The Killer 'Che Guevara' image is probably more iconic. Maybe rolling out the flag today would be topical for the protests to give the papers another image to pick up on. It could even be left covering a load of empty seats throughout the game given there may not be enough fans to pass it along.
Overthrew something far worse that what he created, however imperfect it might have been. Eisenhower's mindless trade embargo pushed him into the arms of the the Russians. Stood up to America for decades when they were overthrowing other left wing governments in Central and South America. Cuba might have been poor and badly run, but it wasn't as bad as its near neighbours. Definite RIP from me.
I think you are mixing him up with Che - Castro was never an oil painting. Having been to Cuba a few times, there is a genuine pride you pick up from the people regarding Castro as well as a desire to join the rest of the world. to counter that, many Cubans who fled to America and I'm sure a few still there hate him. There was lots of bad in what happened ater the revolution, but we mustn't forget why there was a revolution. Castro was a man who wanted the best for his people and his people were suffering and exploited.
When you visit towns in Cuba, it is like going back 50 years in a time warp. But the American sanctions hurt the country and I believe was a despicable policy in that in went on for so long and still does. Although a thawing of relations has given Cuba a sense of anticipation and it is readying itself to join the real world.
It is a beautiful country with a great resourceful people and I hope that change happens in a controlled way that benefits all there. Castro was a man who did what he did out of a sense of justice. He was wealthy, he didn't need to, but exploitation of the people by an evil form of capitalistism made him necessary. Maybe after the victory, he wasn't the best person to lead his country forwards and a lot of the positive changes in the country came when his brother took over from him in 2006. But we shouldn't forget that Cuba has a fantastic health service and provides a lot of medical support and training to third world countries. It has fantastic research and drug development capabilities and it's child mortality rate puts western countries including our own to shame. Our western propaganda - we always assume that works one way - doesn't really dwell on this. The taps simply can't be turned on to capitalism, they need to be opened and flow slowly.
Castro was seen as a villain by many, but that is really a matter of perspective. Yes, he nearly caused a nuclear war but if you look at the facts, America played a massive part in this, driving him to the Soviets. In this Global shrinking world we have multi nationals that only care about the big buck - people are a resource in the same way as iron or any other tradable commodity is. Cuba should teach us that we need capitalism - humans need to strive for something, but it also has to have a heart. Castro is seen as a hero by many too. I think history will be kind to him. I believe for all his faults, which there were many, that he can be deemed to have been a great man.
I think you are mixing him up with Che - Castro was never an oil painting. Having been to Cuba a few times, there is a genuine pride you pick up from the people regarding Castro as well as a desire to join the rest of the world. to counter that, many Cubans who fled to America and I'm sure a few still there hate him. There was lots of bad in what happened ater the revolution, but we mustn't forget why there was a revolution. Castro was a man who wanted the best for his people and his people were suffering and exploited.
When you visit towns in Cuba, it is like going back 50 years in a time warp. But the American sanctions hurt the country and I believe was a despicable policy in that in went on for so long and still does. Although a thawing of relations has given Cuba a sense of anticipation and it is readying itself to join the real world.
It is a beautiful country with a great resourceful people and I hope that change happens in a controlled way that benefits all there. Castro was a man who did what he did out of a sense of justice. He was wealthy, he didn't need to, but exploitation of the people by an evil form of capitalistism made him necessary. Maybe after the victory, he wasn't the best person to lead his country forwards and a lot of the positive changes in the country came when his brother took over from him in 2006. But we shouldn't forget that Cuba has a fantastic health service and provides a lot of medical support and training to third world countries. It has fantastic research and drug development capabilities and it's child mortality rate puts western countries including our own to shame. Our western propaganda - we always assume that works one way - doesn't really dwell on this. The taps simply can't be turned on to capitalism, they need to be opened and flow slowly.
Castro was seen as a villain by many, but that is really a matter of perspective. Yes, he nearly caused a nuclear war but if you look at the facts, America played a massive part in this, driving him to the Soviets. In this Global shrinking world we have multi nationals that only care about the big buck - people are a resource in the same way as iron or any other tradable commodity is. Cuba should teach us that we need capitalism - humans need to strive for something, but it also has to have a heart. Castro is seen as a hero by many too. I think history will be kind to him. I believe for all his faults, which there were many, that he can be deemed to have been a great man.
Well said, Mutts.
For left wing students in the 70s he was a hero - and I was a left wing student in the 70s!
Under Batista it was one of the worst examples of the haves have everything and the have-nots have nothing. He changed that and the health, housing and education systems under Castro were the envy of other central American states. But he controlled their lives too much, not least in freedom of movement and in stifling aspiration. On balance a good man and an absolute icon of the 20th century.
Left wing students of the 70s grow up and change their views, as I have - but still a genuine RIP, Fidel, from me.
Yes, Cubans are well educated. I missed that. I had a conversation with a waiter about their education system. He spoke 3 langauges as well as his native Spanish. His English was excellent, and being able to speak Italian, I can vouch that that was too.
Guy was a murderer. Batista was almost just as bad, but let's not pretend Fidel smells of roses. His state sanctioned murders run into the late tens of thousands/early hundred thousands.
There's a reason basically all Cuban exiles hate him.
Am I surprised by the warm messages? Not really, the left has recently become a bit obsessed with old men with ancient political views.
Important....influential......you really think so? In Cuba maybe.....but where else?
errrrrrrrr .. Paris riots, Baader Meinhof, Red Brigades, Palestinian revolutions, I would also argue, the Vietnam War .. Che Guevera an Argentinian has been and still remains a revered and / or loathed figure worldwide .. no Castro=no Che .. Che was influenced by Castro and vice versa but the notion of a Castro style 'people's revolution' though similar were successfully (or otherwise depending on your opinion of 'communism') carried out by Lenin and later Mao, was essentially a 20c phenomenon and several guerrilla and revolutionary groups in south and central America still look to Castro and Che as inspirations.
Far from perfect leader but the regime he and his supporters ousted were ,in my opinion, the very picture of evil, they had to go. Castro's regime obviously a reaction to the previous corrupt mob tried to rebalance their country and move it forward. Maybe things might have been different without the Americans before and after the revolution. I think he will be remembered well by his people maybe not by the world.
I don’t think either superpower were particularly good for Cuba. They certainly didn’t include Castro in the negotiations once they’d squared up to each other.
There is a really good BBC podcast that explains the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b039kv61 It takes 45 minutes, but worth a listen if only to remember how quickly the World could slide into absolute disaster. Khrushchev severely underrated the ballsiness of President John Kennedy and his brother Robert who delivered a very concise message to the Russian embassy in Washington.
Talk about brinkmanship, it was a close run thing. Kennedy later said, ‘Even the fruits of victory would have been like ashes in our mouths’.
Far from perfect leader but the regime he and his supporters ousted were ,in my opinion, the very picture of evil, they had to go. Castro's regime obviously a reaction to the previous corrupt mob tried to rebalance their country and move it forward. Maybe things might have been different without the Americans before and after the revolution. I think he will be remembered well by his people maybe not by the world.
I think you have to study the build up to get this. Yes, people were executed, some of them very deserving of it, some less so. I think Che lost a sense of humanity in this role and was too inflexible after the revolution - seeing it was humanity that had forced him on the life path he took. If you try to simplify these things without having all of the facts it is easy to come to the conclusion that Castro was a monster, when in fact he was far from one. People have to study the facts, think for themselves and not just decide he was 'commie scum' because we are programmed to think that way.
Having said that, nobody should be flagging posts on this subject. There will be differing opinions. There was lots of bad too. And from a personal perspective, things I am not comfortable with. But revolution is bloody - but it liberated a people from a real tyrant that the US supported. We shouldn't forget that becaus eit doesn't suit our version of history. Unfortunately there is a lot of that in our society. Condem - do not try to understand.
Thought I would share this article ostensibly it's about 49ers QB, but I think in light of Castro passing it's worth reading
San Francisco 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick defends Fidel Castro | Miami Herald
EDITOR’S NOTE: This column was published on Friday, Nov. 25, 2016, several hours before news spread of the death of Fidel Castro.
The August evening the nation first noticed Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem at an NFL game, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback held a postgame news conference, as is typical league policy. At that news conference Kaepernick wore a T-shirt emblazoned with photos from a 1960 meeting between Malcolm X and Fidel Castro.
So after his first notable protest against what last week he called the “systematic oppression” of minorities in the United States, and saying he wants “freedom for all people,” Colin Kaepernick put on a T-shirt that featured a supportive image of one of the 20th century’s most enduring oppressors.
This absurd contradiction between what Kaepernick said and does was only a distant annoyance to me because, although I was born into Cuba’s imprisonment, I don’t often write about Kaepernick or his team. This wasn’t my fight.
But this week Colin Kaepernick is on a teleconference call with me and other South Florida reporters who cover the Miami Dolphins. The Dolphins are playing Kaepernick’s team Sunday. And Kaepernick is saying if anyone is “OK with people being treated unfairly, being harassed, being terrorized, then the problem is more what they’re doing in their lives …”
And because Kaepernick apparently doesn’t understand his words apply to him before he can apply them to others, I ask the man who protests oppression why he wore the Castro shirt when the tyrant is demonstrably a star on the world’s All Oppressor team?
Some facts:
Cuba for more than five decades under the Castros has stifled practically any and all dissent. According to Human Rights Watch, “Cuban citizens have been systematically deprived of their fundamental rights to free expression, privacy, association, assembly, movement, and due process of law. Tactics for enforcing political conformity have included police warnings, surveillance, short-term detentions, house arrests, travel restrictions, criminal prosecutions, and politically motivated dismissals from employment.”
Now go to Google images of the Ladies In White protesting on Cuba’s streets. Kaepernick, the poster child for protest among NFL players, should do this. He would see images of women — white, black, mothers, daughters, sisters — systematically violated in one form or another by Castro’s thugs.
They are harassed, spat upon, pushed and even bloodied simply because they are fighting to do in Cuba what Kaepernick does on an NFL sideline without fear or physical repercussion — just before he wears that Castro shirt to his postgame presser.
So I ask Kaepernick how he can protest oppression then ignorantly don a T-shirt featuring an oppressor?
Kaepernick, Reid only 49ers to take a knee during national anthem
San Francisco 49ers players Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid were the only players who took a knee during the national anthem Monday before a game Monday against the Los Angeles Rams. Four other players raised their fists during the ceremony: Eli Harold and
Paul Kitagaki Jr. /Sacramento Bee And Kaepernick immediately said:
“I wore a Malcolm X shirt,” he said.
Now, Kaepernick is bright even though he seems to be playing dumb. He carried a 4.0 grade point average at John H. Pitman High School in Turlock, California, around the same time my aunt, lacking medicine and care in Cuba, was dying — the last of my family members the Castros refused to allow to escape to freedom in the United States.
So I remind Kaepernick that Castro was indeed on his shirt.
“I am a believer in Malcolm X and his ideology and what he talked about and what he believed in as far as fighting oppression,” Kaepernick said.
That, by the way, does not answer the question. Kaepernick is evading as if my question is an NFL linebacker on a blitz. So I interrupt. ...
Are you a believer in Fidel Castro, who is also on that shirt?
“If you let me finish, please,” Kaepernick requested. “The fact he [Malcolm X] met with Fidel to me speaks to his open mind to be willing to hear different aspects of people’s views and ultimately being able to create his own views as far as the best way to approach different situations, different cultures.”
So it’s good to have an open mind about Fidel Castro and his oppression, I ask?
“I’m not talking about Fidel Castro and his oppression,” Kaepernick said. “I’m talking about Malcolm X and what he’s done for people.”
At this point I hope Kaepernick is starting to realize how untenable his position is relative to the Castros. Even Malcolm X, who met with Castro in New York, for years afterward declined invitations to visit him in Cuba. I’m hoping Kaepernick understands one should not make broad statements about standing up for people’s rights, then slip into a Fidel Castro shirt, suggesting approval for a man who has spent his days on the planet stifling people’s rights.
And that’s exactly the moment Kaepernick shows how lost he truly is. Because in the next breath, Kaepernick, born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, explains to me, the guy born in Havana, how great Castro really is.
“One thing Fidel Castro did do is they have the highest literacy rate because they invest more in their education system than they do in their prison system, which we do not do here even though we’re fully capable of doing that,” Kaepernick said.
Is this real life?
First, Cuba does not have the highest literacy rate. Second, don’t be surprised if the same people who report Cuba’s admittedly high literacy rate are related to those who report its election results — the ones in which the Castros get 100 percent of the votes.
Third, could it be Cuba doesn’t have to invest a lot in its prison system because, you know, dungeons and firing squads (El Paredon) are not too expensive to maintain?
Finally, it’s bizarre that Kaepernick is extolling the education system of a country where people believe launching out into shark-infested seas to flee is a better idea than staying there.
So I make the point to Kaepernick that aside from that awesome school system the Castro devils established, there was also that communist revolution we should consider, and the lack of free elections and justice. And after teaching folks the alphabet, to Kaepernick’s apparent delight, the Castros break up families, including mine, because some folks get out and others cannot
If you want to find evidence he was a hero, it is out there. If you want to find evidence he was a monster, it is out there too. You have to accept that life and circumstances are complex and understand your subject and make a decision based on what you find. You may come to a different conclusion than somebody who does the same thing, but that is what we do or we would all agree with everything.
Comments
Still a hugely influential figure in post ww2 politics and world affairs.
PS Castro not Che had died
Definite RIP from me.
When you visit towns in Cuba, it is like going back 50 years in a time warp. But the American sanctions hurt the country and I believe was a despicable policy in that in went on for so long and still does. Although a thawing of relations has given Cuba a sense of anticipation and it is readying itself to join the real world.
It is a beautiful country with a great resourceful people and I hope that change happens in a controlled way that benefits all there. Castro was a man who did what he did out of a sense of justice. He was wealthy, he didn't need to, but exploitation of the people by an evil form of capitalistism made him necessary. Maybe after the victory, he wasn't the best person to lead his country forwards and a lot of the positive changes in the country came when his brother took over from him in 2006. But we shouldn't forget that Cuba has a fantastic health service and provides a lot of medical support and training to third world countries. It has fantastic research and drug development capabilities and it's child mortality rate puts western countries including our own to shame. Our western propaganda - we always assume that works one way - doesn't really dwell on this. The taps simply can't be turned on to capitalism, they need to be opened and flow slowly.
Castro was seen as a villain by many, but that is really a matter of perspective. Yes, he nearly caused a nuclear war but if you look at the facts, America played a massive part in this, driving him to the Soviets. In this Global shrinking world we have multi nationals that only care about the big buck - people are a resource in the same way as iron or any other tradable commodity is. Cuba should teach us that we need capitalism - humans need to strive for something, but it also has to have a heart. Castro is seen as a hero by many too. I think history will be kind to him. I believe for all his faults, which there were many, that he can be deemed to have been a great man.
For left wing students in the 70s he was a hero - and I was a left wing student in the 70s!
Under Batista it was one of the worst examples of the haves have everything and the have-nots have nothing. He changed that and the health, housing and education systems under Castro were the envy of other central American states. But he controlled their lives too much, not least in freedom of movement and in stifling aspiration. On balance a good man and an absolute icon of the 20th century.
Left wing students of the 70s grow up and change their views, as I have - but still a genuine RIP, Fidel, from me.
There's a reason basically all Cuban exiles hate him.
Am I surprised by the warm messages? Not really, the left has recently become a bit obsessed with old men with ancient political views.
RIP Fray Bentos
In Cuba maybe.....but where else?
I think he will be remembered well by his people maybe not by the world.
There is a really good BBC podcast that explains the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b039kv61 It takes 45 minutes, but worth a listen if only to remember how quickly the World could slide into absolute disaster. Khrushchev severely underrated the ballsiness of President John Kennedy and his brother Robert who delivered a very concise message to the Russian embassy in Washington.
Talk about brinkmanship, it was a close run thing. Kennedy later said, ‘Even the fruits of victory would have been like ashes in our mouths’.
Having said that, nobody should be flagging posts on this subject. There will be differing opinions. There was lots of bad too. And from a personal perspective, things I am not comfortable with. But revolution is bloody - but it liberated a people from a real tyrant that the US supported. We shouldn't forget that becaus eit doesn't suit our version of history. Unfortunately there is a lot of that in our society. Condem - do not try to understand.
San Francisco 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick defends Fidel Castro | Miami Herald
EDITOR’S NOTE: This column was published on Friday, Nov. 25, 2016, several hours before news spread of the death of Fidel Castro.
The August evening the nation first noticed Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem at an NFL game, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback held a postgame news conference, as is typical league policy. At that news conference Kaepernick wore a T-shirt emblazoned with photos from a 1960 meeting between Malcolm X and Fidel Castro.
So after his first notable protest against what last week he called the “systematic oppression” of minorities in the United States, and saying he wants “freedom for all people,” Colin Kaepernick put on a T-shirt that featured a supportive image of one of the 20th century’s most enduring oppressors.
This absurd contradiction between what Kaepernick said and does was only a distant annoyance to me because, although I was born into Cuba’s imprisonment, I don’t often write about Kaepernick or his team. This wasn’t my fight.
But this week Colin Kaepernick is on a teleconference call with me and other South Florida reporters who cover the Miami Dolphins. The Dolphins are playing Kaepernick’s team Sunday. And Kaepernick is saying if anyone is “OK with people being treated unfairly, being harassed, being terrorized, then the problem is more what they’re doing in their lives …”
And because Kaepernick apparently doesn’t understand his words apply to him before he can apply them to others, I ask the man who protests oppression why he wore the Castro shirt when the tyrant is demonstrably a star on the world’s All Oppressor team?
Some facts:
Cuba for more than five decades under the Castros has stifled practically any and all dissent. According to Human Rights Watch, “Cuban citizens have been systematically deprived of their fundamental rights to free expression, privacy, association, assembly, movement, and due process of law. Tactics for enforcing political conformity have included police warnings, surveillance, short-term detentions, house arrests, travel restrictions, criminal prosecutions, and politically motivated dismissals from employment.”
Now go to Google images of the Ladies In White protesting on Cuba’s streets. Kaepernick, the poster child for protest among NFL players, should do this. He would see images of women — white, black, mothers, daughters, sisters — systematically violated in one form or another by Castro’s thugs.
They are harassed, spat upon, pushed and even bloodied simply because they are fighting to do in Cuba what Kaepernick does on an NFL sideline without fear or physical repercussion — just before he wears that Castro shirt to his postgame presser.
So I ask Kaepernick how he can protest oppression then ignorantly don a T-shirt featuring an oppressor?
Kaepernick, Reid only 49ers to take a knee during national anthem
San Francisco 49ers players Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid were the only players who took a knee during the national anthem Monday before a game Monday against the Los Angeles Rams. Four other players raised their fists during the ceremony: Eli Harold and
Paul Kitagaki Jr. /Sacramento Bee
And Kaepernick immediately said:
“I wore a Malcolm X shirt,” he said.
Now, Kaepernick is bright even though he seems to be playing dumb. He carried a 4.0 grade point average at John H. Pitman High School in Turlock, California, around the same time my aunt, lacking medicine and care in Cuba, was dying — the last of my family members the Castros refused to allow to escape to freedom in the United States.
So I remind Kaepernick that Castro was indeed on his shirt.
“I am a believer in Malcolm X and his ideology and what he talked about and what he believed in as far as fighting oppression,” Kaepernick said.
That, by the way, does not answer the question. Kaepernick is evading as if my question is an NFL linebacker on a blitz. So I interrupt. ...
Are you a believer in Fidel Castro, who is also on that shirt?
“If you let me finish, please,” Kaepernick requested. “The fact he [Malcolm X] met with Fidel to me speaks to his open mind to be willing to hear different aspects of people’s views and ultimately being able to create his own views as far as the best way to approach different situations, different cultures.”
So it’s good to have an open mind about Fidel Castro and his oppression, I ask?
“I’m not talking about Fidel Castro and his oppression,” Kaepernick said. “I’m talking about Malcolm X and what he’s done for people.”
At this point I hope Kaepernick is starting to realize how untenable his position is relative to the Castros. Even Malcolm X, who met with Castro in New York, for years afterward declined invitations to visit him in Cuba. I’m hoping Kaepernick understands one should not make broad statements about standing up for people’s rights, then slip into a Fidel Castro shirt, suggesting approval for a man who has spent his days on the planet stifling people’s rights.
And that’s exactly the moment Kaepernick shows how lost he truly is. Because in the next breath, Kaepernick, born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, explains to me, the guy born in Havana, how great Castro really is.
“One thing Fidel Castro did do is they have the highest literacy rate because they invest more in their education system than they do in their prison system, which we do not do here even though we’re fully capable of doing that,” Kaepernick said.
Is this real life?
First, Cuba does not have the highest literacy rate. Second, don’t be surprised if the same people who report Cuba’s admittedly high literacy rate are related to those who report its election results — the ones in which the Castros get 100 percent of the votes.
Third, could it be Cuba doesn’t have to invest a lot in its prison system because, you know, dungeons and firing squads (El Paredon) are not too expensive to maintain?
Finally, it’s bizarre that Kaepernick is extolling the education system of a country where people believe launching out into shark-infested seas to flee is a better idea than staying there.
So I make the point to Kaepernick that aside from that awesome school system the Castro devils established, there was also that communist revolution we should consider, and the lack of free elections and justice. And after teaching folks the alphabet, to Kaepernick’s apparent delight, the Castros break up families, including mine, because some folks get out and others cannot
rest of article here http://www.miamiherald.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/armando-salguero/article117033883.html