7 ms·

>Way less crimes than those who accuse him. Never sprayed Vietnamese with Agent Orange or napalms for one, never dropped nuclear bombs on civilians, never suppo

by gragas 10y ago

>Way less crimes than those who accuse him. Never sprayed Vietnamese with Agent Orange or napalms for one, never dropped nuclear bombs on civilians, never supported Pinochet et co, doesn't have 25% of the world's incarcerated in just 4% of the global population, and lots of other things besides. That's a logical fallacy. You can't say that Castro's crimes against humanity are okay because the US has committed worse ones. >A 40+ years embargo has something to do with that too... Only a US embargo. That leaves more than 80% of the world GDP to interact with.

pmarreck 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque Tu quoque fallacy, for the record
- sooheon 10y ago
  It's only a fallacy if it is being employed to absolve Castro of every crime. I think the point of the comparison was to remind pots not to call kettles black.
  - pmarreck 10y ago
    What makes you think it requires a total absolution to be tu quoque? If I murder 100 people and punch a grandma, and I point out it was OK to punch a grandma because I just saw YOU do it, it's still tu quoque despite the fact that nobody discussed the 100 I murdered
    - sooheon 10y ago
      > ...and I point out it was OK... because I just saw YOU do it... This is tu quoque, because you're trying to say bad thing you did was OK because someone else did a bad thing too. However, you'll notice the above poster definitely did not claim what Castro did was OK.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      Only the argument is that the US has cause much much much greater mayhem than Castro, domestically AND globally, and yet it has the gal to take the hollier than thou stance. Heck, US cops alone have probably killed much more people than the Cuban regime in those 50 years. And the place with 25% of the world's prisoners and 4% of the world's population is rich to call other places "police states".
chinhodado 10y ago
> Only a US embargo. That leaves more than 80% of the rest of the world GDP to interact with. That's a naive view. Do you really think the rest of the world can just straight up ignore the US's embargo and play nice with Cuba, while still staying on good terms with the US?
- gragas 10y ago
  I suppose I agree. The US' embargo was probably quite tough on Cuba. But I don't think the state of the economy in Cuba can be entirely pinned on the embargo.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    Of course it can. Cuba is an island nation and relies on trade to acquire the vast majority of the goods those of us in the West take for granted. Block that trade and you basically stifle all economic growth. From wikipedia: >>Cuba produces sugarcane, tobacco, citrus, coffee, rice, potatoes, beans and livestock.[2] As of 2015 Cuba imported about 70-80% of its food.[51] and 80-84% of the food it rations to the public.[52] Raúl Castro ridiculed the bureaucracy that shackled the agriculture sector.[52] Before 1959, Cuba boasted as many cattle as people. Today meat is so scarce that it is a crime to kill a cow without government permission.[53] Cuban people suffered from starvation during the Special Period.[29]
    - mzw_mzw 10y ago
      And of course the Communist economic system -- the one that has led to immiseration and collapse everywhere it has been tried, all over the world -- has nothing to do with this. Must be the embargo!
      - enraged_camel 10y ago
        If Cuba had a capitalist economy the result would be the same. Or do you believe that capitalism has the ability to generate essential goods out of thin air?
frozenport 10y ago
Further they received significant aid from the USSR.
- Elv13 10y ago
  And their economy wasn't half bad back then (from a communist standard). In Canada we always had a softer tone with Cuba. A lot of the US PoV seems propaganda driven. Sure, there is a vocal expat group that had very good reasons to leave and were definitely harassed/prosecuted/persecuted for their views/lifestyle. The same kind of minorities exists in the US (watch Trump speeches from the last year). On the other side, until the USSR collapsed, it went from the bottom of the list to near top on education, health access and [a few] other areas. Of course it stayed as corrupted as it was for the last 150 years, but don't blame the Castro regime for that, most Latin America and Caribbean nations are as bad in that regard, if not worst. As for the "capitalism is good, communism is evil" propaganda fueled argument, there isn't much to say. I prefer Capitalism. I acknowledge single party is more prone to corruption and nepotism while democracies es is at risk of populism waves, electoral counter intuitive promises and both are just as vulnerable to corporate/power influences. You have to wonder if for lesser economies, you are better off enslaved by landlords like during Batista days or kept poor, but with a proper social net, in the Castro state.
  - mzw_mzw 10y ago
    Stating that "lesser economies" should literally be kept as prison states by strongmen. And they say Americans are heartless; we clearly have nothing on Canadians, if you're anything to go by.
  - edblarney 10y ago
    " In Canada we always had a softer tone with Cuba." Partly because we are not the US and did not have a direct confrontation. But partly because Trudeau Sr. was a communist-revolutionary apologist, in the French intellectual sense - and chilled with Fidel to boost is 'socialist hipster' cred and to thumb the eye of the Americans. As a young man, I found it admirable. Now that I know many ex-Cubans, I find it utterly repulsive and a stain on our history. It's one thing to have 'relations' or 'diplomacy' with another nation - it's altogether another to chum around with a thug. If it was in the name of getting Fidel to let his people off the island, or encourage democracy... sure ... but it was not that.
ageofwant 10y ago
It would be a logical fallacy if coldtea actually made that claim. He did not. He simply pointed out that edblamey moral high ground is a fallacy in itself, when so many of those Western nations stand accused of worse.
- edblarney 10y ago
  Western nations have not 'done worse' in modern times. The logical fallacy I think is yours for trying to compare Cuba to the USA in a tit-for-tat comparison of misrepresented facts and issues. Dropping a nuclear bomb seems 'bad' until you put it in the context of what the Japanese were doing, and the costs otherwise. The North Vietnamese that the Americans & South Vietnamese were fighting against were 10x worse than Castro (they executed 100's of thousands in the streets - and put millions in concentration camps after the Americans withdrew) - and using 'agent Orange' was an act of reasonable desperation on the part of the Americans as it was used only to clear foliage near American firebases, the casualties were mostly American and of course it was not done with the knowledge people would be hurt - the author of the note makes it seem like it was used on purpose to hurt Vietnamese which is a gross misrepresentation. Americas role in the world is fundamentally different than that of Cuba (and of course there is the issue of scale) which makes it futile to compare the USA to Cuba, tit-for-tat in terms of 'things done'. But the comparison is resolved rather more pragmatically: People literally risk everything, including their lives to flee Cuba to get to America. Never the other way around.
  - esrauch 10y ago
    > the casualties were mostly American It isn't really clear if this is true, there is a clear bias of studies to focus on the effect on American veterans, but there are 1-4 million Vietnamese affected depending on what non-American source you believe.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >Western nations have not 'done worse' in modern times. The US has bombed and invaded Afghanistan for the crimes of a handful of (mainly Saudi-backed) loonies (after first sponsoring Bin Laden in the 80s), have invaded Iraq under BS false pretexts (WMDs etc) and created huge losses, chaos, anarchy and civil war, have helped destabilize Libya with the same outcome, have targeted the Syrian regime and in the process helped ISIS grow, and so on. And that's just the open actions since 2001...
joshontheweb 10y ago
> That's a logical fallacy. You can't say that Castro's crimes against humanity are okay because the US has committed worse ones. Correct, but it can help a lot of people come down off of their high horse.
agumonkey 10y ago
May I also add that short but extreme crimes feel different than prolongated even if less violent ones ?
wz1000 10y ago
> Only a US embargo. That leaves more than 80% of the world GDP to interact with. Nope. The US brutally punished countries which traded with Cuba. The best and most macabre example of this would be the 1974 Bangladesh Famine, which had a death toll of 1-1.5 million, and was almost entirely preventable. After the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation war, when Bangladesh achieved its independence from America-backed Pakistan, US initially refused to recognize Bangladesh as a country and trade with it because Bangladesh wanted to prosecute Pakistani war criminals, responsible for the worst genocide since the Holodomor(and committed using American arms). Infact, Nixon and the US refused to condemn Pakistani actions, and actively worked to suppress evidence of their crimes. When the famine started in 1974, the US initially promised food aid to Bangladesh, but refused to deliver because Bangladesh exported jute to Cuba(Cuba was one of the first countries to recognize Bangladeshi independence). By the time Bangladesh agreed to stop all trade relations with Cuba, and US aid finally arrived, the famine was pretty much over and had claimed its 1,500,000+ victims. Now, to make it clear, the US had 2 million+ tonnes of grain pretty much ready to deliver, but held back at the last moment while hundreds of thousands were starving to death. This was also while US was giving huge amounts of grain as food aid to surplus food producing South Vietnam, which the Vietnamese traded for weapons.

by gragas 10y ago

pmarreck 10y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque Tu quoque fallacy, for the record

sooheon 10y ago
It's only a fallacy if it is being employed to absolve Castro of every crime. I think the point of the comparison was to remind pots not to call kettles black.
- pmarreck 10y ago
  What makes you think it requires a total absolution to be tu quoque? If I murder 100 people and punch a grandma, and I point out it was OK to punch a grandma because I just saw YOU do it, it's still tu quoque despite the fact that nobody discussed the 100 I murdered
  - sooheon 10y ago
    > ...and I point out it was OK... because I just saw YOU do it... This is tu quoque, because you're trying to say bad thing you did was OK because someone else did a bad thing too. However, you'll notice the above poster definitely did not claim what Castro did was OK.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    Only the argument is that the US has cause much much much greater mayhem than Castro, domestically AND globally, and yet it has the gal to take the hollier than thou stance. Heck, US cops alone have probably killed much more people than the Cuban regime in those 50 years. And the place with 25% of the world's prisoners and 4% of the world's population is rich to call other places "police states".

chinhodado 10y ago

> Only a US embargo. That leaves more than 80% of the rest of the world GDP to interact with. That's a naive view. Do you really think the rest of the world can just straight up ignore the US's embargo and play nice with Cuba, while still staying on good terms with the US?

gragas 10y ago
I suppose I agree. The US' embargo was probably quite tough on Cuba. But I don't think the state of the economy in Cuba can be entirely pinned on the embargo.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  Of course it can. Cuba is an island nation and relies on trade to acquire the vast majority of the goods those of us in the West take for granted. Block that trade and you basically stifle all economic growth. From wikipedia: >>Cuba produces sugarcane, tobacco, citrus, coffee, rice, potatoes, beans and livestock.[2] As of 2015 Cuba imported about 70-80% of its food.[51] and 80-84% of the food it rations to the public.[52] Raúl Castro ridiculed the bureaucracy that shackled the agriculture sector.[52] Before 1959, Cuba boasted as many cattle as people. Today meat is so scarce that it is a crime to kill a cow without government permission.[53] Cuban people suffered from starvation during the Special Period.[29]
  - mzw_mzw 10y ago
    And of course the Communist economic system -- the one that has led to immiseration and collapse everywhere it has been tried, all over the world -- has nothing to do with this. Must be the embargo!
    - enraged_camel 10y ago
      If Cuba had a capitalist economy the result would be the same. Or do you believe that capitalism has the ability to generate essential goods out of thin air?

frozenport 10y ago

Further they received significant aid from the USSR.

Elv13 10y ago
And their economy wasn't half bad back then (from a communist standard). In Canada we always had a softer tone with Cuba. A lot of the US PoV seems propaganda driven. Sure, there is a vocal expat group that had very good reasons to leave and were definitely harassed/prosecuted/persecuted for their views/lifestyle. The same kind of minorities exists in the US (watch Trump speeches from the last year). On the other side, until the USSR collapsed, it went from the bottom of the list to near top on education, health access and [a few] other areas. Of course it stayed as corrupted as it was for the last 150 years, but don't blame the Castro regime for that, most Latin America and Caribbean nations are as bad in that regard, if not worst. As for the "capitalism is good, communism is evil" propaganda fueled argument, there isn't much to say. I prefer Capitalism. I acknowledge single party is more prone to corruption and nepotism while democracies es is at risk of populism waves, electoral counter intuitive promises and both are just as vulnerable to corporate/power influences. You have to wonder if for lesser economies, you are better off enslaved by landlords like during Batista days or kept poor, but with a proper social net, in the Castro state.
- mzw_mzw 10y ago
  Stating that "lesser economies" should literally be kept as prison states by strongmen. And they say Americans are heartless; we clearly have nothing on Canadians, if you're anything to go by.
- edblarney 10y ago
  " In Canada we always had a softer tone with Cuba." Partly because we are not the US and did not have a direct confrontation. But partly because Trudeau Sr. was a communist-revolutionary apologist, in the French intellectual sense - and chilled with Fidel to boost is 'socialist hipster' cred and to thumb the eye of the Americans. As a young man, I found it admirable. Now that I know many ex-Cubans, I find it utterly repulsive and a stain on our history. It's one thing to have 'relations' or 'diplomacy' with another nation - it's altogether another to chum around with a thug. If it was in the name of getting Fidel to let his people off the island, or encourage democracy... sure ... but it was not that.

ageofwant 10y ago

It would be a logical fallacy if coldtea actually made that claim. He did not. He simply pointed out that edblamey moral high ground is a fallacy in itself, when so many of those Western nations stand accused of worse.

edblarney 10y ago
Western nations have not 'done worse' in modern times. The logical fallacy I think is yours for trying to compare Cuba to the USA in a tit-for-tat comparison of misrepresented facts and issues. Dropping a nuclear bomb seems 'bad' until you put it in the context of what the Japanese were doing, and the costs otherwise. The North Vietnamese that the Americans & South Vietnamese were fighting against were 10x worse than Castro (they executed 100's of thousands in the streets - and put millions in concentration camps after the Americans withdrew) - and using 'agent Orange' was an act of reasonable desperation on the part of the Americans as it was used only to clear foliage near American firebases, the casualties were mostly American and of course it was not done with the knowledge people would be hurt - the author of the note makes it seem like it was used on purpose to hurt Vietnamese which is a gross misrepresentation. Americas role in the world is fundamentally different than that of Cuba (and of course there is the issue of scale) which makes it futile to compare the USA to Cuba, tit-for-tat in terms of 'things done'. But the comparison is resolved rather more pragmatically: People literally risk everything, including their lives to flee Cuba to get to America. Never the other way around.
- esrauch 10y ago
  > the casualties were mostly American It isn't really clear if this is true, there is a clear bias of studies to focus on the effect on American veterans, but there are 1-4 million Vietnamese affected depending on what non-American source you believe.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >Western nations have not 'done worse' in modern times. The US has bombed and invaded Afghanistan for the crimes of a handful of (mainly Saudi-backed) loonies (after first sponsoring Bin Laden in the 80s), have invaded Iraq under BS false pretexts (WMDs etc) and created huge losses, chaos, anarchy and civil war, have helped destabilize Libya with the same outcome, have targeted the Syrian regime and in the process helped ISIS grow, and so on. And that's just the open actions since 2001...

joshontheweb 10y ago

> That's a logical fallacy. You can't say that Castro's crimes against humanity are okay because the US has committed worse ones. Correct, but it can help a lot of people come down off of their high horse.

agumonkey 10y ago

May I also add that short but extreme crimes feel different than prolongated even if less violent ones ?

wz1000 10y ago

> Only a US embargo. That leaves more than 80% of the world GDP to interact with. Nope. The US brutally punished countries which traded with Cuba. The best and most macabre example of this would be the 1974 Bangladesh Famine, which had a death toll of 1-1.5 million, and was almost entirely preventable. After the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation war, when Bangladesh achieved its independence from America-backed Pakistan, US initially refused to recognize Bangladesh as a country and trade with it because Bangladesh wanted to prosecute Pakistani war criminals, responsible for the worst genocide since the Holodomor(and committed using American arms). Infact, Nixon and the US refused to condemn Pakistani actions, and actively worked to suppress evidence of their crimes. When the famine started in 1974, the US initially promised food aid to Bangladesh, but refused to deliver because Bangladesh exported jute to Cuba(Cuba was one of the first countries to recognize Bangladeshi independence). By the time Bangladesh agreed to stop all trade relations with Cuba, and US aid finally arrived, the famine was pretty much over and had claimed its 1,500,000+ victims. Now, to make it clear, the US had 2 million+ tonnes of grain pretty much ready to deliver, but held back at the last moment while hundreds of thousands were starving to death. This was also while US was giving huge amounts of grain as food aid to surplus food producing South Vietnam, which the Vietnamese traded for weapons.