Fidel Castro

[Little_Lord_Fauntleroy]

@ChocolateMice

Where do you freaks get the time? Ive just enough to pop in with a few one liners and insults

+1

[Tassotti]

Sidney just got a one way ticket to humiliation

[maroonandwhite]

If castro came to power in Finland, then his actions would be despotic. But instead he won a popular revolution in a country just a few decades after terrible spanish colonial reign, war, then de facto US colonialism. He could have done a mugabe, just grabbed all and fuck the population, but he clearly intended to better their interests. It seems he almost fell into communism to gain soviet protection from the US. His refusal to move towards democracy, nepotism and holding people in the country amongst others means he cant be viewed as any saintly figure, but he operated under unjustifiable almost insane pressure and real threat of invasion or at least interference from the states. So a mixed report card. Trudeau was too gushing, the yanks hypocrisy is hilarious.

Frankie Boyle (frankieboyle)

[HBV]

The long dark winter evenings are a busy time for a man in your line of business.

[HBV]

That’ll be @Sidney up all night now. Utter genius from Tim, he has the little layabout dancing to his tune. Like the Irish rubby forwards Tim is thinking 2 or 3 rucks ahead. It’s fantastic to watch.

[Sidney]

@Tim_Riggins

Yes, have you not read this thread?

Castro, he was an UNELECTED DICTATOR. The USA didn’t force him to be that for over 50 years and hand over power to his brother. Just blame the USA aye.

Are you aware the US invaded Cuba in 1961 in an effort to depose him?

Any socialist or social democratic government in a small country remotely within the US’s sphere of influence (and they didn’t even have to be within their sphere of influence or be a small country - look at Iran, Chile, Afghanistan or Vietnam) had one option if they wanted to stay in power, and that was to align themselves with the Soviets.

Given the US tried to overthrow Castro, what would you do?

Aligning with the Soviets was basic self-protection.

The alternative was inevitable overthrowal by a US backed coup, probable death and probable civil wars of the type that plagued Nicaragua and El Salvador.

@Tim_Riggins

Castro was not elected but Sidney said he had all the support justified for ruling for 50 years uninterrupted. Your dislike of Pinochet vs Castro is clear, one styled himself as a socialist so you like him. Both committed heinous crimes, both ruled undemocratically, but you like one. I could say for “balance” fair play to Pinochet for handing over power democratically at the end - but I’m not looking for “balance” for Pinochet. The only one looking for balance with an unelected dictator is you.

What does Milton Friedman and Maggie Thatcher’s 80s support for Pinochet have to do with the here and now? Pinochet died in 2006, please find me loads of world leaders at the time who lined up to support him. By that time he was long an international disgrace.

Niall Ferguson, that is grasping ffs. He is an historian, not a current head of state like Michael D or a Western leader like Trudeau.

You don’t get the difference between overthrowing a hated regime and overthrowing democracy, do you?

Pinochet was effectively forced to hold an election in the end i) by the country propping him up - the US who had finally decided to wash their hands of him and ii) because the popular campaign of resistance to him was too big.

There was never such a campaign in Cuba because the lot of the people was better.

You say Pinochet was an international disgrace but I don’t hear you saying the US was an international disgrace. Where’s that balance again?

[Nembo_Kid]

I’d have voted for Castro.

I would have joined his armed militia too to protect his rule.

[Matty_Hislop]

[Ashman]

You would in your hole .

[ironmoth]

@HBV

Great post, I really enjoyed reading it.

+1

I thought he could have fleshed it out a bit more though.

[Nembo_Kid]

I would.

As a man of conviction, I would have fought for Castro.

[Sidney]

@Tim_Riggins

He was a Soviet poodle just like you would like to criticise Tony Blair for following W around. It does amaze me that you would create a fairy tale above to justify his intervention and cause of thousands of deaths, directly and indirectly, abroad. I have NEVER said I am against interventionism, but you are passionate in your dislike of it it (BLIAR). Once again though, this is another principle that goes out the window when you talk about Castro.

I’m generally anti-interventionism but when your enemy is intervening all over the planet to snuff out any sort of government to the left of authoritarian unrestricted free market yet crony capitalism 9not an oxymoron, they go hand in hand), it’s a bit rich to complain when you get a bit of blowback.

And I’d far rather have been on the side of who Cuba was supporting than who they were opposing.

@Tim_Riggins

Once again, you justify his sibling dictatorship for 60 years. You are tying yourself to privilege of family name. Now that it is clear that Sidney justifies single party, undemocratic rule in a country, we know that he also believes that only a family name can keep that faithful line. Much like your mate Jeremy Corbyn, your stance on the benign Monarchy is shown to be hypocritical. Another principle in the toilet.

I don’t think a Donald Trump supporter or a Republican supporter is in much of a position to complain about nepotism.

Not really sure what relevance Jeremy Corbyn has in this case.

@Tim_Riggins

This is a fantastic bit of revisionist history. Much like your parsing of language earlier to try and avoid your blatant hypocrisy for criticising one undemocratic dictator over another, you use the term “invited”.

Here is a good spiel on Castro’s foreign policy, including intervention in Africa;

Yet there are numerous misconceptions on the left about Cuban foreign policy. While it is true that Fidel Castro maintained his opposition to the U.S. empire to his last breath, his Cuban foreign policy, especially after the late 1960s, was moved more by the defense of Cuban state interests as defined by him and by his alliance with the USSR than by the pursuit of anti-capitalist revolution as such. Because the Soviet Union regarded Latin America as part of the U.S. sphere of influence, it applied strong political and economic pressure on Cuba to play down its open support for guerrilla warfare in Latin America. By the late 1960s, the USSR succeeded in this effort and that is why in the 1970s Cuba turned to Africa with a vigor that came from knowing that its policies in that continent were strategically more compatible with Soviet interests, in spite of their many tactical disagreements. This strategic alliance with the USSR helps to explain why Cuba’s African policy had quite different implications for Angola and South African apartheid where it was generally on the left, than for the Horn of Africa, where it was not. In this part of the continent, Fidel Castro’s government supported a “leftist” bloody dictatorship in Ethiopia and indirectly helped that government in its efforts to suppress Eritrean independence. The single most important factor explaining Cuba’s policy in that area was that the new Ethiopian government had taken the side of the Soviets in the Cold War. It was for the same reasons that Fidel Castro, to the great surprise and disappointment of the Cuban people, supported the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, although it was clear that Castro’s political dislike for Dubcek’s liberal policies played an important role in his decision to support the Soviet action. Fidel Castro also supported, at least implicitly, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, although he did it with much discomfort and in a low-key manner because, as it happened, Cuba had just assumed the leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement, the great majority of whose members strongly opposed the Soviet intervention.

Cuba was invited. Familiarise yourself with the Angolan civil war and who the US were backing before commenting.

@Tim_Riggins

By Fidel Castro’s own admission, he had over 20,000 POLITICAL PRISONERS in 1967.

He lined thousands up in front of firing squads.

Castro decided to bring the threat of nuclear war to his country so he could secure his own position.

Yup, the million people took flight from a peaceful existence alright.

Your delusion knows no bounds.

Only one country has a history of waging nuclear war.

Cuba was a peaceful country under Castro by any definition, mate.

Again, taking political prisoners was basic self-preservation. You tend to get paranoid if there are snakes waiting to pounce on you.

@Tim_Riggins

It’s great that you seem to dislike over a million people exiled from their country. You’re a real man of the people I see.

I wasn’t aware I was under any obligation to like anybody. Are you under any obligation to like Mexican or Nicaraguan or Honduran Salvadoran immigrants to the US?

Are you under any obligation to like Irish people in Australia?

@Tim_Riggins

You will point me to the heads of state, such as our President at the time Mary McAleese, for her statement at the time of Pinochet’s death.

The US right fell over themselves to praise him. Even the Washington Post, one of the “liberal sources” @anon7035031 won’t touch, wrote a gushing editorial about him when he died.

Given Thatcher’s staunch defence of him it really does expose your staunch defence of Thatcher.

Why on earth would Mary McAleese have praised him?

@Tim_Riggins

Organisations like Amnesty International. We can add them to the list of organisations Sidney doesn’t trust and this should be noted when he ever talks about them in future.

@Tim_Riggins

Colm O’Gorman? This is like a t-rex trying to the front crawl at this stage, give it up.

You quote Amnesty International and then proceed to criticise me for mentioning the CEO of Amnesty International in this country.

How strange.

[Sidney]

Where’s the balance on the US?

Here’s a list of countries the US has bombed since World War II:

China 1945-46
Korea 1950-53
China 1950-53
Guatemala 1954
Indonesia 1958
Cuba 1959-60
Guatemala 1960
Belgian Congo 1964
Guatemala 1964
Dominican Republic 1965-66
Peru 1965
Laos 1964-73
Vietnam 1961-73
Cambodia 1969-70
Guatemala 1967-69
Lebanon 1982-84
Grenada 1983-84
Libya 1986
El Salvador 1981-92
Nicaragua 1981-90
Iran 1987-88
Libya 1989
Panama 1989-90
Iraq 1991
Kuwait 1991
Somalia 1992-94
Bosnia 1995
Iran 1998
Sudan 1998
Afghanistan 1998
Yugoslavia – Serbia 1999
Afghanistan 2001
Libya 2011

Instances of the United States overthrowing, or attempting to overthrow, a foreign government since the Second World War. ( indicates successful ouster of a government)*

China 1949 to early 1960s
Albania 1949-53
East Germany 1950s
Iran 1953 *
Guatemala 1954 *
Costa Rica mid-1950s
Syria 1956-7
Egypt 1957
Indonesia 1957-8
British Guiana 1953-64 *
Iraq 1963 *
North Vietnam 1945-73
Cambodia 1955-70 *
Laos 1958 *, 1959 *, 1960 *
Ecuador 1960-63 *
Congo 1960 *
France 1965
Brazil 1962-64 *
Dominican Republic 1963 *
Cuba 1959 to present
Bolivia 1964 *
Indonesia 1965 *
Ghana 1966 *
Chile 1964-73 *
Greece 1967 *
Costa Rica 1970-71
Bolivia 1971 *
Australia 1973-75 *
Angola 1975, 1980s
Zaire 1975
Portugal 1974-76 *
Jamaica 1976-80 *
Seychelles 1979-81
Chad 1981-82 *
Grenada 1983 *
South Yemen 1982-84
Suriname 1982-84
Fiji 1987 *
Libya 1980s
Nicaragua 1981-90 *
Panama 1989 *
Bulgaria 1990 *
Albania 1991 *
Iraq 1991
Afghanistan 1980s *
Somalia 1993
Yugoslavia 1999-2000 *
Ecuador 2000 *
Afghanistan 2001 *
Venezuela 2002 *
Iraq 2003 *
Haiti 2004 *
Somalia 2007 to present
Honduras 2009
Libya 2011 *
Syria 2012
Ukraine 2014 *

You know, maybe if the insane anti-communist, anti-socialism and anti-social democracy ideology of the US hadn’t existed and the US hadn’t intervened all over the globe to snuff out any government that wasn’t entirely receptive to US capital, there might have been less problems, and countries might have been able to go their own way on their own terms without having to align with other bad guys for being in constant fear of being overthrown. Just a thought.

[Ashman]

Naive Sid . Ever hear of the Soviet Union ??? . I am not give US interventions a clean bill of health here but Jesus the world ain’t black and white .

[ciarancareyshurlingarmy]

@Fagan_ODowd

@Tassotti

left wing revisionism

Tell that to the people of Stalingrad who sent von Paulus home with his tea in a mug.

I reckon you already know they kept him for 10 years before sending him home

[Sidney]

The Soviet Union hasn’t existed since 1991, mate.

And what legitimate reasons did the US have for intervening to overthrow any government before that?

What reason did the US have for trying to overthrow Castro in 1961 or, say the democratically elected governments of Iran and Guatemala in 1953 and 1954?

I’ll give the answer to spare you writing one. None.

And remember, the US started the Cuban missile crisis.

[balbec]

Tremendous stuff in fairness.

[anon7035031]

The US intervened in countries that aligned themselves with Communisn pal, a failed ideology that reared its stupid head in 1917. There isn’t one example of a county that achieved anything economically since 1750 following any stupid ideology other than capitalism. It’s the best of a bad lot, but by far the best one available.

Stupids think there is something better, but there isn’t. Humans have evolved to be quite innovative in the past few centuries, the smart ones rise to the top and drive economic progress. Dumb fucks oppose anyone who is successful and want to drag them down into the gutter they themselves inhabit.

[KinvarasPassion]

[balbec]

He liked it so much he didn’t want to leave.