Fidel!

Well, guess who flew in to Vancouver yesterday?

Mr. Fidel Castro. His plane needed to be re-fueled. He was very kind and allowed reporters 20 mins of question and answer time.

What amazed me (but shouldn't have) was the respect he was treated with.

It makes Canada a greater place, when other political ideologies are treated with respect.

We should be proud that we can treat someone so vastly different then us with this level of respect.

Makes my heart glad to be Canadian

Its the same as everything else we talk about here. Just because the US hates Cuba, it doesn't meen we have to. What has Fidel ever done to us?

What has Fidel ever done?

May be a better question.

I'm trying to find out more about him. But it's been difficult to find unbiased information. If I read an american site about him, it emphasizes how marxist communism is bad. Doesn't mention the good things he'd done for his country. It maybe a long project to find out the facts not embezelled (sp?) with emotion.

If anybody here has any good links, please post them. I'd be eternally greatfull. (
not that it's worth much)

The problem with Cuba and Castro can be summed up by two words : Communism and socialism . To Americans , those words sound too similar to " community " and " social " . It goes against everything we cherish about American values , such as our God given right to become infinitely richer than our neighbor , and the pursuit of happiness at any cost . Plus , ol' Fidel has resisted and outlasted nearly a dozen different U.S. administrations attempts to bring him down . It's Same reason why America is so hard on Vietnam - because they also refused to allow us to " free " them . Damn commie bastards , they don't know what they're missing !

Yeah I just heard about that today. I was actually excided to hear it, but should I have been???

What has Fidel done?

Cuba was a small, poor nation that was being run by organised crime and used as a casino/whore house by the wealthy in the US. Cuba was ruled by a military dictator named Batista at that time. Things were very bad.

Fidel overthrew Batista, provided health care and education to the Cuban people and, although those people are still poor and there are still many human rights abuses, made things much better than they were.

While Fidel was doing all of that he managed to ally Cuba with the USSR without turning it into another East Germany or Poland. According to records coming out of the former USSR he didn't even want Soviet missiles in Cuba, but had to in order to get aid.

He has also kept Cuba from suffering the seemingling endless wars and counter-insurgencies seen in other Central and South American countries. Even though there are human rights abuses in Cuba, they pale in comparison to those seen in places like Chile and Aregentina under US-backed regimes.

He has done all of this without access to the biggest and most powerful economy on earth, which also happens to be incredibly close to Cuba. He has done it in spite of repeated attempts on his life. He has done it without much money and with extremely limited resources.

Would Cuba be better off under a democracy? Probably. Would a democracy have survived in Cuba better than it has in other countries in the region? Probably not.

Thank you Rev. Blair! The mention of human rights violations in other countries are common. The US also has those, they just don't like to publish that fact.

I'm gathering more and more respect for Mr. Castro with each read.

A good write up there REV B..

I hear alot on the news with people reffering to Fidel as a BAD person.

Naw, he's just like the rest of us, but with a much cooler beard.

As an advocate of democracy I'm pretty torn about Fidel....he's done a ton for his people but he's also quashed dissent and freedom. He saved his country from dictatorship by being a dictator. He speaks of peace but seems way too comfortable in fatigues.

Most of all though, he hasn't brought about democracy. That was probably okay when he was younger, but now that Cuba depends on him what happens when he dies? There aren't that many Trotskyites left, semi-benevolent dictators are getting pretty rare, Che has been dead for a long while, Woody Guthrie's dead, Ed Broadbent works for the man, Steve Earle's busy making a new album, Jaggi Singh is...well....Jaggi. There just aren't a lot of guys of Fidel's calibre kicking around anymore.

My biggest fear is that when Fidel dies, Cuba will go back to being a whorehouse for America's elite. Then they'll point at his grave and say, "See, we were right all along."

Oh shit. I bet the US has a field day when Fidel kicks the bucket. It'll be open season there.

That seems to be what's going to happen. It is possible that somebody will step up to the plate to lead Cuba...surprisingly little seems to be known about its internal political workings...but it doesn't seem probable.