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Fidel Castro Resigns
Smordnys s'regrepsA writes "Fidel Castro, the leader of the island nation of Cuba has declined the possibility of keeping his seat as President, after the February 24th National Assembly election. "I neither will aspire to nor will I accept — I repeat — I neither will aspire to nor will I accept, the position of president of the council of state and commander in chief," Castro wrote almost 19 months after a severe illness caused him to hand power temporarily to his brother Raul."
"I neither will aspire to nor will I accept -- I repeat -- I neither will aspire to nor will I accept, the position of president of the council of state and commander in chief"
Funny... he said something very similar when he and his revolutionaries kicked out Batista in the first place.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
The U.S. should make aggressive postures towards Cuba so that they are too scared to open their society and will look to a strong man for defense. Great idea, huh?
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
...we can finally end this sad old Cold War charade and finally end the damn embargo?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Before corporate America invades, and it's Wendys, Burger King, McDonalds and Starbucks on every street in Habana.
For those of you that have never been to Cuba, it really is a unique place.
Not for much longer, I fear.
he can spend more time on /. - searching for the "stuff that matters" perspective ;-)
this is news, but not really BIG news - Fidel has been sick for a long time and his brother ("Raul") is going to "take over" (although there will be an "election")
"ah come on, we all knew this socialism thing wasn't going to work"
Fidel Castro via the Simpsons
It ain't what they call you. It's what you answer to. http://mylyceum.us/
Good idea. While we're at it, let's pretend China doesn't exist, either. There shall be no discussion of any computer made there.
But there aren't a lot of French people living in Florida or any other swing states.
>Free the press. Allow criticism of the state. Allow the existance of other political parties. Hold free elections.
Maybe a good idea for the US as well ?
political prisoners: let's talk about guantanamo.
press: in the hands of a few extremely rich people tied to one of the 2 parties.
criticism of the state: you get lynched if you dare criticise the war in Iraq
other political parties: 2 parties is NOT a democracy.
free elections : see previous point.
More like a commie disneyland.
The government doesn't represent the wishes of the people anymore than Batista's nonsense.
Cuba wasn't meant to be a quaint backwater for turistas to see vintage automobiles.
It looks as though Father Time will finally accomplish what exploding cigars, poison pills, and even a skin disease-causing fungus could not.
No.
Now they will complain that all their land and wealth they left behind in Cuba must be returned to them with interest. Suddenly all of them were billionaires and owned 1/5th the island. Etc...
There is one thing that is universal in humanity, they all like to complain.
It's often used as an argument as to why the USA shouldn't be bound to international laws that they agree to, or international organizations that they belong to. Seems only fair it should apply to Cuba as well.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
From the article: "Castro...turned tiny Cuba into a thorn in the paw of the mighty capitalist United States."
Bay of Pigs was really the fault of Kennedy. So other than the Cuban Missile Crisis, I don't recall Cuba doing anything significantly irritating. I don't think one incident qualifies Cuba for "thorn in paw" status. Perhaps someone more historically enlightened could explain this to me?
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
You can't be elected by Florida without the Cuban-American vote. You won't get that vote by dropping the embargo on the nation those people fled.
Nerds are interested in many a subject. I am an education/tech nerd. I'm pretty damn sure there's quite a few politics and history nerds in here, too.
Beyond that, why complain when genuine news hits the front page? Did you complain when Slashdot was holding up the internets when the towers fell?
It's important to note that, if it weren't for the embargo to blame all of Cuba's economic troubles on, Fidel Castro likely wouldn't have lasted nearly as long as he did.
The political lobbying by the Cubans in Florida had the exact opposite affect from the one the wanted.
Although I agree with your point that US relations with Cuba isn't exactly news for nerds, news about Brad and Angelina isn't news for ANYBODY. They're just actors. Nothing thay doe will affect the world, let alone MY world. Castro resigning does, in fact, affect me.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
What international entreprise should have long written off can become an incentive for revolution, and an opportunity for trade on the part of the Cubans and the US.
What would be an utter failure would be for Cubans to feel as the Russians do, that state oppression has been replaced with private sector oppression. Cubans deserve the property that their government has taken from then, as well as international entreprises, which would otherwise have created the opportunity for mutual benefit.
If a write-off is politically untenable, then compensation is called for, but the Cubans should not pay for it.
Wikileaks, no DNS
1. ask a cuban to go on the internet
2. ask them to write something critical of castro
what happens next to said cuban?
this is a superior place? because they don't have starbucks?
so you prefer autocracy and censorship and police state over starbucks and mcdonalds?
dude: your priorities stink
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You know, the Bay of Pigs was really us (the U.S.) pulling a shitball stunt against them (Cuba), so it shouldn't really count in this comparison between what France has done and what Cuba has done.
"international contempt"? They're strong allies of Canada. The primary source of international contempt towards Cuba comes from the US. My guess (and it's just a guess) is that the world looks more favourably on Cuba than the US due to foreign policy. Gitmo doesn't help.
People like that--the faux-intellectuals who engage in slashdot groupthink as a means of addressing their own intellectual insecurities--are the reasons I usually don't even get down into the comments. This one had too much potential to pass up... cognitive dissonance is always a good potential source of humor with these people.
What to do? Make silly, baseless, incredibly ignorant claims that the US is pretty much the same as Cuba? Praise Castro, and maybe tie the Che Guevara poster hanging in my cubicle into the conversation? Talk about how Hugo Chavez is the best thing since Castro? Or maybe just act like a normal, intelligent, rational human being? Of course, the latter is to be avoided at all costs on slashdot, so that's unlikely.
for a country, with a large poor population, going radically socialist, at the detriment to some freedoms, in order to force a large part of the population out of poverty. for example venezuela's hugo chavez is using petrodollar-funded socialism to aid venezuela's poor (those petrodollars, ironically, considering chavez's hot air about evil america, are coming from american soccer moms refilling their suvs)
however, also consider the recent vote a few months back in venezuela. chavez, to his credit, asked the venezuelan people if they would let him alter the constitution to dramatically extend his powers. rather than just take those powers by force, like we hear about time and time again in the world. the venezuelan people rejected his power grab, even in the poor parts of venezuela that enthusiastically support chavez otherwise. and chavez, again to his credit, accepted their decision
however, in cuba, you have those authoritarian despotic powers that castro weild. does he have that right? no, he certainly does not. and i think if you asked the average cuban, who benefitted the most from the enforced socialist policies that castro enacted, why they couldn't also have more democratic freedoms, i think that cuban would probably have the same opinion of castro as those poor venezuelans do about chavez: yes to castro's policy, no to castro's absolute power
so socialism for the poor: yes. despotic autocracy: no. in such a way, you can criticize castro without rejecting the policies that benefitted the cuban poor
and btw, frankly, as an american, hugo chavez can talk about constant phantom cia threats on his life, how the evil imperialistic america is about to invade caracas at any moment, etc., blah blah blah. zzz. be as big a fearmongering demagogue gas bag as he wants, i don't care. as long as he uses petrodollars to aid venezuelan poor, and he doesn't abuse his powers and destroy venezuelan democracy, chavez has my support 100%
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You are passed the denial, and entered the anger phase.
We understand it. But, please, understand too that we do not believe you anymore when you talk about "democracy", "change", etc. In our eyes you are not a carrier of democratic ideas anymore. You are just an angry traumatized country.
Of course... You've grown up enjoying the freedoms that cubans under castro don't have, so it's hard for you to recognize them.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
I don't think the U.S. could do it if they tried. The old money in the U.S. has too much political clout and personal interest in carving up Cuba for themselves. Cubans would be worse off than the Florida ghettos if the U.S. touched them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Revolution
Cuba needs communism. They should probably follow China's lead and open up the borders culturally and keep a tight stranglehold on passports, but the land is the property of the people, managed by the government.
Poor Cuba. I hope they get a good leader. Else they're screwed.
some of us like Cuban cigars.
some of us want to visit Cuba, like everyone else in the world can.
some of us would love an opportunity to live in a Caribbean island nation while working to bring their network infrastructure up to international standards.
Can someone explain why we embargo cuba while we can't trade fast enough with China? All I can think of is:
"They're communists!"
So is china.
"Well they had soviet bases and nukes pointed at us once"
China's got nukes now.
"They rob their people of land and rights"
So does china.
"They don't allow Christianity"
Neither does china.
Maybe I'm not supposed to understand and I should just shut up and stop thinking... WTF still cares about Cuba anyway?
"Strong allies?" We're willing to engage in commerce with Cuba; that's a little different from treating them like a NATO member or something.
"All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
They nationalized property without compensating international businesses.
So did Mexico. So did Venezuela.
Then they became Soviet puppets.
Pretty much all of Europe east of Austria, a third of Latin America, half of Africa and most of Asia. We left the first reasonably well alone, but we fought direct wars all over the second and proxy wars everywhere else, but the worst we can muster with Cuba is, what, the Bay of Pigs? Hell, we killed Ghaddafi's daughter with a cruise missile and now we're toasting his health. What gives?
Various acts like supporting leftist guerrillas or shooting down Cessnas with MiGs continued to earn them international contempt.
We never removed diplomatic relations from Russia, we established it long ago and never rescinded it with China, even though we were fighting a half dozen proxy wars in Africa and Asia funded by both of them (think: Iran-Contra and the other war in Afghanistan, and a little tiff we call 'Vietnam' for starts), and we recently restored it with freakin' Libya--which is, from the American point of view at least, a terrorist sponsoring socialist dictatorship in the habit of not bringing down Cessnas, but, with Pan Am 103, like the Soviets with KAL007, bringing down 747s. But, then again, in their eyes, so are we, what with blasting Iranian Air 655 out of the sky, incinerating about 300 civilians in the process, for which we paid $60 million and refused to apologize. We milked Libya for $2 Billion and made them grovel in order get back on the party invite list.
It is not as bad as the neo-cons paint it nor is it as good as the far left paints it.
The "far left" is more in the habit of pointing out the cozy relationships neo-cons and democrats alike have been more than happy to have with regimes FAR more out of line than Cuba. I mean, honestly, the PRI, Pinochet and Noriega were best buddies but Castro was Satan incarnate? Are we kidding here? The point of it is we could AFFORD to isolate Cuba (or, say, Chile) for having dirty little socialist tendencies in order to make a shining example of our not allowing other forms of government in our hemisphere. When countries like Mexico or Venezuela pull the same thing, we wag our fingers in their general direction, shrug, and let the container ships and oil tankers roll into port on schedule. The "far left" looks at that and puzzles why it's A-Okay to blow your kids' college fund in Moscow, Beijing, Triploi, Tehran, Panama or Saigon--hell, you can lunch in Pyongyang with no trouble from the Feds and we're technically still at war with them--yet it's a crime worthy of imprisonment to smoke a stogie in Havana?
Remind me again... why is the U.S. mad at them? France has pulled worse shitball stunts against you than Cuba has.
Well, agreeing to host Soviet missiles around 1960 would qualify as a seriously shitball stunt. Still, that was 40-some years ago. You want the real reason? It all started when Castro pissed off the mob who ran the casinos in Havana, who just happened to be Kennedy's buddies. Lately, there's a certain amount of face-saving that prevents normalization of relations with Castro, as well as the exceptionally strong agriculture lobby in the US which really doesn't want to see a flood of cheap rice on the US market.
Nevermind France, how the shit have we gotten more friendly with *Qaddafi* in Libya? (replace with spelling of your choice).
The US is pretty much the only country that has a gripe with Cuba, and that is just because they are the only country who have ever had the guts to kick the US out.
Do not be Gorbachev, be Den Xiao Ping.
Do not start with political freedoms, start with economic ones...
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
No, I don't think the left argues that Cuba is some kind of paragon of liberty. They argue that the policy towards Cuba should be something like that towards China, one of engagement that will encourage them to move towards free market reforms, which will lead to individual freedoms.
Stating that "the left" has some rosy idea about Cuba makes people say, well, nobody has the right answer, both sides are equally bad. That isn't the case.
Don't, mistake official explanations with the real reasons. The US has being trying to control Cuba since the 1800s but the British Navy was an obstacle for a long time. John Quincy Adams noted that "the laws of political gravitation" would bring Cuba into the hands of the U.S.
Eventually the US saw an opportunity when Cuba was striving for independence from Spain. The resistance in Cuba was wary of US offers of help because they were worried that once in, the US would never leave. However, the US gave assurances that would not be the case (e.g. Teller Amendment) and went in to help the resistance. Once the Spanish-controlled government was overthrown, the US (predictably) refused to leave. General Samuel B.M. Young expressed the opinion... "a lot of degenerates...no more capable of self-government than the savages of Africa,".
Eventually US forces did leave, but they laid down conditions for withdrawal, known as the Platt Amendment. The Cubans had to agree to a US Naval Base (the now infamous Guantanamo Bay) and to never transfer any Cuban land to a power other than the US. The terms also allowed the US to intervene in Cuban affairs when the US deemed necessary. Under US pressure, the terms were even embedded into the Cuban constitution. Eventually this repressive and imperialistic amendment was repealed in 1934 under Roosevelt's "Good Neighbour policy" but the US refused to give up Guantanamo bay and it can only be removed with the consent of both parties (an unlikely occurrence to say the least). Of course, it was ok for the US to give up these powers in 1934 because Fulgencio Batista was already the de facto ruler of Cuba. With this US-backed dictator in place, the Platt Amendment wasn't really necessary.
Eventually this nice little arrangement ended in 1959 when Castro toppled Batista. That is the source of US anger ever since. It is the anger of losing control of Cuba. All the rest of it is just excuses. It was the fear of invasion from the US (which was being planned) that drove Castro into an alliance with the USSR. Eventually there was an invasion attempt (bay of Pigs) but fortunately for Castro it was totally pathetic, possibly bordering on a US attempt at humour.
Although there was no successful invasion, the US conducted a long terrorist campaign against Cuba including the destruction of crops and what we would regard today as Al Qaeda-style bombings. Right now the US is harbouring Possada Carriles who is widely believed to have been behind the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976 that killed 73 people. The US denies involvement in the bombing, but refuses to extradite him to Venezuela citing fears that he might be tortured. Since the US government does not believe that waterboarding is torture, I can only assume they fear he may be subjected to something worse than waterboarding.
The US government will always claim that hostility towards Cuba is for one reason or another but the truth is that it wants control of Cuba and always has. Being a democracy is no guarantee that the US will leave you alone as the case of Venezuela amply demonstrates. The US teaches some unfortunate lessons. It teaches that if you have an open democracy, and you are not a government liked by the US (e.g. a socialist one), the US will use that openness against you, even going as far as coup attempts as was the case in Venezuela, Guatemala etc. If some future leader of Cuba does want to make a transition to democracy, he will no doubt have second thoughts after looking at US subversion in Venezuela and elsewhere.
The original embargo was based on the privatization of primarily American business interests. The Cuban Government effectively stole billions from American investors. Obviously the affiliation with the Soviets did not help. So since the Soviet Union has dissolved, why does it prevail? The simple reason, that there are many anti-Castro ex-Cubans residing in Florida, and Florida as we all know is a swing state. It would be political suicide for anyone in power to suggest removing the embargo and pissing of a(significant enough) chunk of the Sunshine State. The idea being, to leave well enough alone. And then there is obviously political rhetoric involved, not wanting to appear soft on Communism/Socialism. There just isn't enough incentive there for the right or left, to stir the pot.
Well, explain all that to the hundreds of Cubans who annually try to float on inner tubes to Key West. If they fail, they die. If they are caught by this humanitarian's police or military, they go to jail.
In spite of all our debates about whether or not Castro is good/bad/indifferent, I look to the fact that people are willing to die or go to prison as a reliable indicator of the quality of life there.
I might agree that he is not as bad as Kim Jong-il, but that is hardly a compliment, is it?
And why the qualifier quotes on "communism", anyway? Castro is perfectly comfortable saying he is a communist, why can't you admit he is?
Like, say, killing the people that try to escape it?
Mass political murder was good enough for Pinochet, the PRI and Noriega -- and they were all good enough for us...and only one of those three was even vaguely socialist.
No, the fact that Canada decided to ignore the US's diplomatic pressure means we aren't a subsidiary of the US, and thank God for that.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Nice that you brought that up. So is not the killing part that disturbs you, is the "reason" part. So, if the "excuse" is just right, then is ok.
Back at 'ya. What's so disturbing about all the various atrocities that have been committed by dozens of countries that are apparently a-okay, even while at the height of executing said atrocities, yet when performed on a far lesser scale (and often factually questionable to any degree) make Cuba supremely evil and worthy of banning American citizens effectively from so much as setting foot there? You could travel to and spend money in the Soviet Union during the cold war, we had full diplomatic relations the entire time, and they were "the Evil Empire" supposedly hell-bent on the complete annihilation of our entire way of life under hair-trigger threat of nuclear hellfire sufficient to wipe out every city with a population exceeding fifty, yet some old coot with a cigar and a fleet of '56 Chevys is worthy of total blockade? Hell, the worst he's done is let the Russians plant three nukes on his island. For godssakes, FRANCE has more firepower pointed at us than every commie in the Western Hemisphere combined.
Come on...
Visiting Cuba?
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
As the recent independence of Kosovo (a few years following the 1999 US-led bombing campaign) shows, the U.S. is still the world's policeman.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Well, agreeing to host Soviet missiles around 1960 would qualify as a seriously shitball stunt.
But did it really matter? By 1958, the Soviets had ballistic missile submarines that could launch against the U.S. with just as short warning as anything coming from Cuba.
Another important difference is that it is much easier to get from Mexico to the USA than it is from Cuba to the USA. Every Cuban I've ever talked to about Castro and the communist government of Cuba is filled with hatred. These people are not happy with anything about their country's government. Mexicans don't have such hatred in their speech about their president. They admit the Mexican government is corrupt, but they don't talk like Cubans do about government. I figure if it were just economic 'pull' from the US that brought Cubans here then we wouldn't have this huge disparity.
(Let me acknowledge here that my poll is far from scientific. In fact since every Cuban I've spoken to has been living in the USA voluntarily, I'd guess we wouldn't find too many that want to be in Cuba)
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.