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Samizdata quote of the day

· International affairs · Slogans & Quotations

Of course, it’s been half a century since Cuba has had a real new leader. This is one of the down sides to life extension.

– Rand Simberg

April 23rd, 2009 |

16 comments to Samizdata quote of the day

  • Hugo
    April 23, 2009 at 4:51 pm

    On the other hand, as Aubrey de Grey pointed out at the LA conference, dictatorship is not a low-risk occupation.

    On the other hand, technology seems to be increasing the power gap between government and citizens.

  • lukas
    April 23, 2009 at 5:32 pm

    On the other hand, technology seems to be increasing the power gap between government and citizens.

    Hello? You are posting this on ye olde internette, reaching thousands, millions, potentially billions of people. Brining the power of mass media to the masses has reduced the gap enormously.

    On a different note, why hasn’t the CIA ever assassinated Castro, especially after the SU collapse? Did they think he’d just die after a while?

  • the other rob
    April 23, 2009 at 5:34 pm

    Surely the second “On the other hand” should have read “On the gripping hand”?

  • Joshua
    April 23, 2009 at 6:43 pm

    LEADER ????

    I think they’re talking about Obama.

  • Alisa
    April 23, 2009 at 7:41 pm

    RRS: yes, indeed leader. He has been leading his country for a very long time. Where has he been leading it to is an entirely separate matter.

  • RAB
    April 23, 2009 at 8:50 pm

    Leading?

    He has just been squatting on the face of the place
    for fifty years.

    Happily living in that sunny paradise of equality, propped up by the Largesse of the old Soviet Union swapping crap sugar cane for oil. A political not economic deal.

    Now they will have to make other arrangements.

    Well it’s warm, and not too many people get shot, they are pretty literate, even if they only have the Works El Castro to read…

    A world in which your last new car was a 1962 Caddillac, held together with string would be a nightmare to me,

    But George Monbiot probably thinks it’s the future!

  • Alisa
    April 23, 2009 at 9:23 pm

    Sorry RAB, but you are wrong. What you describe is more someone like Putin these days: you are pretty much left to your own devices as long as you are not directly threatening to him. Castro has been deliberately leading his people in a well defined direction. Incidentally it is the same one Obama is trying to lead us.

  • John McClane
    April 23, 2009 at 11:42 pm

    Any country that still runs 1962 Cadillacs is fine by me. Life was good in 1962.

  • Nuke Gray!
    April 24, 2009 at 4:37 am

    The CIA has tried to assassinate Castro on many occasions (exploding cigars, anyone?), but has failed. And a good thing, too! They’d have turned him into a martyr for communism. Now he’s just another pretentious dictator, with no excuses.

  • Paul Marks
    April 24, 2009 at 10:05 pm

    A minor error there Nuke Gray.

    Plans and thought experiments (“what if we…..”) are not assassination efforts.

    The Agency was not always crap (even if it is these days).

    Back in the 1960’s if the order had been given by the President of the United States “I want Fidel Castro killed ” he would have been killed.

    But the will to clearly give the order was never there – it was all vague “well it would be nice if….” and “we know someone who is really close to Castro who might……”

    Pathetic.

  • Laird
    April 24, 2009 at 11:47 pm

    “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” (Or revolutionary.)

    I guess toadies aren’t as good today as they were in Henry II’s day.

  • Nuke Gray!
    April 27, 2009 at 2:06 am

    Paul Marks, according to your view of history, the Bay of Pigs should have been a success! If America wants something, America gets something!
    But the CIA is not as successful as it wants us to think.

  • Nuke Gray!
    April 27, 2009 at 2:16 am

    And when will the USA just give guantanamo base back to the natives? And agree never to interfere in Cuban affairs unless invaded by Cuba? Castro didn’t come out of a vacuum, after all.

  • Joshua
    April 28, 2009 at 2:59 pm

    Castro didn’t come out of a vacuum, after all.

    That is correct. It is my understanding that there was a lot of Soviet and East German involvement. I also seem to recall that the US imposed trade restrictions on the Batista regime and told him to leave the country voluntarily, which he did as Castro occupied Havana. And that the US had stopped supplying Batista with arms way back in 1958. And that the US officially recognized the Castro regime a mere 6 days after the revolution succeeded. So yeah, there’re a lot of decisions by foreign powers that allowed Castro an in.

  • Paul Marks
    April 28, 2009 at 5:16 pm

    Nuke Gray.

    The Bay of Pigs site was decided on by President Kennedy (it was not the site either the CIA, very different to the modern C.I.A., or the miltary wanted).

    And President Kennedy also refused to allow the air support that was promised to the exiles (by the way supporting the Republic of Vietnam without gaining control of the supply lines through Laos, against the warning of Ike, was another of J.F.K.s less than brillient command judgements – and, no, Laos could not be held by irregular forces and air power as J.F.K. and Johnson thought, only by the regular U.S. Army on the ground in large force).

    I am not having a go at you Nuke Gray – but in history there is no subsitute for knowing the facts.

    There is no such thing as a priori history – one of my problems with the Rothbardians.

    Not that I would have supported the intervention of 1898.

    Cuba should have been left under Spanish rule – independence had proved to be a mess long before Castro arrived.

    As for the Americans and Castro – at first they supported him (quietly) as certain people did not like the racially mixed sergeant Batista.

    Again you will not find that in the school history text books.

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