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Castro snuffs it


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RIP. A great personality with true love for his country in my opinion. Although authoritarian, for his era, he was a much better alternative than Batista and other right wing dictators. Cuba eliminated illiteracy(down to 2% comparable only to scandinavian countries) and offered high quality health care to its people. He became obsolete as most of these types of leaderships and that showed in the last decades in a morally and economically decaying Cuba. I hope democratic societies wont have to go back to these regimes though to maintain a humane standard of living if things go wrong with world capitalism.

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This poster's opinion: Castro should have been spayed, neutered and buried alive in one of those ancient US cars that prowl around Havana belching smoke. But... the man, armed with a photographic memory and a profound understanding of human nature, can be classed among the certified geniuses of history. He played the West like a violin, romancing our intellectuals while borrowing many tactics from Hitler. Castro's attempted coup d'etat, the aborted attack on the Moncada barracks, eerily recalled the Beer Hall Putsch with the self-promotional trial, conviction, and subsequent foundational book that mirrored Mein Kampf minus the anti-Semitism.

Factoid: Castro was a superb athlete, in every sport he attempted. At 6'3, he starred on his high school basketball team but was known to get disoriented on the court, scoring thunderous dunks on the other team's basket. A revealing character detail?

Image result for fidel castro basketball player

Edited by Childress
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20 hours ago, Childress said:

This poster's opinion: Castro should have been spayed, neutered and buried alive in one of those ancient US cars that prowl around Havana belching smoke. But... the man, armed with a photographic memory and a profound understanding of human nature, can be classed among the certified geniuses of history. He played the West like a violin, romancing our intellectuals while borrowing many tactics from Hitler. Castro's attempted coup d'etat, the aborted attack on the Moncada barracks, eerily recalled the Beer Hall Putsch with the self-promotional trial, conviction, and subsequent foundational book that mirrored Mein Kampf minus the anti-Semitism.

Factoid: Castro was a superb athlete, in every sport he attempted. At 6'3, he starred on his high school basketball team but was known to get disoriented on the court, scoring thunderous dunks on the other team's basket. A revealing character detail?

Image result for fidel castro basketball player

I thought you could not resist to swallow the bait.

Edited by StieliAlpha
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5 hours ago, StieliAlpha said:

I thought you could not resist to swallow the bait.

It was a case of giving the Devil his due. Castro was a bad dude, but a formidable bad dude. And an astonishing survivor.

A quote from an old thread:

(Castro) has what is called an eidetic photographic memory. It has nothing to do with people who memorize. He just reads something, and it’s like a Xerox machine. When he was a student at the University of Havana, he boasted that he was reading a book and he could tear out the pages and put them in the trash can, and then he could recite from memory the whole book. That is amazing. And he uses that to fool people that he is very knowledgeable of certain areas, like he did with the Soviet who was the one who first came to Cuba [and reported] that Castro was a Marxist. Castro was telling him about Marx, Lenin, Engels. The night before, he just read a few books about Marxism. It is an incredible ability. By the way, Hitler had the same ability.
 

Edited by Childress
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1 hour ago, Childress said:

It was a case of giving the Devil his due. Castro was a bad dude, but a formidable bad dude. And an astonishing survivor.

A quote from an old thread:

(Castro) has what is called an eidetic photographic memory. It has nothing to do with people who memorize. He just reads something, and it’s like a Xerox machine. When he was a student at the University of Havana, he boasted that he was reading a book and he could tear out the pages and put them in the trash can, and then he could recite from memory the whole book. That is amazing. And he uses that to fool people that he is very knowledgeable of certain areas, like he did with the Soviet who was the one who first came to Cuba [and reported] that Castro was a Marxist. Castro was telling him about Marx, Lenin, Engels. The night before, he just read a few books about Marxism. It is an incredible ability. By the way, Hitler had the same ability.
 

Well, I do admit: The Cuban Revolution was slightly before my days and was never my favourite subject, but I have the impression, there were and there are much more evil guys around. Fighting Batista, Castro and his guys certainly had a much better cause, than many others and his reign probably can be called civilized, compared with many earlier or later lunatics.

And (this time I cannot resist), to recite a statement recently heared during a certain  presidential election: "He certainly is not a perfect man, but he has a good heart."

Closure of debate from my side. 

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Castro was loathed by the middle-class, in every country. His appeal- his mojo- was confined to the very poor and the highly educated. However, like Hitler, once in his presence nearly everyone succumbed to his Svengali-like charm. He 'snowed' people. Steven Spielberg said that the four hours he spent with El Commandante in Havana constituted the most meaningful four hours in his life. Presumedly not his marriage, the birth of his children or the success of his films.

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9 hours ago, Splinty said:

Castro was a mass murderer, and supported mass murderers like Che Guevara, He was FAR worse than Batista, and Batista was scum.

 

How was Che a mass murderer?  Whatever else he may or may not have done, I have never heard of an instance of even a large scale massacre much less a "mass murderer".  A year after his death the US would massacre 504 Vietnamese at My Lai. Now that is getting closer to mass murderer status.  As to Batista, I don't know that you can say Castro was FAR worse.  The guy was as repressive as anyone and never even attempted to provide anything to Cubans, hell the guy worked business deals with the Mafia.

Edited by sburke
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14 hours ago, Splinty said:

Che personally shot over 700 people and admitted to enjoying it. As for Batista, he killed thousands, Castro is responsible for over a million.

Can you cite something for that as I've read nearly everything he ever wrote and if I was asked to I could not back that up - either the 700 personally, his delight or his quote.

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Please keep this civil.  For sure Castro has a LOT of blood on his hands, for sure Cuba is still a repressive state, but that doesn't mean everything he did for Cuba was decidedly negative.  Like many "successful" dictators, there's some successes mixed in with the failures.  And like most "successful" dictators, generally the failures are vastly in excess of the successes.

It is too bad that when a rare Human being (and Castro is certainly that) arises to lead a successful removal of a corrupt, inept, and murderous regime that they turn out be just as bad or worse.  Wouldn't it be nice if we could have leaders with strong magnetic personalities, excellent skills at overcoming injustice *AND* not be thieving and/or murdering tyrants as soon as they take power?  The world would be a lot less "interesting", but a whole lot nicer to live in.

Steve

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I think its the law of nature these types of leadership to become corrupt due to the concentration of power. Castro did relatively well since he was almost half a century in rule and had to face isolation, enormous pressure and a constant threat to his life. Most would switch to a lunatic dictator mode under these circumstances. We cant really judge him by today's standards, he rose in a time when even the democratic West was backing worse guys around the globe. I much prefer my flawed democracy so far but if things go really wrong with our capitalist system(its fine when markets work but its not human centered and that shows when things go downhill) chances are that types like Castro would be the ones we would all look upon and not a career politician employee made in Harvard. It is just that these people are like an emergency measure and not meant to stay forever in power. Cuba and Castro were frozen in time in a way, stuck in a revolutionary mode that never really had the chance to evolve or mature.

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