24 Responses to “In other news, Fidel Castro is still NOT dead.”
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Bush should get him for Attorney General. I heard he’s good at ‘prosecuting’ internal enemies. They’d love him.
He just smells funny.
He’s had an artificial anus installed, I understand.
I have no idea how it works — whether by pneumatics, or batteries, or good old hand-powered cranking; though I doubt solar is in play here — but jeez, this is a good argument for dictators to go down in a blaze of glory, innit?
I mean, here’s one of the most reviled men in history*, and rather than being blown up in a failed coup, or poisoned by seditious infiltrators, or even just shot while sleeping in his bed, he’s sliding into obscurity with a rubber asshole.
Sort of puts a lot of things in perspective, and gives us a hint of how Karl Rove might check out eventually.
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* By a lot of south Florida, anyway, which for some reason seems to matter way too much to the rest of the country.
I mean, here’s one of the most reviled men in history*, and rather than being blown up in a failed coup, or poisoned by seditious infiltrators, or even just shot while sleeping in his bed, he’s sliding into obscurity with a rubber asshole.
Considering that Pol Pot got to die in his bed while under house arrest, I’m not surprised at all. Rove will probably go out at the age of 95 surrounded by weeping right-wingers touting his “vision” and “dedication.”
Ah yes. A bit like Reagan.
I have no idea how it works — whether by pneumatics, or batteries, or good old hand-powered cranking; though I doubt solar is in play here — but jeez, this is a good argument for dictators to go down in a blaze of glory, innit?
But is it an argument for or against socialized health care?
Is that cat supposed to be giving us the finger?
Yes, Neil. The cat is flipping us all the bird.
I have a sonogram of our younger daughter clearly doing the same thing- plan on using it as extortion when she starts dating. (as in “Be home by 10 or I will show off “The Picture!”)
Castro’s death will not change Cuba- succession will go to his younger brother, who already is keeping up the status quo. Cubans need to revolt to get rid of this- or BushCo can always invade!! Look what a lovely job they did with Iraq…
in re: to the lolcat, i think i missed a big cultural reference.
i’ll use my usual excuse for whenever i don’t get something — MY PARENTS ARE FOREIGN — and wait for someone to explain it to me…
dude, louise, that is fucking amazing. unfortunately, if your daughter ends up being anything like me, she’ll probably show all of her friends and significant others that photo and go ‘SEE! I WAS AMAZING EVEN IN THE WOMB‘ and will thus be ineffective as a blackmail photo.
XD
So, first 4 commentors–y’all pretty much hate Castro then?
I know I wouldn’t compare anyone to Rove, or Gonzo (the lesser–the Great Gonzo is totally cool of course), or Pol Pot, unless I hated them.
I don’t. The Cuban revolution has its drawbacks; the way they treat queer folks for instance is a scandal. Castro was a macho, posturing dude. While he didn’t bear responsibility for starting the Cuban missile crisis (that was Krushchev’s brilliant scheme, though he had his reasons that weren’t all that sinister), Castro and other Cubans were inclined to make it worse once JFK learned about the missiles and started reacting. In fact, the Cubans scared the pants off the Soviet leadership by being gung-ho about a nuclear war starting right there and then, and the Russians made sure to withdraw every nuke–not just the ones Uncle Sam knew about, but a batch of “tactical” ones we only learned of from later Soviet disclosures at conferences about the crisis, which had been given outright to the Cubans.
I’m sure we could enumerate other indictments against the Cuban Revolution.
Nevertheless, I think it was clearly, on the whole, a good thing for the Cubans and also a good thing someone in the Western Hemisphere has been able to stand up to El Norte as long and as well as the Cubans have. It’s a good thing that they have followed through on their committment to socialism by developing medical practices that save lives on the cheap, and offer both drugs and medics to help people out around the world–including here, after Katrina (and of course Teh Shrub said “no” to that offer.)
When Fidel finally snuffs it, I suppose there will be all kinds of pressure to overthrow the regime, and perhaps it will fall apart on its own. That will almost certainly bode nothing but ill for the Cubans.
Go ahead and prove me wrong on this. But I for one am hoping that the society Castro and company have worked to create survives him. And all said and done, I think he’s well above the average standard of political leaders, for whatever that’s worth.
Since wingers have spent the last 45 years trying to subvert Fidel, I hope he outlives Bush (father and son.) Forty-five years of cutting off noses to spite our faces. We could have had normal relations with Cuba, for decades (and, probably a post-communist government) absent the Cuban-mafia, in Miami, and the wing-nuts, in Washington.
Heck, Castro (and some 15 years earlier, Ho Chi Minh) attempted to get normal relations with the USA the moment he took power. It was Eisenhower who decided to treat his movement as a rouge rebellion, and only after that did Castro turn to the USSR for support. Castro was always a socialist, but he wasn’t a Communist. The Cuban Communist party was ineffective and irrelevant, in the way every such party (in nations that the Red Army hadn’t actually occupied during WWII) that toed the Soviet line was. They didn’t support Castro until after he took power. And much later, the Communist leader in the coalition was purged by Castro. By then Castro himself had become for all practical purposes a Marxist-Leninist leader, but I think he never formally joined any Communist party.
As for Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh was a bona fide Communist all right, but like Mao Zedong, not one who was favored by Stalin. Like Mao, Minh led mainly because his rivals who followed the directions of the Stalin-controlled Communist International had been devastatingly defeated, so he was the one left standing when the Japanese invaded. Like Mao, he led an effective resistance movement that built up solid support for the Communists as a nationalist regime, and like Mao he went on succeeding in the face of adversity despite Soviet bad advice and without any effective Soviet help until after the Vietnamese, like the Chinese, consolidated power on their own.
And it is my understanding that (perhaps, again, like Mao) he tried to get US support on the grounds of our stated anti-colonial policies during WWII, as well as on the basis of his movements contributions to the war against the Axis. And FDR ignored these overtures, and in the case of Vietnam Truman gave blessing and support instead to the French re-conquest of “their” colonies. You know, the ones the Vichy state hung on to while allied with Hitler, the ones that state was ordered to give to the Japanese, with French colonists in Indochina under orders to cooperate with their new Fascist masters.
The point here being, none of these Communist “enemy states” set out to be the enemy of the USA; none of them were mere pawns in an international chess game played by Stalin and his successors, who never fostered any successful revolutions anywhere, only stepped in to prop up ones accomplished domestically–this was even true in Afganistan, though unlike China, Vietnam, or Cuba, the homegrown Afghan leftist government would surely not have survived without the Red Army. In every case it was our option, and our leaders in each case held out for complete subservience of Third World nations to the Western corporate regime.
There’s no telling what any of these nationalist Communist movements would have done if we had responded to their overtures. Perhaps they’d have taken aid and then “run” with it, perhaps they would have liberalized, perhaps been overthrown by more explicitly reactionary movements after compromising themselves. We’ll never know, because Western leaders, at any rate American ones, much preferred a Cold War they could make hot at their discretion in the colonial zones.
*cheers Mark*
That’s probably the best summary of historians and political scientists reanalyzing the Cold War I’ve read in a few years.
Those chumps Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong, and Fidel Castro made the same mistake a lot of people have made over the years about America: That we really believe all that “freedom”, “democracy”, and “individual rights” crap.
We don’t believe in it here in the US - why the hell should we support those things in backward third-world countries? Especially if there’s money involved?…
* By a lot of south Florida, anyway, which for some reason seems to matter way too much to the rest of the country.
“For some reason”?
Did you miss the 2000 election?
What you call a scandal I call crimes against humanity. Go read a book, pinko!
pinko
@@
between a baby totalitarian dictatorship and having your country run by Dole Pineapple and the mob …well, i’m wondering if maybe there’s a third option.
Let us know if ya find it…might be worth importing into the US.
How about no dictatorship and no banana republic?
I mean, sure, the fascists had some drawbacks, but at least the trains were on time. WTF?!?! No. Seriously, no. How the hell can you attack the authoritarian neo-cons and at the same time give a free pass to Castro? Hi Larry Craig! Rationalizing communist crimes just because they’re against anti-American imperialism? Communists love American imperialism the same way neo-cons love terrorists. Keeps the permanant revolution going. Makes it easier to oppress the people.
How about opposing ALL authoritarians instead of making up excuses?
Would I support a US invasion of Cuba? No.
Will I cheer when that psychotic sick fuck Castro kicks the bucket. Hell yeah, and so should all.
Blah, I completly missread Roxanne’s last comment. :-p Sorry
I basicaly repeated what you wrote. Ah well, I’m still right. X-)
It must be too hot out here to comment on blogs, I’ll go feed ice cream to the rats now.
I think the point Mark was making upthread was that Castro’s regime was by no means an assured dictatorship from the get-go. Castro veered hard left after the US took a hostile posture with the revolutionaries, and there is every reason to believe there was some causation there. America’s support for United Fruit and co. had to seem like the ultimate slap in the face to Castro.
I don’t think Castro deserves a “free pass”, but I don’t think it is fair to lump him in with the fascists, either. The revolution may have run off the rails, but America gave it a mighty big push.
Want a world with no dictators and no banana republics? America walking the walk of democracy and freedom instead of just talking the talk would be a step in the right direction.
Well Mark, Castro is not so bad? Try writing something insulting about Castro in Cuba like we write about Bush in this here USA. If you get out of jail, let us know what a cool and upstanding guy Castro is. Dictator is a dictator.