Rest in Revolution Fidel Castro
2016 has been a shit year, and it continues to find ways to keep killing off all my heroes, this time 2016 has managed to wrestle life from the Godfather of the Revolution, Fidel Castro –
The CIA tried to assassinate him 638 times, here was one of their first attempts…
…Nelson Mandela loved him…
…and the World lost an idea that common people could join together and fight the forces of Capitalism with weapons if need be.
A revolutionary hero just turned up at the pearly gates demanding a meeting with the workers – Rest in Revolution Fidel.
Better still, for Che and Fidel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgE11M0tSMM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSRVtlTwFs8
Remember! El pueblo unido! Where did that ever go under?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvWyYmn3Qfg
This is the shit some Russia lovers here seem to support. They are just another version of nazis.
Do you include waterboarding in your little moralising speech there, Sceptic?
“Soften”?!?!
Jeezus, Patrick, are you totally bereft of history? Are you so one-eyed in your bias against the Left that you have “forgotten” everything Castro faced?
FFS, Castro faced 600 assassination attempts by the CIA and their Mafia cronies!
Cuba faced decades of economic blockade by the US!
And the US tried an invasion in April 1961, using Cuban mercenaries!
And you’re harping on about wanting Castro to “soften”?! Fuck me, if you faced what Cuba and Castro faced, I don’t think you’d be in any hurry to “soften” in the face of such hostile intransigence and overt violence.
How many governments has the US overtly and covertly over-thrown? Dozens? Hundreds? Salvador Allende probably played by your rules, and paid the ultimate price.
Screw your hypocrisy. Castro defended Cuba in the face of the most powerful nation on Earth. Only sycophants to the implacable American Empire wanted him to roll over and die.
Patrick – But you only focus on Fidel Castro – perhaps one of the few really popular communist governments aside from Imre Nagy and Alexander Dubcek, and socialists like the late Salvador Allende?
“You may wonder why nearly half of voters vote national, they are mostly concerned about this lot getting anywhere near the wheel”
funny that, i dont remember Fidel ever running for parliament here in NZ ?
Patrick: “Did they? I imagine that the USSR buying 80% of Cuban sugar and paying up to 11 times the world price would have gone some way towards Cuba going it’s own way.”
Maybe that’s because the West wouldn’t sell sugar to the Soviet Union during the Cold War so the Russians were forced to buy at a higher price?
On top of which, Paddy, maybe 11 times the world price was actually a FAIR PRICE, and the West was buying the product cheaply from pro-US puppet regimes?
In which case Castro liberated Cuba from the sugar transnationals and actually managed to get the price that the product was worth??
I call that shrewd business acumen, Paddy me old son.
Wasamatter, doncha like it when the socialists stick it to the corporates??
That’s why the Yanks got rid of Allende. Oh, by the way, that was a democratically elected socialist government. Didn’t last long though. Washington made certain of that.
No wonder Castro locked up or shot his opponants. He KNEW what the Americans were capable of!!
True.
Patrick: “Frank, I’m not talking about revious regimes.”
Of course not. Then you’d have to put Castro’s rule into context. And that would upset your patently anti-socialist bias, eh Paddy?
The pearly gates is a fairy tale. I prefer the tales of Hans Christian Andersen myself.
It’s the American regimes that are guilty of the mass murders many of you accuse Castro of. The American pig war whores who are supported by Israel, Britain, Australia and good old New Zealand. Wakey wakey
So youre a homophobe redneck then?
True.
Half of NZers vote Nats, because they have their heads up their bums and love fossil fuel and methane up their noses.
They cling to lifestyles and economic models that will ruin the planet and the future of their off-spring. They have been brainwashed to death, and think they know best.
I can just see it again, Paul Henry ignoring and ridiculing climate change and the human input in that looming disaster. Making jokes about it.
Sadly with the kind of dumbing down media, and ignorant that also drop in here at times, with their right wing nonsense and conspiracy stuff, NZers are in too small numbers educated enough, so the blind lead the blind majority, towards a deep cliff.
Cuba may be backward in some ways, but the people there, at least enjoying good healthcare and education, they may still know how to survive with little fossil fuel technology, even during a nuclear winter that may be the end result of Trumpism that is about to hit us.
Those US American fast food addicts and consumer idiots, same as their counterparts here, they will freeze to death, not knowing what to do without a switch to turn things on, that will not function after nukes have hit.
Castro was no saint, but he was one that endured and overthrew others that were much worse, and who were corrupt, selling the island nation cheaply to the US mafiosis and so. Batista was a US puppet, same as many in that sphere of political imperialist interference.
Those that are overly critical of the revolution, of Castro, Che and the ones that brought change, they are blind in one eye, and politically in bed with the ones that committed much worse atrocities than some may lament.
RIP Fidel, I say, “revolution” may though imply, he will have enough reasons to turn in his grave, looking at the future US president and what may loom for Cuba.
Are you referring to Batista?
As opposed to having corporations with their boots on the necks of Third World nations? How’s your moral compass, ‘Off White’, when it comes to sweat shops producing goods for fashion-label businesses? Or polluting environments to strip-mine the land; clear-fell forests; pollute rivers and the air?
You ok with corporate boots (with Adidas labels, of course) on the necks of Third World nations and their workers?
Yes, they were free to choose their own destiny.
If the people didn’t support the Castro government, it would have been over-thrown. Cuba was nowhere near the Soviet Union, so unlike up-risings in East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the Cuban government could not rely on Red Army ‘muscle’ for local communist parties to maintain power.
So Castro had to be a peoples’ government.
Remember that the Kennedy government banked on a popular uprising by Cubans during the Bay of Pigs invasion. That up-rising never happened. No one wanted a return to a US-puppet regime, and certainly no one wanted see see Batista come back.
Let’s not forget that during Batista’s regime, Cuba was controlled by organised US crime families.
Castro got rid of those parasites. Instead, Cuban people were finally free to determine their own destiny.
Right on the mark there Frank. Under Batista’s vile reign, Cuba was the whorehouse of the Caribbean. Castro soon put paid to that.
Fidel Castro’s legacy will be his health and education policies, where in Cuba now, second to none free medical care is available to all, while education has been recognized as the best in the world, with a 97% literacy rate.
RIP Fidel.
How do you know, Andrew?
Jesus was pretty revolutionary for his time. Practically a socialist!
You’re referring to one of the many “brush wars” during the 20th Century Cold War. The West was also involved, Patrick – which you seem to over-look.
During the Indochina conflict, 1,450,000 to 3,595,000 million were killed. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties#Civilian_deaths_in_the_Vietnam_War)
During the Iraq-Iran War – where the West supported Saddam Hussein against Iran – an estimate 1 milion to 1.5 million were killed (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/sep/23/iran-iraq-war-anniversary).
During Ogaden War between Somalia and Ethiopia (where the West supported the former), thousands more were killed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogaden_War)
And of course, we now have Western military adventurism in Iraq. Death toll thus far; appriximately 1 million civilians dead (http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq) since the US-led invasion in 2003.
When it comes to “breaking eggs”, the West is no better than Joe Stalin. We just have better “PR”, to clothe it in nice terms like “regime change”, “democracy”, and “human rights”.
As for your reference to Angola. It’s amazing how conveniently you forgot to mention the colonisation of Angola by Portugal and the de-stabilisation that caused. In your mind, Patrick, history seems to start only when it suits you – notably when local populations rise up against colonial oppressors.
So a mass murderer is your hero Martyn!?
???…explain?
“So a mass murderer ”
you have some ACTUAL evidence of this ?
I guess it doesn’t matter that he murdered thousands of Cubans for daring to not agree with him?
citation?…links of proof?..or a fibberish falsey ?
Viva la revolución
My entire life has been dominated by the desire of capitalists to exploit people and resources at the expense of environment, and capitalism’s relentless of transfer wealth upwards to those who already have too much. There are very few places where capitalists have not succeeded in exploiting people and resources and bringing about ruination.
The process of ruination of the Earth is reaching it’s ultimate conclusion. And all the good work that has been done in Cuba since the 1950s will be wiped out in the final orgy of exploitation, greed and stupidity that characterizes the capitalist system.
I don’t think anyone heads to the pearly gates, let alone self claimed Christians.
A leader who showed they could stand up to the US and go their own way.
He achieved huge literacy and health outcomes for Cubans.
A true hero and a true survivor… and a true inspiration to the rest of the world
‘Sympathy & celebration: Twitterati react to death of former Cuban president Fidel Castro’
https://www.rt.com/news/368273-fidel-castro-death-cuba/
‘ ‘I have a heart of steel’: Fidel Castro’s most memorable quotes’
https://www.rt.com/news/368251-fidel-castro-best-quotes/
Cuban health care a model for the world:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Cuba
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/salim-lamrani/cubas-health-care-system-_b_5649968.html
http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/86/5/08-030508/en/
So can you reconcile Trump and Castro, as Trump has lambasted Fidel Castro as having been a cruel dictator?