Fidel Castro dies

[TrueMetis]

20 minutes ago, House Balstroko said:

I don't understand in the slightest how some people can praise Castro while sitting comfortably in western countries, using technology that only exists as a result of capitalism.

Such as?

[House Balstroko]

2 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

Such as?

Most of the things you use. The internet, computers, smartphones, (information technology in general).

Then we have the industry which developed following the industrial revolution (cars, trains, aircraft...)

 

 

[all swedes are racist]

I thought most of those things were developed out of military research and, like, space programs and shit?

[House Balstroko]

44 minutes ago, R'hllor's nasty lobster said:

I thought most of those things were developed out of military research and, like, space programs and shit?

Some of the things like computers, the internet and GPS were, which largely came from the West. 

[all swedes are racist]

So... more a fortuitous confluence of cause, then?

[The Marquis de Leech]

20 minutes ago, House Balstroko said:

Some of the things like computers, the internet and GPS were, which largely came from the West. 

So what? The internet is no more the creation of capitalism than the printing press was the creation of feudalism.

(Does this mean that space satellites are Communist?).

[House Balstroko]

3 minutes ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

So what? The internet is no more the creation of capitalism than the printing press was the creation of feudalism.

(Does this mean that space satellites are Communist?).

No, but the products you use in your daily life are definitely the result of capitalism (as flawed as it may be). 

There is something inherently wrong when people use computers, the internet, social media (all western products), to praise a communist leader who lambasts the countries who produce those very things. Some people like the idea of a romantic Cuba, devoid of modern technology, but that's because they know they can go back to their comfy chairs at the end of the day. It is entirely dishonest to portray Castro as a model leader when you're not willing to live under the conditions many Cubans go through.

 

 

 

 

[all swedes are racist]

Lol. All other nonsense aside, are you trying to claim my phone was produced in America?

[The Marquis de Leech]

1 hour ago, House Balstroko said:

No, but the products you use in your daily life are definitely the result of capitalism (as flawed as it may be). 

Economic system derives from technology, not vice versa. Again, by your reasoning space satellites are Communist (as is Tetris).

[Datepalm]

There are neither phones nor comfy chairs in Cuba. Communists can produce only hard benches. They don't have the technology.

[House Balstroko]

54 minutes ago, R'hllor's nasty lobster said:

Lol. All other nonsense aside, are you trying to claim my phone was produced in America?

No, there are plenty of countries that make phones, and by make I do not mean manufacture.

7 minutes ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

Economic system derives from technology, not vice versa. Again, by your reasoning space satellites are Communist (as is Tetris).

Except there are multiple countries making satellites. Cuba still relies on vintage technology from the Cold War era. I'm not saying that capitalism is directly responsible for technology, but do you really think it's by coincidence that the most advanced countries follow a capitalistic model (to varying degrees).

My original point was that it is bizarre that some people look to Castro's Cuba as a model country, when it has accomplished so little. They think that Castro was some benevolent individual who had people's interests at heart. If that's the case why did he rule for 50 years and not allow anyone else to run for office?

Would you trade your life in New Zealand for one in Cuba?

[The Marquis de Leech]

*Head desk*

The economic and legal underpinnings that underlie capitalism are the creation of technology. Modern capitalism could not function without it. You're confusing the direction of the causal relationship.

My comment on the space satellites was, of course, tongue in cheek: saying that the internet is a capitalist technology because it first appeared under capitalism* is like saying that the printing press is a feudalist technology (can we write books criticising aristocrats?) because it first appeared under feudalism, or that the space satellite is a communist technology because it first appeared under communism.

*Actually, it didn't. The internet was developed from the 1950s, during the era of the Mixed Economy, where capitalism was a term associated with the Depression.  

As for the last point, I'd sooner be sick and/or homeless in Cuba than in the United States.

[The Marquis de Leech]

Speaking of technology and politics, Salvador Allende (one of Castro's friends) tried experimenting with economic planning via mainframe computer in the early 1970s. The experiment came to a (literal) screaming halt under Pinochet. It remains a curious little what-if. 

[Erik of Hazelfield]

I find the praise from Trudeau et al rather uncontroversial. 

Castro was definitely an oppressive dictator. He was also a father figure and a national hero for most Cubans. Acknowledging the latter and offering your condolences does not mean you deny the former. If you hold any kind of diplomatic position, it's probably a pretty good idea not to insult such a person at the time of his death, especially considering he was the brother of the sitting president.

[Jo498]

Isn't this more like a mixture between "nothing too bad about the recently departed" (will the obituaries focus on the 100000s killed in Iraq and Afghanistan when Bush dies? probably not...) and the admiration that Castro kept going for so long in the backyard of a powerful hostile power?

[Bennis of the Brown Shield]

5 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

*Head desk*

The economic and legal underpinnings that underlie capitalism are the creation of technology. Modern capitalism could not function without it. You're confusing the direction of the causal relationship.

My comment on the space satellites was, of course, tongue in cheek: saying that the internet is a capitalist technology because it first appeared under capitalism* is like saying that the printing press is a feudalist technology (can we write books criticising aristocrats?) because it first appeared under feudalism, or that the space satellite is a communist technology because it first appeared under communism.

*Actually, it didn't. The internet was developed from the 1950s, during the era of the Mixed Economy, where capitalism was a term associated with the Depression.  

As for the last point, I'd sooner be sick and/or homeless in Cuba than in the United States.

I think it is fairly reasonable to claim that the causal relationship goes both ways, given how all communist countries stagnated technologically and economically, only to then (in most cases) experience great growth rates once they transitioned to more market liberal systems.

Particularly if we look at more hardcore communist countries than Cuba, it is probably reasonable to assume that for example exterminating 25% of your country's population (including almost all educated people), or starving a couple of tens of million to death with failed agricultural experiments, will probably not foster that good of an environment for technological development or intellectual advances either. 

[maarsen]

So, how many people here have actually been to Cuba? Health care and education are as good as or better than a lot of places in the US.  You have  much less chance of getting shot by police if black. Political freedom is limited. Cell phones do exist and so does Internet access. If you do go, pretend to be Canadian. As I was told, 'no matter how things change, we will always remember our friends '.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 minutes ago, maarsen said:

So, how many people here have actually been to Cuba? Health care and education are as good as or better than a lot of places in the US.  You have  much less chance of getting shot by police if black. Political freedom is limited. Cell phones do exist and so does Internet access. If you do go, pretend to be Canadian. As I was told, 'no matter how things change, we will always remember our friends '.

Please define with specificity what you mean when you say "political freedom is limited".  How is it limited and what happens to people who breach those limits?

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, maarsen said:

So, how many people here have actually been to Cuba? Health care and education are as good as or better than a lot of places in the US.  You have  much less chance of getting shot by police if black. Political freedom is limited. Cell phones do exist and so does Internet access. If you do go, pretend to be Canadian. As I was told, 'no matter how things change, we will always remember our friends '.

I have been going to Cuba regularly since 1990.  And yes, always legally.

It's the safest place in the world one can be at this point, when it comes to health and opportunities to get caught up in a terrorist event.  What happens now all over the world, as at the Boston Marathon, Sandy Hook school shootings, etc. just do not happen there and can't happen there, for a whole variety of reasons.  Any more than dying neglected in a nursing home, etc. can't happen there.

I would never say the nation is perfect.  But in so many ways, especially for children, it's the best place in the world to live.  It's when one gets older, and faces the facts that on an island, opportunities for so many in terms of career and professional expression, are limited.

It also has the best music.  People are kind, compassionate and generous (and people are also corrupt, etc. too -- though not yet on levels of corruption we see here.

Nor is Cuba a museum or a land that time forgot.  As mentioned above, I've been going there regularly since 1990.  The changes between then and now are enormous.  It's only USian tourists who see an unchanged land, and that's because they don't know what else to look for and don't want to see anything else, because old cars are all they know about Cuba. The cliches never change, but Cuba is anything but a cliche and changes all the time.  Change is not at a halt but continues to accelerate.

The reason internet access is iffy and limited is because the United States commanded that Cuba be left out of the fiber optic grid that is the foundation for global internet communications when it was being put down.  This was part of punishing Cuba for defying the United States.  Perhaps this was the most extreme action of the U.S. decreed embargo -- along with Clinton's elms-Burton.  Which cannot be repealed unless a majority of Congress votes to do so.  Which doesn't seem likely to happen any time soon.

 

 

 

[Zorral]

This won't happen in Cuba, nor this, despite the majority of men and women having done military service, so know how to handle weapons, while, of course loving to party and dance.  Even the elderly love to party and dance, and they too have have done military service and know how to handle weapons.