Adios

[BBKing]

Fidel is off - this is one of those historical moments, which is why Virgin bloody Radio deemed it important enough for the second item on its 8am news. Shame, I'd hoped he'd survive yet another US President. Viva Fidel!*

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7252109.stm

* by which I don't mean that Communism is necessarily a great way to run a country, but somewhere that exports doctors strikes me as better run than somewhere that exports private mercenary companies.

[SOSAGES]

without him we wouldnt have tony montana

[skyblueheroes]

I thought you were leaving then............

[Osem]

Originally Posted by skyblueheroes

I thought you were leaving then............

Fat chance

[BBKing]

You'll have to offer me more money. On a related end-of-dictator note, Musharref, Our Man In Islamabad, got his hat handed to him in the elections. And George W Bush only has 335 days 8 hours to go.

[Osem]

Plenty of Cuban exiles and refugees in Florida and thereabouts are celebrating right now.

[Graham M]

Is that celebration moot since his brother might take over?

[punky]

Nice to see Galloway showing his true colours again by slithering up the rectum of another human rights oppressing dictator. But he's socialist as well, so that's OK then.

One of my family's employees in Florida escaped from Cuba with his parents who had execution warrants on their heads for doing what our members on this forum do every day. I can't see him saying Adios or Viva Fidel.

Kudos to Galloway for trying to defend Fidel's reputation anyway, although his main excuse that Fidel has legitimately suspended rights because they are in a perpetual war (despite 40 years of inactivity) with the US is a rather sad and pathetic attempt that doesn't wash. Contradicted when he opposes Labour's anti-terrorism measures for the same reason.

Raul is like Fidel lite. Fidel has still been niggling him when he seems fit so Fidel's influence never has left and probably won't soon. However, aforemention Cuban above said there is a very soft socialist and democratic reform group under the skin that will come into play with Raul when Fidel goes. This will lead to a re-opening a relations between the two countries. This was a couple of years ago he said it though.

[Osem]

Originally Posted by Zeph

Is that celebration moot since his brother might take over?

I doubt it as that was fully expected apparently. They're still delighted that the old tyrant has gone in just the same way as most of us were glad when John Major was replaced by Tony Bliar. For how long is, of course, a different matter.........

I think Cuba's version of socialism is closer to communism than our UK definition of "socialism" (imho)
Encarta
"In 1959 a guerrilla force commanded by Fidel Castro, a leftist revolutionary, unseated Cuba’s dictatorial ruler Fulgencio Batista in the Cuban Revolution. In 1961 Castro declared himself a Marxist-Leninist and pronounced Cuba a socialist country, the first in the Western Hemisphere. Castro allied Cuba with the Soviet Union and gave the Soviets the right to station intelligence units and dock their naval vessels in Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, triggered by the installation of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, brought Havana and Moscow into an even more enthusiastic partnership. Within several years, Cuba had acquired the trappings of a communist state. Although Castro had not been a member of Cuba’s communist party (the Socialist People’s Party, or PSP, established in 1925), in 1961 he forced a merger of the PSP and his own political group, the 26th of July Movement. In 1965 the merged party was renamed the Communist Party of Cuba."

[punky]

To quote a famous pseudo-socialist, it's all the same ball of wax.

In some peoples' minds - to me, that's like saying Fascism is the same as Conservatism (imho).

I personally don't clump all left-wingers or right-wingers together, as I believe there is a spectrum to both sides.

btw, who was the pseudo-socialist?

[punky]

Michael Moore

Originally Posted by Gavin

To quote a famous pseudo-socialist, it's all the same ball of wax.

Originally Posted by Gavin

Michael Moore

Sorry, I'm being a bit "senior moment" here.

Michael Moore equates (imho, simplistically and wrongly) "“In Liverpool, [Moore] paused to contemplate the epicenters of evil in the modern world: “It’s all part of the same ball of wax, right? The oil companies, Israel, Halliburton.� " , so this somehow translates into him saying that Communism and Socialism are the same thing?

Nope, sorry - don't get that one.

[punky]

You're reading too much into it.

I was trying to say that there is a lot of overlap between communism and socialism (although i'm not a scholar in either),. So much so in that Cuba seems to dance between the two depending on what year you pick. More recently than 1962, the Cuban Consitution in 1992 mentions socialism as the current theory, and as of now, wikipedia calls it a socialist republic. Anyway, in trying to express that Moore's words, and the fact he's a socialist as well, came into my head so I thought it was apt.