(November 26, 2016 at 5:19 pm)Pandæmonium Wrote:(November 26, 2016 at 1:35 pm)Aegon Wrote: That's your defense? People close to him liked him? People close to him were loyal to him? Yeah, surely you couldn't say that about any other brutal dictator figure in history...
Do you know how many innocent deaths are attributed to the Castro regime? Or what sort of human rights atrocities went on in Castro's UMAP labor camps? Or how stifled the Cuban population's rights were? Even if you attempt to excuse those things, he was still an awful leader. Cuba's communist economy simply did not function. It was awful and the only way it kept itself afloat was because the USSR was funneling millions into the regime. When the Soviets fell, a significant portion of the population was starved or malnourished.
Am I supposed to ignore all that and respect him because he stuck it to the U.S.?
QFT - those that respect Castro are deluded in equal measures if anything else:
Just to remove any misguided admiration people have for Cuba's dearly departed:
"'According to Castro’s own estimates, at one point there were as many as 15,000 political prisoners in Cuba. One of the darkest periods of the repression occurred in 1963 when Castro approved “Operation P,” named because of a black “P” (for pimps, prostitutes, pederasts) emblazoned on the uniforms of those arrested. The operation saw Castro’s newly formed secret police sweep through Havana targeting homosexuals, religious believers, and “deviants”—often no more than men with long hair and blue jeans. Those rounded up were placed in UMAPs (Military Units to Help Production), a euphemism for concentration camps, and forced to do hard labor. According to the poet Armando Valladares, imprisoned by Castro in 1960, “there have been few examples of repression of homosexuals in history as virulent as in Cuba.”'
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/20...at-90.html
Lets be careful when talking about CASTRO and religion, while he DID go after the religious he DID NOT go after his religious supporters, BIG DIFF. But, like Castro and Putin they don't like gays either just like Pence doesn't. Castro, like Stalin had a religious education, so they both learned from biblical authoritarianism, even if one wants to claim they were atheists.
