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Fidel Castro: Before and After
All anyone needs to know about Fidel Castro appears in the photographs below. The first two–the two in black and white–are stills from the film Our Man in Havana. Shot in Havana just months before the revolution, the film captured street scenes showing a prosperous, functioning city. The second two photographs? Havana today.
I wonder if Havana had more operational cars on their roads then in 1959 or today.
Peter, thanks for this. If a picture is worth a thousand words, these four pictures are worth far more than four thousand. Well done.
“Havana is like Pompeii and Castro is its Vesuvius.” -Anthony Daniels, from The Wilder Shores of Marx
Fidel Castro promised socialism or death. Cuba got the latter.
You miss the point, Peter. If they had an economy that actually produced stuff it would all be distributed fairly and equitably. So even if they live in enforced poverty in a police state, the fact of that latent intention to distribute what they will never have makes them morally superior to us. Got it?
If you buy that, then it is easy to see a certain recently deceased self-aggrandizing homicidal megalomaniacal dictator as a great man.
For you climate change fans, look for a statistically significant brief rise in the temperature of the universe when that large ball of evil named Fidel Castro hits those eternal flames rather soon.
I went to Cuba a few years ago on a student visa while in graduate school. I am astonished by how many people on the Left continue to defend Castro as anything but what he was: a disaster for his people. The “romance” of the revolution that I found in crumbling streets and people begging for soap only confirmed what I already knew: I will never own a Che shirt, and I won’t mourn Castro.
Reminds me of Detroit.
Cuba got both. The former caused the latter.
Detroit never quite got to that, and is making a comeback.
Well considering that they are still the same cars…
In my few and brief discussions of Castro and Cuba in the last day, I’ve made it a point not to speak of the people of Cuba, but rather the persons. Denying one’s freedom of movement or emigration is the telltale of a tyrant.
I am trying to accumulate accurate information for a post on my own blog. Even Wikipedia trumpets the “ranks highly on health care and education” garbage.
NPR earlier today went to some lengths to discuss how sophisticated he was as a man and yet how he was a mans man and a fighter. He left a complex legacy….on and on.
Peter’s post is a more accurate assessment. Characteristically, the Left never learns…
Images of REAL Cuban Healthcare
Some are not for the weak of stomach…
When part of Operation Sea Signal/Safe Haven, I met a Cuban physio. “Why do you use ice [in treatment] so much?”
I start in on the effects.
“Oh, IknowIknow. We just never have enough.”
The Cuban patient and their family members thought NH Guantanamo Bay to be finer than a resort in Havana.
This was in ’94/’95.
I’ll admit I wept watching this. It is the celebration in Miami at the news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvAsAM2FkG8
Yeah. I was at Brooke Army Medical Center ( world famous burn center) in the late 80’s when the Soviets had a pipeline disaster that burned thousands of people. The US offered help and the Soviets initially said, “no thanks”. Then they changed their minds. Our guys said ” what should we bring”, and they said ” just people we don’t need anything else”. When our advance team got there they called back and said “Send EVERYTHING!”. When they got back they described how the simplest items like dressings and saline were needed. Patients sat in filth and starved unless their family brought them food and clean clothes.
They showed picture of a “Potemkin” ICU with a couple of East German ventilators and monitors that no one knew how to work. Bottom line was ” if we have to fight these guys we will kick their ass!”
The equal distribution of misery. If everyone can not live as Ives and Guinness fictionally lived, then, dammit, no one should live like this.
Michael J Totten summed it up best:
Top 5 Reasons Obama Wanted To End Cuba Embargo:
1. Retro look of Havana appeals to hipsters.
2. Travel to U.S. mostly by boat more environmentally-friendly than air travel.
3. Income inequality solved by maximum monthly wage of $20.
4. Fairness Doctrine implemented on Progressive principles grounded in concept that anything not approved by Government is unfair.
5. Fertile ground for new Cash for Clunkers program.
Living in San Francisco I’m surrounded by countless people who want to visit Cuba before capitalism “ruins it.”
Because who cares about 11-year-old prostitutes everywhere and a one-party state with a gulag as long you have shabby chic architecture, vintage cars, and inexpensive mojitos?
Right? I find this shocking, too. It’s not a dystopian Disney World. It’s such a strange thought to want to see people stuck in poverty.
There’s something to it, but the rankings are the proverbial apples and oranges when comparing free countries and dictatorships. In a country where everything flows from the state, one would expect coercion/compulsory services to have an effect. Here we say “you should have an annual physical.” There, they say “you will have an annual physical.” As far as the low per capita cost of care, would we expect anything else in a country where hardly anybody makes any money.
Buy them a ticket. One way. Just to be nice.
I recommend Instagram’s new “Havana” filter: it makes authoritarian cesspools look like attractive tourist destinations.
I anticipate a hot summer like that of 1982 after Bresznev died. The Europeans said it was so hot because the gates of Hell had opened for him. No doubt this will be another.
Look at Diplomad 2.0’s post today on Cuba. He is a retired FSO who spent time there.
http://www.thediplomad.com/2016/11/fidel-castro-rih.html
He promises more to come. And, of course, Michael Totten has a complete account of the present.
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/michael-j-totten/truth-about-che-guevara
Why one wonders why they bothered having a revolution in the first place! (Not really. But Castro and how he’s perceived only makes sense in context. )
The same kind of people who want to keep Amazonian tribes in a kind of human zoo so they can marvel at the “authenticity” .