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  • #31
    Saw this on Twitter....

    Castro arrives in the Greta Beyond. He is greeted by, of all people, Rasputin.

    Rasputin grabs Fidel by the shoulders and holds him at arms length and exclaims: "Damn! You are one hard dude to kill!"

    May he rot in hell...
    “Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
    Mark Twain

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    • #32
      Stay classy WAPO. The man wasn't content merely oppressing Cuba, he helped set up and support vile human rights violating regimes.

      Fidel Castro, African hero
      https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...-african-hero/



      By Max Bearak

      November 28 


      Cuban President Fidel Castro speaks to South African President Nelson Mandela at the World Trade Organization in Geneva in 1998. (Patrick Aviolat/European Pressphoto Agency)

      Following his release after 27 years in prison, Nelson Mandela made sure one of his first trips abroad was to Havana. There, in the Cuban capital in 1991, Mandela lavished his host, Fidel Castro, with appreciation. Castro, said Mandela, was a “source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people.”

      The scene might seem paradoxical in some corners of the West. How could the global symbol of African liberation and democracy say such a thing about a man whose death last Friday provoked exiles who fled repressive Cuban rule to dance in Miami's streets? How could Mandela — imprisoned by South Africa's apartheid rulers — find common ground with Castro, who cleared his way to absolute power in Cuba by jailing untold numbers of dissidents?

      The answer lies in Cuba's robust, and sometimes pivotal, support for many African groups as they fought to bring the era of colonialism to an end. And now, upon Castro's death, many of the loudest and most unequivocal tributes to him have been voiced by African leaders who inherited the political movements stemming from the independence struggles spanning the 1960s to the 1980s.

      [In wake of Castro’s death, his legacy is debated]

      Castro and his African allies saw fertile ground for the spread of communist “revolution” in these wars for independence. In turn, the Soviets provided arms and aid — turning parts of Africa into a stage for Cold War proxy battles.

      In 1988, for instance, a deployment of 36,000 Cuban troops played a decisive role in beating back U.S.-supported South African apartheid-era forces stationed in Angola. Those battles precipitated neighboring Namibia's independence from South Africa and reinvigorated anti-apartheid fighters at home. The United States, especially during the Reagan years, supported the apartheid government as a bulwark against communist expansion. All told, at least 4,300 Cubans died in the fighting in Angola.

      But Castro's troops weren't just mercenaries for the Soviets. Castro intervened against apartheid largely out of his own convictions, not at Moscow's bidding, historians note.




      Cuban troops, as well as technicians, teachers and doctors, would end up staying in Angola for years, to defend against the possibility of another incursion and to build the beginnings of the post-colonial Angolan state. After Castro's death, the secretary general of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, which fought alongside the Cubans and has been in power since independence, said that Castro was his country's Mandela.




      Fidel Castro, the Cuban dictator who led the country's communist revolution in the late 1950s, died on Nov. 25. (Jason Aldag/The Washington Post)

      [Fidel may be gone, but his legacy lives on in Latin America]

      In the ’60s and ’70s, Cuban troops — or African fighters trained by Cubans — also prevailed against the Portuguese in their former colonies of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde. They fought against Mobutu Sese Seko, who led the Congo (later Zaire, then the Democratic Republic of Congo) after the killing of the country's first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, who was perceived in the West as leaning toward the Soviets. And in 1977, Castro sent 17,000 troops to help Ethiopia's Communist leader, Mengistu Haile Mariam, wrest control of the contested Ogaden region from neighboring Somalia. Castro would later claim that almost 400,000 Cuban troops served in Africa, “side-by-side with their African brothers for national independence or against foreign aggression.”


      Fidel Castro rides with Lt. Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam in Ethiopia on Sept. 12, 1978. Castro had arrived to attend celebrations for Ethiopia's fourth anniversary of toppling the emperor. (AP)

      Piero Gleijeses, author of “Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991,” said that Mandela, upon hearing of the arrival of Cuban troops in Angola in 1975, wrote from his jail cell that “it was the first time that a country had come from another continent not to take something away, but to help Africans to achieve their freedom.” And of their Angola victory in 1988 against the regime that had imprisoned him, Mandela said it “destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor and inspired the fighting masses of South Africa.”

      And, to a lesser degree, Cuba's outsized influence continues — though not on the battlefield. Rather, as it does elsewhere in the Caribbean and Latin America, Cuba continues to send doctors from its nationalized health system to Africa. At one point during the beginning of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa two years ago, Cuba had the largest contingent of foreign doctors in the region. As of two years ago, more than 50,000 Cuban doctors work around the world, including in 32 African countries.




      Today, the many failures of Castro's revolution at home have left it resembling many of the African countries where it intervened. Like in Cuba, one-party-rule is common across many so-called democracies, and the revolutionary ideals that Cuba helped engender decades ago have been often consumed by greed and incompetence.

      It was not surprising to see presidents like Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi offer solemn tributes to Castro. They, too, have inherited his penchant for brutally stifling dissent, and staying in power at all costs.

      But Castro will live on in Africa as an icon of freedom and struggle. In 1998, four years after Mandela became South Africa's first black president, Castro flew to the city of Durban and was given a hero’s welcome on the streets. He delivered a speech to a packed meeting of the African National Congress, Mandela's party.

      Once reaching the podium, it was several minutes before Castro could begin his address, as the legislature thundered with cheers of “Cuba, Cuba,” and “Fidel, Fidel.”
      To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

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      • #33
        Originally posted by troung View Post
        he helped set up and support vile human rights violating regimes.
        Umm... let's say he wouldn't be the only political leader of a country to have done that. And leave it at that.

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        • #34
          ...
          http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed...128-story.html

          Column Fidel Castro died as he lived — praised by useful idiots

          Remembering Fidel Castro 1926-2016

          Within half an hour of the Cuban government's announcement Saturday of the death of the 90-year-old revolutionary leader, cheers were heard in Miami's Little Havana.

          By Jonah Goldberg•Contact Reporter
          November 28, 2016, 11:40 AM

          Fidel Castro died as he lived: to the sound of useful idiots making allowances for his crimes. (That’s not my term: It was Lenin who called liberal apologists for Communism “useful idiots.”)

          The gold medal in the Useful Idiot Olympics should probably go to Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada. In a statement, he expressed his “deep sorrow” upon learning that “Cuba’s longest serving president” had died.

          One can only imagine what George Orwell could do with that one word, “serving.” Castro did not serve, he ruled a nation of servants, often cruelly, while making obscene profits for himself and his family.

          “To listen to some Castro defenders, you’d think the scales of justice can balance out any load of horrors, so long as the substandard healthcare is free.

          “Fidel Castro was a larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century,” Trudeau continued, repeating that word. “While a controversial figure, both Mr. Castro’s supporters and detractors recognized his tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people who had a deep and lasting affection for ‘el Comandante.’”

          Again, where is Orwell’s red pen?

          “El Comandante”: The term drips with affection, doesn’t it? Castro’s “detractors”? Would those be the families of the thousands he had executed? The survivors of Castro’s Caribbean gulag? Those who didn’t drown trying to escape?

          Trudeau’s expression of “deep sorrow” was typical of a whole genre of Castro eulogies. His apologists have tended to romanticize the “revolution” and parrot Cuban state propaganda – literacy rates! Free healthcare! – while dispensing antiseptic euphemisms for the brutal reality of what the revolution wrought.

          At least when people note that Hitler built the autobahn and Mussolini made the trains run on time, they’re usually being ironic. To listen to some Castro defenders, you’d think the scales of justice can balance out any load of horrors, so long as the substandard healthcare is free and the schools (allegedly) teach everyone to read.

          As much of the American left is openly mooting whether or not the American president-elect is a dictator in waiting, one has to wonder whether they would take that bargain: No more elections, no more free speech, no more civil liberties of any kind, but socialized medicine and literacy for everyone! American political dissidents, homosexuals, journalists and the clergy, just like in Cuba, can languish in prison or internal exile, but at least they’ll be able to read the charges against them.

          Such un-nuanced arguments always make leftist eyes roll. As University of Rhode Island professor Eric Loomis put it, “Castro: It’s Complicated!” cautioning against thinking “in terms of simplistic moral judgments.” It seems to me that when people want to ban simplistic moral judgments, it’s usually because simple morality is not on their side.

          Here’s my Fox News colleague Geraldo Rivera on Twitter: “Conservatives mocking nuanced view of #FidelCastro make me gag-What do they say about @realDonaldTrump? #RonaldReagan? RichardNixon? #Elvis?

          Orwell’s red pen is too good for such asininity. Lest there is something I don’t know about Elvis, none of these figures were brutal unelected despots responsible for the murder of their own people (10 times as many deaths as those credited to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet).

          One hint as to why Rivera and so many others were smitten with Castro: he was an international celebrity. Rivera even tweeted a picture of himself grinning broadly in “el Comandante’s” presence along with his condolences. “RIP #FidelCastro Yes, a despot who ruthlessly suppressed dissidents. But he defeated a dictator & was the premier revolutionary of his time.”


          “Premier revolutionary of his time.” It’s as if Rivera thinks this title provides moral cover. This is the thinking that allows vacuous hipsters to unselfconsciously shrug when you tell them that the Che Guavara on their T-shirt was a sadistic murderer. “Yeah, but he was cool.”

          But among serious leftists, Castro’s radical chic is secondary. For them, Fidel’s revolution provided the slender hope that America was on the wrong side of history. It was a symbol of resistance – intellectual, political and spiritual – to Western yanqui hegemony. They loved Cuba for many of the reasons they hate Israel (despite its exemplary literacy rate and universal healthcare system). They think – wrongly – that Israel is an extension of Western colonialism while Cuba was a rejection of it.

          Castro understood this better than anyone, which is why he was able to “serve” his people for so long.

          [email protected]
          Last edited by TopHatter; 01 Dec 16,, 16:39.
          To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

          Comment


          • #35
            Left 900 million , over 20 large properties , he really served his people did this POS and of course our labour leader , Corbin , thinks he was a veritable fine chap , mind tho , corbin breaks bread with the scum from the IRA adams n mcguiness etc etc .
            Last edited by tankie; 02 Dec 16,, 13:14.

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            • #36
              Says it all really


              Click image for larger version

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              In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.

              Leibniz

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              • #37
                Originally posted by Parihaka View Post
                Says it all really


                [ATTACH]42768[/ATTACH]
                Yes, sir. Venezuela closed the tap.
                To be Truly ignorant, Man requires an Education - Plato

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                • #38
                  In 1988, for instance, a deployment of 36,000 Cuban troops played a decisive role in beating back U.S.-supported South African apartheid-era forces stationed in Angola.
                  Cuba, USA, Apartheid South Africa and Angola.
                  All of us are murderer
                  This world i tell you.....

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                  • #39
                    Fidel Castro was a good man. HIS CRIME? He was naïve. He thought by ridding his island nation of the American Mafia he would be applauded by Washington. He was fond of the US and I'm sure he was confused by America's campaign against him. Cuba (like Iran during the Mossedeq Democratic government) was left for dead and had no other option (again like Iran) but to make friends with the Soviet Union.

                    Castro was played like a pawn between Kennedy and Kruschev over the Soviet's missile «knight to E-6» move, forcing America to dismantle its own missiles on the Turkish-Soviet border. Although the US has been keeping up the pressure to this very day, the settlement over the missiles and "The Bay of Pigs" fiasco meant that Cuba would not be invaded again. That agreement must have been written in blood.

                    The strain was great, of course, and Fidel had to make some drastic decisions that might not have always been the best ones to make.

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                    • #40
                      Originally posted by FORMBY View Post
                      Fidel Castro was a good man. HIS CRIME? He was naïve.
                      You certainly going to make a lot of friends here. Here, let me Google that for you https://www.google.com/#q=Human+righ...f+fidel+castro
                      “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

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                      • #41
                        Originally posted by TopHatter View Post
                        You certainly going to make a lot of friends here. Here, let me Google that for you https://www.google.com/#q=Human+righ...f+fidel+castro
                        I do not see anything in your link that disproves anything I've written. That was your purpose, yes?

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                        • #42
                          Yea he was so 'mis-understood' by his own people that thousands of them took to anything that would float to try to make it to Florida.

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                          • #43
                            Originally posted by snapper View Post
                            Yea he was so 'mis-understood' by his own people that thousands of them took to anything that would float to try to make it to Florida.
                            Those that were not shot you mean?
                            No such thing as a good tax - Churchill

                            To make mistakes is human. To blame someone else for your mistake, is strategic.

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                            • #44
                              Originally posted by FORMBY View Post
                              Fidel Castro was a good man.

                              For me, Castro lost all claim to being a good man when enabled a scenario that could have led to nuclear war. He did just that when he invited the USSR to station nuclear missiles in his country.
                              To be Truly ignorant, Man requires an Education - Plato

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                              • #45
                                Originally posted by JAD_333 View Post
                                For me, Castro lost all claim to being a good man when enabled a scenario that could have led to nuclear war. He did just that when he invited the USSR to station nuclear missiles in his country.
                                We'll gloss over the fact that Castro was enraged by the Soviet decision to withdraw those missiles and demanded to know why they weren't being used.

                                That's right, his reaction was "Why in the hell did you bring them here in the first place if not to launch them??"
                                “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

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