Comments by "BVargas78" (@BVargas78) on "The People Profiles" channel.

This must have left some kind of a long term psychological scar to the collective psyche of the nation. Is mental illness worse than average in modern day Cambodia?
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@alexcarter8807 Spotted the Stalinist! lol, seriously though i don't think he was a Trotskyist. People like Trotsky would have been killed because they were cosmopolitan internationalists. While Pol Pot was ultra insular and wanted to form a new cambodian culture in his image. If anything he had more in common with Maoism but only in the sense that we have to flip everything on it's head to start anew.
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@ashyari1989 Not Batista, he was too self serving. i.e. my interests first, my countries interests second, he was always that kind of a person. Some other leader who was less corrupt could have beaten Castro and the communists though. Pinochet for example, (and people can say what they want about him), actually wanted to improve his country into the future. While Batista was just enjoying the ride and taking what he could get.
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An absolute mad man.
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@ashyari1989 Castro, while no saint (and responsible for all of Cuba's problems and poverty today) actually killed less people than Batista over a longer period of time. Personally i wouldn't include him near the top, try Mengistu instead.
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fa q That's because overeating is bad for health while many Cubans have to make do with a spartan diet. Which while good for you, is not what most people would choose if they could choose plenty instead. And yes, the US sanctions are a big factor, I believe there is a fear that if they raise the sanctions and conditions improve, the island may actually become an alternative beacon of sorts for the worlds poorest countries and that would rock the boat. So it's not going to happen. This means that the only alternative is to embrace a mutli-party democracy, something they should have done in the late 90's. I can see Cuba becoming a well off social democracy within a capitalist system. Or at least become better off than Chile, which is going through a rough patch, perhaps indefinitely. Social cohesion has fallen apart pretty badly of late. But back on point, Cuba has an enviable geographic position ideally suited for this era of globalised trade and capitalism. Investment would flood the island. And given the people's higher than average standard of education, i think they would vote for their own interests. Rather than the interests of the communist party, i don't think anyone is going to pull the wool over their eyes easily.
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@DEVOPS_R_US You can't really compare him to someone like Pol Pot though. People die and get killed in armed struggles. Che and Fidel together actually killed less than what Batista did. And even with Batista, you can't can't compare him against someone like Pol Pot either. What really makes Pol Pot a psychopath was that he killed millions in social engineering, to try make his bizarre and retarded theories into reality.
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@DEVOPS_R_US A lot of that evidence is anecdotal though. i.e. "I heard he did this, i saw him do that". I'd take some of it with a pinch of salt, because it can be very easy way for political enemies to disparage someone they don't like by throwing shit and seeing what sticks. That being said, there could be some truth to it also, but without hard evidence i'm always a bit skeptical of a lot of things like that whether it be vs the left or vs the right. That being said, when he left Congo, after a failed revolution he partook in, he had a low opinion of Africans, i think it was reflected in his diaries of the time. And i have read of him shooting a new recruit in cold blood once because he fell asleep on guard duty. So he was no saint, and the whole personality cult around him in the left is pretty stupid. The man was a bad example too, because he didn't like responsibility. When he got the opportunity to build socialism in Cuba, and made head of the national banks, he quit the job because it was too boring for him. I don't think he would have liked Pol Pot though. Pol Pot broke one of the central tenets of marxism. In Marxism the countryside has to support the cities in order to further industrialisation. Pol Pot was the opposite of this, he saw cities as a parasite and only wanted a society of countryside peasantry. In the end it took other (actual/orthodox) communists to oust Pol Pot, that being communist Vietnam.
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@DEVOPS_R_US It's probable he didn't like gays, a lot of people even on the left didn't like gays as many old school communists saw it as a type of 'bourgeois decadence' but despite of this, what's the evidence that he killed a gay person for being gay? If he killed an agent of Batista who was responsible for the death of some of his allies, but that Batista agent happened to be gay, would his enemies portray him as killing a gay person just for being gay, when really it was for another reason? This kind of thing happens a lot to right wing historical personalities too btw. Both sides use tactics like this to attack reputation of people they don't like, but I try remain objective and balanced. And on that note, I'll repeat, i don't think Che was the saintly paragon the modern left likes to paint him as. He had a mean and dangerous side. One of which was that he was not afraid of nuclear conflict vs the US and was furious when the Soviets took away the missiles.
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