Castro

Sunseeker. We visited Cuba about 16 years ago. How true, they only show you the 'nice' parts. If you happen to escape your 'minders' and go to a local bar to talk to the real people and want to talk about politics, they were terrified. They warned us not to ask too many questions.

The good of Castro years - education, health care , no one went hungry, what praise

The bad - firing squads , interment camps for homosexuals , these are just faults

Democracy IS the best form of government as it is within the power of us, the voters to get successive governments out of power every few years.

It goes without saying, that the more vocal left wingers on the forum would laud Castro and all his works and one post (*trisher's*) actually made me laugh ' that his regime was not without faults' haha. What an understatement! As others say, some who go on to become dictators start off full of good ideas (Mugabe) but soon become cruel and selfish tyrants, which Castro did become.There are massive celebrations going on from those who escaped to the US and found freedom.Any visitors ( a bit like the old USSR) were only shown the good bits of a country.Castro had so many people tortured and killed during his long regime, that to say he did some good is a bit like the aplogists for Stalin and also Mussolini saying that hospitals were cleaner and the trains ran on time.The man became a total bastard.

vq * just because I praise something that a politician did does not mean I fail to recognise their mistakes.

Even the much villified Tony Blair stopped smoking in public venues.

I don't see things in shades of black or white or even red or blue,, I can see the shades in between.

You could say the same of some areas of the USA. Visitors tend not to go to the places where there is real poverty. The difference is that there is very little money in Cuba anyway unlike in the USA where some are worth millions.

Some things work better under a democratic syatem, some work worse.
Some things work better under a capitalist system, some work worse.
Some things work better under a communist system. Some work worse.

There is no such thing as a perfect system of government. Each can be praised for something, but praising some things that Castro achieved is not the same as "supporting communist rule" over other forms of rule. As Winston Churchill said "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."

Jalima....this would be the same Margaret Thatcher who supported Lech Wałęsa and Solidarność whilst at the same time setting police and troops (in police uniforms) on striking British workers and legislating against British trade unions. But, hey, let's not vilify her.

This wasn't anything about freeing the Polish people from the yoke of oppression but everything about reducing the power of the Soviet Union by weakening it's hold over it's satellite states.

I don't pretend to be an authority on Cuba or it's politics, but someone I know who visited the country said that visitors are shown "shop window" facilities, (hospitals, clinics, schools). He managed to visit some poor areas where conditions were some of the worst he has ever seen in all his travels around the world.

Accepting that some things have worked well in some regimes is not necessarily supporting the regime. Hilary Clinton when she was First Lady went to Estonia to look at their maternity care because they have one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world. It was a legacy of communist rule, but I don't think Hilary supports communism.

Surprising how many support communist rule here

No one in Cuba dies from hunger or lack of medical treatment, unlike in the USA. Everyone has a roof over their heads and access to free education including university, and free healthcare. When there is a food shortage it gets rationed not just only made available to people with the most money.

I'd be interested to know where that photo came from - is it someone on a 'dirty protest'? It is not on the BBC website.

The Cubans in Miami are bound to celebrate as they will be brought up by parents who left because they supported the old regime in the 1950s where rich americans went to Cuba for the brothels and the bars.

If I was a poor person I'd rather be in Cuba under Castro than anywhere in the USA. Unless I was a gay person - which I accept is a whole different history of bad treatment.

Did Pol Pot's form of communism work in Cambodia?
Or does communism only work well after the regime has imprisoned, killed or starved to death any dissenters?
Likewise an extreme fascist regime?

As I said, democracy is not perfect but it is better than the alternatives.

That was to Morgana, trying to explain how difficult it was to establish relations with the Soviet Union.
And, of course, the Americans were terrified of communism spreading in the Far East, hence the Vietnam war which arose as a rebellion against French imperialism accompanied by American meddling and hence a dreadful war.
Thank goodness the UK did not get drawn into that one.

just adopting your attitude to the wrongs in the world trisher

I remember my DB visited Germany regularly and friends took him to the border to show him the how militarised it was between East and West.
And how come people (including thousands of guards) tried to escape from East to West and not many defected the other way?
That is puzzling if communism is so great.

Of course, After glasnost and perestroika brought about by Gorbachev, (the much villified)Margaret Thatcher and Reagan worked together to bring a thaw to relations
Conveniently forgotten by many of course.
And we have gone backwards again since then.

Isn't that 'dismissing brutality with a wave of the hand'? Or don't you think Guantanamo Bay is brutal?

Oh trisher, Blair left government in 2007, do try moving on

Oh Anniebach try moving on, it's a discussion about the development of gay rights which I have linked to education and pointed that our record considering we are an educated population hasn't been that good. Nothing to do with turning back the clock, much as you might like to do so.
I would never dismiss brutality with a wave of the hand, either in Cuba or in the US where prisoners are still held in Guantanamo Bay, in many cases after being illegally subjected to 'rendition'(which sometimes involved Blair and the UK government).

True recognising achievements is important but dismissing brutality with a wave of the hand is worrying , to me

Trisher, I am curious , how is 1860 relevant when 1983 is dismissed as living in the past ?

As far as the treatment of gay people I think it is possibly something to do with development and education. We were still locking them up and 'treating' them in the 1960s, we had had compulsory education since 1860. In the 1950s Cuba was still an illiterate, peasant economy with a strong Catholic faith. It is less than 60 years since they reformed, perhaps gay rights take longer. This isn't excusing anything just looking at the historic realities.
On the health issues, a friend who works in the NHS has visited hospitals in Cuba, he was impressed and amazed at how they managed to treat patients in spite of all the problems. The US blocked everything. 80% of the drugs in Cuba are manufactured there and he saw kidney dialysis machines, hand built in Cuba because they were unable to import them.
Anniebach recognising someone's achievements is not excusing their faults and errors. Please don't confuse the two

I suspect that the USA continued to meddle in Cuba's affairs. As others have said they did their very best to impose trade embargoes and meddle in Latin American countries - but then are we any better? I find it hard to understand why looking back the UK and USA were so scared of communism. Wouldn't things have been better if they could have seen the bigger picture and worked with Communist countries (not suggesting we all become Communist)? (do I need to hide behind the parapet now?)

I don't think that embargoes work - they just create more tension and fear and it is the ordinary people who suffer, not government officials.
We were enduring the Cold War during that period.

The British have been visiting Cuba for many years.

The EU imposed a trade embargo on Cuba in 2003 in protest at Cuba's treatment of dissidents and lifted it in 2008 after Raul took over from Fidel.

Perhaps things would have been different if the USA had continued to trade with Cuba and buy it's sugar rather than imposing an embargo and encouraging the rest of the world to do the same. Cuba had to trade with someone and the only country left was Russia.