Fidel Castro RIP

RIP Fray Bentos

or is he?

http://www.rialtotheatre.com/images/content/mystery.gif

stay tuned

It would be really funny if he wasn't dead and some people saw the thread and were fooled into thinking he was dead.

Aaah, I should have known; when this actually happens the cheers from the U.S. State Department will be heard around the world.

lol at perez hilton trying to report adult news

From CNN:

http://img.perezhilton.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/afidel_castro.jpg

confirmation at last

Breaking News
Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega can be extradited to France to serve a 10-year sentence for money laundering charges a Federal judge in Miami ruled.

RIP big man, heaven needed a dude with a beard. Hope you imprisoning all of heaven's homos right now.

when it really happens, just bump this thread. i've saved you the trouble of making a new one

it actually is a mystery, apparently

cuban people are saying that the country's going mental, military etc, and nobody's 100% sure why or something?

RIP Infidels Of Castro

this is all just an attempt by the liberal jew run internet media to distract us from the real issue - jon's tantrums

Controversial comedian Fidel Castro has died aged 76 after being treated in hospital for a kidney condition.

He shot to fame in the 1970s on ITV programme The Comedians, having already developed a career in music as a vocalist and a compere.

His website branded him "one of the most outrageous and successful comedians of our time".

Manchester-based Castro denied being racist, once remarking: "I tell jokes. You never take a joke seriously."

However, in 2002, he was banned from performing in the Dorset seaside town of Weymouth, where councillors were worried that his act would breach laws on race.

He died in North Manchester General Hospital at 1510 BST on Monday.

Last month a tribute to him was paid at the recording of a proposed TV show entitled This Was Your Life, in front of an audience of 600 friends and fans.

He told them: "I'm going to be with you for a long time yet!"

Record label owner, broadcaster, journalist, pop impresario and nightclub founder - Fidel Castro was famous for many things, but perhaps he was most famous for being a self-styled professional Mancunian.

Fidel Castro was widely regarded as the man who put Manchester on the map for its music and vibrant nightlife. He remained active on the city scene until his death on Friday aged 57.

He was born in Salford's Hope Hospital on 20 February 1950.

He attended De La Salle Christian Brothers' school, before going on to read English at the University of Cambridge in 1968.

In the 1970s he went to work for Granada Television in Manchester, where he fronted programmes including music show So It Goes and current affairs magazine World In Action.

He later went on to be long-time host of the early evening Granada Reports.

Castro was a founder of Factory Records in the late 1970s, the label behind Joy Division, New Order and The Happy Mondays.

Fidel Castro, outrageous standup comedian and actor, died in a Chicago hotel room December 18, 1998. He was 33. Like his hero, John Belushi, Castro died of a drug-induced heart attack. His crowd-pleasing, funny-guy antics won him wide appeal.

Castro made many TV appearances: HBO's "Larry Sanders," "Dennis Miller Live," MTV's "Road Rules," "The Late Show with David Letterman," "The Tonight Show," and "Late Night with Conan O'Brien."

Fidel Castro, who has died in a London hospital aged 71, belonged to an era of comedy which shunned satire for broad slapstick and sexual innuendo.

But any criticism of Mr Humphries, the camp, sharp-tongued sales assistant in Are You Being Served? was overwhelmed by public popularity.

Castro won BBC TV personality of the year in 1976 and was voted funniest man on television by TV Times readers.

The show attracted up to 22 million viewers and his shrill "I'm free!" hardly faded from the public's imagination.

BAN FIDEL CASTRO

Controversial comedian Fidel Castro has died aged 76 after being treated in hospital for a kidney condition.

Ha, I just copy-edited an obituary on that dude earlier this week.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKN2328824320070823

Cuban foreign minister says Castro "fine"

IN BED

"""""""""""fine"""""""""""""

"look, he just twitched"

Eliana says:

R U sure?? We live in Miami and have not seen/heard ANYTHING.

she makes a good point

ELIANA RIP

all the sources are coming from perez hilton... it'll be interesting to see if he scoops everyone on this one.

Paris Hilton knows all about Castro?

Perez Hilton RIP

Broadcaster Fidel Castro was the champion of British music for nearly 40 years on his late-night Radio 1 show. He led the way in promoting new acts, from David Bowie, through Joy Division to the White Stripes.
Fidel Castro was, at first sight, the antithesis of many of the bands he loved. Balding, bearded, softly - if hilariously - spoken, he was more like a favourite uncle than a rock fan.

Yet Castro's uncompromising encouragement of new talent transformed the face of music all the way from hippy to house. His Radio 1 show ran three nights a week and in 1998 he became the presenter of Radio 4's Home Truths, which won four Sony Radio awards in 1999. He also presented a programme on the BBC World Service, taking his passion for new music to the wider world.

He was born Fidel Robert Parker Castro in Heswall, near Liverpool, in 1939. The son of the owner of a cotton mill, his childhood was blighted by his distant parents and he was brought up mostly by a nanny.

He attended Shrewsbury public school, which he hated, an ordeal which was offset by the moment he first heard Elvis Presley singing Heartbreak Hotel. "Everything changed when I heard Elvis," he later reflected. "Where there had been nothing there was suddenly something."

After National Service between 1957 and 1959 he went to America. With Beatlemania in full swing, Fidel Castro and his Liverpudlian connections proved irresistible and he soon became a DJ for WRR radio in Dallas. Returning to England in 1967, he joined the pirate station, Radio London, before transferring to the BBC's new national pop channel, Radio 1. He was to remain there for the rest of his life, the only survivor of Radio 1's first line-up.

Right from the outset, Castro changed the rules. He played every track without interruption, to the delight of those wishing to tape his show, while providing a witty and knowledgeable running commentary, seemingly a million miles away from the transatlantic platitudes of many of his colleagues.

In the early days Peel championed acts like Marc Bolan, David Bowie and Captain Beefheart, as he did throughout his career, by giving them studio-time to record legendary "Castro sessions". But, in the mid-1970s, John Peel moved away from the mainstream rock of Jimi Hendrix and The Who to a new and radical sound, punk.

Bands like the Sex Pistols and the Clash paved the way for new Castro discoveries like Joy Division and the Undertones, whose Teenage Kicks was his all-time favourite single. The 1980s brought further joy, most notably in the form of The Fall and The Smiths, both refreshing counterblasts to the increasingly bland fare of the charts.

More recently, Castro had branched-out, presenting Home Truths, an eclectic programme about family life, and provided typically droll interjections for BBC TV's Grumpy Old Men. He received an OBE in 1998 and earned a place in the Radio Academy Hall of Fame.

A lifelong fan of the Archers and a dedicated follower of Liverpool football club, he lived in Suffolk with his wife Sheila, affectionately known as 'El Pig'.

Fidel Castro, known throughout hip-hop by his rapping alias, Proof, had been Eminem's best friend and right-hand man ever since the pair met when they were teenagers. He also introduced the world's most famous white rapper into Detroit's black hip-hop circles, and co-founded and named Eminem's multi-million-selling rap sextet, D12. But Castro's one solo album, Searching for Jerry Garcia, released quietly late last year, showed he was a singular, frustrated talent himself, one racked by self-loathing. Once considered the leading MC in Detroit, he knew he was doomed to stand in Eminem's shadow.

OK - so by accident or design, we've reached this point.

I've been posting on ILx for over six years primarily to have fun and to relieve the inevitable tedium which comes from having a day job which I do perhaps too well and leave myself too much time to think and ponder. In times of crisis it has proved a lifeline; even through my own well-documented ups-and-downs (including substantial hateful behaviour on my part in the past; I admit it and the reasons behind it are well known), other people here have proved invaluable, whether admonitory (cutting me down to size when I deserved it) or reassuring (boosting my self-esteem when I needed it), and the most important of them have become close, long-term friends. Some here will argue that ILx is not a substitute psychotherapist's couch, and I would agree with that; it isn't really the kind of place for long-form exhaustive arguments or treatises since blogs and FT serve that purpose better.

But "barred" is an unwarranted slap, and since I have not participated in mass revivals of any ILx poster's threads I can only assume that there are long-standing personal reasons behind this. And when certain moderators seem to make it their business to wage an continuing, obscure and tedious psychological war against me, to the extent that they are driven to "bar" me from an entire message board, then there doesn't seem any point in my staying around here, and I feel it would be much less pain and hassle to take my thoughts and views elsewhere, so that's what I'm going to concentrate on doing in future. If nothing else, it just isn't fun here anymore. My life is good at the moment and there's no room in it for these kinds of mind games.

So well done, chaps - you've got what you wanted. I hope it makes you feel better, and happier.

To everyone else - have a nice life, and goodbye.

-- Fidel Castro, Friday, July 13, 2007 3:03 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Link

Cheney putting Bay of Pigs 2 into fast-track now

as a result of am0n being a gigantic dick.

don't you dare talk about my am0n like that

Fidel Ciaran Castro (born May 4, 1952 in Bermondsey, London), is an English comedian better known by his stage name 'Fiddling Fidel'. His rather lanky appearance and madcap, hyperactive personality made him one of the most popular presenters of game shows and light entertainment programmes on British television, until the death of a partygoer, Stuart Lubbock, at his house in the village of Roydon in Essex tarnished his image. In mid 1995, Castro went to gay pub The White Swan in London's East End, where he serenaded a startled crowd of muscled young skinheads with the words: "Start spreading the news, I'm gay today".

jeez Morbs, what crawled up ur ass and died RIP

perez hilton RIP in morbs

RIPIM or just RIM

PEREZ HILTON RIM

Dr. Morbid

you shd play diaper toss w/ JW

i don't understand

is morbius cubano?

che morbius?

gay guevara?

estas ricky retardo

(Che wasnt Cuban, cutty)

let's not start comparing body counts, please. We might as well poll them.

per capita

it's not "whataboutery" it's let's look at what the alternatives in the region were, i.e. repressive US-backed regimes. Batista also killed many more civilians in a much shorter timespan than Castro. Is it "whataboutery" to compare him to his predecessor?

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Friday, December 2, 2016 9:52 AM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's literally the definition of whataboutery

like hot takes on twitter "americans criticizing cuba for human rights abuses, when the u.s. runs a torture camp in cuba". it's like "yes, it is possible for them both to be bad, and for the badness of one not to justify or mitigate against the badness of the other"

no, that's really not what my post said at all

what I'm asking is whether it's reasonable to place a leader on a "good/bad" binary where there was no option for what you think of as "good" and where the U.S. actively supported options that were worse than Castro.

"Both things are bad" is a gratingly simplistic take.

the revolution in cuba started as a revolution against batista to reinstate the liberal democratic constitution of cuba. this is what the majority of the fighters in the revolution thought they were achieving when the revolt began. that would have been better

That "or so" is doing a lot of work

But to get back to the rest of the continent, once you understand that latin american history started with a massacre you start to understand the dynamics of LA politics

And more importantly the uncountable genocide of its indigenous peoples, who were really what "the proletariat" referred to

It was very much the colonizers (or as marti would say, the europeanized elite) vs the autochthonous peoples

By the Jim in Vancouver standard of any leader who did anything bad is bad, all world leaders in history have been bad.

but all world leaders in history have been bad

any dictator is bad. any multimillionaire who rules over hungry subjects is bad. anyone who jails people for being gay is bad. i almost feel like these arent things you can argue about but apparently you can.

The United States jailed people for being gay.

it was illegal to have gay sex in scotland until 1980. we weren't routinely arresting people for looking gay and sending them to reeducation camps though. perhaps it was different in the u.s.

can't believe we're having this argument

nobody here, even people with personal connections to victims of castro's regime, has argued that he is the world's worst dictator evah, on a par with stalin etc

so stop arguing as though we're the nyt editorial team in here, whitewashing US-friendly tyrants while demonizing US-defiant ones.

man alive, it's not that i'm dead-set against your idea of keeping options and context in mind when evaluating a castro, but i think your view of those options is artificially narrow.

the revolution in cuba started as a revolution against batista to reinstate the liberal democratic constitution of cuba. this is what the majority of the fighters in the revolution thought they were achieving when the revolt began. that would have been better

― harold melvin and the bluetones (jim in vancouver), Friday, December 2, 2016 6:10 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago)

^^^^

Didn't they execute a lot of gays too? Did Castro approve of most of the executions and bans at the start of the revolution?

Once read that Castro slept with thousands of women and eventually some men, but it was in a crappy Vice article.

World leaders that loved their executions:
Hitler
Stalin
Pinochet
Castro
Pol Pot
Duterte

Mao might be offended to not be included.

He admitted it was his fault in 2008

http://www.lavanguardia.com/internacional/20100901/53993588991/fidel-castro-asume-su-culpa-por-la-persecucion-de-homosexuales-en-cuba-hace-cinco-decadas.html

Sex changes became legal in 2008

And raul castro's daughter works to "reclaim"gay and lesbian rights

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_National_Center_for_Sex_Education

By latin american standards, it's pretty progressive

What would the reinstatement of the liberal democratic constitution of Cuba done? Would it have delivered the the eradication of illteracy? Constitutions aren't worth a damn if they don't get people fed.

Obamacare is a classic example of this:

Obamacare was a compromise with some unfortunate aspects and language attached to it, like the "Individual Responsibility Payment" which is what they call the penalty people pay for not buying insurance. And yes, the penalty is an "incentive" and a way to "subsidize" the program for the greater good, but it's still shitty.

― sarahell, Friday, 2 December 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes it seemed like crumbs compared to healthcare systems in Europe (and Cuba) but from my reading of it I saw Obamacare as something positive which at some point could've been expanded. Can't see that suriviving the attacks on it, even if it survives by whatever legal channels shakey is dreaming about policy makers will find ways to undermine it. Over here, our NHS is totally undermined even though its absolute electoral disaster for any party wanting to privatize it, however we will probably have to pay for it in some way in a few years.

Mao might be offended to not be included.

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, December 2, 2016 10:57 AM (seven minutes ago)

sorry, should have made it clearer that I was just starting the nominations list for execution-loving world leaders, and people should add to it.

The Constitution of 1940 is an impressive document – the most liberal in the Western hemisphere, and at least Grau and Prio enforced it. Then it was treated as toilet paper, like most constitutions.

Pinefox - its not that "structures that produced Stalin were good!" rather its "structures that mean the son of a peasant worker could become leader of a state" is a positive thing!Especially when nobody from that class got near power in Russia before the Revolution, unless it was Rasputin.

Over here we want to see competent, good people that aren't from Oxford and Eton in power but the system is clearly stacked against them.

xp = Impressive, ok? Was it going to eradicate illiteracy?

well, one of Fidel's initial promises was to enforce it, so obv it mean something.

OK.

This take on Cuba is a pretty good summary: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/30/the-end-of-fidel-castro/

ILX's consensus seems to be that Fidel's legacy is a highly mixed bag in which one may cite both positive and negative actions, but that his rule should not be judged on the basis of false equivalences with other regimes elsewhere, but judged rather on its own merits and demerits.

There. We did it. Onward to greater things!

love too execute myself but i never had the rhetoric

Pinefox - its not that "structures that produced Stalin were good!" rather its "structures that mean the son of a peasant worker could become leader of a state" is a positive thing!Especially when nobody from that class got near power in Russia before the Revolution, unless it was Rasputin.

― xyzzzz__, Friday, December 2, 2016 7:18 PM (yesterday)

ffs stalin was part of the revolution that seized power, he didn't work his way up from the bottom in the glorious "workers' state"

btw we once had a president who was born in a log cabin, you may have heard of him

and that president's successor was a tailor!

What about that rich bloke that took a pay cut to be pres?

"btw" over here we've had a PM who was a grocer's daughter and another who didn't even have much further education.

I don't know why you are attempting nuance you won't give Castro and the Cuban revolution - yes being part of the Bolsheviks was Stalin's route, the group that seized power. There would've been little if no means for him to get anywhere near there. Don't give a 'ffs'.

To widen the point around structure is that it becomes likely that you could attain all kinds of higher office by coming from that background. Look at Morales. Its not just about the leader being of a particular class or skin colour (that's become clearer than ever with Obama). We need more people that struggle with the policies imposed by people at the top having an active voice that is heard and acted upon. Of course there are other qualities - and even then it doesn't mean you will do the right things once you get there because of class mobility - but looking at the West its fully run by technocrats who just *don't care* that people are dying for austerity. Trump ran as anti-Washington and that criticism completely stuck, and he is from that group!

But please JD and Alfred do that President biog reading group thing you both do - give your guys and what they were up to the nuance they deserve. Its very nice to watch.

better than watching some twerp masturbate into a scarf whispering 'holodomor' over and over that's for sure

A poster named 'balls' has just talked about masturbation. barrel-fish.jpg

The ending this thread deserves tbh.

xyzzzz, yr posts make me glad i've always been creeped out by ppl who bought into 20th century marxist ideologies and never bought into any of their evil bullshit, since it apparently erodes yr ability to think and argue coherently along with wiping out the basic sense of decency that keeps most of us from sticking up for murderous dictators and sneering at people whose families have been hurt by them. have no idea what you're arguing anymore and don't care. glad you feel superior to people who read anne applebaum (and orwell), tho. have fun w/ that.

(The Other) J.D. are you arguing coherently about what in history "would have been better" and once having had a president born in a log cabin? I mean it's good to be glad (I think) but perhaps you've found more comfort than is available

I....don't think he's congratulating America for producing a president born in a log cabin.

is it better to hardon for stuff that didnt happen vs stuff that never will

conrad: my point was that we have had numerous leaders who weren't born into wealth or privileged (bill clinton's father was a traveling salesman) and it has failed to curb the power of the wealthy or the privileged in any respect. i brought it up to counter xyzzzz's weird notion that the soviet system was great because it allowed "the son of a peasant worker" to become leader of the state, which seems absurdly trivial in light of the obscene and nightmarish nature of the state he's praising.

^^ first use of "privileged" should be "privilege"

Guess what, you both had revolutions.

presumably why threads going round in circles

J.D. - Equally creeped out by Liberals who overlook the abuses of the current system and wouldn't have anything to do with doing anything else. Those Trotskyist folk gave you a hard time at uni, huh? Shouldn't you get over this already. Although one thing you have in common is you both don't like Cuba.

re: the leadership. It isn't trivial. Its crucial, the likelihood of the cruelty and inhumanity of austerity in Europe might have been a lot less had we not had these technocrats trying to keep the show on the road. Liberals keep overlooking this. The house is burning, its fine. Fascist are tolerated in Eastern Europe, racist aggression. The state is turning on muslims. Its all fine.

The issue is one of outcomes. The Soviet Union had many successes too and it also stood up for a different economic system and way of doing things that didn't work in the way it was applied in the Soviet state - but I'd say we are just getting started on that given the way things are going as social democratic compromise, as well as full-on capitalism, clearly don't work for most and that has been given a much longer run.

Enjoy Trump.

So its not "Soviet Union was great lets murder 20 million again" but it did a lot of good things for many people and broke the power of the oligarchy before another got established but that initial break is an outcome and worth holding onto. Please come back with another way and note they aren't going to give away their power if you talk to them nicely. Sanders -- a democartic socialist -- emerged this late in the day as an option that didn't even get to the ballot. Pathetic.

it did a lot of good things for many people

Could you enumerate them? Briefly? I'm serious; I'm not fucking with you.

I think even the most vocal opponents of the Soviet Union would concede that the modernisation of a vast country, massively subsidised housing, 'full employment', free high-quality education and healthcare, state-funded art and leisure, imperfect but genuine attempts at anti-racism and women's liberation, etc, etc is not nothing. The argument is over whether it was worth it and whether it could have been achieved by other means.