Fidel Castro dies, aged 90.

[Broomstick]

One country with enormous influence. A lot of nations effectively joined the embargo because they didn't want to piss off the US. As time went on that eroded, but I have no doubt that a number of governments decided good relations with the US were more important than what happened on a small island.

[Lonestar]

I hope everyone that talks about the dangers of normalizing Trump keep that in mind as they are normalizing Castro.

[The Romulan Republic]

Not really comparable. Trump as President will wield far more power on a global scale than Castro ever did or could.

That said, while I do recognize that he did some good, Castro killed opponents, restricted freedom of expression, and denied his people democracy. That is inexcusable.

Although I cannot help but have a small amount of respect for anyone who managed to survive hundreds of assassination attempts to die of old age at 90.

[mr friendly guy]

How many US presidents has this guy outlived, including the ones who tried to have him assassinated.

[Lonestar]

Not really comparable. Trump as President will wield far more power on a global scale than Castro ever did or could.

Generally, people are talking about Trump's personality traits while warning people not to normalize him.

"It doesn't matter because Castro just ran Cuba and wasn't that important on the world stage*"

*Besides egging the USSR to nuke the US and sending an army to Angola.

[mr friendly guy]

Attempts by the US to kill Castro

In a Vanity Fair article Ms Lorenz opened up about her audience with Castro the night she was meant to kill him at a bedroom at the Hilton Havana hotel.
“He was chewing a cigar, and he lay down on the bed and he said, ‘did you come to kill me?’ Just like that. I said ‘Yes. I wanted to see you’,” she said.
Castro, she claimed, then leaned over and gave her his loaded gun. But she couldn’t do the deed.
“He said ‘You can’t kill me. Nobody can kill me’. I felt deflated. He was so sure of me, he just grabbed me. We made love.”

Man, that guy was one lucky cookie. To survive all those assassination attempts of course.

[Joun_Lord]

Not really comparable. Trump as President will wield far more power on a global scale than Castro ever did or could.

Castro's world power mattered little to his people and Trump's milkcrate on the world stage will matter little to American people (and all our foreign national guests) who are going to be on the receiving end of his policies.

Fidel couldn't kill some random entire fucking wedding like Trump will soon be able to but he could kill plenty at home. No torture chambers in Poland but still had them. Essentially Castro did alot of the shit Trump has got people pissing their My Little Pony panties over him possibly doing. Not the stuff with global consequences like war or trading with bad people or not trading with bad people but the contained civil and humans rights abuses.

If Trump actually becomes the HuffPo nightmare or wet dream and decides to close the borders, monitor and jail and make disappear political dissenters and opponents, to have watch lists and files of citizens to see if they are subversive, censor the press and any type of media, to stop large gathering of political nature, and generally not be nice to people he don't like, none of that would have much effect on the global scale beyond maybe stopping Europeons from coming here to gawk at our big hole in the ground and our collection of World Biggest roadside attractions.

Still would have an effect on people here, the power Trump would wield would be more then enough scale to fuck them up.

Fidel is much the same. And to ignore it, to excuse it even because he thumbed his nose at Amerikkkans or didn't inflict misery on people other then his own holds the door open for people to do the same for Lord Trump. To ignore his probable future abuses because he thumbed his nose at the Chinese or Ruskies or didn't inflict his racist, sexist, and stupid policies only on American people or inflicted it only on illegals or whatever.

What Castro did should be inexcusable, any mooning of global powers or good shit he did be damned, just like if Trump follows the same path he too should be inexcusable, arguably already inexcusable just from his words alone. No more excused absences, they will need a doctors note.

[K. A. Pital]

Generally, people are talking about Trump's personality traits while warning people not to normalize him.

"It doesn't matter because Castro just ran Cuba and wasn't that important on the world stage*"

*Besides egging the USSR to nuke the US and sending an army to Angola.

Well, at least Castro wasn't supporting apartheid South Africa. And the USSR wasn't nuking the US, just restoring the balance of strategic assault capabilities.

[Shroom Man 777]

Angola's a ridiculous issue since Apartheid South Africa, the US and China were supporting rebels that followed Maoist ideologies.

I think Cuba's domestic authoritarianism are a more valid venue of criticizing Castro than Angola.

[Lonestar]

Well, at least Castro wasn't supporting apartheid South Africa. And the USSR wasn't nuking the US, just restoring the balance of strategic assault capabilities.

(1)Yeah, the US sure was pumping all sorts of guns and ammo into South Africa, which is completely why the late-SA army wasn't a hilarious kitbash of whatever they could throw togather.

(2)Castro actually tried to get Khrushchev to launch a first strike against the US, he was appalled that Castro would suggest this. It wasn't a simple matter of "restoring balance".

[K. A. Pital]

(1)Yeah, the US sure was pumping all sorts of guns and ammo into South Africa, which is completely why the late-SA army wasn't a hilarious kitbash of whatever they could throw togather.

I didn't say the US was supporting SA. Check what I have actually said.

(2)Castro actually tried to get Khrushchev to launch a first strike against the US, he was appalled that Castro would suggest this. It wasn't a simple matter of "restoring balance".

Cuba did not have the authority to launch anything, even if Castro suggested such a thing. His statement was, actually, that if the US starts a conventional war and occupies Cuba, the USSR would be within their rights to retaliate with any weapons (but Khrushev was, of course, dismayed). Until very late in the crisis, Castro was actually of the opinion that there would not be any war, and only changed his position extremely late, on the 27th of October, thinking the US invasion is imminent. One day later, Khrushev told the US that missiles will be crated.

[Elfdart]

*Besides egging the USSR to nuke the US and sending an army to Angola.

Sending troops to Angola is the best thing he ever did. UNITA was a group of ex-Maoists led by a Pentacostal religious fanatic and made ISIS and Al Qaeda look like the Salvation Army. Savimbi (backed by Botha and Von Reagan) had children burned alive for witchcraft. His war killed over a million and a half people before the MPLA and Cuban Army stopped them. Botha's loss in Angola led to the downfall of Apartheid in South Africa, especially when they lost Namibia, too.

Whatever else Castro might have done, he deserves major brownie points for this.

[mr friendly guy]

Elfdart's info gave me thought. All I knew of Castro was the guy who kept on stymieing America's attempt to remove him. I knew very little about his exploits elsewhere so I did a bit of reading.

http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/ ... ?page=show

Many factors led to the demise of apartheid. The white South African government was defeated not just by the power of Mandela, the courage of the South African people, or the worldwide movement to impose sanctions. It was also brought down by the defeat of the South African military in Angola. This explains the prominence of Raúl Castro at the memorial service: it was Cuban troops that humiliated the South African army. In the 1970s and 1980s, Cuba changed the course of history in southern Africa despite the best efforts of the United States to prevent it.
In October 1975, the South Africans, encouraged by the Gerald Ford administration, invaded Angola to crush the leftwing Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). They would have succeeded had not 36,000 Cuban soldiers suddenly poured into Angola.

By April 1976, the Cubans had pushed the South Africans out.

As the CIA noted, Castro had not consulted Moscow before sending his troops (as is clear from later tense meetings with the Soviet leadership in the 1980s.) The Cubans, Kissinger confirmed in his memoirs, had confronted the Soviets with a fait accompli. Fidel Castro understood that the victory of Pretoria (with Washington in the wings) would have tightened the grip of white domination over the people of southern Africa. It was a defining moment: Castro sent troops to Angola because of his commitment to what he has called “the most beautiful cause,” the struggle against apartheid. As Kissinger observed later, Castro “was probably the most genuine revolutionary leader then in power.”
The tidal wave unleashed by the Cuban victory in Angola washed over South Africa. “Black Africa is riding the crest of a wave generated by the Cuban success in Angola,” noted the World, South Africa’s major black newspaper. “Black Africa is tasting the heady wine of the possibility of realizing the dream of total liberation.” Mandela later recalled hearing about the Cuban victory in Angola while he was incarcerated on Robben Island. “I was in prison when I first heard of the massive aid that the internationalist Cuban troops were giving to the people of Angola. ... We in Africa are accustomed to being the victims of countries that want to grab our territory or subvert our sovereignty. In all the history of Africa this is the only time a foreign people has risen up to defend one of our countries.”

From 1981 to 1987, the South Africans launched bruising invasions of southern Angola. It was a stalemate—until November 1987, when Castro decided to push the South Africans out of the country once and for all. His decision was triggered by the fact that the South African army had cornered the best units of the Angolan army in the southern Angolan town of Cuito Cuanavale. And his decision was made possible by the Iran Contra scandal rocking Washington. Until the Iran-Contra scandal exploded in late 1986, weakening and distracting the Reagan administration, the Cubans had feared that the United States might launch an attack on their homeland. They had therefore been unwilling to deplete their stocks of weapons. But Iran Contra defanged Reagan, and freed Castro to send Cuba's best planes, pilots, and antiaircraft weapons to Angola. His strategy was to break the South African offensive against Cuito Cuanavale in the southeast and then attack in the southwest, “like a boxer who with his left hand blocks the blow and with his right—strikes.”

On March 23, 1988, the South Africans launched their last major attack against Cuito Cuanavale. It was an abject failure. The US Joint Chiefs of Staff noted, “The war in Angola has taken a dramatic and—as far as the South Africans are concerned—an undesirable turn.”

The Cubans' left hand had blocked the South African blow while their right hand was preparing to strike: powerful Cuban columns were moving towards the Namibian border, pushing the South Africans back. Cuban MIG-23s began to fly over northern Namibia. US and South African documents prove that the Cubans gained the upper hand in Angola. The Cubans demanded that Pretoria withdraw unconditionally from Angola and allow UN-supervised elections in Namibia. The US Joint Chiefs of Staff warned that if South Africa refused, the Cubans were in a position “to launch a well-supported offensive into Namibia.” The South Africans acknowledged their dilemma: if they refused the Cuban demands, they ran “the very real risk of becoming involved in a full-scale conventional war with the Cubans, the results of which are potentially disastrous.” The South African military was grim: “We must do the utmost to avoid a confrontation.”
Pretoria capitulated. It accepted the Cubans’ demands and withdrew unconditionally from Angola and agreed to UN supervised elections in Namibia, which SWAPO won.
The Cuban victory reverberated beyond Namibia and Angola. In the words of Nelson Mandela, the Cuban victory “destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor ... [and] inspired the fighting masses of South Africa ... Cuito Cuanavale was the turning point for the liberation of our continent—and of my people—from the scourge of apartheid.”

http://qz.com/846337/cuban-leader-fidel ... continent/

When the apartheid government, aided by the United States, attacked Angola, it was Castro who came to the Africans’ aid. He sent 36,000 troops who succeeded in pushing the South African soldiers back while also training African fighters. Cuban troops remained in Africa until 1988, when an apartheid South Africa agreed to withdraw and grant independence to Namibia. Castro’s defiance of the United States was seen as defiance of imperialism and neo-colonialism by African freedom fighters.

Nelson Mandela once reportedly said that when he heard of the Cuban army’s victories in Angola, he was heartened by the idea of a non-white army out-maneuvering a white army. Upon his release, Castro was one of the first leaders Mandela met with, and dismissed criticism of his friendship with the politically isolated Castro.

Castro’s commitment to Africa continued in post-liberation Africa. The country still trains African doctors, and continues to send doctors here. When Ebola ravaged Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, Cuba lead international aid efforts when other world powers fretted. It is a relationship likely to continue long after Castro’s death.

************************************************************
Castro may have been a dictator, but Jesus, anyone who actually sent troops in and helped end apartheid South Africa deserves kudos. Meanwhile the democracies were either actively supporting South Africa like the US, or boycotting their sporting teams. Yeah that really showed them, unlike those Cuban troops.

Damn it. Someone needs to make a movie about the Cubans in Angola. I would so pay to watch it.

[Shroom Man 777]

Defeating a proxy war doesn't mean directly ending apartheid South Africa tho.

But yes, Cubans in Angola, MiG-23s in the sky and shit, jungle warfare, Cuban cigars in Vietafrica. That would be pretty great.

[mr friendly guy]

Well his intervention forced SA out of Namimbia. Nelson Mandela certainly credits Castro's contribution to helping end apartheid, which naturally we won't highlight here.

Apparently the Cuban military is a shadow of its former self since the collapse of the Soviet Union. But damn it, they were pretty capable for a developing nation if they had the means to send so many troops abroad so far from their borders and keep them supplied.

[K. A. Pital]

That story was pretty... great actually.

Some Soviet veterans who fought side by side with the Cubans in Angola later remembered that the Cubans would often risk their lives to protect "sovieticos" (Soviet military advisors to MPLA forces).

Bros. Communist bearded bros. Our bros. *happy*

[Ziggy Stardust]

The rest of the world had pretty big qualms until the very recent thawing of relations.

In November 1991, the Cuban ambassador, Ricardo Alarcon, in a speech to the UN General Assembly, cited 27 recent cases of trade contracts interrupted by US pressure. The British journal Cuba Business claimed that British Petroleum was seemingly dissuaded by US authorities from investing in offshore oil exploration in Cuba despite being initially keenly interested. The Petroleum economist claimed, in September 1992, that the US State Department vigorously discouraged firms like Royal Dutch Shell and Clyde Petroleum from investing in Cuba.

Sanctioning a tiny state with not much to offer in the way of production or services is very easy, and it is quite possible to compel others not to trade with that state as well.

But how big of an impact did this really have? The ambassador (who is, of course, not going to be giving a completely unbiased debriefing on the situation...) cites 27 cases interrupted by US pressure, but out of how many total cases? How much were these cases worth compared to the ones that weren't interrupted? This doesn't give nearly enough information to address my question.

Since the Soviet collapse, Cuba has endured the hardships of the special period, but still does not seem to be doing terribly badly compared to some neighbors who don't have an embargo:

Isn't this evidence FOR my point, not AGAINST it? If they aren't doing terribly badly compared to some neighbors who don't have an embargo, that would imply that the embargo isn't having as big of an effect as was previously claimed. It would also further support the notion that plenty of non-US countries are still doing business with Cuba.

EDIT: To clarify, I am in no way trying to defend the embargo. I'm mostly playing devil's advocate, here.

[Shroom Man 777]

Indulge me, how did the defeats exactly end apartheid in South Africa? I don't doubt it made the South African military look bad, that it emboldened the freedom fighters and showed people that the South African military, for all its reputation, could be beaten... but how was the political fallout of the defeat for the apartheid leadership?

[Guardsman Bass]

Good riddance. Fidel overthrew a right-wing dictator (good!), became a dictator himself (bad), and while he improved health care and education in the country*, he and his regime mismanaged just about everything else in the Cuban economy. By the time the Soviet Union fell, Cuba was incredibly dependent on Soviet aid, and their economy contracted something like 40% in the early 1990s once it was cut off.

How conveniently you ignore the embargo question. With whom should Cuba have traded if not the USSR? Embargo gave it no other choice.

I need to learn to be that skillful.

You mean the embargo that a whopping one country imposed, and which all other countries disregarded and continue to disregard (including the Canadians, Mexicans, and Europeans)?

Not to mention the irony of claiming that a communist country failed because it couldn't trade with the premier capitalist power.

[K. A. Pital]

You mean the embargo that a whopping one country imposed, and which all other countries disregarded and continue to disregard (including the Canadians, Mexicans, and Europeans)? Not to mention the irony of claiming that a communist country failed because it couldn't trade with the premier capitalist power.

Yes, and I have elaborated on that point a bit (though perhaps far from enough). If Cuba shared a land border with the USSR and was located in Europe, the embargo would not have meant much, but with its current location? I think it does affect the development of the island (though not as much as those imposing it would want to).

[Raj Ahten]

Using Castro's authoritarianism as an excuse for continuing sanctions, even after he is dead now, seems a little weak to me. The US has had no problems supporting and dealing with non democratic governments then or now. Name any right wing dictator of the past from Franco of Spain or Marcos in the Philippines to the Saudis and their Yemeni bombing campaign of today and you find lots of loathsome regimes counted among America's friends. As long as people are willing to bow down to US interests no one in power really gives a damn about their human rights record.

The real issue is Cuba is now strategically irrelevant so lawmakers can pretend ethics matter in the way they exercise foreign relations. Many also hold a grudge against cuba; a power that threatens their hegemony in their own backyard by thumbing their nose at the US and providing support to other nations that dare to do the same such as Venezuela.

Also saying a "one nation" embargo isn't that bad is ridiculous when that nation is the US. Cuba being so close most of its trade was with the US before the embargo and the US's financial dominance means that when it embargoes someone, many other nations follow suit because they need to do business with US banks and can't afford to be on the treasury departments shit list.

[Tribble]

Using Castro's authoritarianism as an excuse for continuing sanctions, even after he is dead now, seems a little weak to me. The US has had no problems supporting and dealing with non democratic governments then or now. Name any right wing dictator of the past from Franco of Spain or Marcos in the Philippines to the Saudis and their Yemeni bombing campaign of today and you find lots of loathsome regimes counted among America's friends. As long as people are willing to bow down to US interests no one in power really gives a damn about their human rights record.

The real issue is Cuba is now strategically irrelevant so lawmakers can pretend ethics matter in the way they exercise foreign relations. Many also hold a grudge against cuba; a power that threatens their hegemony in their own backyard by thumbing their nose at the US and providing support to other nations that dare to do the same such as Venezuela.

Also saying a "one nation" embargo isn't that bad is ridiculous when that nation is the US. Cuba being so close most of its trade was with the US before the embargo and the US's financial dominance means that when it embargoes someone, many other nations follow suit because they need to do business with US banks and can't afford to be on the treasury departments shit list..

I agree, Americans (and the west in general) are being very hypocritical here. America's perfectly content with dictatorships, and will even happily overthrow democratically elected governments and make dictatorships when it suits their interests. Cuba's conduct was far more serious than being a mere dictatorship - they challenged and successfully overthrew a US-backed corporate empire. That in America's eyes was the unforgivable crime.

I've never said that Castro was a nice guy, or that the Cuban government is a utopian democratic society. Far from it. However, IMO the American backed puppets screwed over the country far more than he ever did, and I'm 100% confident that Americans would screw them over again given half the chance. Who here honestly believes that having American corporations move into Cuba again would be a good thing in the long run? Or that an American backed "regime change" would be beneficial to Cuban society?

[Raj Ahten]

Defeating a proxy war doesn't mean directly ending apartheid South Africa tho.

But yes, Cubans in Angola, MiG-23s in the sky and shit, jungle warfare, Cuban cigars in Vietafrica. That would be pretty great.

What's even weirder is the South African mercenaries who had a big hand destroying UNITA is the 90's and early 2000's working for the Angolan government this time. It was literally some of the commanders and men of the same units that had been most prominent in fighting on UNITA's side for Apartheid South Africa.

[LaCroix]

You mean the embargo that a whopping one country imposed, and which all other countries disregarded and continue to disregard (including the Canadians, Mexicans, and Europeans)?

Actually, there is a lot of soft power thrown around concerning that embargo.

When one of our banks got US investors, they were forced to kick out all cuban customers, or the deal would have been cancelled. Papers looked into it, and found out that in a nutshell, if you want any US company to invest in you, you need to honor the embargo, or they won't sign (since that would mean they would circumvent the embargo).

Since basically every company worth notice, international trade-wise, has a big US shareholder, the "just one country" embargo is very universal in real life.

[Flagg]

Let's not forget that the country that embargoed them was the largest fucking economy in the world, and still is. And the only reason it's lasted as long as it has is a small but powerful voting block in America's dick (FL). It's also a country only 90 miles south of said dick and normalized relations would likely improve the lives of the people living there.

Do I like Castro and what he did? Fuck no. But you could argue that the US embargo did more harm to Cubans than Castro's regime.