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http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/9341291.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/9341291.stm)

Speaking before the vote, Blatter said: "All these successes have created a lot of envy and jealousy in our world because you cannot satisfy everybody.
"The success story of Fifa can continue because we are in a comfortable situation, despite the criticism given to Fifa. We have the power and the instruments to go against any attacks that are made."

Arrogant pr*ck!!!!!!

Fully agree with Uli Hoeness...

Blimey swap FIFA for Cuba and that could have been written by Castro. 

Except that Castro isn't corrupt.

Erm..well perhaps just a bit

Probably not as homophobic though.

Compared to Blatter, he isn't (and even then he isn't really from what I have seen in Cuba)

Jaysus Boldie I do hope this you're joking. Castro is/was a murdering torturing dictator.  Sepp Blatter is someone in charge of football.

Erm, no i'm not. you can say a lot of things about Castro but he is not corrupt.

It's only January and that has to be jaw-dropping statement of the year already.  I'd love to see you argue that point with a real Cuban, one who'd managed to escape from the place of course and could argue his point without the obvious consequences should he do so in Cuba.  Castro has remained in power by murdering and torturing literally hundreds of people over 50 years.  What is your definition of corrupt? He's a corrupt megalomaniac as most dictators are and Cubans bare the brunt of it.  That's why so many people every year risk their lives trying to make it to the USA on an inner tube.  How you can possibly say Castro is not corrupt is astonishing.  He's a monster and his brother is even worse.

he stole the trillion dollar note from mr burns

Did he?  I didn't know that.  Such a bastard.

Corrupt, IMO, is taking bribes and stealing money intended for his own people and dumping it into his own Swiss bank account. This he does not do. Cuba as a country does have a massive issue with institutionalised corruption but you are the first person I have heard to call Castro himself corrupt.

With regards to him being a monster...well that's your opinion obv. I understand very well why Cubans flee their country in search of a better life and why people don't like Castro. (Though the American politicians and media are obviously a joke when it comes to the Cuban issue) I also know that he has done some very distasteful things in the past. Quite a few of these things were obviously provoked and quite a few of these things were obviously just not on but he is not even close to being top of the tree when it comes to that sort of thing.

But that does not make him corrupt.

Utter tripe Boldie really.  You'll be claiming Hitler was misunderstood next.  Bloody Germans.

Totally with warbwastard on this one.

How anyone can say castro is not corrupt is truly amazing.

lol @ comparing Hitler and Castro....you are soo far off it's just wrong.

Corrupt from the dictionary


I mainly see corrupt, when it refers to politicians, as falling under nr 1.

This wikipage is pretty much how I see corruption with regards to politics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_corruption

It is easy to argue cronyism in Castro's Cuba but then again this is easy to argue in any society.


We might just be arguing semantics here though. When you say someone is corrupt I read that as above...Castro might be a monster (In your opinion) but he does not run your standard corrupt dictatorship.

With regards to Castro himself; I have no massive problem with Castro (For all that he has done some nasty shit to his opponents) and firmly believe most of the problems as published, mainly in America, are exaggerated. Castro really isn't the devil as shown on American telly or in American programs.

Cuba is poor as feck (Thanks to the American trade embargo, which really is just a massive joke) and life for most Cubans is very difficult indeed but I found most Cubans (in Cuba) to be very open about the issue they are facing and in their opinions with regards to what Castro does right and wrong. (Which they were, much to my surprise, very willing to discuss)

Not comparing Castro to Hitler, obviously I was being facetious.  I also don't base my arguments according to what someone's posted on Wikipedia. The American trade embargo is not the cause of the shit conditions Cubans are forced to live under.  That's an even older chestnut than the one about how Cuban health care is free for everyone and how literate Cubans are.  Cuba has the ability to be self sufficient, it isn't because of incompetence and corruption. 

How you can have "no problems with Castro" is really unbelievable.  Even by your incredibly narrow definition of corrupt he is simply indefensible.  It is not possible for Castro to have remained in power and ruled so oppressively and lived in such luxury without squirreling away a fortune he isn't entitled to. Outside of people who only believe what's written in the Guardian there can't be any reasonable person who can defend him.  It always amuses me how apologists for Castro or any form of Communism or Socialism are always either students who haven't grown up yet or people who have the luxury of living some distance away from the conditions they impose of it's citizens.

It's the "living in such luxury" comments that always get me. Please show me the proof that Castro is living in such luxury. I have not been able to find it at all. The excess that other political families show are certainly not found in Cuba. Castro is a lot of things, and certainly no saint, however he does not surround himself with 20 BMWs/Mercs/lives in a big palace eating caviar off the body of a naked virgin every night.

The people I met in Cuba (admittedly I didn't travel outside Havana) were certainly all literate, all spoke several languages, and all enjoy free healthcare (I honestly don't know what the problem with that old chestnut is)

As I said, Cuba is ridic poor and the living conditions of people is certainly something that needs to be improved. There is no doubt though that this is in a large part due to the trade embargo with the US. This has pushed up prices of almost all products in Cuba. It isn't just that direct trade to Cuba is illegal but indirect trade for American companies is illegal as well. This means they can't just ship something over from america to Mexico and then on to Cuba. Products tend to go to Canada first. this adds quite a bit to the transport cost of stuff.

Obviously there is massive institutionalised corruption in Cuba, even Castro readily admits this (He has famously declared "war on corruption" many a times but what can you do when everyone is piss poor? Even in Britain MPs, who make good money, fiddle their expenses) and he's not one for pointing out the failings of Cuba, and that is definitely holding them back but to say that not having any access to what should be their largest trade partner for the past decades has not had any effect on the Cuban economy doesn't make any sense.

there are a lot of things that need to be improved in Cuba, the squalid conditions and the food situation for most Cubans being the main things. I have seen an awful lot worse though and I have seen political leaders acting a hell of a lot worse than Castro has.

I definitely don't base my opinion about Castro and Cuba on what some leftist nut-job in the Guardian writes. I also don't base it on whatever the Daily Torygraph says. TBH, I mostly base my opinion on Castro and Cuba from what I have seen myself and the conversations I have had with Cubans (admittedly all of them were still living in Cuba) and things I have read up on since.

I am not an apologist for Castro, or didn't think I was anyways. As far as rulers of communist countries go he is miles ahead of almost everyone out there. Certainly miles ahead of the Chinese and Russian leadership. But, as stated before, he has done some very nasty shit indeed (The prison camps in the 60's and 70s are but one example) I certainly am aware of this but have chosen to mainly focus on how he has been behaving in the past few decades TBH and I compare him to other leaders of similar countries.
Once he dies it will be interesting to see in which direction Cuba goes...hell in a hand-basket would be my guess but you never know.


Amazing how a thread about Blatter can go soo massively off-topic though...can we atleast agree Blatter is a clown?

I give in. Read some books Bolide, this one's a good one: Corruption in Cuba: Castro and Beyond http://amzn.to/ePwpV7.  Read some accounts of Cuban life from people who've had to endure it and escaped or journalists without an anti-USA agenda who have managed to make it past the boundaries of Havana.

Yes Blatter is a clown.

Speaking of revolutions, how much more craziness from Sepp Blatter before everyone just tells him and FIFA to fuck off and a new Governing body is formed where a mad tranny isn't in control?

Wouldn't be too soon. As soon as the big footie nations in the world realise that Trinidad and Tobago or Qatar shouldn't have the same share of the vote as Brazil/Spain or the UK...but they won't..they'll just put up with it :(

Did you know Fidel Castro was the President of the World Society of Friends of Suspenders?

Or was it Sepp Blatter?

i always get those two mixed up. Like peas in a pod.

seperated at birth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

"Not comparing Castro to Hitler, obviously I was being facetious."

The collapse of Soviet Union and the billions of dollars of subsidies they used to receive each year has more to do with Cuba's poverty than US trade embargoes.  They should still be self sufficient anyway, certainly much better than they are.  They're not as I've already said because of incompetence and corruption.  I've already answered all of those other cliches and myths in your post.  But as for sending medics to other Latin American countries,,...Castro trades Doctors to Venezuela in return for oil, they're not just sent there out of the goodness of Castro's heart. And those Doctors don't get to decide whether they want to go or not either.  They don't even get to decide if they want to be Doctors in fact..people are just selected to train as Doctors.  Despite trading away so many Doctors Cubans joke about having medicine but no medics, there's still a shortage of petrol ..unless you have money for black market stuff.  Cubans escape every year from Cuba still, 20% of Cubans live abroad now...it's not just descendants from those that escaped 50 years ago that are anti-Castro, it's any one that doesn't enjoy the perpetual denial of basic human rights.  Defending Castro is fashionable, but it's sickening really.  I'm no Americaphile, but blaming them for Cuba's poverty is just utter bullshit. My last word on the subject as this has now pissed me off more than Sepp Blatter ever has.