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Is Castro Already Dead?

Architect said:
Are you suggesting that it didn't?
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I'm not suggesting anything. I'm asking a question. The US passed lies trying to strong-arm other countries into participating in our embargo. How much real impact did that have. For example, you pointed out that several countries passed laws that conflict with the US law on this topic. So, how much was trade between non-US countries and Cuba curtailed by the US law?

PS Please keep in mind that I don't support the embargo, in general, and feel that the US trying to foist it on other countries is particular absurd.
 
dann said:
Castro recovering
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His pic in that article evoked the following blast from the past:

I wasn't lookin' too good but I was feelin' real well

After all is said and done
Gotta move, while it's still fun
Gotta walk
Before they make me run

That vocalist still breaths, though he treated himself harder than Fidel ever did.

DR
 
hgc said:
Who/what will die first? Fidel Castro or this here thread?

(For definitional purposes, the death of this thread will be when it reaches page 11 of the forum. The death of Castro is not so easy to define.)
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Look what I just found hanging out on page 11 of the Politics forum: this thread. And Fidel is still kickin'. Looks like Castro has nine lives. (And a colostomy bag?)
 
dann said:
Back in office by the end of April?
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?

He's an old man who has for the purpose of his own ego seen to it that his people have stagnated and many have had to leave to find opportunity or die trying.

The loss of liberty and the Cubans who have left their homeland to get liberty is his legacy.

If he had put his people ahead of his ego he would have sought to normalize relations with the US and even step down but Castro was always only important to Castro. Which is typical of Communist dictators.
 
dann said:
"Castro was always only important to Castro. Which is typical of Communist dictators."
It is good that US presidents are utterly selfless and have only the interests of the people of the world on their minds ...
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Interesting. The second terms of US presidents who manage to get re-elected are almost always plagued with problems that make that term a disappointment. Recent history: JFK's "second" term (actually, Johnson's only term) saw the escalation of the Vietnam war. Nixon's second term was overwhelmed by the Watergate scandal. Reagan's second term was overshadowed by the Iran-Contra scandal. Clinton ended up getting impeached, and Bush has been dogged by Iraq.

Now, there are certainly any number of possible explanations for this pattern. Two that make the most sense to me are:
  1. A new president brings in the best people he can to fill his cabinet and other executive offices. After a few years, they get worn out or leave, or both, to be replaced by the second string, who are not as capable.
  2. A new president comes in to fix the problems he spoke of during the campaign. He may fix those problems, especially if he has a mandate from the voters, but when he gets confronted with a host of new problems, he may not have the mandate he needs to impose the solution he wants. And where he might have spent years developing the solutions to the problems he ran on during the campaign, he doesn't have that luxury when a new crisis arises.
The big problem that Castro solved when he came to power in 1957 was the dictatorial rule of Fulgencio Batista. I think it speaks poorly for Cuba that after half a century of Castro's rule, Cuba is still a poor country, yet El Jefe is still regarded as an indispensible man. You'd think that there would be thousands of Cubans who could have run the country over the last fifty years who could have done just as well, or (perish the thought!) even better. But that's evidently not so, because communism's apologists sem to think the country would be even worse off without Castro.

As Napoleon Bonaparte (or was it Charles de Gaulle? it was a frog, anyway) observed, "The world's graveyards are full of indispensible men." In the US, at least, we kick the indispensible men out after eight years.
 
BPSCG said:
Interesting. The second terms of US presidents who manage to get re-elected are almost always plagued with problems that make that term a disappointment. Recent history: JFK's "second" term (actually, Johnson's only term) saw the escalation of the Vietnam war. Nixon's second term was overwhelmed by the Watergate scandal. Reagan's second term was overshadowed by the Iran-Contra scandal. Clinton ended up getting impeached, and Bush has been dogged by Iraq.

Now, there are certainly any number of possible explanations for this pattern. Two that make the most sense to me are:
  1. A new president brings in the best people he can to fill his cabinet and other executive offices. After a few years, they get worn out or leave, or both, to be replaced by the second string, who are not as capable.
  2. A new president comes in to fix the problems he spoke of during the campaign. He may fix those problems, especially if he has a mandate from the voters, but when he gets confronted with a host of new problems, he may not have the mandate he needs to impose the solution he wants. And where he might have spent years developing the solutions to the problems he ran on during the campaign, he doesn't have that luxury when a new crisis arises.
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3. A President running for (re)election has to appeal to a large percentage of the voting public. A President in his second term no longer has to worry about getting re-elected, or keeping the populace happy.
 
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ZirconBlue said:
3. A President running for (re)election has to appeal to a large percentage of the voting public. A President in his second term no longer has to worry about getting re-elected, or keeping the populace happy.
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True, but he does owe his party the duty to remain good enough so that he doesn't screw his party's choice for the next election. Some people think Al Gore suffered in his campaign due to a "guilt by association" deal with Clinton, for example, and Ford certainly had to work against the shadow of Nixon looming over his head.

DR
 
BPSCG said:
Interesting. The second terms of US presidents ...
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Castro and his supporters took control of Cuba in 1958-59, actually.
The second term of JFK is only meant as a joke, right?
And the first term of GWB was extremely successful, I guess ...

In the so-called representative democracy voters tend to vent their frustrations with the old guy by putting a new man in office every four or eight years, rarely for terms longer than that, yes, even in Europe, but always periodically. Not because the new ones are any better, but because this is the way the system allows people to vent their dissatisfaction with the government and politics. The politics don't change, but a new man is in the office.
The Italians used to do it much more often.
And in the eighties, of course, the USSR and the Vatican seemed to have a competition going about whose leader would last the shortest number of weeks, but that was due to the tendency of both systems to choose mainly very old men as figureheads ...
In the US, at least, we kick the indispensible men out after eight years.
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And elect a similar one. When will they ever learn ...


PS Do you actually believe that this is what a man running for office spends his time doing?:
years developing the solutions to the problems he ran on
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. So every time the most capable guy is elected only to run into 'problems' that he did not foresee which is what screws everything up? I know that JFK ran into something that he did not foresee, but GWB's war on Iraq appeared to have been determined long before 9/11 (which he probably didn't foresee) and actually only helped him convince the Americans that this was the right kind of policy even though it did not really have anything at all to do with Osama and his followers.
 
dann said:
In the so-called representative democracy voters tend to vent their frustrations with the old guy by putting a new man in office every four or eight years, rarely for terms longer than that, yes, even in Europe, but always periodically. Not because the new ones are any better, but because this is the way the system allows people to vent their dissatisfaction with the government and politics. The politics don't change, but a new man is in the office.
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Whereas in Cuba, they don't need to have elections to replace the indispensible man, because his enlightened guidance has served their nation unerringly for nearly half a century (can't locate my sarcasm font, sorry...).
And elect a similar one. When will they ever learn ...
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Whereas in Cuba, they don't have that problem because they've had the same guy in charge since before you were born.
 
dann said:
Not because the new ones are any better, but because this is the way the system allows people to vent their dissatisfaction with the government and politics. The politics don't change, but a new man is in the office.
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Yet it works. America has had single digit unemployment for decades. We have a stable economy and are listed 8 in HDI. Bear in mind, we have a very large influx of poor immigrants and yet we still have a high standard of living. And it isn't just for America that we work for. The United States has developed much of the technology that has fed the world poor, developed much of the technology that has provided health care for people around the world. It was America that sent large shipments of grain to the USSR and not the other way around. Kruschev was wrong, the Soviets did not bury us and now they are no longer in power.

We are not perfect. No one here will argue differently but replacing our leaders periodically has been very good for America. It has helped ensure the protections of the rights we hold dear.
 
BPSCG said:
Whereas in Cuba, they don't need to have elections to replace the indispensible man, because his enlightened guidance has served their nation unerringly for nearly half a century (can't locate my sarcasm font, sorry...).
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You are missing an important point. Cuban's have a choice. They can have any leader they want, so long as the want Castro. ;)
 
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