the "Free West" and highly susceptible to foreign interference.
I want through that wall without difficulty - on a train - it was no different and probably a damn sight easier that if I wanted to fly from Shannon to America - I've never seen such security in my life - and up to fairly recently, so many American soldiers - some of them guarding untried suspects on their way to such health centres as Guantanamo.
These walls have two sides Keith
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 08:09 AM

A similar wall now exists in Israel - is that to keep people in or out?

What took you so long? Can't keep your obsession in check for too long, can you.

The world knows the purpose of the wall, it is to keep the West Bank Arabs from killing Jews. It has saved countless lives on both sides yet people like you try to twist it's purpose in order to demonize Israel. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Teribus
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 09:01 AM

"Most of the things working people fought for over the centuries to better their lot have now gone"

Gone? Where? How? When?

" - the right to work,"

Where is this "right" laid down? When was it ever defined? As far as I know there is nothing stopping people from working, never has been. To get a job you prepare yourself and make yourself as "marketable" and attractive to potential employers as possible.

"the right to have a degree of security of employment"

Where is this "right" laid down? When was it ever defined? It is not a right it is an aspiration.

a voice in the workplace

Where is this "right" laid down? When was it ever defined? Again not a right at all, it makes sense as long as all concerned act responsibly and remember that it is the Company that provides the jobs and the wages and that if anything is done to make the company non-competitive then that security of employment goes straight out of the window.

"social housing"

Tell us about the centuries of social housing Jim, according to the History of Social Housing in the UK does not pre-date 1919.

"a reasonably comfortable standard of living after retirement..."

An aspiration not a right and one that has to be prepared by the individual. In this cloud-cuckoo land of yours Jim, who is it that gets to decide and define what constitutes "a reasonably comfortable standard of living"?

Fidel Castro headed up a regime that was hard "Marxist-Leninist", there was nothing watered down about it, it did however have to make certain accommodations during the Gorbachev era up until the collapse of the USSR. Cuba is now "adjusting" to accommodate what suits those who run the People's Republic of China (Their latest sponsor). Cuba and Castro hoped Hugo Chavez's Venezuela would help bail them out, but Chavez and now Maduro have made such a mess of Venezuela that they can be of no help at all in propping up Castro's Cuba.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 09:23 AM

"Where is this "right" laid down? "
Never laid down but the right to work came with jobs - all gone, no more tomorrow - destruction of home industries put paid to them.
Now, you clowns have probably closed the door to Europeans thanks to your little Englanderism - so anybody can no longer throw thair legs over Norman'Tebbitt's bike
"Where is this "right" laid down?"
It was fought for then destroyed by Maggie's fascism - prior to Trades Unionism it was illegal to combine - that was what was fought for - freedom to join a Union that could make a difference.
Your 'Coloud Cuckoo' land description underlines the uncaring predatory nature of your politics - thank ylou for saving me the trouble of having to describe it myself.
"Fidel Castro headed up a regime that was hard "Marxist-Leninist""
One more time - no he wasn't - he and Guevara were Natiopnal Liberationists who sought haelp from the Soviet Union in defence of the destructive behaviour of the U.S. towards the new regime - go buy a book if you can't work it out for yourself - and please lay off the John Birch/Joe McCarthy clichés - they are nor even amunsing any more, and certainly lacking in imagination.
The rest is made-up-on-the-spot garbage, as is your wont.
"The world knows the purpose of the wall, it is to keep the West Bank Arabs from killing Jews."
No it isn't - it is there to ethnically cleanse Arabs in order to make a monotheistic State
How does cutting off farmers from their means of livelihood prevent the killing of Jews?
TThe only thing that will prevent that is to stop stealing land and killing Arabs.
Conversation over - it has no place here - one of your own fanatics (Keith) raised the question of a Wall in the first place - (or perhaps ytyou think that certain walls should have a wall built around them so they cannot be discussed)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 10:48 AM

The only thing that will prevent that is to stop stealing land

Lol......you can't steal something that belongs to you in the first place......try again.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: beardedbruce
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 11:00 AM

Sorry, Jimmie boyo,

the wall is there to PREVENT the effort by Palestinians to "ethnically cleanse Jews in order to make a monotheistic State "


Take a look at Jewish populations in Arab countries 1940 to present- almost none left

Look at Arab population in Israel- far greater than in 1940.



You really need to look at the world, and not the inside of your colon.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: beardedbruce
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 11:02 AM

Hell's Bells Jimmie,

look at the ARAB Christian population that was ethnically cleaned out between 1948 and 1967, in addition to the Jews.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 11:23 AM

"the wall is there to PREVENT the effort by Palestinians to "ethnically cleanse Jews in order to make a monotheistic State ""
Yeah - sure it is
We'll ignore the massacres, the ethnic cleansing, the destruction of homes hospitals and schools, Apartheid Israel, the ethnic cleansing, the burning to death of children followed by celebrating having done it - and the chemical weapons - and all the other crimes committed by the Israeli regime and blamed on the Jews.
And we'll certainly forget the rapidly shrinking MAPS of Arab territory
C'mon my little anonymous Troll - none of this has any place in a discussion on Castro.
Now - let me guess your position on that one - wonder if the Bookies is till open)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 11:34 AM

And we'll certainly forget the rapidly shrinking MAPS of Arab territory

Totally fake, designed to appeal to um.....let's just say..... people like you.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 11:52 AM

East Germany was a poor country that never really got over the war.

East and West Germany had the same start.

It was also on the borders of the "Free West" and highly susceptible to foreign interference.

As you say, you had no trouble getting in. The wall was to keep the Germans, Poles, Hungarians and Czecks in. Nothing to do with "foreign interference!"

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: beardedbruce
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 11:57 AM

Jimmie boyo,

Ever looked at the Hamas Charter?

"The Hamas credo is not just anti-Israel, but profoundly anti-Semitic with racism at its core. The Hamas Charter reads like a modern-day 'Mein Kampf.'" According to the charter, Jewish people "have only negative traits and are presented as planning to take over the world."[27] The charter claims that the Jews deserve God's/Allah's enmity and wrath because they received the Scriptures but violated its sacred texts, disbelieved the signs of Allah, and slew their own prophets.[28] It quotes a saying of Muhammad from a hadith: "The Day of Judgment will not come until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say, 'O Muslim, O servant of God, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.' Only the Gharkad tree would not do that, because it is one of the trees of the Jews." (Related by al-Bukhari and Muslim.)[29]

The charter goes further in detailing how Jihad against the Jews is a duty. "The day that enemies usurp part of Moslem land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Moslem. In face of the Jews' usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised. To do this requires the diffusion of Islamic consciousness among the masses, both on the regional, Arab and Islamic levels. It is necessary to instill the spirit of Jihad in the heart of the nation so that they would confront the enemies and join the ranks of the fighters."[30]

The charter contains references to anti-Semitic canards, such as the assertion that through shrewd manipulation of imperial countries and secret societies, Jews were behind a wide range of events and disasters going as far back in history as the French Revolution. The document also quotes Islamic religious texts to provide justification for fighting against and killing the Jews, without distinction of whether they are in Israel or elsewhere.[31] It presents the Arab-Israeli conflict as an inherently irreconcilable struggle between Jews and Muslims, and Judaism and Islam, adding that the only way to engage in this struggle between "truth and falsehood" is through Islam and by means of jihad, until victory or martyrdom."


YOU have stated most of this in your posts- nice to know you have such a ... "high-valued" source for your anti- Semitism

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: beardedbruce
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 11:58 AM

btw, 100

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 12:07 PM

"East and West Germany had the same start."
It most certainly did not
West Germany received loans from the allies of $1.45 billion - (the equivalent of 14.5 billion in 2006)
The East decided to nationalise industry for the benefit of the entire population and received no help at all - the Soviet Union was in no position to bale them out given the wartime damage and number of casualties there.
"As you say, you had no trouble getting in"
East Germany was one of the most spied on countries in the East - by the time we got there the Wall had made a difference and access had become easier.
"The wall was to keep the Germans, Poles, Hungarians and Czecks in."
Don't be **** insane - a shor wall to keep in a half a continent - "the Socialist sixth of the World"
You really do live in La-La land, don't you?
Barmy - you couldn't make you people up!!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Greg F.
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 12:09 PM

Are cow farts anti-semitic by definition?

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: robomatic
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 12:20 PM

Since none of my points have been addressed in a straightforward manner:

Cult of Personality
Inability of Cuba to pay for the programs so admired by some of Castro's admirers
Tendency of Castro to do the Soviet Union's bidding while for some reason his defiance of the U.S. is supposed to be salutory.
Strong tendency of Communist regimes to repress their populations' human freedoms while ruining their economies (Cuba, Venezuela, Korea, Soviet Union, et.al.)
Notion that having your health care looked after is a great notion, (especially if you are cattle).
Reminder of a quote from the previous Castro thread that got ended for the same insult-ridden drift that is occurring in this thread: "Both Communism and Capitalism give you a kick in the pants, but in the Communist system they make you applaud while in the Capitalist system they allow you to scream."

I'm going to throw in another riposte to the notion that somehow Castro's Communists and Communism in general are a source of moral order. I got to visit the Soviet Union and there were prostitutes there as well. There was racism there as well. The totalitarian nature of the order was to suppress not the fact, but the acknowledgment of the fact.

One of the posters has started to go ad hominem on me which is where I declare victory and move on.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 12:28 PM

"The Hamas credo is not just anti-Israel, but profoundly anti-Semitic with racism at its core. "
they have taken their cue from the Israelis who insist that all their actions are the responsibility of the Jewish people - how antisemitic can you get?
Whatever any charter might threaten, go count who actually does the most killings, destroys the most hospitals and schools, carries out the most invasions is responsible for the most civilian deaths - mainly women and children and who has usurped the most land.
And who worlds the world record for facilitating the largest single massacre of unarmed refugees?
Not on paper but in actual fact.
Hamas is an ill-armed, badly trained tinpot defence against Nuclear facilitated Israeli State Terrorism - if the Israelis say it's all the Jews fault, who are Hamas to argue?
Israel has paintred a target on every Jew on the planet in order to keep itself from facing crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 12:36 PM

All answered - a cold war load of bollocks that has nothing to do with what has happened
It doesn't mention half-century blockades, assassination attempts on presidents and foreign invasions
Nor does it mention the sewer level country Cuba was driven to before Bastista got the boot
Selective friggin' nonsense.
Racism's a new one on me - that came when Communism fell.
What answer do to want Robo?

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: beardedbruce
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 01:11 PM

Jimmie boyo,

"And who worlds the world record for facilitating the largest single massacre of unarmed refugees?"

Unless you actually LOOK at the world- Try

Cambodia
Rwanda
Jordan
Syria


Just since 1967...

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: beardedbruce
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 01:16 PM

In case you care (which I doubt)


Not including recent conflicts like Syria.

    Conflicts since 1950 with over 10,000 Fatalities (all figures rounded)*
    1         40,000,000         Red China, 1949-76 (outright killing, manmade famine, Gulag)
    2         10,000,000         Soviet Bloc: late Stalinism, 1950-53; post-Stalinism, to 1987 (mostly Gulag)
    3         4,000,000         Ethiopia, 1962-92: Communists, artificial hunger, genocides
    4         3,800,000         Zaire (Congo-Kinshasa): 1967-68; 1977-78; 1992-95; 1998-present
    5         2,800,000         Korean war, 1950-53
    6         1,900,000         Sudan, 1955-72; 1983-2006 (civil wars, genocides)
    7         1,870,000         Cambodia: Khmer Rouge 1975-79; civil war 1978-91
    8         1,800,000         Vietnam War, 1954-75
    9         1,800,000         Afghanistan: Soviet and internecine killings, Taliban 1980-2001
    10         1,250,000         West Pakistan massacres in East Pakistan (Bangladesh 1971)
    11         1,100,000         Nigeria, 1966-79 (Biafra); 1993-present
    12         1,100,000         Mozambique, 1964-70 (30,000) + after retreat of Portugal 1976-92
    13         1,000,000         Iran-Iraq-War, 1980-88
    14         900,000         Rwanda genocide, 1994
    15         875,000         Algeria: against France 1954-62 (675,000); between Islamists and the government 1991-2006 (200,000)
    16         850,000         Uganda, 1971-79; 1981-85; 1994-present
    17         650,000         Indonesia: Marxists 1965-66 (450,000); East Timor, Papua, Aceh etc, 1969-present (200,000)
    18         580,000         Angola: war against Portugal 1961-72 (80,000); after Portugal's retreat (1972-2002)
    19         500,000         Brazil against its Indians, up to 1999
    20         430,000         Vietnam, after the war ended in 1975 (own people; boat refugees)
    21         400,000         Indochina: against France, 1945-54
    22         400,000         Burundi, 1959-present (Tutsi/Hutu)
    23         400,000         Somalia, 1991-present
    24         400,000         North Korea up to 2006 (own people)
    25         300,000         Kurds in Iraq, Iran, Turkey, 1980s-1990s
    26         300,000         Iraq, 1970-2003 (Saddam against minorities)
    27         240,000         Colombia, 1946-58; 1964-present
    28         200,000         Yugoslavia, Tito regime, 1944-80
    29         200,000         Guatemala, 1960-96
    30         190,000         Laos, 1975-90
    31         175,000         Serbia against Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, 1991-1999
    32         150,000         Romania, 1949-99 (own people)
    33         150,000         Liberia, 1989-97
    34         140,000         Russia against Chechnya, 1994-present
    35         150,000         Lebanon civil war, 1975-90
    36         140,000         Kuwait War, 1990-91
    37         130,000         Philippines: 1946-54 (10,000); 1972-present (120,000)
    38         130,000         Burma/Myanmar, 1948-present
    39         100,000         North Yemen, 1962-70
    40         100,000         Sierra Leone, 1991-present
    41         100,000         Albania, 1945-91 (own people)
    42         80,000         Iran, 1978-79 (revolution)
    43         75,000         Iraq, 2003-present (domestic)
    44         75,000         El Salvador, 1975-92
    45         70,000         Eritrea against Ethiopia, 1998-2000
    46         68,000         Sri Lanka, 1997-present
    47         60,000         Zimbabwe, 1966-79; 1980-present
    48         60,000         Nicaragua, 1972-91 (Marxists/natives etc,)
    49         51,000         Arab-Israeli conflict 1950-present
    50         50,000         North Vietnam, 1954-75 (own people)
    51         50,000         Tajikistan, 1992-96 (secularists against Islamists)
    52         50,000         Equatorial Guinea, 1969-79
    53         50,000         Peru, 1980-2000
    54         50,000         Guinea, 1958-84
    55         40,000         Chad, 1982-90
    56         30,000         Bulgaria, 1948-89 (own people)
    57         30,000         Rhodesia, 1972-79
    58         30,000         Argentina, 1976-83 (own people)
    59         27,000         Hungary, 1948-89 (own people)
    60         26,000         Kashmir independence, 1989-present
    61         25,000         Jordan government vs. Palestinians, 1970-71 (Black September)
    62         22,000         Poland, 1948-89 (own people)
    63         20,000         Syria, 1982 (against Islamists in Hama)
    64         20,000         Chinese-Vietnamese war, 1979
    65         19,000         Morocco: war against France, 1953-56 (3,000) and in Western Sahara, 1975-present (16,000)
    66         18,000         Congo Republic, 1997-99
    67         10,000         South Yemen, 1986 (civil war)

    *Sources: Z. Brzezinski, Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-first Century, 1993; S. Courtois, Le Livre Noir du Communism, 1997; G. Heinsohn, Lexikon der Völkermorde, 1999, 2nd ed.; G. Heinsohn, Söhne und Weltmacht, 2006, 8th ed.; R. Rummel, Death by Government, 1994; M. Small and J.D. Singer, Resort to Arms: International and Civil Wars 1816-1980, 1982; M. White, "Death Tolls for the Major Wars and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century," 2003.

Mao Tse-Tung, by far the greatest post-1950 murderer.
This grisly inventory finds the total number of deaths in conflicts since 1950 numbering about 85,000,000. Of that sum, the deaths in the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1950 include 32,000 deaths due to Arab state attacks and 19,000 due to Palestinian attacks, or 51,000 in all. Arabs make up roughly 35,000 of these dead and Jewish Israelis make up 16,000.

These figures mean that deaths in Arab-Israeli fighting since 1950 amount to just 0.06 percent of the total number of deaths in all conflicts in that period. More graphically, only 1 out of about 1,700 persons killed in conflicts since 1950 has died due to Arab-Israeli fighting.

(Adding the 11,000 killed in the Israeli war of independence, 1947-49, made up of 5,000 Arabs and 6,000 Israeli Jews, does not significantly alter these figures.)

In a different perspective, some 11,000,000 Muslims have been violently killed since 1948, of which 35,000, or 0.3 percent, died during the sixty years of fighting Israel, or just 1 out of every 315 Muslim fatalities. In contrast, over 90 percent of the 11 million who perished were killed by fellow Muslims.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: beardedbruce
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 01:28 PM

And just Palestinians: (since you have stated Jews are not human enough for you to count casualties)


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

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 01:38 PM

Er, please filter your list to include only unarmed refugees, please.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 01:39 PM

I didn't mean to aim two pleases.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: beardedbruce
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 01:46 PM

2nd list has civilians broken out- Note number killed by other Palestinians and by Jordan.

How many are Israel accused of killing? Has to be at least 3200 civilians, just to surpass Islamist's attack on 9/11.


And who besides Jimmie boyo is accusing them?

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 01:54 PM

What Steve just said - single massacres Brucie - 3,500 in three nights
None of those on your list specify a single massacre, unarmed or refugee
By your reckoning we would have to count the 30,000 Palestinians killed by Israel
Finished here - don't feed the troll lads - he's stone deaf
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: beardedbruce
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 02:05 PM

Compare to Syria-

Time Period         Pro-government forces         Anti-government forces         Civilians         Grand Total (inc.unidentified)
2011
2012
2013         52,290 killed[25]
(2013: 30,239)[26]         29,083 killed[25]
(2013: 18,812)[26]         46,266 killed[27]
(2013: 22,436)[28]         2011: 7,841 killed[29]
2012: 49,294 killed[29]
2013: 73,447 killed[29]
2014         25,160 killed         32,726 killed         17,790 killed         76,021 killed[30]
2015         17,686 killed         24,010 killed         13,249 killed         55,219 killed[31]
January 2016         1,599 killed         1,687 killed         1,345 killed         4,680 killed[32]
February 2016         1,442 killed         2,209 killed         1,109 killed         4,802 killed[33]
March 2016         827 killed         1,232 killed         588 killed         2,658 killed[34]
April 2016         990 killed         1,263 killed         859 killed         3,116 killed[35]
May 2016         1,318 killed         2,669 killed         917 killed         4,927 killed[36]
June 2016         1,435 killed         2,139 killed         1,208 killed         4,823 killed[37]
July 2016         1,291 killed         1,882 killed         1,590 killed         4,794 killed[38]
August 2016         1,311 killed         1,845 killed         1,289 killed         4,475 killed[39]
September 2016         987 killed         1,302 killed         1,228 killed         3,686 killed[40]
October 2016         970 killed         1,720 killed         1,343 killed         4,527 killed[41]
November 2016         1,006 killed         1,656 killed         1,279 killed         3,954 killed[42]
Cumulative 2016 13,176 killed         19,604 killed         12,755 killed         46,442 killed

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


Where do you get 3200????? The only number like that you have previously presented was shown to be false, many times.

In ONE day, Islamist terrorists killed about that number on 9/11

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Teribus
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 02:08 PM

Good heavens Jim Carroll has actually got this thread on to the Arab/Israeli Conflict.

"This thread is about Fidel Castro. Messages on other subjects will be deleted. And that's a threat, too. What's wrong with threats? They explain beforehand the consequences of your actions."

-Joe-

---

True. But Joe isn't likely to do anything until the thread deteriorates into petty squabbling. Israel is off-topic, but it's still reasonable discussion.
-Joe=

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 03:47 PM

Jim,
Don't be **** insane - a shor wall to keep in a half a continent - "the Socialist sixth of the World"
You really do live in La-La land, don't you?

The 900 mile wall across Germany plus the fortified Czech border did indeed keep the subject peoples of East Europe from escaping to freedom.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 08:06 PM

The people killed on 9/11 were not refugees. If you wish to challenge Jim's point about the biggest single massacre of unarmed refugees, then you need to give us figures for massacres of unarmed refugees, not stacks of figures (unreadable to boot) about different kinds of atrocities or war tragedies. Odd that you should need to be told that.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 09:34 PM

I suppose there's no hope of getting the discussion back to the topic of Fidel Castro, but at least we had a pretty good discussion of him before it moved across the sea to Israel.

I think there are valid arguments on both sides of the Palestine issue. It's true that the wall has helped curtail the frequent bombings that were taking place in Israel, and I do believe that was a valid concern for the Israelis. But on the other hand, the wall was detrimental to the lives of the vast majority of residents of the Palestinian territory who were not guilty of any participation in the bombings. The wall made it impossible for many Palestinians to go to work or shopping, or to visit family and friends on the other side of the wall.

Same with the wall in Berlin. The border in Berlin was the most permeable border in Europe until the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961. Until then, Berliners worked and shopped and lived on both sides of the border, and had friends and family on both sides. The Wall was built mostly for economic reasons - East Germans were leaving in droves, and this created severe instability in the workforce. Stabilizing the workforce was a valid concern for the GDR
(German Democratic Republic/DDR). But the wall caused the same serious problems for innocent people that the wall in Israel caused. And, by the way, the Trump Wall would cause similar problems on the U.S.-Mexico border. There are still many people who commute across the border to or from Mexico daily to work - but it's getting more and more difficult. Same thing applies to the U.S.-Canada border, especially for auto industry workers in Detroit and Windsor. And the same thing will soon apply to the borders between the UK and the EU.

Both Israel and the DDR could argue that they needed their walls for basic survival, and that's a valid argument. The Castro regime could argue the same for restricting emigration from Cuba.

[Ha! I got Cuba back into the picture....]

But this is an issue. At various times all through history, nations have done things to prevent mass migration of their own people. One could argue that these measures are for the common good of survival of the nation, but is that justification enough?

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 10:21 PM

The wall made it impossible for many Palestinians to go to work or shopping, or to visit family and friends on the other side of the wall.

From Haaretz:

"The number of Palestinians from the West Bank working in Israel both legally and illegally doubled in the past four years to about 92,000 in 2014, in many cases displacing overseas guest workers, the Bank of Israel said yesterday.

The government has been easing the entry of West Bank Palestinians into Israel, for instance increasing the number of overnight-stay permits to around 14,000 from 10,000 last year.

The West Bank economy has benefited, too, from growing employment in Israel, the bank noted. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Palestinians working in Israel made up 11.7% of the Palestinian West Bank workforce last year and their wages in 2013 were equal to 12.3% of the West Bank's gross domestic product."

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 02 Dec 16 - 10:45 PM

Looks like I need to go back to Israel and see for myself. I haven't been there since 1999. At the time, the Palestinians had a big casino in Jericho that made a lot of money from Jewish Israeli gamblers taking the bus down from Jerusalem. I imagine the casino hasn't done very well since then.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Teribus
Date: 03 Dec 16 - 02:39 AM

Thanks for that footnote by way of explanation Joe.

I see that he has raised the 3,200 again so my prediction is he'll be wittering on about bulldozers in the not too distant future.

However on the thread topic of Fidel Castro it is nice to know that as both yourself and Jim appear to be appreciative of his efforts that you put forward and accept that Governments are by reality compelled to put the interests of the state they are responsible for governing before the desires, wishes and freedom of the people, with one marked exception - Israel - who built their wall to protect its citizens from suicide bombers and sniper attacks (As a solution it was extremely effective).

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Dec 16 - 04:20 AM

"The 900 mile wall across Germany plus the fortified Czech border did indeed keep the subject peoples of East Europe from escaping to freedom."
So a wall I could pass through with ease by showing a passport (didn't even need a visa) can keep half of Europe under repression - feckin' idiotic.
Joe is right that the wall also had an economic reason of course; the authorities in East Germany were attempting to break away from a system that had caused two wars and establish a new system
The U.S. poured money into West Berlin making it a showpiece to attract defectors and sow dissention - rightly or wrongly the Government took measures to prevent that- the two Germanys were in fact two separate countries and were treated as such.
One of the facts of Irish history was the smuggling that went on between the Six Counties and the Republic, especially during the Emergency
It wasn't a comparable situation of course - you weren't faced with two hostile armed camps, as was the case in the Germanys - there were many more factors involved
This, as far as I can make out is a fair SUMMING UP by Canadian writer, Stephen Gowans covering most of the factors that gave rise to the wall - far more sensible that the idea of keeping half a continent enslaved.
"Good heavens Jim Carroll has actually got this thread on to the Arab/Israeli Conflict."
No I did not, and it was not my intention - somebody mentioned a "Trump-like wall - I pointed out that Israel had one as well.
Our usual bunch of atrocity deniers took it from there and jumped to the defence of their favourite terroist state.
This thread drift is nothing whatever to do with me - but I don't goo in for ignoring one means of repression while condemning another as some people do.
I'm getting more than a little pissed of by people who maake the discussion of a nuclear facilitated, untried war criminal and human rights abuser a no-go area with constant attempts at censorship - I'm beginning to beieve they have something to hide!!!!.
"Don't mention Israel" has become as much a standing joke as has "don't mention the wall"
" compelled to put the interests of the state they are responsible for governing before the desires, wishes and freedom of the people, with one marked exception"
I know it is a waste of time asking you for evidence of this, but - well - here goes - do you have any evidence of this?
Where have there been any major signs of opposition against Castro's governance of Cuba - armed soldiers on the streets - mass rioting - strikes - organised opposition - or were the Cuban people all brainwashed and forced into submission - just as Irish children were "all brainwashed to make them hate Britain".
Perhaps those interviewed about his death gave their interviews knowing that there was a sniper waiting to mown them down if they said the wrong thing!!
Cuba has been in a virtual state of siege lasting 50 years imposed by a State that has been proved to have no compunction in sending troops in with horrific anti-personnel weapons, should the opportunity arise - that is what real repression looks like.
Cuba has been unable to develop, economically or politically for the entire length of that time due to not being to sell its products to the degree of giving its people anything other than a basic standard of living - no industrial development essential to modern progress - that is what I call repression in the extreme - imposed by a foreign power.
Sure - of course there were defections - why woudn't there be with the richest nation in the world just next door, both threatening and offerning inducements to leave.
None of these people want to deal with the invasion - the assassination attempts - the embargo - the constant threat of emigrés who have encouraged the U.S. to try another invasion in order to "destroy free medicine and education and return cuba to its rightful owners" - the handful of wealthy families and the American companies who owned most of the land.
The First actions of the new Cuban leaders was to establish excellent free health and education systems and redistribute the land to people who had originally worked it but never owned it - how ******* despotic of them.
If you want to make your case about a repressive State - make it by taking all the facts into consideration - including the fact that the only concentration camp in Cuba is that run by The United States.
We saw how repressive and security conscious the U.S. became after 9/11 - try multiplying that event by fifty years and see what you come up with.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 03 Dec 16 - 04:32 AM

So a wall I could pass through with ease by showing a passport (didn't even need a visa) can keep half of Europe under repression - feckin' idiotic.

Did you try it or see it tried with an East European passport?
No, because that would be "feckin' idiotic."

The border was seeded with mines, electric fences and guards who were under orders to shoot.
Many were killed trying to escape.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Dec 16 - 04:49 AM

For crying out loud Keith - read and answer the artical.
Your knowledge seems to have been gleaned from Len Deighton and John Le Carrier (two of my favourite FICTION authors)
You can no more keep half a continent (and part of Asia) confined by a wall than you can repress an entire nation against its will for half a century
Try working out the situation any country attempting to change its system against world-wide hostile opposition would react - Cuba was beginning to emerge from the Cold War when Castro died.
By the way - I passed over the Czech border with the same ease as I did the German one - - one visit to a photogropher in a little German border town the night before did the trick
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Dec 16 - 04:52 AM

Should be John Le Carre of course, before Teribus gets hi typo pencil out
Too early in the morning - thinking of my food!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Teribus
Date: 03 Dec 16 - 07:17 AM

Well they reckon around 1,100 people were shot trying to cross from the DDR to the FDR during the Cold War.

Pleased that Jim had such an easy time crossing the border, great pity they didn't keep him. Others of course were not so lucky:

1: On 13 October 1961, Westfälische Rundschau journalist Kurt Lichtenstein was shot on the border near the village of Zicherie after he attempted to speak with East German farm workers. His death aroused condemnation across the political spectrum in West Germany; he was a former parliamentary representative of the German Communist Party. The incident prompted students from Braunschweig to erect a sign on the border protesting the killing.

Fancy that getting shot just for trying to talk to somebody - What freedom indeed in the "Workers Paradise".

2: "An apparent mix-up over papers at a border crossing point led to the shooting of Benito Corghi, an Italian truck driver, in August 1976. The dead man was a member of the Italian Communist Party, which denounced the killing. The episode severely embarrassed the East German government and produced an unusual apology."

There but for the grace of God eh Jim? Could have been you.

3: "In one notorious shooting on 1 May 1976, a former East German political prisoner, Michael Gartenschläger, who had fled to the West some years before, was ambushed and killed by a Stasi commando squad on the border near Büchen as he tried to dismantle an SM-70 anti-personnel mine. When his body was buried it was described merely as an "unknown body fished out of the water". The Stasi's after-action report, however, declared that "before he could carry out the act [of removing the mine], Gartenschläger was liquidated by security forces of the GDR".

Summary executions Jim, names, dates and place all known.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Dec 16 - 08:44 AM

"1,100 "
As little as that?
Considering the inducements being offered it's ais surprising that there weere not many more.
"Pleased that Jim had such an easy time crossing the border, great pity they didn't keep him. "
Small minded as ever - and as unoriginal.
Why not address the given facts rather than indulging in the spy fiction version of the events.
I don't in any way support the Wall's existence, but I have made an effort to understand it.
Why not get help to do so yourself?
Do you know how many Vietnamese were murdered because they tried to establish the wrong sort of Government, or how many opponents of America's ally Pinochet (supported enthusiatically by Thatcher and the U.S.), were raped, tortured and murdered for opposing a fascist coup, or those who suffered the same fate in the Greek coup while Britain hosted a visit of the King and Queen of Greece or how many Arabs have been killed in order to keep oil flowing to the west, or how many died at the hands of Britain's friends in Apartheid South Africa......?
This is about Cuba - the U.S. has inflicted half a century of hardship on an entire nation because it did not approve of Government policies.
The list of suffering and deaths in defence of the interests of Capitalism greatly outnumbers those caused by defending aspiring Communist States - and goes back much further.
How about addressing those facts?
You might start by counting the millions that died at the hands of German Industrial Capitalism
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 03 Dec 16 - 08:49 AM

Cuba has been in a virtual state of siege lasting 50 years

Lol.........more of Carroll's made up shit®

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Dec 16 - 09:24 AM

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Dec 16 - 09:30 AM

"more of Carroll's made up shit®"
Not even original - straight from Teribus's Dictionary of Limited Vocabulary
TROLLING DOESN'T HACK IT UNLESS YOU COME UP WITH THE GOODS YOURSELF

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Dec 16 - 09:39 AM

Or
638 WAYS TO KILL CASTRO
Or
BAY of PIGS
or
CIA MURDER ATTEMPTS
Any evidence that this didn't happen Bobad - whoops, forgot, you lot don't go in fro evidence
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 03 Dec 16 - 09:42 AM

It would help to acquaint yourself with the definition of siege, you wouldn't look so foolish then.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Dec 16 - 10:35 AM

"It would help to acquaint yourself with the definition of siege, you wouldn't look so foolish then."
It would help if you read what is put up and responded to it with rational argument - you wouldn't appear as cowardly and nasty as you do
Jim Carrroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 03 Dec 16 - 11:29 AM

Thing is, Teribus, in the land of the free hundreds of people get shot just for going to school.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 03 Dec 16 - 11:34 AM

Jim,
I want through that wall without difficulty - on a train - it was no different and probably a damn sight easier that if I wanted to fly from Shannon to America

How little you knew or understood them Jim.

Wiki,
At the end of the 1970s, a study was carried out by the East German army to review attempted "border breaches" (Grenzdurchbrüche). It found that 4,956 people had attempted to escape across the border between 1 December 1974 and 30 November 1979. Of those, 3,984 people (80.4%) were arrested by the Volkspolizei in the Sperrzone, the outer restricted zone. 205 people (4.1%) were caught at the signal fence.[127]
Within the inner security zone, the Schutzstreifen, a further 743 people (15%) were arrested by the guards. 48 people (1%) were stopped – i.e. killed or injured – by landmines and 43 people (0.9%) by SM-70 directional mines on the fence. A further 67 people (1.35%) were intercepted at the fence (shot and/or arrested). A total of 229 people – just 4.6% of attempted escapees, representing less than one in twenty – made it across the fence. Of these, the largest number (129, or 55% of successful escapees) succeeded in making it across the fence in unmined sectors. 89 people (39% of escapees) managed to cross both the minefields and the fence, but just 12 people (6% of the total) succeeded in getting past the SM-70s booby-trap mines on the fences.[127]
Escape attempts were severely punished by the GDR. From 1953, the regime described the act of escaping as Republikflucht (literally "flight from the Republic"), by analogy with the existing military term Fahnenflucht ("desertion"). A successful escapee was not a Flüchtling ("refugee") but a Republikflüchtiger ("Republic deserter"). Those who attempted to escape were called Sperrbrecher (literally "blockade runners" but more loosely translated as "border violators").[126] Those who helped escapees were not Fluchthelfer ("escape helpers"), the Western term, but Menschenhändler ("human traffickers").[128] Such ideologically coloured language enabled the regime to portray border crossers as little better than traitors and criminals.[129]
Republikflucht became a crime in 1957, punishable by heavy fines and up to three years' imprisonment. Any act associated with an escape attempt – including helping an escapee – was subject to this legislation. Those caught in the act were often tried for espionage as well and given proportionately harsher sentences.[130] More than 75,000 people – an average of more than seven people a day – were imprisoned for attempting to escape across the border, serving an average of one to two years' imprisonment. Border guards who attempted to escape were treated much more harshly and were on average imprisoned for five years.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: robomatic
Date: 03 Dec 16 - 12:40 PM

Joe, you wrote:

I think there are valid arguments on both sides of the Palestine issue. It's true that the wall has helped curtail the frequent bombings that were taking place in Israel, and I do believe that was a valid concern for the Israelis. But on the other hand, the wall was detrimental to the lives of the vast majority of residents of the Palestinian territory who were not guilty of any participation in the bombings. The wall made it impossible for many Palestinians to go to work or shopping, or to visit family and friends on the other side of the wall.

Same with the wall in Berlin. The border in Berlin was the most permeable border in Europe until the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961. Until then, Berliners worked and shopped and lived on both sides of the border, and had friends and family on both sides. The Wall was built mostly for economic reasons - East Germans were leaving in droves, and this created severe instability in the workforce. Stabilizing the workforce was a valid concern for the GDR
(German Democratic Republic/DDR). But the wall caused the same serious problems for innocent people that the wall in Israel caused. ....

Both Israel and the DDR could argue that they needed their walls for basic survival, and that's a valid argument. The Castro regime could argue the same for restricting emigration from Cuba.


With your third paragraph, I think you have either walked or stumbled badly into equivalency.

All the walls mentioned by you above are controversial and can be argued about in their local contexts. But they are not equivalent. I am saying that Israel, a democratic country with a mult-ethnic population is not equivalent to the DDR, a Communist totalitarian regime. Your argument assumes that Israel and the DDR have the same valid right to existence.

By assuming equivalency, you could make a similar argument that by establishing concentration camps, the Nazis were simply trying to maintain the social order that was the heart of their raison d'etre. That the Soviets' extensive gulag system was merely their means of maintaining their onerous rule.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Dec 16 - 12:55 PM

"How little you knew or understood them Jim."
To be honest Keith - I would much rather take my own personal experience and a lifelong interest on the subject to a hastily sought out cut-n-paste from Wiki
I can't see a word there that claims the wall was built to enclose a half-continent plus, as you have.
I have given you what I believe to be an accurate summary of The reason for the Wall and the situation prevailing in Est Germany at the time it was built.
Do you honestly think that ignoring that and putting forward a cut-'n-paste that touches not a single point of that summary, proves anything.
As I said - I've visited sicx of these "imprisoned and terrorised" countries - why dis I miss the imprisonment and terrorism?
one of these countries were ideal, by any mans, but they were all idealistic - they believed they were creating a better world for themselves - which is more than I can say for the non-communist countries I have visited.
Would the British people have the same ideals - but how can they, with our dishonest, self-serving politicians and corrupt bankers who are ruining our world more and more daily with their greed and corruption.
When I was in Prague I met a young North Vietnamese soldier who had been given leave because he had been in the field without a break for over two years.
We went to the park to argue with the young Russian soldiers - no fear - no hatred - no subservience to terrorism - a young man who was risking his life for his desire for a better world - an idealist fighter, not the terrorised slave you would have us accept - he had witnessed the nightly raids of the B52s dropping their filthy loads on his family and friends - people like you defend those actions and describe the victims as political prisoners.
Maybe the whole of the Soveit bloc was "brainwashed" like your Irish children.
How little you know or understand, or even want to
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Greg F.
Date: 03 Dec 16 - 01:47 PM

you could make a similar argument that by establishing concentration camps, the Nazis were simply trying to maintain the social order

You COULD, but you would be an idiot.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Dec 16 - 02:56 PM

" Soviets' extensive gulag system"
The Soviets "Gulag System" was set up by the Tsarist Regime they overthrew and was in existence for at least a century before the Revolution - Tolstoy wrote an excellent novel (Resurrection) on it.
Many of the leading Revolutionaries were inmates - Trotsky escaped from them twice.
Stalinism had nothing to do with either Socialism or Communism, many of Stalin#'s victims were both and his leading socialist opponent, the former Minister of War, was murdered on the order of Stalin in Mexico.
As with Keith, you have available a fairly articulate analysis of what happened in East Germany, including an explanation of The Wall.
Don't you think it would be far more satisfactory to dismantle that rather than stump up time-worn Cold War clichés?
Fra more conclusive from your point of view and far more likely to avoid errors like "trying to maintain the social order"
REad and enjoy - or not!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: The Sandman
Date: 03 Dec 16 - 04:20 PM

How I envy John Faulkner and Sandra Kerr who sang to Castro.
imo,Fidel was a great man.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: robomatic
Date: 03 Dec 16 - 06:28 PM

Here's a New York Times link to a native Cuban who unlike me does not refer to people under Communism as cattle in a paddock. She thinks of 'em as animals in a zoo as opposed to the jungle:

Welcome to Savage Capitalism

As usual, New York Times links might be iffy for some webbees.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 03 Dec 16 - 09:52 PM

Robomatic says, in response to my post: All the walls mentioned by you above are controversial and can be argued about in their local contexts. But they are not equivalent. I am saying that Israel, a democratic country with a mult-ethnic population is not equivalent to the DDR, a Communist totalitarian regime. Your argument assumes that Israel and the DDR have the same valid right to existence.

I think you failed to read to the end of my post. All those who build walls, can make valid arguments to defend their fortifications. But in building a wall to stop a few offenders, they also do great harm to many others who are innocent. This is true in Germany, in Israel - and in the already-fortified United States, whose president-elect wants to build a yet-higher wall so he can surpass both Israel and Berlin.

-Joe-

P.S. George Orwell used the animal-communism analogy long ago. Animal Farm was published in 1945.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: robomatic
Date: 03 Dec 16 - 10:38 PM

Joe:
Of course I read your entire post. You don't seem to have read to the end of MY post where I extrapolated your argument as justifying concentration camps and gulags because they were simply the acts of states preserving themselves.
That' the danger of equivalency.

Ms. Guerra's article in the NYT refers to her actual life under Castro so you don't need to refer to Mr. Orwell's great novella, it's really happened.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Dec 16 - 04:33 AM

This doesn't appear to be going anywhere - still the same old uncorroborated and illogical same old.
Describing an entire people who would willingly allow themselves to be treated as "animals in a zoo" without showing any visible signs of resistance is just about scraping the bottom of the illogical barrel for me.
Educated people (I see no argument that they are not), don't behave like that, and if you wish to treat them as such, you don't educate them.
Doesn't make sense on any level.
"Ms. Guerra's article in the NYT refers to her actual life under Castro "
There is very little evidence of how her life was spent - as it is, she appears to be reaping the benefits of American culture outside of Cuba as a pop-jazz singer.
Many people left Cuba because they could get a better life for themselves as individuals elsewhere - people do that all over the world without it being an accurate reflection on the countries they left.
Cuba, East Germany, The Soviet Union...... attempted to create a better life for everybody, which began to bring about a leveling out of society, meaning those that once had, had less - the mostly extreme cases of this were in Cuba, where the land that wasn't owned by American companies was owned by six families - until it was shared out among the people who once worked it as employees - bound to be a few unhappy bodies after that happened.
"I am saying that Israel, a democratic country with a mult-ethnic population"
I have no intention of making this an issue again, but this is simply not the case - read the ''Inequality Report'
Israel is increasingly moving to the extreme right under the present regime - even Israeli Jews are describing what is happening as 'Fascism' and comparing it to pre-war Germany, including high up members of the establishment - even ex directors of the Security Service, Mossad.
There are accusations, from Jews and Arabs alike, that Israel has embarked on a programmer based on the old South African Apartheid system, creating Arab GHETTOS (can't put this up in full without subscribing, but the headline is enough).
That is what the Israeli Wall is about.
Any State which claims that opponents to its policies within the Jewish religion are "Self-Hating Jews" are not even treating Jews democratically and dividing them into supporters and opponents.
These opponents are claiming that the Arabs are being "Ethnically cleansed" to create a monotheistic state - on the slippery slope to Fascism, if not there already.
Unless anybody can respond to this with facts and logic rather than the hateful, insulting rhetoric that such facts elicit, that's all I have to say about the Israeli wall - the wall is there and it has a purpose which serves the regime that put it up.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Teribus
Date: 04 Dec 16 - 04:58 AM

"Thing is, Teribus, in the land of the free hundreds of people get shot just for going to school." - Steve Shaw

Not by their own Government they don't Shaw. Small distinction I know but I think it significant.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 04 Dec 16 - 05:56 AM

Their own government, in the land of the free, is so shit scared of the gun lobby that it can be blamed to a very large extent for the runaway gun culture that ultimately leads to those school mass-murders. Let's face it, without justifying any of it: shit happens everywhere. Every time you pick out an isolated outrage in one country to demonstrate what baddies their leaders are, it's no trouble to pick out ten others in the places you think are very nice. A sterile line of enquiry, I'd say.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Dec 16 - 06:43 AM

SHOT FOR GOING TO SCHOOL a decade after the Cuban Revolution
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Dec 16 - 07:15 AM

SELMA five years after the Cuban Revolution
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Dec 16 - 07:18 AM

STANDING ROCK 2016
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Dec 16 - 07:21 AM

POLICE KILLINGS 2015
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Dec 16 - 07:28 AM

HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS US
BRITISH WHITEWASH
How does the song go:
And the country I belong to
They call it the Free West
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Dec 16 - 07:41 AM

BANNED BOOKS U.S.

SUPPRESSION of FREE SPEECH US
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Teribus
Date: 04 Dec 16 - 07:48 AM

"Let's face it, without justifying any of it: shit happens everywhere."

And all deserve condemnation, it is you and your pals who attempt to justify.

"Every time you pick out an isolated outrage in one country to demonstrate what baddies their leaders are, it's no trouble to pick out ten others in the places you think are very nice. A sterile line of enquiry, I'd say."

What an idiotic line of argument, but one that does not surprise me considering the person putting it forward.

On lines of argument this, also yours, is equally idiotic:

"Their own government, in the land of the free, is so shit scared of the gun lobby that it can be blamed to a very large extent for the runaway gun culture that ultimately leads to those school mass-murders."

Especially as you put it as a counter to the fact that the police, border guards and army of the DDR blindly followed orders to gun down their own citizens and seemed to do it with a diligence and zeal that defies description.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 04 Dec 16 - 08:06 AM

Yikes, these bizarre attempts to draw spurious equivalence smacks of desperation. Sometimes you just have to accept the fact that your argument has been destroyed and move on, else the hole just keeps getting deeper.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 04 Dec 16 - 08:45 AM

What a ridiculous deflection, Teribus. I'm not putting anything up as a "counter." When I say that shit happens everywhere I'm not playing your silly yah-boo he's-as-bad-as-me schoolyard game. If I'd wanted to do that I could have pointed to IDF snipers shooting children on a beach. I'm saying that picking out isolated incidents in order to show how rotten a regime is is fraught and not worth pursuing, which I did actually say if you read my post. As for your "fact," care to provide us evidence for the incident chapter and verse or do we take your word for it?

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Dec 16 - 09:22 AM

"Yikes, these bizarre attempts to draw spurious equivalence smacks of desperation."
No they don't - it shows practical examples of State oppression by a State that has blockaded another country, as distinct from unqualified accusations of oppression.
The crushing of Civil Rights Demonstrations around the time when the Castro Govenment was just beginning and the McCarthy Trials, still happening in the U.S., just four years before the Batista Regime was overthrown, are undisputed breaches of Human Rights, yet the Government which was responsible for them can blockade a state for - abusing Human Rights
A bleedin' joke, in anyone's book
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 04 Dec 16 - 10:32 AM

Jim,
To be honest Keith - I would much rather take my own personal experience and a lifelong interest on the subject to a hastily sought out cut-n-paste from Wiki

I want through that wall without difficulty - on a train - it was no different and probably a damn sight easier that if I wanted to fly from Shannon to America

How often did you come under fire leaving Shannon for US. Well done for surviving.
Were many killed, mutilated and maimed by land mines and directional mines on the fence?
Did you see large numbers of your fellow travellers dragged off to long terms of incarceration?

I suspect than as an idealistic young communist visiting the communist world you saw what you wanted and expected to see, and ignored the unpleasant fact that the people had to be prevented from fleeing it.

"Those caught in the act were often tried for espionage as well and given proportionately harsher sentences.[130] More than 75,000 people – an average of more than seven people a day – were imprisoned for attempting to escape across the border,"

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Greg F.
Date: 04 Dec 16 - 11:28 AM

you saw what you wanted and expected to see
Rather like you do to an unprecedented degree, Professor, usually in the face of conclusive evidence to the contrary..

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Dec 16 - 11:36 AM

"I suspect than as an idealistic young communist visiting the communist world you saw what you wanted and expected to see, and ignored the unpleasant fact that the people had to be prevented from fleeing it."
Ho ****** dare you
You come up with a load of unqualified shit, produce a cut-n'-paste from Wiki and accuse mme of lying
Who on earth said I was a young communist - I most certainly didn't.
You are a braindead right-wing propaganda swallower who refused to respond to documented evidence and trot out Cold-War bullshit
Plenty of evidence for that and a recod as long as your arm
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: akenaton
Date: 04 Dec 16 - 12:00 PM

You've a right cheek Jim, complaining about Keith adding 2+2 and making 4, when you do it continuously and come up with the figure 5.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: robomatic
Date: 04 Dec 16 - 12:23 PM

People are dancing around the argument I'm making that if you see various parties as equivalent then anything they do in pursuit of their aims is 'ok'. (The school bully is simply making the small kid punch himself because he has a right to feel good, too).

If Israel is equivalent to the DDR, then their walls are a wash. Some people get ahead, some get hurt, it's all the same. The fact that they each have motives is greater than what the motives actually are. The fact that they are each trying to preserve their society is more important than the facts OF the society. And that goes for Cuba, too, apparently.

I'm saying that it's NOT THE SAME.

Extending this argument one can argue the British built concentration camps and interned Boers. The Americans built camps and interned Japanese U.S. citizens. The Germans built concentration camps and interned Jews, Communists, Gypsies, Homosexuals et. al. The Russians built an extensive Gulag system and interned a host of people for a host of reasons (including none). Each event has its own justifications from the point of view of the constructor. Each is controversial.

I'm saying that the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and Nazi Germany were still NOT THE SAME just 'cause they all built camps.

That was my original intent on responding to Joe Offer's post of 02 Dec 16 - 09:34 PM . That is why I responded against Joe's statement (in italics):

"Both Israel and the DDR could argue that they needed their walls for basic survival, and that's a valid argument. The Castro regime could argue the same for restricting emigration from Cuba."
I responded:
"With your third paragraph, I think you have either walked or stumbled badly into equivalency."


The posts since then have NOT addressed explicitly whether these nations are equivalent or not. I say they're not, which is the basis of my arguments.

If you think they are equivalent, that is the unstated basis of your argument.

The successive posting and the to-ing and fro-ing back and froth are fruitless until you address the main point.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Dec 16 - 12:43 PM

" Keith adding 2+2 and making 4,"
Keith said what he said and I don't make things up - as I have now shown of the Brexit thread
Talk about making things up
"and seemed to do it with a diligence and zeal that defies description."
Therre is no evidence this ever happened.
One minute the soldiers are automatons obeying orders and the next they are howling monsters enjoying killing their fellow citizens - who says so
It is the Brits in Ireland after Bloody Sunday who were found to have had drunken parties celebrating their kills and hanging souvenirs on the barrack walls
"I'm saying that it's NOT THE SAME."
No point saying it if you are not prepared top prove it - why is it not the same?
And yes - the Brits invented concentration camps in South Africa - so what - were they any less reprehensible for doing so
The British record in that war was appalling
The Americans still have one for untried suspects - and they have a reputation for torture - waterboarding, sleep deprivation, mock executions - we've seen the photos from Camp X-Ray - why are these acceptable?
Why are massacres like Kenbt State - or the McCarthy Trials, or the treatment of blacks sending their kids to white schools or trying to vote?
And where is your evidence that any of these shooting downs has an equivalence in Cuba?
You have been given a summing up of East Germany - where is your response
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Teribus
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 03:15 AM

Jim Carroll - 04 Dec 16 - 12:43 PM

1: I don't make things up - as I have now shown of the Brexit thread

What you have more or less conclusively shown on the Brexit thread was that you do distort what has been stated and that you do make things up

2: Talk about making things up
"and seemed to do it with a diligence and zeal that defies description." - Teribus
Therre is no evidence this ever happened.

Disagree completely the statistics detailing the numbers killed, arrested and imprisoned for attempting to flee, not to mention those imprisoned for plotting to flee is more than ample evidence to back up my statement.

3: the Brits invented concentration camps in South Africa

MYTH. They were first used by the Spanish in 1873 in Cuba during the Ten Years War as a means of quelling a rebellion and again in Cuba in 1896 during the Cuban War of Independence - Matter of historical record. The strategy was adopted by the British in South Africa against the Boers in 1900.

4: As far as you are concerned Jim "The British record" on anything is appalling.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 03:47 AM

That meant sometthing I am sure Teibus
Whatyou will find on The Brexit thread is a huge list of examples of your abusive and insulting behaviour to those who deem to agree with you.
Can't help but notice you are now making an effort to not add to it - but should you lapse - those examples will be added to the list.
You will also fingd your mate, having called me a liar, as you just have, and being proved a liar himself with a huge string of examples of what he claimed I made up.
I don't tell lies - I don't see the poing of doing so on a debate forum - only a few of you are here to score points and win prizes, the rest of us are here to pass on what we think we know and hopefully to learn more.
I have no idea why you personally are here - you add little other than a bad taste and an impression of an insecure and arrogant little man.
Now - if you wish to prove anything I have said about Cuba is wrong, please do so - as far as anything you have just said, you have had ample enough time to prove them and haven't managed to do so, so far, so let's move on and not be cluttering this discussion up with personal arguments - waddy'a say?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Teribus
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 04:00 AM

"I don't tell lies"

Oh yes you most certainly do Carroll - Examples:

1: "No Poppies for me" Thread, where you were exposed telling lies.

2: "Syria: the new nightmare" Thread where you were exposed telling lies.

Note on the Brexit thread where you listed a number of posts by Akenaton you forgot to tag them to your posts where you distorted what had been said in order to back up your rather delusional views.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 04:03 AM

A reminder
"every time you mention the name Woodcock I know I've got through to you and you are getting rattled.""
Oh yes you most certainly do Carroll
It will remind everyone that you are truly clueless and gormless to an astounding degree.
"Got the point now Shaw"
Probably because Carroll
Really Carroll
Keep floundering about Carroll
So all in all Christmas
For JOM:
Christmas
No need for reminders JOM I have nothing but the utmost contempt for you and everything you stand for. Not many humans wander this planet without one single redeeming feature - you seem to have managed that without even trying.
The Truth according to JOM - thick as shit and proud of it
I will repeat IT YET AGAIN FOR THE BENEFIT OF THOSE AMONG US WHO ARE TOO BLOODY THICK TO UNDERSTAND PLAIN ENGLISH (i.e. YOU RAGGY)
"complete and utter buffoon"
"That by the way THICKO "
"clueless ignoramus of truly astounding degree"
"Carroll"
"Have you found an echo JOM?"
Or have you always wandered through life making a complete and utter JOM-like CUNT of yourself?
Carroll
"Here is a link for you Jom:"
"By the way JOM"
"how boastful a man can get doesn't it JOM?"
"Don't worry JOM"

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 06:03 AM

Jim,
You are a braindead right-wing propaganda swallower

We have been asked to refrain from personal abuse. I do, why can't you?

who refused to respond to documented evidence

What "documented evidence?"

and trot out Cold-War bullshit

Apart from young starry eyed communist dreamers who never grew up, everyone knows the things I referred to are facts.

Which of them do you deny Jim?

Here is the Wiki page I quoted.
All the quotes are authenticated.
On the whole page there is only one "citation required" and that is on a photograph.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 06:31 AM

Sorry, forgot the link.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_German_border#Escape_attempts_and_victims_of_the_inner_German_border

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 06:36 AM

"We have been asked to refrain from personal abuse. "
Then stop insulting our intelligence
Your repetitios behaviour and your refusal to responfd to what is put up makes you what I described you are - not an analysis based on your behaviour
Repeating things over and over again and ignoring ansers is a long established technique with you - in cricket, it's known as 'stone-walling'
If you have any argument with what I have put up, argue with it and stop pretending it's not there.
"What "documented evidence?"
I've just told you what and asked you to respond to is several time - see wwhat I mean - pretending it's not there?
If you are not interested in responding to it - fine - I'm not interested in responding to you.
"the things I referred to are facts."
Based on personal experience and decades of reading, they bear no resemblance to fact
"starry eyed communist dreamers "
If you don't want to be insulted - stop insulting others - you've already described me as this once and I have refuted it
Nothing on Wiki is authenticated - that is the nature of Wiki - it is based on opinions, sometimes authoritative, but often not.
It is idiotic to suggest you can sum up the history of a State or a number of States with one page of script - that's comic-book research.
It's just as idiotic that, because something is 'authenticated' on Wiki, it is proven - it simply means that it is referenced to someone
Do you believe there is a Wiki-fairy whose job it is to check everything that is put up?
Jaysus - it's like believing in a god you can't see.
Now - argue on the basis of what I have said here (without insults) or we're done here.
In the light of the entire study of Eastern European history, what you have put up so far is 'Cold War Bullshit' - the subject really is more complicated than a page of Wiki
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 06:57 AM

"What "documented evidence?"
THIS DOCUMENTED EVIDENCE
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 07:45 AM

By the way Keith -
"The 900 mile wall across Germany"
The Berlin Wall was 155 km (96 mi) - maybe you should send Wiki a new tape measure!!
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 08:00 AM

THIS DOCUMENTED EVIDENCE

Lol......it's a blog post by a brain dead, extremist, regressive leftist apologist for dictators of repressive regimes.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 08:40 AM

".it's a blog post by a brain dead, extremist, regressive leftist apologist for dictators of repressive regimes."
Anybody to the left of Hitler or Netanyahu the Yahoo fits that description as far as you are concerned Bobad.
It's actually a detailed researched article by a Canadian researcher - but I quite realise that such people aren't included in your world of freedom of speech.
Answer his points or butt out, seems to be the appropriate response to a serial troll
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 08:55 AM

It's actually a detailed researched article by a Canadian researcher.....one who believes Kim Jong-un is misunderstood......lol.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 09:12 AM

Exiled writer Zoé Valdés on the Most Terrible Things About Life Under Castro

"Immediately afterwards I began to remember all the people who died in exile, as well as all of the people he murdered," she said. "And then my thoughts turned to his victims."

"My family told me, 'You must not repeat at school what you hear at home about Castro,'" she recalled. "And it was something that really left an impression on me because at home my mother and grandmother were against Castro, but at school everything that I heard was pro-Castro. So from a very early age I was taught two opposing ways of speaking and two opposing value systems."

"I learned that if I thought differently (from the government's party line) I was not to say it or to express it, and to be discreet,"

"The thing that was worse than the fear itself, was the acceptance of the fear and the way living in fear became a normal part of daily life," she said. "That was the most terrible thing."

"The internal repression against dissidents and artists is still the same," she said. "I think with Raúl Castro it will continue as before. After which his children will take over the regime, plus the military is still there. So it is difficult to say that things will change immediately."

The Daily Beast

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 09:26 AM

"one who believes Kim Jong-un is misunderstood......lol."
So what Bobad?
The author has put together a number of facts and rationised them into an article that makes sense rather than the empty rhetoric you lot come up with
Coming from sombody who screams "antisemitism" every time anybody criticises a fascist regime, your argument rings somewhat hollow
I have no knowledge of Kim Jong-un whatsoever and would never pass an opinion on him until I had, but, as with every other leader that does not serve western interests, I would not go to opponents of a system to fill the gap - the waves of ignorance on Cuba confirm the folly of that.
If you disagree with the arguments put forward, provide alternatives.
You are the only people who rely totally on the opinions of others without providing knowledge of your own.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 10:04 AM

Totalitarianism of the left or totalitarianism of the right are both totalitarianism. It's where the extremists of the left meet and shake hands with those of the right, the only difference being the hymn book from which they sing.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Teribus
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 10:07 AM

Jim Carroll - 05 Dec 16 - 07:45 AM

By the way Keith -
"The 900 mile wall across Germany"
The Berlin Wall was 155 km (96 mi) - maybe you should send Wiki a new tape measure!!

By the way Jim the 155 km of wall you refer to as the Berlin Wall was only one part of the 900 mile wall that was built to imprison the population of the DDR.

By the way Jim the one thing you didn't mention whilst on your travels. Did you ever have to sit on the floor of a train because of the countless thousands of oppressed people fleeing from the "west" to that "Workers Paradise" that was the DDR? The most under reported mass immigration in history.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 10:07 AM

Once again, you are putting up unqualified opinions without putting them into context.
America put Cuba under a state of Siege for fifty years, during that period, the U.S. was waging a war on a Third World peasant country which brought about between 1,450,000, and 3,595,000 deaths
Why moralise about one and ignore the other - America was involved in both?
Whatever did and didn't happen in Cuba was caused by the circumstances imposed on it from outside, not from internal tyranny.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 10:24 AM

"900 mile wall that was built to imprison the population of the DDR."
All natioional borders are prisons in that case.#
Keith taked about the wall which was, as I said, 96 miles long, he said it was to imprison the whole of eastern Europe - you appear to have adjusted that to the population of the D.D.R. - both are fantaised crap, of course.
Don't know where the "Workers Paradise" earned its quotation marks - not from me.
More made up Teribus crap.
"The most under reported mass immigration in history."
I would have though the estimated 7.2 million Palestinian refugees merited that title, by far.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 10:30 AM

THESE ARE THE ACTUAL RATHER THAN THE MADE UP FIGURES
Not unreported at all
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 10:31 AM

America put Cuba under a state of Siege for fifty years

Again, no matter how often you keep repeating it there was no siege. You are just lying to justify totalitarian oppression.

Whatever did and didn't happen in Cuba was caused by the circumstances imposed on it from outside, not from internal tyranny.

Again I quote from Solidarity: (an independent socialist organization dedicated to forming a broad regrouping of the U.S. left.)

"despite the strenuous efforts of the U.S. government, Cuba has not been isolated from most of the rest of the globe. The main causes of Cuba's poverty must surely be domestic."

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: robomatic
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 11:07 AM

Jim Carroll- re your link to:

"What "documented evidence?"
THIS DOCUMENTED EVIDENCE
Jim Carroll"

How that brought me back to the 'good' ol' days of The Cold War. Indeed, we are in the territory of "The God That Failed", and "Darkness at Noon" and of course, the still valid "1984".

The Gowan piece, to which you link, is a screed justifying the "Dictatorship OVER the Proletariat" that was Communist Eastern Europe. It seeks to humanize and justify the Eastern German nation-state that existed from Post-War to 1989.

The elephant in the room unseen was, of course, terror. The Stalinist imposition of imposed thought patterns under threat of death of oneself, one's loved ones, or both. From Stalin's point of view, it was simply survival. This is the case of ultimate equivalency: Stalin's survival as important as Roosevelt's for instance. It is understandable- from Stalin's point of view. It led to the killing of millions of people across the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe, and the sending of other millions to the Gulags and various institutions, including of course, in a less lethal environment, in the 70s, mental institutions because if you were loco enough to oppose the state, certainly you must be mentally challenged.

Unfortunately for those who accept Gowan's article as anything other than a self-justifying screed, I remember Communism and Communists. They were not unlike the racists of the Nazis in that they set up a self-justifying philosophy that supplanted reality by using their own version of Orwellian Newspeak. I'll never forget one professor at my university explaining to me that the failures of the U.S.S.R. were not due to Communism being imperfect, but that the Russians trying to implement it were.

Jim Carroll you have been right about one thing, this is become a cold war back-and-forth. Whatever language you choose to indulge in, you have swallowed the principle of equivalency which I reject. There is no need for name calling. This is our point of difference. I think this applies to our difference in the Middle East as well. We are using a different set of basic standards and, like the impossibility of squaring the circle using nothing but a straight-edge and a compass, we will not be able to agree.

Thank you for populating your threads with enough clarity and references to make this clear to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 11:38 AM

Then why not simply dismantle the points he raises
It really doesnt get more complicated than that
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 12:15 PM

Nothing on Wiki is authenticated - that is the nature of Wiki - it is based on opinions,

Wrong Jim. The little blue numbers relate to the source of the information.
Every fact given there has a source provided.

By the way Keith -
"The 900 mile wall across Germany"
The Berlin Wall was 155 km (96 mi) - maybe you should send Wiki a new tape measure!!

Wrong again Jim.
The wall around Berlin was indeed 96 miles, and the wall across the whole of Germany was another 866 miles.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 12:22 PM

Jim, your link "This documented evidence" is no such thing.
It is just an opinion piece by someone called Stephen Gowans, and it contradicts nothing factual I posted.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 12:36 PM

Not now Keith, I'll play with you later.
This gets more and more stupid
All this dates back to 1917 - nothing to do with repressing or enlsaving people - why the **** should it have?
You have two political systems in conflict - one based on profit and acquisition, the other put in to motion to end that system.
New Communism was considered an enemy of world capitalism and from the Russian Revolution onward every effort was made to crush it, even to the extent of welcoming the rise of German Fascism as "A BULWARK AGAINST BOLSHEVISM "
A PRAGMATIC approach was adopted by the West as it had its uses.
Castro brought Bolshevism to the doorstep of the U.S. - the U.S. was the forst to accept him, but dropped him as soon as they found he was not prepared to be another puppet.
From day one of the Cuban Revolution, America was the aggressor - in it's own interests, as little to do with the freedom of the Cuban people as was the support the U.S. gave to despots throughout Souuth and Latin America - Haiti's Doc Duvalier was one of America's favorite despots.
Try dealing with those facts instead of Cold War sterotyping
"and the wall across the whole of Germany was another 866 miles."
There was no other "wall" Keith
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 12:39 PM

"Pragmatic approach to the Berlin Wall" of course
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 01:00 PM

Somementioned the shortage of soap in Cuba earlier

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 01:02 PM

Whoops - again!
Someone mentioned the shortahe of soap in Cuba earlier
TRY THIS FOR "SHORTAGE"
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 01:21 PM

An interesting statistic.
U.S. citizens below poverty line -14.5% (no blockade)
Cuban citizens below poverty line - 1.5% (50 year blockade)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 01:34 PM

(50 year blockade)

Bullshit - no such thing - more Carroll Made Up Shit®

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 01:37 PM

50 YEAR BLOCKADE
NO BLOCKADE
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 01:50 PM

Like I said no blockade just more Carroll Made Up Shit®

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 01:52 PM

Again I quote from Solidarity: (an independent socialist organization dedicated to forming a broad regrouping of the U.S. left.)

"despite the strenuous efforts of the U.S. government, Cuba has not been isolated from most of the rest of the globe. The main causes of Cuba's poverty must surely be domestic."

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Greg F.
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 02:22 PM

Opinions are like arseholes, Bubo.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 02:57 PM

"The negative impact of the embargo is pervasive
in the social, economic and environmental
dimensions of human development in Cuba,
severely affecting the most vulnerable socioeconomic
groups of the Cuban population."
Office of the Resident Co-ordinator of the United Nations system for operational activities for development, July 2008.29
United Nations
AMNESTY REPORT
ILLEGALITY of BLOCKADE "

ERADICATION of POVERTY in CUBA
POVERTY GAP in U.S.
"Like I said no blockade just more Carroll Made Up Shit®"
Tell it to the United Nations and Amnesty
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 03:45 PM

I have had enough of this shit.

The Batista regime sold the people of Cuba to the Mafia or left them to starve on the streets. It oppressed, imprisoned, executed, and otherwise dispossessed and killed to a greater extent than the Castro regime. Remember the "10 to 1" order that Batista gave? If your measure of legitimacy is simply the alleged "oppression" the Castro regime was at least no worse and probably better than the Batista regime.

The people who fled Cuba were those who had, prior to the successful and popularly supported Cuban rebellion, oppressed the ordinary Cuban. Many went straight back into US mafia organisations or clones thereof. As Castro said - those he executed were the criminals who deserved execution.

On the other hand, Castro gave Cuba freedom from starvation, freedom from homelessness, freedom from illiteracy, and health. A damned good deal for Cuba. And a similar revolution would be a damned good deal for the USA and the UK, where the oligolists conspire to starve and exterminate the less advantaged.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 03:45 PM

*oligopolists*. Where is the that "edit" button?

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 04:09 PM

So one gangster replaced another gangster and became a whore to the Soviet Union gangsters instead of the US gangsters.....whoop de effin' doo.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 04:13 PM

You are clueless and out of your depth, bobad.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 04:24 PM

You are clueless and out of your depth, bobad.

As your friend Greg says: "opinions are like arseholes"

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 04:35 PM

Except that I'm dealing in facts here, not opinions. Not once have I ever seen you take a balanced, ideology-free view of any topic, and this one is no exception. It's quite significant that you never attract support. You are an embarrassment even to the people here who are potentially your allies. And you are, as we all know, a cheat, outed only by the change of rules on anonymous guest posting. No wonder no-one associates with you.

Reply if you like. But, as far as I'm concerned, this topic from now on is about Castro and Cuba. I suggest you make a contribution that is actually worth something.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 04:42 PM

Thank you for your opinion but considering who it's coming from I shall give it the consideration it is worth.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Greg F.
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 06:26 PM

I posted this on the Trump thread, but its equally germaine here, as it could have been made by Bubo:

"One thing that has been interesting this entire campaign season to watch is that people that say facts are facts; they're not really facts. Everybody has a way, it's kind of like looking at ratings or looking at a glass of half-full water. Everybody has a way of interpreting them to be the truth or not true." She continued: "There's no such thing, unfortunately, anymore of facts."

Trump surrogate Scottie Nell Hughes last week on The Diane Rehm Show:

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 08:45 PM

Can't be arsed with him, Greg. He's a parasite.

I suppose we can conclude from all that's been said and written about Castro that it shows him to be a divisive figure. He used brutal methods against his enemies within, who were legion and often US-backed. Is that an excuse for his behaviour? Well it's an explanation. He did drive people out, but he did all the good things for his people that have been mentioned here and they loved him. He struggled big-time when the USSR lost interest in him as a proxy whilst at the same time enduring Reagan's vicious hostility. At the back of it all was that senseless, alienating embargo. Without that, who knows how he might have been better embraced and moderated? Praising him unconditionally to the rafters seems wrong to me. As does calling him a "brutal dictator" and leaving it at that. Neither is anywhere near correct. The US was wrong to prop up Batista and wrong to invade in 1961. The Russians were wrong to put warheads on Cuba but the yanks were wrong to put theirs in Turkey. But during all that he turned out in the end, to his chagrin, to be sidelined by the superidiotpowers. The superidiotpowers who had created him.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 09:11 PM

As I have said above, his regime was a change for the better.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 09:17 PM

Pretty sure everyone has caught the trend here with the usual suspects resorting to personal attack when their arguments have failed. It's too bad really because there was some good discussion until they felt compelled to resort to their fallback tactic. Hopefully the mods will recognize this and act accordingly.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 09:31 PM

The most surprising thing to me is that he was never almost a baseball player. I used to have long discussions with the kids' dad about that, *his* dad was almost a ball player too...

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 09:31 PM

Ok, not "too" - oops.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Dec 16 - 11:12 PM

Nice summing up Richard
The refusal to respond to what Cuba was under Batista and what 'Democratic' America has been getting up to since the end of the War, says everything that needs to be said about our righter-than-right crowd
OK to bomb the shit out of peasants that stray from the political straight and narrow, carry out hundreds of assasination attempts on a neighboring President, gun down American students and blacks, baton people who try to get their kids educated and win the vote - 'oppressive to seize and redistribute the land, educate the people and give them a decent, free health system, and end economic exploitation.
Okay to attempt to starve a nation into submission, carry out ongoing wars to keep S.U.Vs on the road and hold and torture untried suspects for indefinite periods in inillegally intolerable and inhuman conditions - undemocratic to try and create an equal society in the face of half a century of violent opposition of the richest and most powerful State on the planet (which has now a fascist, racist, openly misogynist multi-billion thug for president (whose first action was to be forced to partially settle a law suit where one of his companies had stolen students fees).
Long live western democracy - that's what I say.
The silence on any of this will be as deafening as it has on all the other points that have been totally ignored.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 04:07 AM

Richard,
The people who fled Cuba were those who had, prior to the successful and popularly supported Cuban rebellion, oppressed the ordinary Cuban.

This statement ignores the fact that people were fleeing Cuba long after the revolution, and many of the refugees would not have been born when Batista ruled!
This was written in 2009

"The immigration of Cubans to the United States has increased since 1995, although the actual admission numbers have ebbed and flowed over this period. Cuba consistently ranks among the top 10 source countries for legal permanent residents (LPRs). Cuba ranked fifth as a top immigrant-sending country—after Mexico, China, India, and the Philippines—in FY2008. A total of 49,500 Cubans became LPRs in FY2008.
U.S. Coast Guard interdictions of Cubans have fluctuated since the mid-1990s, yet the general trend has moved upward. Cuban interdictions reached a 12-year high of 2,868 in FY2007. In FY2008, the U.S. Coast Guard reported 2,199 Cuban interdictions. Similarly, U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions of Cubans peaked at 4,295 in FY2007 and slipped to 3,351 in FY2008. Cubans who arrived at ports of entry without documents exhibited a comparable pattern, reaching a high of 13,019 in FY2007 and falling slightly to 11,278 in FY2008."

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 04:58 AM

"This statement ignores the fact that people were fleeing Cuba long after the revolution, and many of the refugees would not have been born when Batista ruled!"
So?
The effects of Batista's rule and the U.S. intervention in Cuban politics, egged on by emigrés who were part of Batista regime, have stunted Cuba's grown fo fifty years - Cuba has been unable to develop as a socialist Democracy in that time.
Is everybody who emigrates fleeing oppression or just trying to get a better living for themselves - must go and ask some of my neighbors - most of them have "fled terror at one tim or another in their lives"
Your unidentified quote was written by an American Congressional employee - The American Congress is, of course, completely innocent of all actions carried out by the American Government over the last half century, which is, of course, why you had no problems in using it and felt it totally unnecessary to identify its source.
You, of course, have no intention in replying to the acts of American terror, inequality and injustice - why should you when you quote Congress?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Teribus
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 05:14 AM

A question for Richard Bridge where would you rather live?

So far your statements would seem to indicate Castro's Cuba:

"Castro gave Cuba freedom from starvation, freedom from homelessness, freedom from illiteracy, and health. A damned good deal for Cuba. And a similar revolution would be a damned good deal for the USA and the UK, where the oligopolists conspire to starve and exterminate the less advantaged." - Richard Bridge

Yet you remain in the UK - Why?

Could it be because in Castro's Cuba you only got all those "freedoms" as long as you lived where you were told to live, worked where you were told to work, did as the Party directed, never dared to criticise the regime for fear of being reported and exposed as a "reactionary".

I would dearly like to see any substantiation for that last bit, i.e. "the USA and the UK, where the oligopolists conspire to starve and exterminate the less advantaged" - Oligopoly means a state of limited competition, in which a market is shared by a small number of producers or sellers, thereby allowing and maintaining restricted or limited competition doesn't it? Tell me Richard what greater proponents of "oligopoly" could there be than any Communist country of the type that Castro adopted for Cuba post 1959.

Once served on what the Royal Navy called the West Indies Station. It was split into two zones. The Northern Zone covered Bermuda down to the Bahamas, the Southern Zone covered the Caribbean.

While in the Northern Zone we were under the operational control of the US Coast Guard and the main function was to patrol the channel between the northern coast of Cuba and the Bahamas Keys. The latter we searched regularly and picked up the poor unfortunates fleeing from the "paradise" that was Castro's Cuba and the other thing we searched for was for caches of weapons being smuggled into Cuba. The Southern Zone was much simpler we were there as Hurricane Guard Ships to provide immediate aid anywhere a hurricane struck.

We never encountered anyone trying to gain entry to Castro's Cuba from the surrounding countries and islands which according to Richard Bridge were all "hellholes" compared to Castro's Cuba - rather strange that isn't it?

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 05:18 AM

"Pretty sure everyone has caught the trend here with the usual suspects resorting to personal attack when their arguments have failed. Hopefully the mods will recognize this and act accordingly."

Well I don't see any of those "everyone" exactly flocking to support you. And I may just remind you of this super-hypocritical, whingeing post, bleating about personal attacks and going crying to the mods, next time you call any of us "Jew-haters" as you've done countless times before, until recently from behind a wall of cowardly anonymity whilst pretending to be all sweetness and light via your alter ego. Now, as I suggested, why don't you have a go at shedding your blind ideology-driven prejudices, look at the facts of the matter for a change (which you won't find on your far-right hate-sites, by the way) and have a go at posting something BALANCED about Cuba and Castro, like SOME of us are trying to do?

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 05:34 AM

I don't think even Fidel would have described Cuba as paradise. Well if he ever did it was only to boost his own people in the face of the embargo. The US badly needed an enemy like him, didn't they? Unless you've never read 1984...

People don't rush off in droves to live in Cuba/Russia/China, etc., because people tend to stay where they were born. What a facile argument, a real throwback to the 60s and 70s. Mind you, while people might not emigrate in droves, a lot of the wealthier ones were hiding their riches from the taxman in those more desirable islands you were "defending" during your Pugwash days. Ah, yes, there's more than one kind of island culture in that part of the world, n'est-ce pas?

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 05:39 AM

"A question for Richard Bridge where would you rather live?"#
Jaysus - not that old cliché
For crying out loud
Who wouldn't like not to live in country not kept at starvation level by a hostile power?
I'd rather live in Ireland than Britain - it has nothint to do with how either are governed nor that one is freer than the other
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 07:23 AM

"Pretty sure everyone has caught the trend here with the usual suspects resorting to personal attack when their arguments have failed. Hopefully the mods will recognize this and act accordingly."

Well I don't see any of those "everyone" exactly flocking to support you.

I too have objected to personal attack here in place if reasoned debate.
I did have a post saying that deleted.

people tend to stay where they were born.

Tens of thousands of Cubans have risked their lives in small boats on the treacherous Florida Straits to escape, and many have paid with their lives.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 07:30 AM

And millions didn't. And not ONCE have I ever seen you condemn bobad for calling us Jew-haters. Your silence on the "personal attacks" here that rather suit your cause speaks volumes. You haven't got a principled bone in your body, have you?

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Teribus
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 07:40 AM

"People don't rush off in droves to live in Cuba/Russia/China, etc., because:......"

1: They are fully aware of the price they would be required to pay in terms of personal fulfilment, aspiration, hope and freedom.

2: They are fully aware of the personal freedoms and rights they would have to give up.

Note that Richard Bridge has not responded. He did after all state that - "A damned good deal for Cuba. And a similar revolution would be a damned good deal for the USA and the UK

Now if Richard Bridge actually truly believes that why wouldn't he want to live in Castro's Cuba. Or is it just meaningless, "right-on", "party-line" waffle from the neo-liberal left.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 07:48 AM

"I too have objected to personal attack here in place if reasoned debate."
And you have indulged in personal abuse yourself
"I suspect than as an idealistic young communist visiting the communist world you saw what you wanted and expected to see,"
You've stopped calling people Muppets and ignoramuses after protest, but it's never far from the surface.
"Tens of thousands of Cubans have risked their lives "
To earn a better living
You have the situation in Cuba brought about by aggressive American intervention over fifty years - do you not think that to be part of this discussion?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 08:39 AM

Despite the embargo, the U.S. does do business with Cuba. Last year, according to the Census Bureau, the U.S. exported nearly $300 million worth of products to Cuba; nearly all (96.2%) of that was in the form of meat and poultry, soybeans, corn, animal feed and other foodstuffs. The exports are permitted under a 2000 law that modified, but did not repeal, the U.S. embargo; under it, Cuba can buy certain agricultural products, medicines and medical devices from the U.S., but must pay in cash.

Some "siege", some "blockade", eh!

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 10:02 AM

Steve,
And not ONCE have I ever seen you condemn bobad for calling us Jew-haters.

You and Jim have called me racist.
No difference.

Jim,
And you have indulged in personal abuse yourself

No I have not.
I do not regard "communist" as abusive. Do you?
Likewise "young and idealistic."

It is years since I called anyone here a muppet. I stopped when you took offence.
I did not and do not think it a term of abuse. I often call my dear grandkids muppets.

I never indulge in personal abuse, and on this thread we have all been asked to abstain.
Why won't you?

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 10:02 AM

"Despite the embargo, the U.S. does do business with Cuba."
The U.S. sells goods to Cuba only and, unlike other trading nations, refuses to allow credit
As you say, some embargo.
Obama recognised the existence of the Embargo and began to remove it - Trump acknowledged its existence and has said he will consider removing it if Cuba changes her political policy - international blackmail.
The world recognises there to be an embargo and refers to it as "A blockade" - you refuse to do so and, unimaginatively borrowing from one of your gang, have described it as "more Carroll Made Up Shit®"
You have been given two examples of the term being used, by Amnesty and by The United Nations - you have yet to withdraw your accusation of my lying and you have yet to even acknowledge that this "blockade" not only exists but has done so for half a century. I WILL BE GRATEFUL IF YOU DO SO NOW - BUT WE BOTH KNOW YOU WILL NOT - YOU DON'T SEEM THAT SORT OF FELLER
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 10:08 AM

People in general don't rush off in millions to other countries unless they're refugees. The vast majority of people want to stay in the country they were born in. In the 70s, if you said you were a communist you were told to "get back to Russia then" (even though you'd never been there in the first place). You are up shit creek sans paddle with that line of argument, Teribus, and you know it. And perhaps you think we should all sign contracts gluing us to our keyboards so that we will respond instantly at his command whenever Teribus posts. I'd rather be waterboarded.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 10:15 AM

Again no "blockade" no "siege" in spite of whoever uses that term. Naming something what it isn't doesn't make it that.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 10:21 AM

Jim, a blockade is an act of war.
An embargo is not.
You advocate an embargo on Israel remember.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 10:52 AM

"You advocate an embargo on Israel remember."
I advocate a boycott of Israeli goods and suggest that it is long overdue that they be tried for war crimes they have undoubtedly committed and have been saved from being tried for by a string of U.S. vetoes - the U.S. has defended Israel in exactly the same way as Russia and China have defended Assad - the only difference being that the U.S. has been at it far, far longer and had issued many, many more vetoes in defence of Israel's criminality than has Russia and China combined in defence of Assad's terrorism.
"Naming something what it isn't doesn't make it that."
Simply denying it doesn't change it from what it is and what it is universally recognised as.
You accused me of deliberately making it up - you have been proved wrong and are now refusing to withdraw that accusation.
You were dishonest then and you continue to be dishonest
Fine by me - all grist for the mill
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 11:25 AM

Again no "blockade" no "siege" in spite of whoever uses that term. Naming something what it isn't doesn't make it that. And anyone using that term, be it Amnesty or the UN or you are lying.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Greg F.
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 11:31 AM

Also Sprach Bubo:

"it's kind of like looking at ratings or looking at a glass of half-full water. There's no such thing, unfortunately, anymore of facts."

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 11:41 AM

Leave him Steve
He's as mad as a bag of cats
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 11:47 AM

Ah yes, deploying the old losers strategy once again. It becomes you.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 12:21 PM

"Ah yes, deploying the old losers strategy once again"
You said it, how can we possibly withstand such an avalanche of eruditely presented information!!
As I said, mad as a bag of cats - and about as proncipled
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Teribus
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 12:48 PM

"The world recognises there to be an embargo and refers to it as "A blockade" - Jim Carroll

Not quite true is that.

The world did indeed recognise that the USA and other countries imposed an embargo (an official ban on trade or other commercial activity with a particular country) - Only your cherry-picked pro-Castro bloggers refer to that embargo as a blockade (an act or means of sealing off a place to prevent goods or people from entering or leaving).

The USA only undertook a naval blockade of Cuba during the Cuban Missile crisis - it lasted for less than a month.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 01:08 PM

"An embargo is when one nation establishes a policy not to trade with another nation and not to allow its own ports or territory to be used for commerce with that nation. Establishment of an embargo is the prerogative of any nation. For decades the United States has had an embargo on trade with Cuba. This is a policy decision which has been made by the Government. The policy may be wise or foolish, but nations are clearly within their rights to establish embargos."

"A blockade is totally different. A blockade is closing to international commerce by military force the coast of another entity. A blockade prevents third parties from undertaking normal commercial activity. A blockade is an act of war rather than merely exercising one's own prerogatives."

"The Cuban missile crisis was a crisis because the Kennedy Administration indicated to the Soviet Union that they were prepared to change their embargo of Cuba to a blockade of Cuba by forcefully intercepting Soviet ships with missiles on board. The US clearly indicated that they were prepared to go to war over this issue. The Soviet leadership avoided testing the American will by recalling its ships. No one doubted that in moving from an embargo to a blockade a state of war would exist"

Graeme Bannerman - The Middle East Institute

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 01:34 PM

"It also referred to the blockade as "genocidal" according to U.N. conventions, and labelled it an act of "economic war," while thanking those around the world that have supported Cuba in demanding an end to the hostile blockade."
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/US-Blockade-on-Cuba-Is-Genocidal-20160923-0006.html
http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-renews-sanctions-and-keeps-blockade-on-cuba/5545957

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 01:38 PM

If I call a carrot an apple does that make it an apple?

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 01:39 PM

U.S. RENEWS BLOCKADE
You've already had quotes from the U.N. and Amnesty using the term
This has now become a battle of face-saving semantics
In the end it proves nothing - U.S. action has stifled the Cuban economy in order to break the Government - end od story
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 01:41 PM

This has now become a battle of face-saving semantics

No battle at all, the definitions are perfectly clear. Repeating a lie does not make it a truth.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: robomatic
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 02:30 PM

Jim:

You "advocate a boycott of Israeli goods" and rail against the United States for restricted trade with Cuba, have I got that right?

Sounds like you do not believe in 'equivalency' either.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 02:59 PM

Use of the term Blockade
Fidel Castro announces general mobilization after the announcement of Cuba blockade by US President John F Kennedy, in Havana, on Oct. 29, 1962.
Time Magazine

The aim of this study is to provide an empirical basis for theories about political coalitions formed to apply economic sanctions against a target country. An excellent example is the economic blockade of Cuba by the United States, during which successive Republican and Democratic administrations have pursued economic measures to achieve a political objective.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3227652?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Term used 40 time in article

The United States and the Global Economic Blockade of Cuba: A Study in Political Pressures on America's Allies
MORRIS H. MORLEY Council on Hemispheric Affairs*
The Legality of the U.S. Economic Blockade of Cuba under International Law
Paul A. Shneyer Virginia Barta false
Term used 45 times in article

Washington Maintains Economic Blockade on Cuba. "Absurd" Says Cuban Foreign Minister
Global research
Term used 10 times in article
http://www.globalresearch.ca/washington-maintains-its-blockade-on-cuba-absurd-says-cuban-foreign-minister/5546330

Cuban Government Describes Devastating Effects of U. S. Economic Blockade
by W. T. WHITNEY
Counterpunch
Term used 11 times in article
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/02/cuban-government-describes-devastating-effects-of-u-s-economic-blockade/
"You "advocate a boycott of Israeli goods"
I advocate the support of a BOYCOTT of Israeli goods in support of the officially called one in order to protest about Israeli war crimes and proven human abuses
A little different from a worldwide economic blockade of Cuba lasting 50 years in order to crush a political system and starve an entire eople into submission.
It seems they you have problems with eqivelancy - not me
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 03:05 PM

Well, robomatic, I haven't heard anything about Cuba invading surrounding states and killing innocent civilians there, bulldozing homes, blockading one and a half million people In a massive open prison, leaving hundreds of thousands of cluster bomblets to blow children's legs off in Southern Lebanon, dividing families and farms with an apartheid wall, illegally possessing nuclear weapons, stealing the best land for its settlements, discriminating against a quarter of its population, massacring refugees... BDS is the upshot of justified international outrage. The Cuban embargo is just another sorry Cold War relic of the US using its enemies as pawns in its standoff with the Soviet Union. Apples and pears. Ask bobad.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 03:07 PM

Apples and carrots

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 04:24 PM

BDS is the upshot of justified international outrage

BDS is the upshot of a Jew hating, anti-Semitic, Qatari hypocrite by the name of Omar Barghouti who, although he actively lobbies for worldwide economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel is currently studying at Tel Aviv University.

As for the rest of your post - the usual lie filled garbage that marks you for what you are.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 05:20 PM

So you believe in freedom of speech as long as it's not in Israel. Nice one! 😂😂😂

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: robomatic
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 05:22 PM

You had to know this was coming:

Cuban Military 'Assistance'

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 05:34 PM

Are you criticising Cuba's sending of troops to assist other military causes as though that is unique to Cuba, by any chance? Well, we can all wish the world wasn't like that, but we're all at it. Right now, all over the place, now and ever shall be. Typical of you right-wingers to hold up left-wing regimes as erstwhile pillars of virtue who have all inevitably fallen. Naturally, right-wing regimes can't be held up to this scrutiny because, well, they haven't got any of those inconvenient principles in the first place!

I'd also add that your source is that nasty mix of dubious facts and polemic typical of tabloidisation. Not measured, not to be relied on.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: robomatic
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 06:12 PM

An earlier post by yourself indicated that somehow one state, Israel, was responsible for all sorts of aggression against its neighbors while pure little Cuba was not guilty of such. I am simply adding in that there is lots of information out there about Cub exporting military might far beyond its borders for its own purposes.

Is it all the same to you, Steve?

It seems to me that you don't believe in equivalency, either.

You can go on and debate the niceties of the state you like versus the state you don't like, but you clearly play with favorites.

That is the extent of my point.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Greg F.
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 06:27 PM

Robo, Israel IS responsible for aggression against its neighbors unless you subscribe to the Scottie Nell Hughes/Trumpist agenda.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 06:39 PM

Greg, self defense is not aggression.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Greg F.
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 06:47 PM

And then there's self deception, and/or self justification, Bubo.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 06:52 PM

Every military action taken by Israel against it's neighbours has been a response to aggression.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 07:29 PM

"An earlier post by yourself indicated that somehow one state, Israel, was responsible for all sorts of aggression against its neighbors while pure little Cuba was not guilty of such. I am simply adding in that there is lots of information out there about Cub exporting military might far beyond its borders for its own purposes."

I've never referred to "pure Little Cuba" and no post of mine carries that sentiment. I acknowledged in reply to your post that Cuba sends its military overseas to aid various causes and I reminded you that, when it comes to that, we're all at it, troops on the ground, military bases, aircraft carriers, air strikes, supplying weaponry to guerrillas, the lot. Not to speak of fighting proxy wars by arming countries such as Israel to the teeth. I also expressed regret that the world is like that. Singling out Cuba for that kind of adventurism when so many other countries are at it, including, egregiously, yours and mine, is highly invidious. It is not at all the same thing as aggression towards your immediate neighbours via incursions, blockades, invasion, occupation and air attacks. There is no equivalency there at all. And what we really don't need is the equivalency of the schoolyard. I'd also remind you that Israel has, in spite of BDS, enjoyed amazingly advantageous trade deals with the US and EU, not to speak of never having to worry about where its military might comes from. At the same time, Cuba has endured a half-century of unnecessary and inhuman impoverishment at the hands of the US and massively diminishing returns from its own allies. What price equivalence?

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: robomatic
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 07:42 PM

Interesting that we each acknowledge 'our' preferred state does bad things for good reasons. So we neither think one equivalent to the other.
It was you singling out Cuba as somehow better than all that. Now that you admit it's not pure, as the old joke goes, now all we're arguing about is the price. And I think the Cubans were sold out pretty cheaply.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 08:59 PM

"Interesting that we each acknowledge 'our' preferred state does bad things for good reasons. So we neither think one equivalent to the other.
It was you singling out Cuba as somehow better than all that. Now that you admit it's not pure, as the old joke goes, now all we're arguing about is the price. And I think the Cubans were sold out pretty cheaply."

You know what you can do with your "preferred states" nonsense. I stick up for the ordinary people who are trying to do the best for themselves and their families, not "states." I've stuck up for the ordinary people of Israel dozens of times on this forum. I want their state to be as good as it can be, thank you, just as I want the ordinary Cuban people's state to be as good as it can be. And, if you don't mind, less of the "now that I admit" bullshit, implying that I've relented on something, which I haven't. Finally, I'm not having that silly penny-in-the-slot nonsense about doing "bad things for good reasons." If we want to talk about the complexities of national and international politics constructively we have to do a lot better than that. You can boil things down way too far, you know.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: robomatic
Date: 06 Dec 16 - 10:23 PM

Steve,you're right about boiling things down too far. I don't want to boil any further down this line which to me is much of a cold war rehash. Obviously we're not done with it, but maybe we should think about being done with it, and retain some of the same idealism you speak of, speaking up for the ordinary people.
I got to visit London many years ago when very young and I discovered Sunday at Marble Arch. You could find any viewpoint in the world there, it seemed, with a soapbox to match. People would say incredible things and tell one incredible stories with passion but not much hate. Don't know if the tradition has been maintained, but with the English anything is possible.
As I wrote earlier, I think as far as I am concerned in this thread I've reached an irreducible difference with you and some of the other posters and I have no personal antagonisms at this time and I'm going to try not to add in unless I've got something new to add.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Dec 16 - 04:14 AM

"Every military action taken by Israel against it's neighbours has been a response to aggression."
And every action by its neighbours has been to Israeli military aggression and expansionism
Where do you go from there - other than to decide for yourself whose cause is the most worthy?
Personally, I have no time for any State based on religion, it is the effect on human beings that concern me.
It seems that, with this conflict, we have a wealthy, successful and powerful State forcing out an impoverished, badly armed underdeveloped one.
I refuse to take sides on the rights and wrongs of the conflict, but I recognse war crimes and human rights abuses when I see them.
If both are guilty, then both should stand trial on the basis of all the facts, not on who has the biggest guns and powerful enough friends to prevent trials to take place with vetoes.
"Greg, self defense is not aggression."
Expansionism is not self defence
"BDS is the upshot of a Jew hating, anti-Semitic"
And here you announce which side you are on - antisemitically - it is, by definition, antisemitic to associatete the actions of Israel with The Jewish People
B.D.S. is a non-violent defence against expansionism and ongoing war crimes.
"You had to know this was coming:"
Why should we, this is what has been happening throughout tis argument – an excuse for why it was permissible for the United States to interfere in the politics of a nation whose politics they didn't agree with.
A pictorially obviously gung-ho American propaganda sight justifying the massacres that took place in Vietnam and America's continuing interference in South American politics,, citing such lily-white heroes of democracy as Henry Kissinger, isn't going to help a bit.
I could just as easily grab chunks from Marxism Today or Pravda to show the opposite – but why should I – it's all propaganda defending one point of view or another.
One of the things this argument has helped me do is bring together all the bits and pieces I (think I have) learned and relate them.
1950s MacCarthyism, the Cuban Blockade, Berlin, the possible murders of Lumumba and Dag Hammarskjöld and the deposing of Kwame Nkruma, Vietnam and Cambodia…. all related as part of an ideological struggle.
All you need to do is decide which objective is right or wrong for you.
If we're not going to get any further on Castro, as we obviously are not, let those of us who are interested move on to that.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Dec 16 - 05:13 AM

I'm happy to agree to that as a civil conclusion, robomatic. We may have different perspectives but at least we can avoid black-and-white oversimplifying.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 07 Dec 16 - 01:25 PM

Viva la Opresión

"The end of the nine-day official mourning period of Fidel Castro's death means life is back to normal for most Cubans — except for Danilo Maldonado, who languishes in a Cuban prison.

His crime? On the day of Castro's death, the 33-year-old dissident graffiti artist known as "El Sexto" marked the occasion by spray painting his street name on a Havana hotel wall, along with the cheeky message "Se fue" (He's gone).

It didn't go over well with authorities."

"They have been upset with Danilo from the beginning," said Antonio Rodiles, a friend of Maldonado and a well-known political activist in Cuba. "Because this kind of totalitarian regime doesn't like the humour and he's making fun of these people. They are not accustomed to that."

Rodiles, a vocal critic of the government, said he himself has run afoul of the Cuban authorities and has also been arrested and assaulted."

CBC in Cuba

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Dec 16 - 01:42 PM

Well, bobad, in your own nation of choice hundreds of prisoners are held for months or years sans charge, in many cases not even knowing why they're there. Same the world over. And it stinks wherever it happens. At least yer man knows what he did wrong. Well unless you think that spraying paint everywhere is hunkydory. Yes it's very hard on him. He'll be out within days and you know it, if he isn't already.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: robomatic
Date: 07 Dec 16 - 01:43 PM

This is a bit off-topic, and quite probably belongs in another thread.

I took Russian in high school. Among the source materials on our classroom's shelves was a stack of almost-never-read copies of "Soviet Life". Seems during the enlightened latter period of the Cold War someone who believed in peace, love, and understanding arranged for Our Government, the good ol' USA to publish a popular magazine in the USSR, called 'USA', or, in its Russian incarnation, "ClllA" where those three upright ls are standing together for the Russian letter 'sha'. I was able to buy a copy of C111A in Moscow a few years later, but that's another story. These copies of "Soviet Life" were in English and designed to show off the best that the Soviet Union wanted the outside world to see of itself. Big color photographs but no glossy paper and I clearly remember seeing developer's fingerprints on the illustration. Point is, there were no reader's fingerprints because the publication was exceedingly dry, full of stories about great agricultural progress and the kind of human interest tales that might appeal to a ear, nose and throat clinician but not a young homemaker or model car buff. Dry stuff, downright boring if you're an American teen.

Meanwhile, the copies of the American derived glossy, colorful, C111A flew off the shelf when they went for sale in the USSR (Personally witnessed by me at a later date). So, the Soviets made sure there was a rule limiting the access that Yankee propaganda had in their country behind the iron doily. They mandated an equal magazine quantity count between the U.S. CIIIA and the U.S.S.R. Soviet Life. So someone, maybe the U.S. government, bought lots of copies of "Soviet Life" in order to assure an adequate quantity of American mags to be released over there, and that was why there was a nearly untouched STACK of them in my high school's language classroom, and probably many more classrooms across the fruited plain.
So I was in that classroom not for instruction from my equally awesome and fearsome Russian teacher, Mr. Morse, but as part of a study period, and I idly started thumbing through one of these dreary publications. After an article with pictures of Young Soviets at band practice, I found a Q & A section. I don't remember any of the Qs and As but for one:

Q: What do you think of political jokes?

I don't remember the A, just that it was serious and analytical. The fact of the matter is that Russians, whether pre-Soviet, Soviet, or post-Soviet are TERRIFIC at political jokes. But the official Soviet line had to be prepared by an official Soviet writer of an offical Soviet publication. Talk about groupthink! So the answer was dry and serious. The point of this story is that even as a tender, rather immature high schooler, I knew the American answer to this question:

"Political jokes are fine, as long as they don't get elected."

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: bobad
Date: 07 Dec 16 - 02:30 PM

Well, bobad, in your own nation of choice hundreds of prisoners are held for months or years sans charge, in many cases not even knowing why they're there.

Actually they know very well why they are there. I have no idea what you mean by "your nation of choice".

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Dec 16 - 02:53 PM

Go on, have a guess.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 07 Dec 16 - 02:54 PM

"except for Danilo Maldonado, who languishes in a Cuban prison."
How far from Guantanamo is he and does he have to live chained in a cage and wear a boiler suit in temperatures averaging 92 degrees and rising to 100 in midsummer?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Teribus
Date: 08 Dec 16 - 02:29 AM

Orange one-piece coveralls Jim - the "uniform" of the offshore oil & gas industry in the tropics since the 1970s.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Dec 16 - 03:48 AM

"Orange one-piece coveralls Jim - the "uniform" of the offshore oil & gas industry in the tropics since the 1970s.
Haven't you missed out the 100 degree temperatures, the cages in the open sun, the chains and the fact that these people were uncharged, untried and therefore held illegally?
They used to be passed (supposedly in secret) through our local airport (shannon) until this illegal trade was brought to into the spotlight and stopped - after a long period of having been denied.
779 prisoners have been held by the U.S. military at Guantánamo since the prison opened on January 11, 2002. Of those, 709 have been released or transferred, one was transferred to the U.S. to be tried, and nine have died, the most recent being Adnan Latif, in September 2012. 59 men are still held, and 20 of these men have been recommended for release by high-level governmental review processes.

A description of life in Guantanamo's "offshore oil & gas industry ".
"Latif and other prisoners described Guantanamo conditions to Latif attorney Falkoff when he and other U.S. attorneys were first allowed to visit them in November 2004: "During the three years in which they had been held in total isolation, they had been subjected repeatedly to stress positions, sleep deprivation, blaring music, and extremes of heat and cold during endless interrogations." Latif also described to Lakoff a visit to his cell by an 'Immediate Reaction Force" team:
A half-dozen soldiers in body armor, carrying shields and batons, had forcibly extracted him from his cell. His offense: stepping over a line, painted on the floor of his cell, while his lunch was being passed through the food slot of his door.
"Suddenly the riot police came," he recounted. "No one in the cellblock knew who for. They closed all the windows except mine. A female soldier came in with a big can of pepper spray. Eventually I figured out they were coming for me. She sprayed me. I couldn't breathe. I fell down. I put a mattress over my head. I thought I was dying. They opened the door. I was lying on the bed but they were kicking and hitting me with the shields. They put my head in the toilet. They put me on a stretcher and carried me away."
Latif became a frequent hunger striker, and described being force fed as "like having a dagger shoved down your throat." The Miami Herald writes that at times Latif "would smear his excrement on himself, throw blood at his lawyers, and on at least one occasion was brought to meet his lawyer clad only in a padded green garment called a 'suicide smock' held together by Velcro."

You justify this and condemn what the Government of Cuba did - wonder if they'll ever find a cure for the disease of "Double Standards"?
As I said, the only concentration camp on Cuba was and is till being run by the Americans
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Teribus
Date: 08 Dec 16 - 04:02 AM

Ah missed the point being made entirely once again Jim. Not surprising at all really.

100 degrees F Jimbo? Try working full shifts flat out in the open in temperatures of 120 degrees F, the apparel was not the thing people tended to complain about, especially the welders. They are light coveralls by the way NOT Boiler suits.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Dec 16 - 05:07 AM

You are justifying this torture, aren't you?
Now there's a surprise
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Dec 16 - 05:23 AM

GUANTANAMO HOLIDAY CAMP
WISH YOU WERE HERE
Love
Jim

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Teribus
Date: 08 Dec 16 - 05:45 AM

What torture? Where do I justify it?

Verbatim quotes from any post of mine Jim.

There's something else you will not come up with.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 08 Dec 16 - 05:54 AM

You are trivialising and questioning proven acts of torture "What torture?" (there's your verbatim quote), by questioning them without proof and dismissing the conditions these illegally held prisoners are subjected to
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Teribus
Date: 08 Dec 16 - 04:22 PM

You did ask this question didn't you Carroll:

Jim Carroll - 08 Dec 16 - 05:07 AM

"You are justifying this torture, aren't you?"

I merely ask - what torture? and where, how and when I am supposed to have attempted to justify it.

If you cannot provide this forum with that information then you are back at your old tricks of misrepresentation and telling lies about people again.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Dec 16 - 04:43 AM

You have just been provided with evidence of uncharged prisoners in cages chained up in the burning sun, force fed, subjected to high pitch noise, deprived of sleep.... and a whole batch of examples of modern methods of torture - elsewhere, waterboarding has become common.
You have been given your examples - you justify it by ignoring them and pretending they are not there
I don't tell lies and you have never exer shown me to have done
- we all make the occasional mistake - certainly you do.
Youi have never ever caught me out in a deliberate lie and it is a lie to continually claim that you have.
Now - about this non-existent torture...... DOES THIS HELP? ?
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Stu
Date: 09 Dec 16 - 06:17 AM

Sigh.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Dec 16 - 06:23 AM

Back to bed maybe Stu - if you are feeling tired.
You are, of course welcome to participate in the subject rather than making meaningless disapproving noises
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Stu
Date: 09 Dec 16 - 06:58 AM

Not disapproval, despair.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Dec 16 - 07:39 AM

I'm sorry for your despair Stu
As far as I' can make out, apart from your tut-tutting, you haven't actually contributed to this subject
Don't you feel it a bit.... (what's the word I'm looking for?). that your only appearance here is to do a Mary Whitehouse on what others have contributed?
Can't speak for Terribus, but everything I have written is more or less relevant to what is being discussed - with a few head-to-heads with those who go out of their way to be insulting.
Not sure what I can do about that other than to react.
As I said, feel free.....
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Stu
Date: 09 Dec 16 - 09:48 AM

What's the point of contributing to any of these threads?

They all end up with the same people challenging each other to illustrate where they said why the other person said they'd said and how that was not actually what they said even though they'd used the same words etc etc etc


Any half decent thread eventually gets turned into the forum equivalent of Saint Clabbert's.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Dec 16 - 10:06 AM

"hey all end up with the same people challenging each other to illustrate where they said...
That i an inevitable consequence of two groups of people from the opposite sides of the political spectrum clashing - it doesn't stop other people joining in without getting involved in the cat-fights.
I have to say Stu, I usually admire whaat you havee to say and am extremely grateful for the number of occasions you have contributed to my knowledge, but sometimes you appear to haunt these threads like the Ghost of Christmas Past
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Teribus
Date: 09 Dec 16 - 10:18 AM

"You have just been provided with evidence of uncharged prisoners in cages chained up in the burning sun,"

Well no Jom the only people chained up in the burning sun were protesters in the link you provided.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 09 Dec 16 - 10:43 AM

"They all end up with the same people challenging each other to illustrate where they said why the other person said they'd said and how that was not actually what they said even though they'd used the same words etc etc etc"

You are not wrong, Stu. As a matter of fact I've just had a similar go on the Labour thread but in that case I focussed on the chief culprit (not the only one by a long chalk, but by far the worst), Keith A. of Hertford. Over the years I've singled out several examples of how he constantly twists words, obsesses over semantics, gets inventive with quotes, lies in his teeth and refuses to back down when he's wrong. We are stupid enough to engage him, unfortunately, and his constant misrepresentations inevitably get under people's skin time and time again. It's utterly energy-sapping, frankly. In addition, we have the most aggressive, sarcastic, name-calling, ill-tempered, arrogant, bullying and bombastic poster it's ever been my misfortune to encounter, Teribus of course, and one of the very worst bigots you're ever likely to come across, bobad. In a perfect world we'd let these three nutters just burble on and not respond. We should try doing that more and more. After all, it's not as if half the planet is reading our enlightened little natters, is it?

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Dec 16 - 11:05 AM

"Well no Jom
Sigh - not again
Which list do you want, or shall I put both up?
"uncharged prisoners in cages chained up in the burning sun,"
So - that's what I said what's your point - ?
CHAINING is in fact a common form of torture in Guantanamo.
INTERNATIONAL LAW
Can we assume that chaining is the only thing that appears to disturb you, we can accept that you acccept that torture is common in Guantanamo
Jim Carroll
And you weer doing so well - the old lists will do until I can make a start on another thread

A reminder
"every time you mention the name Woodcock I know I've got through to you and you are getting rattled.""
It will remind everyone that you are truly clueless and gormless to an astounding degree.
"Got the point now Shaw"
Probably because Carroll
Really Carroll
Keep floundering about Carroll
So all in all Christmas
For JOM:
Christmas
No need for reminders JOM I have nothing but the utmost contempt for you and everything you stand for. Not many humans wander this planet without one single redeeming feature - you seem to have managed that without even trying.
The Truth according to JOM - thick as shit and proud of it
I will repeat IT YET AGAIN FOR THE BENEFIT OF THOSE AMONG US WHO ARE TOO BLOODY THICK TO UNDERSTAND PLAIN ENGLISH (i.e. YOU RAGGY)
"complete and utter buffoon"
"That by the way THICKO "
"clueless ignoramus of truly astounding degree"
"Carroll"
"Have you found an echo JOM?"
Or have you always wandered through life making a complete and utter JOM-like CUNT of yourself?
Carroll
"Here is a link for you Jom:"
"By the way JOM"
"how boastful a man can get doesn't it JOM?"
"Don't worry JOM"
You really should read our own posts sometime - it would help avoid the foot-in-mouths - the "Rattle of an Simple Man", as the screenplay writer described it.

"To Br/Exit Or Not To Br/Exit", dating from 2nd of June to 12th of September.
These are selections of Teribus's contemptuously appalling behaviour towards those who disagree with him, all taken from one thread "To Br/Exit Or Not To Br/Exit", dating from 2nd of June to 12th of September.
Several of his postings contain up to half a dozen examples of insulting behavior
One of the conditions of membership of this forum "You are free to be anything you want EXCEPT unkind, impolite, argumentative or snooty."
We all get rattled on occasion, some time ago, Joe Offer sensibly suggested that we should act like adults and stop calling each other silly names – most of us have tried, Teribus continues his appalling behaviour, making it virtually impossible not to react in kind to it.
If these discussions are to be of any value whatever, I feel there needs to be a cut-off point as to when a member is prevented in serially behaving in this way – as far as I am concerned, that point was reached a long time ago.
Until he stops behaving in this arrogant and bullying manner, I will continue selecting examples of his appalling behaviour until he either stops of his own free will or is stopped I will continue selecting topics an providing examples.
It really is devaluing the quality of this great forum – let's stop it now.
Jim Carroll

Idiotic argument Shaw and you know it
Don't worry Jom, we both know that it is just more of your "Made-Up-Shit
Unfortunately though Jom,
Reality check for you Jom:
How many pieces will the Labour Party be in by then Shaw?
Let's rip this clichéd little exercise in leftist rhetoric apart shall we:
At one point Jom - WOW - Is it fun living in your time warp Jom?
Missed the point again Jom,
On points Jom, you have completely missed the point that was being made
But Jom you are talking "individuals" your little bleat
Just how have we closed the door Jom?
Jom says that this is
Correction Jom
Well Shaw, as ever you don't let the facts stand in your way, glossing over the utterly dire state of the nation
A new all time low even for Jim Carroll.
Now I have opened those three sentences out, just in case Jom doesn't know what a sentence is
You didn't say Jom
Unfortunately Jom
Well well Jom,
As for your post - Steve Shaw…. Put that to music and you'd have a song that would top the "Country & Western" charts in next to no time
I have drawn Jom's attention
Good heavens Jom it must have taken you at least half-an-hour to wipe down and dry out the screen and keyboard after that spittle-flecked tirade of yours.
Naw too much fun just letting you contradict yourself Jom.
Well Jom how about you banging on about how wrong those are who advocate
There is also the likes of you and Carroll
About the daftest statement I think I have ever read - not surprising really considering who wrote it
How the hell do you think he became an MEP you Prat
Ah more twaddle from Jom:
"THE F**KER WHO FEEDS THEM - YOU HALFWIT PRAT."
"Only to a wanker like you Shaw."
"Oh and please, please, please let just one of you clowns chirp up... as I will paint the room with you.
Carroll
Rap and the "kipper" haven't cottoned on to.
Nothing whatsoever to say then Jom? Just the empty beating of your gums.
You're using your "tell" that lets me know that I am really niggling you Shaw.
By the bye Shaw
Don't think so Shaw,
Still nothing to say then Jom?
By the way Jom thanks for the PM - as a spit-flecked rant it is quite an amusing bit of pointless froth - any time I want a good laugh I dare say I'll open it up and read it.
Ehmmm Carroll
Very true Shaw, I
from Eastern Europe Jom?
Depending upon who things are classified Shaw.
Only problem with all of that Shaw
Tell me Shaw
"our" democratic system hasn't failed Jom

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Teribus
Date: 09 Dec 16 - 11:35 AM

You get paid in the currency you deal in Jim. As does Shaw, Raggy and DtG.

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Dec 16 - 11:44 AM

"You get paid in the currency you deal in Jim."
Nobody goes in for serial abuse - only you, who seems to regard disagreement as abuse
Plenty more threads to work on, so keep it up
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obit2: So long, Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Dec 16 - 11:47 AM

You didn't answer my question, by the way
Can we assume that chaining is the only thing that appears to disturb you, we can accept that you accept that torture is common in Guantanamo?
Jim Carroll