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posted by takyon on Saturday November 26 2016, @12:01PM   Printer-friendly
from the west-triumphs dept.

Fidel Castro's death has been announced by Cuban state television:

Cuba's former president Fidel Castro, one of the world's longest-serving and most iconic leaders, has died aged 90. His younger brother and successor as president Raul Castro announced the news on state television.

Castro toppled the government in 1959, introducing a Communist revolution. He defied the US for decades, surviving many assassination plots. His supporters said he had given Cuba back to the people. Critics saw him as a dictator.

Ashen and grave, President Castro told the nation in an unexpected late night broadcast on state television that Fidel Castro had died and would be cremated later on Saturday. "The commander in chief of the Cuban revolution died at 22:29 hours this evening (03:29 GMT Saturday)," he said. "Towards victory, always!" he added, using a revolutionary slogan. A period of official mourning has been declared on the island until 4 December, when his ashes will be laid to rest in the south-eastern city of Santiago.

Also at Bloomberg (world leaders react), Washington Post, NYT, The Guardian, CNN, NPR, WSJ, PBS, and Reuters. Editorials at the Miami Herald and Daily Beast.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 27 2016, @08:49PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 27 2016, @08:49PM (#433758)

    FTFL (link)
    Marxists have ruled Cuba for more than a half-century now

    ...which he immediately contradicts by saying

    But rather than raise the poor up, Castro and Guevara shoved the rich and the middle class down

    That turkey (like you) is simply disingenuous and repeats USA.gov's propaganda.
    Marxism is about empowering The Working Class (there is no such thing as "the middle class"--there's only The Idle Rich and those who have only labor to offer to earn a living).

    Actual Marxists would have immediately and dramatically started a plan to seed masses of worker-owned cooperatives.
    (Mao did this with farming collectives, and Italy--y'know that well-known "COMMUNIST" country {waves hands wildly}--has done it for over 30 years via their Maracora Law.)

    N.B. I'm not supplying any supporting links because you don't follow them anyway; [soylentnews.org] you revel in your gargantuan Reactionary ignorance.

    Cuba was one of the world’s richest countries before Castro destroyed it

    I notice that he doesn't mention the USA's 5-decade-plus blockade.
    He also didn't mention how Cuba was largely run by the USA's organized crime ("The Mob") before 1959.

    Communism destroyed Cuba’s prosperity

    The kinds of dishonest links that you find, containing dishonest terms, are not surprising to me.
    You continue to beat the drum of ignorance.

    That this tiny island, smaller than many states in the USA, should be the cause of such irrational, disproportionate fear demonstrates the utter failure of USA foreign policy as well as the willingness of USA's Lamestream Media to spew ignorance and unwarranted hatred for over half a century.

    USA.gov -could- have embraced the new regime in Cuba and had a BFF.
    Instead, USA.gov tried hundreds and hundreds of times to murder its leader.
    USA.gov was scared shitless that USA's Working Class might be inspired to learn about how they could become empowered and kick out the USA's Oligarchy and have DEMOCRACY EVERYWHERE, so USA.gov spread lies and hate at every turn and threw up a blockade on its 3rd-closest neighbor which continues to this day.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Sunday November 27 2016, @11:52PM

    by Yog-Yogguth (1862) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 27 2016, @11:52PM (#433830) Journal

    You do raise many valid points but some of the stuff you say (and believe) is like you're chocking yourself till you're blue :( (I'm sure I do it too, not trying to be mean).

    "...Mao did this with farming collectives..."

    No pun intended but you want to take ownership of that? Really? You haven't heard about the result that got them? It's not like the Chinese try to deny it. They tried it in the Soviet Union too, and Israel, and "hippie" communes, and plenty of other places. You don't need no special laws, you can try it anywhere you can buy land and invite people, so almost everywhere. I've been told there's basically only one village left in China today that does it that way. Sorry I don't remember the name but they're famous for it now since it's all gone elsewhere so a Chinese might be able to tell you the name.

    It only works with the right selection of rare people who almost never self-select voluntarily and most of those people had already been shot and the rest had to be forced together with all the other "stinky" teachers, doctors, and other professionals being sent out from the cities to do their share under the gun.

    Sorry to be a downer, it's great —outright fantastic— if you can make it work with likeminded people like a few do but there are plenty of reasons why there aren't many of those about :|

    Want to see it done right? Free source is the closest example ever; entirely voluntary or paid, never forced, and no longer communist. No bullshit ideology (any ideology) to prescribe dogmatic "solutions" and at most a set of somewhat loose and relevant aims (the four freedoms) who most people and participants haven't even heard of.

    Each time someone drags in the "marxism" as a fits-all silver bullet all they end up doing is moving towards the opposite. Not that they're the only ones, not by a long shot. If it wasn't that way we would all have been marxist (or whatever else worked) a long time ago.

    Anyway back on topic (we might agree on this):
    Fidel deserves no credit for Cuba, Cubans do, they're the ones who had and still have to survive him, his brother, and their acolytes. The global "elite" "in-crowd" sycophants deserve to be spat upon and ridiculed as the shit they are.

    And as we used to say in the cold war: "hate communism, love the communist" (at least the ordinary/"true" ones) :)

    --
    Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @01:53AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 28 2016, @01:53AM (#433868)

      farming collectives

      They tried it in the Soviet Union

      You should investigate that before speaking out on it.
      Start with the famine imposed by the Totalitarian Soviet gov't on the Ukraine in 1932-1933.
      What the Soviets had was State Capitalism.
      What the Soviet Union had was still peasants who still had their work product taken away at gunpoint.

      Mao's program was one of education and cooperation.
      The 2 systems weren't anything alike.
      There's a scene I really like from a Cold War Era movie with Glenn Ford playing a young USAian officer who hasn't swallowed the Reactionary bullshit. [google.com]

      You don't need no special laws, you can try [Socialism] anywhere

      First, you have to shed decades of indoctrination that has been telling you that top-down is the only way to do things.
      Cast aside the Hobbesian philosophy that, without overlords, "the life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".
      Discard those societal "values" in which you have been steeped which told you that *competition* is glorious and **cooperation** is for sissies.

      Next, you're going to have to pick up some entrepreneurial know-how.
      They make a point of avoiding instruction in that in public schools.
      (Good thing we're not in France; they don't even have a word for "entrepreneurial" there.)

      It only works with the right selection of rare people

      Nonsense. Mondragon has them by the tens of thousands.
      Northern Italy also has them by the tens of thousands.

      some of the stuff you say

      ...and have said again and again and again.
      You haven't been paying good attention.
      ...and I recently noted that USA has over 400 companies that are (Socialist) worker-owned cooperatives.

      With the 2 big political parties having sold out The Working Class for over 4 decades, the gov't isn't any help either.
      (I think this last election has stirred 1 of those from its sleepwalking toward the Authoritarian/Plantation Capitalism edge.)
      N.B. I expect Elizabeth Warren to kick Trump's ass at every turn for the next 4 years and stomp him thoroughly when she runs against him in 2020.

      The biggest problem is that Lamestream Media doesn't allow any examples of actual Socialism to be included.
      ...and most USAians get home, flop down in front of the TeeVee, and slip their brains into Park.

      Free source [Open Source??] is the closest example ever

      ...if you ignore the thousands and thousand of folks that I just pointed to.

      You, like Reziac, need to stop swallowing USA.gov's decades-out-of-date[1] Cold War bullshit and read some History that was not written by Reactionaries.

      [1] ...and it was bullshit then as well.

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

      • (Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Monday November 28 2016, @07:29PM

        by Yog-Yogguth (1862) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 28 2016, @07:29PM (#434159) Journal

        LOL :)

        --
        Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
        • (Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Monday November 28 2016, @08:25PM

          by Yog-Yogguth (1862) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 28 2016, @08:25PM (#434194) Journal

          I should explain my laughter to those who don't get it.

          I'm laughing because OriginalOwner is perfectly mirroring all the communists of the 70ies and likely just about every communist before that as well :)

          They were all like him, many but not all the newer ones still are, the old ones either died or became a large part of the current crop of asshole European "centrist" politicians. They were filled to the brim with unquestioning faith in their ideology and not actually listening to anyone but themselves. For all I know even the Soviet inventor of the mobile gas chamber a hundred years ago was identical in faith to OriginalOwner, there's not much reason to suspect he or she wasn't since the ideology and aspirations are identical. There's absolutely nothing new under the sun as far as OrignalOwner is concerned and among non-violent responses one can only choose between laughing or crying, I choose laughter.

          OriginalOwner is the embodiment and cause of precisely the failures that he thinks he opposes, a young Fidel, Lenin, or Stalin :)

          And maybe I'm just being trolled hard by someone who knows exactly these things that I'm pointing out in this comment but there are still people out there who genuinely believe what OriginalOwner professes to believe. The tragedy of it all, truly classical Greek tragedy and they knew they just had to laugh at the horror.

          Don't start murdering people OriginalOwner, as long as you manage to avoid that you'll be enormously far better than both your idols and your ideals and receive a friendly pat on the back from me.

          As for me you'll never win me over, because I know better by direct experience. This shit isn't history to some of us.

          --
          Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))