Basically, beyond being an apologist for the Cuban tyrant, he's totally clueless about Castro in many ways.
quote:ALB: Now, when you were talking to the prisoners who tried to hijack a plane, one told you he was a fisherman, and you said, "Why then didn't you take a boat?" Why did you ask that?
OS: Well, it seemed to me that if they were familiar with boats, it seemed to be the best way.
ALB: Did you know that in Cuba there are virtually no boats? The boats that are used for fishermen are tightly controlled. One of the more surreal aspects of Cuba, being the largest island in the Caribbean, is that there are no visible boats.
OS: I see. **************** ALB: Let me ask you about the part [in the film] where Castro's in front of eight prisoners charged with attempting to hijack a plane [to Miami]. He says to them, "I want you all to speak frankly and freely." What do you make of that whole scene, where you have these prisoners who happened to be wearing perfectly starched, nice blue shirts?
OS: Let me give you the background. He obviously set it up overnight. It was in that spirit that he said, "Ask whatever you want. I'm sitting here. I want to hear it too. I want to hear what they're thinking." He let me run the tribunal, so to speak.
ALB: But Cuba's leader for life is sitting in front of these guys who are facing life in prison, and you're asking them, "Are you well treated in prison?" Did you think they could honestly answer that question?
OS: If they were being horribly mistreated, then I don't know that they could be worse mistreated [afterward].
ALB: So in other words, you think they thought this was their best shot to air grievances? Rather than that if they did speak candidly, there'd be hell to pay when they got back to prison?
OS: I must say, you're really picturing a Stalinist state. It doesn't feel that way. You can always find horrible prisons if you go to any country in Central America.
ALB: Did you go to the prisons in Cuba?
OS: No, I didn't.
ALB: So you don't know if they're any different than, say, the prisons in Honduras then?
OS: I think that those prisoners are being honest. ********************
ALB: Did you ask him about his relationship with Juanita in Miami?
OS: God, I don't remember. There were so many women.
ALB: Juanita is his sister.
OS: Juanita's his sister? ************************* ALB: Did you ever think to bring up why he doesn't hold a presidential election?
OS: I did. He said something to the effect, "We have elections."
ALB: Local representative elections. But what about a presidential election?
OS: We didn't talk about it, especially in view of the fact that our own 2000 elections were a little bit discredited.
ALB: In the first film, Comandante, he asked you, "Is it so bad to be a dictator?" Did you think you should have responded to that question?
OS: I don't think that was the place to do it. … You know, dictator or tyrant, those words are used very easily. In the Greek political system, democracy didn't work out that well. There were what they called benevolent dictators back in those days.
ALB: And you think he might be in that category?
OS: Well, not benevolent to everybody, no.
ALB: Can't it be said in fact that Castro is quite cynical—the master debater, master lawyer?
posted
The master debater. Oh my. I never thought I'd hear that in an interview. I'm so glad to hear Cuba isn't a Stalinist state. Of course, maybe pro-communists use "Stalinist" as a special term for where communism went wrong. Like that was the Shi'ite communists. Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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How does this man continue to have a national soap box?
Further, why is it that certain people on the left (especially in Hollywood) have such a love affair with Fidel Castro?
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Well, he does have that pirate like charm. But a reasonably intelligent person is suppose to see past the swash and the freedom to the fact that the world would stink if it were ruled by pirates.
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Yeah. Like, literally stink. I don't think pirates had much opportunity to wash. Plus, they usually had rotten teeth and stuff...
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quote:If they were being horribly mistreated, then I don't know that they could be worse mistreated [afterward].
Wow, the man is actually quite naive, isn't he? Even if you buy that Cuba doesn't mistreat prisoners, does he really think there isn't almost always a way to treat someone worse?
quote: OS: Yeah. I thought that was funny, I did—the prosecutor and Fidel admonishing them, to make sure they worked hard. There was that paternalism. I mean "father knows best," as opposed to totalitarianism. It's paternalism, that's what I meant. It's a Latin thing.
uh huh
quote:OS: No, I think the focus is wrong. Fidel is not the revolution, believe me. Fidel is popular, whatever his enemies say. It's Zapata, remember that movie? He said, "A strong people don't need a strong leader."
ALB: So you think that if he went off the scene the revolution would continue?
OS: If Mr. Bush and his people have the illusion that they're going to walk into an Iraq-type situation, and people are going to throw up their arms and welcome us, [they are] dead wrong. These people are committed. Castro has become a spiritual leader. He will always be a Mao to those people.
posted
I had a college professor, in the social & behavioral science department, who was a big fan of Cuban communism. Every summer he goes down there for a visit, both for academic reasons and just to bask in it. He had a representative of the Cuban government come give a presentation on campus one time. The guy didn't seem too scary, but of course that's why his bosses picked him to come to the U.S. and be their mouthpiece.
Luckily, although he was a nut, this professor wasn't an unreasonable or pushy nut. He wasn't interested in propagandizing anybody, nor did agreement or disagreement with his views affect one's grade.
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I have relatives who have been imprisoned, relatives who have lost their property and their livelihood, and many relatives of my generation who were taken away from their family to complete their schooling in the Soviet Union or to serve against their will in Angola. And at least a dozen cousins. aunts, and uncles I have never met.
I just love these Americans for whom this is all a nice theoretical exercise, who can ignore the scads of evidence of grotesque human rights violations, the eyewitness accounts from virtually everyone who is free to talk about the truth who is not also a government official, and the desperation with which everyone has been clamoring to get off of that island for the last forty-odd years. People who are so in love with the idea of revolution and communism that they just whitewash all this real suffering in their minds.
You want a firsthand account of the torture that was commonplace for peaceful dissidents? Read Against All Hope, by Armando Valladares.
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Um, David... I have no particular expertise about Cuba or Castro and I'm going to assume all the bad stuff I've heard about it is true, but is it really necessary to call someone clueless about the matter when (1) you give no evidence or reason why, and (2) he's probably had more experience with Castro and Cuba than you have?
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I think David can call him clueless based on his decision to ignore the preponderance of evidence in this case.
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Tres, sometimes I feel an irresistible desire to tell you to go sodomize yourself. Really. But somehow I resist.
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But no evidence was given or pointed to. Oliver Stone actually met the guy and made a movie about him which, I assume, most people on this thread have not done. I don't think it's fair to assume he's an idiot on the grounds that his actual observations and impressions don't agree with whatever we have heard.
In general, I don't think it's fair to just say "This guy believes X and we don't, so he's dumb," and leave it at that.
David, That's all I can hope for. Posts: 2432 | Registered: Feb 2001
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Do you seriously need me to link to evidence of Castro's brutality before my objections can be considered? As if the evidence is not already well known and documented? And does the book I linked to along with the firsthand accounts of my relatives, which I have alluded to second-hand, not constitute evidence?
Does it not occur to you that similar movies/eyewitness accounts could and were made for Nazi Germany? (My point being that a film in which you follow around government officials and have interviews which they have set up is ludicrous as evidence regarding the behavior of the regime!)
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If I find a link to somebody suggesting the holocaust did not occur, do I need to find evidence that it did before calling that person an idiot?
If not, would you actually argue with me that I have no evidence to the contrary?
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quote:Funny, Xap, I've never seen you respond that way when someone calls Bush an idiot without supporting it.
I'm certain I have, actually, on at least a couple occassions. I've also complained about totally unsupported claims that Bush secretly knew about 9/11 beforehand, that he only went into Iraq for oil, and that he was deliberately lying when he said WMDs were in Iraq.
quote:If I find a link to somebody suggesting the holocaust did not occur, do I need to find evidence that it did before calling that person an idiot?
Yes. Why would that be any different? If he's such an idiot, it should be easy to refute him. If it's not, then it's really not necessary to call him one.
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So Tres, would you say that you support Castro? Or at the very least support keeping an open mind about him?
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No, I definitely don't support Castro. I have a friend whose father lived in (and fled from) Cuba, and has gone back for missionary work. I've gotten enough stories from them to come to the conclusion that Castro has not done much good for that country in any conceivable way.
As for an open mind, of course I'd keep an open mind about Castro, and anyone else for that matter. Why? Do you support keeping a closed mind about him?
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My wireless connection at work really sucks. It has great speed downstream, but not upstream. I can post short replies or send short e-mails great, but anything longer gets timed out. So I will reply in chunks.
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You keep an open mind until the facts are known. If you say you are open to the possibility that the Marlins did not, in fact, win the World Series last year, I would say your open mind is not virtue.
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It's easy to refute the idiot who says the holocaust did not happen, unless you throw out all the evidence that all of us have already seen in favor of newer evidence. (Or if you suggest that it's not, in fact, evidence until you have something tangible in your hands.) A standard of proof that high is absurd, because doubting when millions of people have reported evidence requires believing in an absurdly huge conspiracy theory. Keep in mind that this also means that when enough time passes, no amount of evidence will be sufficient to meet such a standard, because it will no longer be primary evidence, and thus could have been tampered with. A person with such a standard of evidence must maintain an "open mind" (I prefer the term "empty," but that's just me) about whether or not the holocaust occurred, because the people who claim to have experienced it could be lying, the physical evidence could be manufactured, etc.
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This all gets very existential . . . how do we know anything? I've seen you assert before that philosophy is necessary to guide action, and cases like this are why I think that's hogwash. No amound of evidence is beyond unreasonable doubt, but the preponderence of evidence in this case is clear.
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To suggest that the evidence is not in on Castro, or to minimize his evil to simply being "bad for the island" is a hell of a slap in the face to the people who have risked their lives to escape, and who have shared their story. It is to say, "I see your evidence, I hear your tale, but I don't believe you."
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What is the risk in having an open mind? What is so dangerous that it necessitates ignoring the fact that no evidence is beyond doubt?
The only costs I see associated with having an open mind are that you lose the ability to reject people out of hand without considering their position, and that you lose the ability to call them idiots. I don't think either of these are things we desperately need.
Consider that I might have a selfish reason for my complaint here: I have been known to have opinions that are highly contraversial and rejected by most people. I would be unhappy and think it unfair if someone took my opinions and posted them, saying "Isn't this guy an idiot?" without any justification given whatsoever. This is especially true if, somehow, I turned out to be right and the majority wrong. That is not in the least bit without precident you know. Remember that whole "sun revolves around the earth" bit everybody thought was solid, well-proven fact?
Although there is very little cost to having an open mind, there is a HUGE cost in not having one - even in the most extreme cases. That is the fact that even in the most extreme cases, you can turn out to be extremely wrong, and would find it pretty difficult to correct yourself if you didn't at least keep an open mind. It's an extremely common affliction - and it might even be Olvier Stone's problem too.
I'd be willing to bet you also believe some things that most of us would think absurd. I think most people do. Don't you think it would be unfair of us to take those beliefs, hold them up for ridicule, and reject them without even an argument because we already believe them to be false? What's the point in that? What's the point in specifically setting out to point out the idiocy in believing the Holocaust never happens if we already all know it to be true without hearing any new evidence? I don't see the point in that, aside from to make fun of someone, and I don't see any compelling need for closed-mindedness on any issue.
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You haven't addressed my statement about the limitation of the value of an open mind. Are you open-minded about whether or not the Marlins won the World Series?
Do you claim to know anything?
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Can we ever take action to right a wrong? Or are we stuck, because we can never know in any empirical way that any wrong exists?
I believe that there comes a point where you have enough knowledge that claiming to have an open-mind is silly.
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I never said that the preponderance of evidence cannot be wrong. Just that someone who rejects the preponderence of evidence without having better evidence to base this on, just because a proposition is attractive, or because it would annoy one's political opponents, is being intellectually dishonest.
I like your suggestion that my only desire is to be able to call people idiots. That's nice.
Oliver Stone bears no similarity to Galileo. Galileo rejected what was believed to be known because he had better evidence to the contrary. Stone is doing so because it is atractive to his worldview to do so.
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I met a great many Cubans in Florida. I never met one that was terribly fond of Castro. Alright, so I never even met one that didn't hate him with a flaming fiery passion and wished him a slow and painful death. Sooner rather than later. I knew one guy who had been a fairly high official and had fled from a conference in Mexico. I translated his story: I should post it sometime. I think I'll do that.
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Yes, I'm open-minded about who won the world series. Again, how does this hurt me in any important way?
Yes, I believe I know a few things (like I exist), but no, most things I think I don't know with certainty.
And yes, of course people can believe things and take action on them, including righting wrongs. To deny this would be crazy. You don't have to know something with absolute certainty to act on it, by any means. I'm open-minded to the possibility that God might possibly not exist, but I still have faith that he does and go to church.
Believing that your beliefs could be wrong is not the same as not believing. Open-mindedness is not "Empty-mindedness".
And again, my complaint was about calling Oliver Stones names without even backing it up with evidence. If this is not about that calling him an idiot or clueless or whatever, then what is this about?
quote:And yes, of course people can believe things and take action on them, including righting wrongs. To deny this would be crazy. You don't have to know something with absolute certainty to act on it, by any means. I'm open-minded to the possibility that God might possibly not exist, but I still have faith that he does and go to church.
quote:But this year's vote was followed by something more unusual. A Cuban diplomat, encountering an American human rights activist in the hallway, punched him and knocked him out, apparently from behind. The U.S. ambassador to the commission, who witnessed the incident, declared his intention to press charges. "If you act that way in the U.N., what do you do in your own country, where there is no accountability?" he asked.
Cuban authorities have a long record of harassing foreigners whose views they dislike. Human rights activists report that although actual violence is new, they have grown accustomed to harassment and intimidation from Cuban diplomats in Geneva. During the imbroglio several years ago over Elian Gonzalez, the child refugee, Cuban interest section officials beat up pro-Elian protesters. Foreign journalists working in Cuba are periodically attacked as well.
All of this pales, of course, in comparison to what Cuban officials are capable of inflicting on their own people: The U.N. incident provides outsiders with a mere glimpse of what life is like under Castro. It should also provide the U.N. Human Rights Commission with a motivation to break -- for once -- with its traditional equivocation and condemn Cuba using the language it deserves.
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The master debater. Oh my. I never thought I'd hear that in an interview. I'm so glad to hear Cuba isn't a Stalinist state. Of course, maybe pro-communists use "Stalinist" as a special term for where communism went wrong. Like that was the Shi'ite communists. ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
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