Class is class - Jimmy Carter remembers Fidel Castro fondly

[malaise]

http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2016/11/26/jimmy-carter-remembers-fidel-castro-fondly/
<snip>
Former President Jimmy Carter had kind words for Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, who died Friday, saying in a statement he and his wife “remember fondly our visits with him in Cuba and his love of his country.”

Castro, who was 90, was long a scourge of the U.S. who brought the Cold War to America’s doorstep. But he and Carter, a Georgia native, had warmer relations.

Carter took a step to normalize relations between the two nations during his presidency, and the two shared several visits, including a 2011 journey where Castro called Carter a “friend.”

----------------------
I loved Fidel and love Jimmy Carter

[malaise]

1. Castro's legacy and the envy of many nations: social care in Cuba

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/27/castros-legacy-and-the-envy-of-many-nations-social-care-in-cuba
<snip>
To his critics, the late Fidel Castro was a totalitarian despot, an opponent of free speech and a man determined to preserve his hard-won revolution whatever the cost.

But to his defenders and admirers, he was a leader whose enlightened and practical approach to social care provided Cuba with enviable health and education systems.

Figures from the UN children’s agency, Unicef, show that Cuba’s youth literacy rate stands at 100%, as does its adult literacy rate. In Mexico, youth literacy is around 98.5%, while adult literacy is at 93.5%. In the Dominican Republic, meanwhile, youth literacy is at 98.1% for females aged 15-24, 96.1% for males of the same age, and adult literacy is at 90%.

Many of the educational gains were made in the early years of the revolution, not least during the 1961 literacy campaign that saw hundreds of thousands of Cubans, including schoolchildren, mobilising to educate their compatriots.

[heaven05]

2. I agree

[malaise]

3. Bump

Don't you love the silence here

[oberliner]

4. Dictators can accomplish a lot

When you can just shut down the opposition and send any dissenters to prison.

[tenderfoot]

5. We do that here too but because no one goes to prison, that makes it okay.

eom

[oberliner]

8. People marched up and down 5th Avenue protesting Donald Trump

That's the difference.

[LittleBlue]

15. Bingo. How is this any different than the idolization of Trump or Putin?

Okay, he made a good health care system from a very educated pool of people on the island. And it cost everyone in Cuba their democratic rights and human rights.

Many countries have good health care systems without giving up their rights. Castro was a tyrant, as the 1.5 million who fled the country can attest.

I just lost all respect for Carter.

[Judi Lynn]

18. Some kinds never liked Jimmy Carter in the first place. They can't lose what they didn't have. n/t

[cwydro]

23. I have enormous respect for Carter.

He's a decent and honorable man who contributes more to this world in a week than most will do in a lifetime.

[ericson00]

6. I'm ashamed of Jimmy Carter being registered to the party I'm registered to.

no one who is labeled a Democrat should be supporting the most undemocratic and tyrannical regime in this hemisphere.

[malaise]

9. The most undemocratic and tyrannical regimes in our hemisphere were put in power

by US interests.

[ericson00]

12. for the most part, they were better than the ones put in place by anti-US interests

and they didn't linger forever either.

[malaise]

13. It was not for your government to choose for others

I'm trying to process how folks claim to support democracy when it applies to their country but imperialists for others. That thinking partly explains why liberal democratic parties are in such trouble these days.

[ericson00]

14. the world is always going to have wannabe superpowers. Better America than other past aspirants

like Russia (see the USSR's record), Germany, Japan, or even the British and French empires.

[ronnie624]

16. What about the USSR's record?

If you're going to sit here and try to re-write history, at least provide some citations.

[ericson00]

17. Great Purge, Holodomor, gulags, ...

the USSR's many colonies across Europe, it's brutal crushing of nationalist movements of Soviet Republics during and after the Bolshevik Revolution, ...

[rug]

7. Carter never was a second rate red-baiter.

[malaise]

10. That's why special interests still hate him

[AngryAmish]

11. Castro's fifty year rule proved his commitment to pluralism and democracy.

[Judi Lynn]

19. Did you ever go berserk over US puppet dictator Stroessner in Paraguay's 35 years ruling?

He was bumped out of office, in the end, but in his 35 years, he massacred indigenous people, genocide, he moved survivors into servitude, he gave have to the world's notorious Angel of Death from Auschwitz concentration camp, a man who tortured and terrorized Jewish prisoners, Dr. Josef Menegele.

He was ALWAYS A-OK with the US government, and our corporate media NEVER uttered a squeak of gossip about that monster, no propaganda flying out to the idiot class of US Americans to spread hatred and viciousness about him. Why is that?

[burrowowl]

21. Not to mention

200,000 to 250,000 Guatemalan Indigenous people massacred under Reagan-Bush by U$ backed dictator through Iran-Contra.

[AngryAmish]

22. ?

[brooklynite]

20. How many people are posting anti-Trump comments on this website?

How many people were posting anti-Castro comments in Cuba?