General News Fidel Castro dies

I've always heard of him as being a horrible dictator but I've never really looked into him at all.

 

I think he was cool. Even as someone who hates communism, there is something very inspiring and captivating about reading about the Cuban revolutionaries and their guerilla warfare. He was a dictator, but so was the leader before him, who was arguably a lot worse.

 

This is the first time I heard of him. I have no opinion but it does seem like he had quite a cult personality going on..
And it creeps me out a bit.

 

Castro was an evil man who basically destroyed Cuba. Numerous Cubans were exiled to Miami, never to return to their home. Not to mention the Cuban economy suffered big time under him and his brother. Hopefully, though, relations will normalize and Communism gets the boot from Cuba.

---------- Post added 27th Nov 2016 at 08:07 AM ----------

Elections were used to expand the Communist Party. The Castro regime benefited from this.

---------- Post added 27th Nov 2016 at 08:08 AM ----------

Yes there was a HUGE cult of personality.

 

I think. Wow, this would have been as big had we not screwed up with him
Some background info:Castro lived in the US for a while, he played baseball for a minor league team. We placed him in Cuba, he started the revolution, and he became leader. Cuba was poor and he wanted to be closer to the US than the USSR, but we put an embargo on Cuba and Castro became close to the USSR, and then the Cuban missle crises, when we found nukes in Cuba, but that was resolved. We screwed Cuba over, he is our fault, he would have been closer to us that to USSR, even though they were communist, like Yugoslavia.

---------- Post added 27th Nov 2016 at 09:36 AM ----------

I think. Wow, this would have been as big had we not screwed up with him
Some background info:Castro lived in the US for a while, he played baseball for a minor league team. We placed him in Cuba, he started the revolution, and he became leader. Cuba was poor and he wanted to be closer to the US than the USSR, but we put an embargo on Cuba and Castro became close to the USSR, and then the Cuban missle crises, when we found nukes in Cuba, but that was resolved. We screwed Cuba over, he is our fault, he would have been closer to us that to USSR, even though they were communist, like Yugoslavia.

 

He was a brutal dictator. I hope unlike Che's cult of personality, history will remember this.

 

Well after 638 assassination attempts, old age finally got him. Rest in peace Commandanté.

 

From myself, and I'm sure others, he gets a begrudged respect.

 

che was brutal too......

 

Same. Well anyway R.I.P.

 

I hope every Cuban spits on his grave. Just my opinion.

 

From what I've seen, this is what he deserves. People don't need to leave most countries by risking death on improvised rafts.

 

From what I have seen Castro is either romanticized as a revolutionary who ended US imperialism in Cuba or hated as a tyrant due to his suppression of dissent and other repugnant policies.

I personally take the middle road. Castro had his positives and negatives and to simply adore him as a freedom figher ignores the disgraceful policies he undertook as leader of Cuba; however, to simply detest him as a tyrant ignores the ways that Castro was a positive influence in world affairs. Castro was a negative and positive force in the world and I feel that the positives can never make up for the negatives; however, I feel that the negatives should not diminish the positives either.

I think Castro is one of the best examples of noble intentions gone astray in the contemporary world.

 

Do we have an actual confirm on the number of assassination attempts? It kinda seems like a crazy number-especially if CIA was involved.

 

I went to Cuba in the summer of 2009. We stayed in Havana, apart from a side trip to a beautiful tropical forest resort (mostly for tourists).

We were privileged to know actual Cubans in their own environment, having had contacts with the skeletal remains of the once quite large Jewish community. We were able to collect medication, medical supplies, and other "luxuries" that we take for granted and stuffed our suitcases to the limit so that we could provide the local synagogue with supplies that simply can't be found there (from pain killers to adult diapers).

Let there be no ambiguity: it is an unnecessarily impoverished police state. We had a friend, a local from the Jewish community (who happens to be black) accompany us in Havana, a police officer noticed us. Our friend was arrested on the spot, presumably on suspicion of illegally acting as a guide in the city. When he was later released, he brought us to his home, a decrepit Soviet built apartment unit in a massive layout of ugly apartment buildings. We also met a family who lived in the same Havana apartment for 48 years, their "kitchen" was smaller than a closet.

It was like going to a country frozen in time. I rode in cars I had not been in since the early sixties. We visited a cigar factory where people worked while a local political officer lectured them during the entire day. It was like a scene out of Kafka...

It is a beautiful country caught in the thrall of a political nightmare, a place set up for tourists. Yes, they have free healthcare, but no medicine, free education, which only seems to exacerbate their awareness of impoverishment.

And yet, it is the Cuban people themselves who will eventually re-awaken. The former Battista regime was a right-wing dictatorship with mob connections, the past was no glory either, but what a tragedy for such a country, essentially a pawn in geopolitics, may things become brighter as Castro's generation fades away...

 

man, i thought he died already. having a vaccine for lung cancer might be one thing, but he does have a violent history with him.

 

The only good commie is a dead commie.

 

Yet the USA made him turn to communism