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Cuban Video Game Recreates Revolutionary History
Hugh Pickens writes writes "The Guardian reports that Cuban programmers have unveiled a new 3D video game that puts a revolutionary twist on gaming, letting players recreate decisive clashes from the 1959 uprising in which many of their grandparents fought. 'The player identifies with the history of Cuba,' says Haylin Corujo, head of video game studies for Cuba's Youth Computing Club and leader of the team of developers who created Gesta Final – roughly translated as 'Final Heroic Deed'. 'You can be a participant in the battles that were fought in the war from '56 to '59.' The game begins with the user joining the 82 rebels who in 1956 sailed to Cuba from Mexico aboard the Granma. Players then fight their way through swamps shoulder-to-shoulder with bearded guerrillas clad in the olive green of Fidel Castro and Ernesto 'Che' Guevara to topple 1950s Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. The game lets you pick from three player profiles, one in an olive hat similar to the one Fidel Castro was known for, another wearing a Guevara-style beret and the last with the kind of helmet worn by the ill-fated Camilo Cienfuegos in many revolution-era photographs. Rene Vargas, a 29-year-old gamer who tried his hand at 'Gesta Final' when it was presented at a technology fair in Havana last week, says the graphics were surprisingly sophisticated. 'Bearing in mind the level of technical support there is in Cuba, it looks pretty good,' says Vargas. There are about 783,000 computers in this country of some 11 million inhabitants, according to government statistics from 2011. Private ownership of computers is low, but many Cubans access them at work, school or cyber cafes. 'We developed (it) keeping in mind the purchasing power and reality of Cubans,' says Corujo. 'It doesn't require incredible technological features.'"
Yeah Castro and his boy Che Che are real fucking heros. Che ran Castro's death camps and got off murdering people. HEROS!!
You're comparing the Cuban Revolution to the rise of Nazi Germany? Congratulations on almost completing your American primary public education little guy.
When you have a combat boot crushing your throat, it doesn't matter if its a Left boot or a Right boot.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
Uhh... Bullshit? It always amazes me that so many people are willing to credulousness accept "statistics" like that from total propaganda. You probably also believed that the Soviet Union was a massive economic powerhouse for it's people in the 80s, right?
Hint: People don't take leaky boats and swim across oceans to get elsewhere because where they live is just too wonderful for them to handle. Try talking to someone who's actually lived in Cuba and then escaped.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
was Call of Duty banned there? I thought I recalled hearing about a mission where you assassinated Fidel Castro which I thought was rather ballsy considering Castro was alive at the time and not at war with the country. That'd be like the NAACP making a game where you assassinate former President Bush.
Just another second banana
So... you doubt the propaganda of other countries but you believe the one fed to you by your leaders.
Hint: My working colleagues did not leave the US because it was so great to live there...
People don't do the same thing to escape the wonderful capitalistic democracies of Mexico and various Central American states?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Every single cuban citizen who has to escape in a raft suffering 90 miles of sunburn while traveling a few miles per hour hoping you make it across the Gulf stream quickly so it doesn't carry you far enough into the Atlantic that no one ever finds you. The fact that people live there make the choice to ride a raft with THEIR KIDS in what is essentially their own personal death march should be enough to answer your question.
I use common sense and the actions of the people there to draw my conclusion. You're still trying to argue which political side is right.
10% of the countries population (roughly) has been so distraught that they elected a trip thats got less than a 1% chance of survival over staying and dealing with it.
We punish our soldiers when we find them committing crimes you speak of. Its well known fact (from those who escape the country) that the Cuban army on the other hand do commit those crimes ... and you yourself give an example of them doing so.
America has its own set of issues, but its hard to believe America and Cuba are even on the same planet, putting them in the same class just makes it clear that you have no concept of what you're talking about.
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You realize when you say something stupid like 'Meruca' you instantly lose everyone in your listener group except the other idiots such as yourself with an axe to grind?
You lose any credence you had instantly and make it clear that you're not out about the truth or facts, you're out to promote your agenda.
If you actually wanted to spread truth, you wouldn't try to drag your own personal agenda into it. You end up letting everyone around you know that your 'facts' aren't trustable.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
"A revolution in which 58 men inspired a country of 6.5 million to throw out a dictatorial, postcolonial government?"
... and replaced it with another dictatorial, post-colonial government.
Am I supposed to be impressed?
It's quite shocking to see how much worse the opinion Nazis get is worse than those of Soviets. The latter put a great deal of effort into propaganda, and had a chance to continue it for half a century after the former got defeated.
Nazis were evil, sure, but if you look around, most wars in the history of mankind revolved around "our tribe is good, their is bad, they don't deserve to exist, their belongings/land are rightful loot that should be ours". Try reading the Bible, you have an outright order from the tribe's god to genocide every living being, including even livestock, from a list of neighbours a prophet didn't like. Even in 21th century we have Tutsi vs Hutu, and so on. I'd say there is only one reason to consider Nazis more evil than the rest: Germany was one of the most civilised countries at the time, so such barbarous actions are more shocking than when done by Tutsi or some such. Doing something "for the good of your people" has at least a good intent, even if it's severely misguided. Hitler wanted to give Germans power, to let them expand to lands occupied by "lesser races", protect them from "evil plotting Jews", purge the race from the weak, get rid of "traitors" to the nation, etc.
On the other hand, Soviets had no good intentions whatsoever. Even before the revolution, "good of the working class" was an empty slogan. The actual source of their name "soviets", ie, workman councils, were immediately disbanded, and "dictatorship of the proletariat" was from the start a dictatorship of the Party. Unlike "Animal Farm", it was not a popular movement gone bad, it was planned to be bad.
In Nazi Germany, if you were an ethnic German, physically and mentally hale, and not a dissident, you were ok as long as you obeyed orders. On the other hand, in the Soviet Union, the very working class that was supposed to be the main benefactors of the revolution were also those hit the hardest. You don't go on mass murders of people you intent to fight for.
So even though there are no doubts Nazis were evil, Soviets and their offshots (Mao, Pol Pot, Kim) were a whole new class of evil that makes Hitler a mere naughty kindergarten kid in comparison.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Castro's revolution had its flaws but he never openly tortured or killed his fellow citizens
No, he left that to Che Guevera.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I'm a physician in a New York City Emergency Room. There are plenty of Cubans here, and either Jodido is correct about the wonderful conditions in Cuba or these people are completely making up everything they tell me. Personally, I'll go with the stories of poor immigrants who have no reason to lie to a white Jewish doctor who has nothing to do with Cuba over the rantings of some random internet troll.