The death of Cuban revolutionary, dictator and hard left cause celebre, Fidel Castro has reopened a debate on his legacy.
Tim Farron released the following statement
There is no doubt that Fidel Castro was a vastly significant 20th century leader, but even as we respectfully acknowledge this on his passing, we must not overlook the appalling human rights abuses including brutal summary executions for which he was responsible
As expected Jeremy Corbyn was among the more fulsome in praise, to objections from progressives:
Fidel Castro’s death marks the passing of a huge figure of modern history, national independence and 20th century socialism.
From building a world class health and education system, to Cuba’s record of international solidarity abroad, Castro’s achievements were many.
For all his flaws, Castro’s support for Angola played a crucial role in bringing an end to Apartheid in South Africa and he will be remembered both as an internationalist and a champion of social justice.
If anybody knows how sending Cuban troops to Angola brought about the end of apartheid, do please explain in the comments.
In the United States, reaction from Donald Trump and Barack Obama struck very different tones heralding a likely reversal of Obama’s policy of engagement, while both expressing hope that Cuba will now emerge from poverty and oppression.
The most shockingly warm tribute from beyond the hard left came from Justin Trudeau who emphasised the health and education schtick and his family connections to Castro.
So the formula seems to be: talk about either health and education or human rights according to your preference. And blame either the USA or Cuba for Cuban domestic policy and economic performance, according to your preference.
This perhaps misses much of the picture. What does a fuller legacy look like?
- The overthrow of the Batista regime. I’ll give Castro this one. Can’t argue with that.
- The failure to call elections, the suppression of dissent, mass imprisonment, torture, executions. Dissidents, poets, journalists, LGBT people. No excuse. America did not make you do it.
- Foreign policy. The documentary Fidel Castro: America’s Nemesis reports Castro to be the most belligerent player of the Cuban missile crisis, suggesting to Kruschev that “the thing with these missiles is that you have to use them first”. This comes alongside Che Guevara seeing the USA bogged down in Vietnam, wishing to create “more Vietnams”. This is warmongering to make the USA and USSR look like angels.
- Economic policy. Cuba is one of the poorest countries of South America as a result of a) socialist economic policy and b) the American trade boycott. Emphasise either according to your preference but America will be damned whether they boycott a tyranny or engage with it, so they can’t win. Whatever America did, Cubans would have benefited had their government allowed them to earn honest livings in a greater variety of ways.
- Health and literacy. This is quite good if you believe Cuban government statistics, which you shouldn’t.
The overall picture? Some good, some bad? At least Mussolini made the trains run on time? (He didn’t actually.)
No, the overall picture is of resisting freedom, democracy, human rights and prosperity, and instead having tyranny, sharing non-existent wealth out equally, and warmongering. This is not the price of good healthcare, and if Corbyn wants to try paying British doctors and nurses as little as Cuban ones are paid he will get a shock.
Old lefties like Corbyn support Castro not because what he did was any good, but because he was against the West. This was wrong in the Cold War, and it still is today. Working people are better off with freedom, democracy and human rights than we are without, unequivocally.
* Joe Otten was the candidate for Sheffield Heeley in June 2017 and Doncaster North in December 2019 and is a councillor in Sheffield.
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46 Comments
Joe
I am very pleased to say that this post is one I can 100% agree with. Castro was a blood-soaked tyrant, and No, history will not absolve him.
Corbyn’s idiocy just shows why he is totally unelectable. Moderate Labour people must be tearing their hair out.
No mention about US interference/terrorism in Cuba…The US sinking ships in Havana harbour, the death and disease spread via embargo, and the covert operations that included poisoning crop harvests from the 60s to the 90s?
A country under siege is rarely an ‘open society’ and yet you condemn Castro for defending the Cuban revolution against hostile forces that would have turned their country into yet another third world slave wage nation providing clothes, cigars and sex workers to Miami?
Perhaps the best way to measure Castro’s Cuba is to compare it to other countries in the area. There seems to be less of the government hit squads and gang activity that has characterized life in other Central American countries. Health, life expectancy and education levels seem better.
Castro wasn’t perfect by along chalk but he’s done a lot more good for the majority of his people than most Central American leaders over the last 50 years.
I’m not a fan. He did bad things. However there’s always an element of look over there at the bad man when someone like Castro dies. The reality is that our governments have a lot of blood on their hands in recent years, are not averse to torture, or spying on their own citizens and our MPs will line up pretty much as they have done since the 19th century to sanction the use of the latest weaponry on North Africans. But Castro was a bad man so really we’re the good guys, when you think about it.
Any country that does not observe human rights cannot be considered to be Liberal and should be judged as such. Cuba has a history of abusing human rights and so I am sure we are all clear that the government there should be condemned.
However when it comes to judging a country like Cuba I think we should be fair. It is not easy to know what is going on there as the critics are often as biased as the government. How much research did the author make with regard to LGBT rights in Cuba? As far as Central America is concerned there are many countries, including those backed the US that have a worse record than that of Cuba. Wikipedia may not be a perfect source of information but I think it tries as hard as it can to be impartial. They report that Cuba does indeed have a bad record, but in recent times LGBT rights are improving, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Cuba. This is true in many countries, only in recent years have we acquired a modern understanding of non-conforming sexuality and gender identity.
As for healthcare, it really depends on who you believe but again compared to Central America, and some would argue the USA as well they have done well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Cuba
On the bottom line I agree with Joe, Cuba’s human rights are not acceptable. But I also think that for much of his article he is more interested in political score settling than seeking out the truth..
Castro was responsible for death. Supporting him is no more acceptable than supporting Pinochet, the Saudi Royals, Henry Kissinger or Pol Pot.
However Corbyn’s praise of Castro, though utterly stupid / deluded, is no worse than Clinton praising Kissinger, Cameron the Saudis or Thatcher and Pinochet.
Both sides in the Cold War had their share of very unsavoury strategic allies. The demand here seems to be that the USA should have treated its unsavoury strategic allies as enemies and its enemies as allies and that this would have improved them. It’s like Donald Trump’s analysis of Obama’s policies – everything you do is wrong and if you had done the opposite, that would have been wrong too.
I guess it’s kind of a fair point that LGBT rights started out terrible everywhere and were pretty terrible here until recently so let’s not be too pious about it, and I suppose that’s why I didn’t make more of the issue. And yet we don’t and shouldn’t start making excuses for or whatabouting over anybody else’s terrible record. When people start doing this for Castro, it is a double standard. A double standard motivated by the desire to give Castro credit for fighting a bigger battle.
Well he was fighting a bigger battle – on the wrong side. Not just against LGBT+ rights but against all rights. Not for the poor, but to make everybody poor. Not for peace, but for war. Not for freedom, but for tyranny. Hardly any different to the fascists, but call yourself a socialist and that makes it all all right in the minds of fools.
As I’ve said,countries under siege are not open societies and Castro was, for almost all his time in power, the leader of such a country…
I, nor anyone else know how many deaths of political opponents there were under Castro…Most figures include those killed during the initial revolutionary fighting and in the Bay of Pigs invasion. However, most of his opponents appear to have been imprisoned and many were freed when Castro/Carter were on ‘talking terms’..
Castro undoubtedly killed/imprisoned thousands and can be rightly criticized for such actions..However, those who condoned/supported regimes, all around the world, who are equally guilty of arrests, detentions, torture and political murders are NOT entitled to criticize…I note that the most vociferous are those who are so implicated…
BTW..Sadly, Joe, like the ‘Daily Mail’ has turned Castro’s death into an attack on Corbyn…
Joe HASN’T turned Castro’s death into an attack on Corbyn.
He has highlighted Corbyn’s stupid remarks.
Corbyn’s fault, not Joe’s.
hmm Castro definitely had a lot of faults, but was he really comparable with Pol Pot? Perhaps just a little over the top.
I think the 1st point Liberals should make about Castro was that he was human, a real person with friends & family who loved & hated him. That is the basis for expressions of regret & attendance at State Funerals. Holding parties to celebrate anyones death is wrong & demeaning.
I find all the “Giant Figure” crap really annoying, its the cult of celebrity, you could say the same about Hitler or Pol Pot.
There was no “Good side” to Communism, it was wrong both morally & factually & led to Millions of unneccasary deaths, we should say so.
The Guardian’s editorial on the matter relinquishes their right to call itself a liberal newspaper, in my eyes. Most of the editorial was spent defending him and pleading us to judge him as a figure of his time – he died in 2016 anyway, not 1970 and Cuba still doesn’t have democracy or a free press.
Here it is for those that want to check it out:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2016/nov/27/the-guardian-view-on-fidel-castro-man-of-history
A sad time for those who love standing in queues.
Maybe we should think of the future, as much as the past. Seeing Castro legacy as either totally bad or totally good is to oversimplify the complexity. He was guilty of terrible human rights abuses, yet Jacob Zuma in his elegy praised Castros supportive role in ending Apartheid in South Africa. Moreover, according to Human Rights Watch, no executions have taken place in Cuba since 2003. As Amnesty UK said – He was a progressive but deeply flawed leader. https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/fidel-castro-progressive-deeply-flawed-leader
IMHO, we now need to build bridges, not walls -continuing the work Obama started. Justin Trudeau’s and Jeremy Corbyn’s comments paying tribute to the positives of Castro’s leadership of Cuba (without denying the negatives) are more likely to encourage improved relations between a Cuba still ruled by Raul Castro, and the West, and consequently encourage liberalisation -more than Trump’s blunt condemnation! Soft power will be more influential than hard power.
So, without denying Fidel’s human rights abuses, lets pay tribute where it’s due, build bridges, and work to support the ongoing process of liberalisation in Cuba.
Of course there was a great deal wrong with the Castro regime – it’s extremely difficult to defend it. But it should be put in the context of a society which we in a ‘liberal democracy’ (sort of) have been fortunate not to suffer. Sheffield Hallam it was not.
In 1950, Castro’s predecessor Batista suspended the 1940 Constitution and revoked political liberties including the right to strike. He aligned with the wealthiest landowners who owned the largest sugar plantations, and presided over a stagnating economy that widened the gap between rich and poor Cubans.
Batista ran a corrupt and repressive government negotiating relationships with the American Mafia, who controlled the drug, gambling, and prostitution businesses in Havana. To quell discontent he established tighter censorship of the media and a Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities to carry out wide-scale violence, torture and public executions; ultimately killing anywhere from hundreds to 20,000 people. For several years until 1959, the Batista government received financial, military, and logistical support from the United States government (under Eisenhower but with Nixon pulling the strings).
That doesn’t make what Castro did right, but it was a totally different context to anything we have been used to.
crewegwyn 29th Nov ’16 – 2:31pm……….He has highlighted Corbyn’s stupid remarks……..
Corbyn’s fault, not Joe’s….
Jeremy Corbyn…”Despite his flaws he was a massive figure in the history of the whole planet. History will show that Fidel was somebody who stood up for something very, very different in the Caribbean and many independent people would say how good healthcare and education are in Cuba compared with many other places in the world.
President Obama…..”Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation. History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him.”
Donald Trump, US president-elect:….”Today, the world marks the passing of a brutal dictator who oppressed his own people for nearly six decades. Fidel Castro’s legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights.”….
Sadly, you are firmly on the side of Donald Trump…
Part of the US Republican response to his passing was that his funeral should be boycotted because he was anti-American….
We should also recognise that some of those criticising or avoiding his legacy are perfectly happy to sell weapons to leader’s of other nations who will use them against their own people or their neighbours.
Castro’s legacy should be talked about in the immense good he did despite leading his country at times through isolation and the horrors that came with that too. I don’t think they’ll be many who will be able to speak about both (as you have pointed out) but the better leaders will be able to walk that thin line.
Up until Trump American policy has been to support regimes that were friendly to America and which supported free trade and business. This meant that the US ended up supporting various tyrant dictatorships around the world. These included Batista in Cuba. Then his regime became so bad on human rights they had to accept his downfall. The mistake made was to immediately treat Castro with suspicion, Eisenhower refused to meet with him and employed sanctions on sugar trade and oil companies refused to refine oil contracted for by the Soviets. This helped force him into nationalisation of US assets and into the arms of the Soviet Union – becoming a self fulfilled prophecy for the US. 1962 must have been one of the most frightening times to be alive on this planet.
I do not know much about Cuba, and before condemning Castro in the way some have I would want to gather some facts from primary sources rather than websites often influenced by his enemies.. For quite a few years after the Cuban revolution I believe there was an insurgency by Batista-supporting rebels. In those circumstances human rights abuses are committed by virtually all governments. I would point to the 1981 people interred without trial by the British government in the 1970’s and the recent revelation that we employed torture as a policy http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/british-ministers-sanctioned-torture-of-ni-internees-1.1820882
I don’t want to get into an argument about whether the torture happened in NI, but I am sure it is based on as much evidence as many of the accusations against Castro.
So my view of Castro is to reserve judgement rather than jerk the knee. The Americans behaved pretty badly in Vietnam yet Kennedy, who started the major US involvement, is venerated as a hero… I respect Obama for his statesmanship here
Joe Otten: A colleague I worked for in London (male, white skinned, Jewish) had been conscripted into the army in South Africa. He said that South Africa was not at war but its soldiers were coming back wounded.
I wonder if the Castro apologists made the same apologies for Pinochet.
I can’t understand the reasoning which seems to say murder is bad but you must remember other people have murdered as well so in context murder isn’t so bad after all.
I say it again , as I did on Tim Farron’s Facebook page. His comments on Castro put him in the rank of Liberal statesmen. He , as a man of great spiritual feeling , is respectful, but as one of great Liberal understanding, is critical. He says it as it is because Castro should have no other response from a Liberal or a Democrat of any sort.
Castro was a man who if compared to other dictators , was a Chaplinesque Great Dictator . Not in the league with monsters. But he was a dictator . His regime might have done wonders for the health care of his nation , but it did so while killing people ! Health for most and death for some is a warped trade off.His regime was predicated on a lie , the return of democracy after Batista. It never happened.
Duped far leftists who hate the west and love the sort of socialism that imprisons those it is out of step with or they with it , say it never became democratic because of America.This is as stupid a half a century later as the economic blockade or embargo had become.
Read the speech of candidate Kennedy , running for the presidency , October , 1960, to a dinner fundraiser, and you see the absolute opposite of the nonsense that is peddled about the US of the time . Liberals and progressives like Kennedy loathed Batista, and had compassion for Cuba. They just felt Communist dictatorship after a promise of pre Batista democracy not to the liking of most !
The response of Corbyn was as predictable as the man.
That of Trudeau was risible . He reduced his Liberalism to the levels of iliberalism even I had not expected , from a leader I do not rate very much . His father may well have been a friend . The Carters , President and First lady , have worked in Cuba over many years with their terrific foundation. The statement of President Carter , like that of President Obama , was pleasant and friendly.
The words of Trudeau were laughable .
Richard, thanks for that. Yes I understand that Cuba and South Africa both sent troops to escalate a proxy war in Angola. But apartheid was not ended by a threat of military defeat for South Africa in Angola, so I still don’t see how that is supposed to have helped.
“That impressive defeat of the racist army gave Angola the possibility of enjoying peace and consolidating its sovereignty. It gave the people of Namibia their independence, demoralised the white racist regime of Pretoria and inspired the anti-apartheid forces inside South Africa. Without the defeat inflicted at Cuito Cuanavale our organisations never would have been legalised” Nelson Mandela in Cuba 1991
I suggest Mandela speaks with more authority than Joe Otten on these matters …
Not his biggest fan, but anyone who steps up to the plate and tries, even if I don’t agree with their methods, I won’t condemn entirely. As they say, walk a mile.
One might say that the West is blood soaked and some might say we were trying to help…and the road to hell is paved with good intentions. All anyone can do is try and do what they believe is best, it may get dirty, it may get bloody, ot may not have the outcome you intended. Sometimes evil prevails when good men act.
Don’t know if it’s true, whilst people where saying yeah or nay to Castro’s legacy, one report reminded us of what Bush said on hearing of Arafat’s death ‘God rest his sole’ not best mates but nothing more, nothing less.
The man is dead, that’s going to sad for his family, plenty of time to scorn the tyrant, or remember the man.
Excellent post Lorenzo, as usual.
The brazen hypocrisy of some on here, defending Castro when we ask know full well they would be outraged of the same defence of Pinochet was made, even though Pinochet and Castro were very comparable indeed.
For those with their fingers in their ears regarding the kind of man Castro was, here is a photo of him murdering an unarmed prisoner, in cold blood:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CyNgBY7XcAAzBaK.jpg
What a guy! Inspirational! Had his heart in the right place! Wise up.
Mark, can you ever say we have never done the same, this from a true blue, but rendition, execution by drone, support of Saudi, Iraq, Israel, all in the national interest of course, and mainly whilst we look away then protest strongly but privately ( that’s the most effective way right? ). I shall say nothing of the empire and neither will I apologise for it.
We are the bloody good guys….right?
Mark,
That’s kind of you, thank you . Where does that picture come from ?
The comparison is interesting .
Pinochet ,
worse , he took over from an elected government .
Better , he submitted for election after a couple of decades, lost and retired!
His handling of the economy is to the right what we would expect, praised.
Castro,
better, he took over from an unelected despot.
Worse, he never submitted for election despite being supported in the revolution , which was backed by many non leftists because he promised to restore elections !
His handling of health what we would expect from the left, praised.
It fascinates me how only a few radical maverick rightwingers like Dan Hannan and radical maverick leftwingers like Peter Tatchell, seem capable of condemning both the right and left at once when they do terrible things !
DJ
“Castro’s legacy should be talked about in the immense good he did ”
He would not have been able to much without the economic support he received from the Soviet Union.
Cllr Mark Wright 30th Nov ’16 – 1:49am…..For those with their fingers in their ears regarding the kind of man Castro was, here is a photo of him murdering an unarmed prisoner, in cold blood:…..
Oh, dear.. A photo taken out of context as proof??????????? You’d be laughed out of any court…
Is it genuine? If it is, who was the prisoner; a Batista thug, a rapist, a child murderer? etc..
Correct me if I’m wrong but, a couple of months ago, weren’t you defending the use of drones, etc. to kill UK born ‘alleged’ ISIS terrorists in Syria?
@expats: “A photo taken out of context”
Hilarious. Literally beyond parody. Do you even stop to look at what you’ve written before you post?
Can you imagine, *can you imagine*… the squealing howls of pure and utter outrage that would emerge from the left if a photo (whether “in context” or not) emerged of Nigel Farage or Donald Trump, murdering an unarmed prisoner in cold blood? Seriously?
Unbelievable. Genuinely unbelievable. You people have lost *all* credibility when it comes to complaining about what a horrible and unpleasant pair Trump and Farage are. No one will take that seriously now.
Cllr Mark Wright 30th Nov ’16 – 10:00am………..Hilarious. Literally beyond parody. Do you even stop to look at what you’ve written before you post?………
Yes. Do you?
Please explain how you can defend the use of UK drones to ‘execute’ British ISIS suspects in Syria and still write the above?
I think we need to accept that the reason Castro’s reign was (relatively) stable and therefore not bloodier (so far as we know) and able to spread (a little) positive benefits to those under his rule was largely because of cunning, luck and geography, not necessarily because of any inherent moral virtues of him or his system of rule.
He was able to play off the great powers to leave him alone (with a huge helping hand from Kruschev) and was lucky enough be on an island a long way away from significantly militarised borders, so didn’t suffer the intense soviet control of the post-WW2 European communist regimes, nor the experiences of similar regimes in 60s and 70s Indo-China, rebuilding and desperately grabbing for control after intensive, no-holds-barred warfare.
If you really want a comparison for your dictators-I-don’t-hate-that-much-because-I-haven’t-heard-much-about-them score sheet, then, yes, he was clearly ‘better’ than his near neighbour Papa Doc, and possibly ‘better’ than his cultural cousin Franco, and roughly equivalent with that other Iberian ruler, Salazar.
But they were all dictators, they all ruled by force, they all took power by force, they took away freedoms and built personality cults around themselves to justify their behaviour.
I don’t know enough about the post-war Turkish regime, but they also spring to mind as a nation under military dictatorship that escaped scrutiny and criticism because of a ‘great power’ sponsor.
That all said, I know a Jamaican and an Indian who both have said to me that they respected him for the fact he offered the possibility to them of their countries being free from effects of meddling in their politics by the Cold-War era powers.
I think this was largely a manipulative illusion on his part (with Soviet backing for his economy, he was in no way ‘neutral’), but we in the ‘traditional’ Western states need to recognise (just as Russia and China do, too) this yearning in many countries for a life without us looking over their shoulders, that has been building and building over the last 50 years and has not gone away, but continues to spark into anger. The legacy of colonialism and the Cold War is still a brittle and damaged one.
@Expats: because bombing enemies in a warzone is not the same as executing unarmed prisoners in cold blood – as long agreed by general international law and the Geneva Conventions.
The doctoring of photographs is an interesting one, I have visited exhibitions of Russian propaganda art at the Haywood Gallery which also included doctored photographs.
I was fascinated therefore by photos of the Bullingdon club where there was a space that couldn’t possibly have been occupied by the leader of the lLiberal Democrats’s coalition partners. Similarly photos of the Bullingdon club where George Osborne and Nat Rothschild would have appeared.
I never had a poster of Che Guevara on my wall or a tee shirt with the image of Castro, and had and still have very little interest, but it never blunted my awareness that lies and propaganda were not strategies that were only used as tools by those who were our enemies. As far as health and education are concerned , the term there are three types of lies, lies, damned lies and statistics is an excellent one for those win this country with a similar awareness.
People might mock Castro’s international medical teams, but I know people who have first hand experience of the excellence of those who responded to the Haiti earthquake disaster and in the fight against Ebola in African countries, responses that put richer nations to shame.
Lorenzo
Apologies for not responding earlier to a number of other balanced insightful comments over the last number of day on other threads. Finally caught up with you here!
I tried to post this last night immediately after your comment, but for some reason, even though I’d only made 3 other comments (on other threads – 1 just 1 line), I got a comment flood protection notification??? Frustrating – anyway here we go:
I’ve a new nickname for you – “Mr Common Sense” Thought you’d like that 🙂
Cllr Mark Wright 30th Nov ’16 – 10:31am….@Expats: because bombing enemies in a warzone is not the same as executing unarmed prisoners in cold blood – as long agreed by general international law and the Geneva Conventions…..
But they’re NOT OUR enemies….No state of war exists between those fighting on either side in Syria and the UK…Cameron’s (and your) tenuous defence of ‘executing’ such fighters e.g. Khan (that they pose an ‘imminent and direct’ threat to the UK..as required in international law) smacks of Saddam/Blair’s WMD situation…
Your photo ‘evidence’ shows a hooded man being shot…Had he been tried, convicted by a rebel court, sentenced to death and was the sentence being carried out? I don’t know and neither do you!
We have no reason to believe the photo and no reason to doubt it either. But it is consistent with the rest of his reign and values to personally shoot a prisoner in cold blood.
The photo is from issue 509 of Paris Match Jan 1959. It’s not Castro.
The photo has been used extensively in global media coverage of Castro in the last few days.
I don’t have the magazine you reference to look at, but that edition of Paris Match has the following contents summary: “Jayne Mansfield gave birth to a baby 9 pounds, Miklos – Fidel Castro and his bearded (15 pages report on the victory of Fidel Castro) – Moscow: the great night of starting for the moon – Picasso has just bought the castle Vauvenargues – the Chinese year of their revolution X (many pages) Gilbert Bécaud sings in the desert” – perhaps the photo is from the Jayne Mansfield story, do you think?
Perhaps this other execution photo is also not Fidel? It is well known that Fidel, Raul, and Che all personally killed a lot of prisoners.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BAfxSdjCEAEmWBM.png
Mike s
Thank you for that , and keep plugging away on here , but don’t think different types of ideas means factions , and nor should different groupings either. What we need is a range of ideas.
Mark
Personally the photos are upsetting but not surprising. Castro was often or mostly in his prime in uniform . It was the same mentality that probably meant he could kill those he did and justify the deed as part of war my word and war is horrible we all know ! Self delusion is the default position of revolutionary socialism or the like . We have to say that in the context of dictators, he according to those who now have some more rational and objective views , the Jimmy Carters of this world etc, was more “normal ” or human, reflective , call it what us mere onlookers cannot fathom ! I suspect if you watch interviews with him by western reporters , you can see what they mean . But the delusion of us all , is not possible , anyone with any sense can see through much of it as him kidding himself or us or both !
Cllr Mark Wright
You claimed the photo showed Castro murdering an unarmed man in cold blood. Do you stand by that? If so please link to a credible source.
A bit rattled are we Councillor Wright?
@ Mark Wright
I did a google search for images of “Fidel Castro shooting” and found your last photo with the following text – “Below is a photograph of a firing squad victim being blindfolded by a young Raul Castro.” (http://babalublog.com/fidel-castros-greatest-atrocities-and-crimes/fidel-castros-firing-squads-in-cuba/)
My search did not bring up your first picture, however there is one with this text “Fidel Castro’s brother, Raul, is seen getting ready to shoot a young rebel soldier who disobeyed orders.” (http://www.therealcuba.com/?page_id=55)
It therefore seems that people were shot, but I do not know why these people were shot. During the First World War the British army executed some soldiers and the US Army during Second World War sentenced 49 men to death one of whom it is implied on the orders of General Eisenhower was actually executed in early 1945 (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/10/books/the-deserters-a-world-war-ii-history-by-charles-glass.html)
According to Wikipedia after the Battle of La Plata “Castro’s troops captured some 400 Cuban Army soldiers later they turned them over to the Red Cross)” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_La_Plata).
“Hundreds of Batista-era agents, policemen and soldiers were put on public trial, accused of human rights abuses, war crimes, murder, and torture. Most of the accused people were convicted of political crimes by revolutionary tribunals and then executed by firing squad; others received long sentences of imprisonment. A notable example of revolutionary justice occurred after the capture of Santiago, where Raúl Castro directed the execution of more than seventy Batista POWs” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Revolution#Guerrilla_warfare).
On examining photographic and written evidence on this subject, I’ve come across ‘irrefutable’ evidence that Batista, on fleeing Cuba, paid a Voodoo priest to put a ‘death curse’ on Castro…
I say, to all you doubters of such curses,”See, it worked!”…
@Lorenzo 12.28am
…..but don’t think different types of ideas means factions , and nor should different groupings either. What we need is a range of ideas.
I agree entirely with you re ideas generation Lorenzo
I’m a massive fan of brainstorming (I assume we’re still OK to use that word), and I’d like to think I’m open to and stimulated by a range of opinions.
However, there comes a point, when you have to *do something* with all the ideas generated and weave them into a clear ‘narrative’ that is capable of galvanising the party and inspiring the audience (to use a performing arts analogy) otherwise you simply go round in circles fighting respective corners (in this case it appears to a relative outsider like me, that left and right wing factions are more interested in defending their corners than pulling together for the common good).
I hope I’m wrong – time will tell I guess.
Anyway, that’s for another day. For now, very best of luck to everyone down in Richmond. I will be tuning in tonight with fingers crossed!
Anyone can make their infant mortality figures look great if they forcibly abort children likely to have health problems before they are born.
To say, as somebody did above, that Castro was a Chaplinesque dictator, implying buffonery and harmlessness misrepresents what went on in Cuba. On a pro-rata basis the bloodshed inflicted in the early years was on par with Stalin’s Great Terror of the 1930s.
But my biggest beef of all is with what Castro wanted to do with nuclear weapons. He wanted to destroy America. Thinking this is really, really bad doesn’t make me a neocon or an imperialist warmonger. Castro told the Soviets in October 1962 that they had intelligence of a US attack and that the Soviets should attack first. Fortunately, Kruschev heeded wiser counsels.
but them fast forward 20 years to regan and Castro was at it again, urging the Soviets to attack the US. the Soviet Chief of Staff said something along the lines of, “we managed to disabuse the Cubans of their promptings by pointing out the severe ecological consequences fro Cuba of a nuclear strike on the United States.”