[grzm]

Here's a possible starting point:

It's crucial to remember that Castro silenced all who disagreed with him. He condemned an entire nation to poverty! His most notable achievement with regards to Africa was sending soldiers to extend the life of wars.

It's stripped of the insults to those that disagree with you and complaints of down voting. In my experience users on HN will down vote tone more often than they will down vote disagreement.

I agree it doesn't have the punch of your original post. I don't have much experience writing emotionally charged comments, though I'm sure there are ways of doing that without resorting to insults.

It sounds like you may have some personal stories to share. These would definitely add to the power of your comment, if you chose to include them.

[coldtea]

>He condemned an entire nation to poverty!

That's more because of the embargo than anything Cubans did. And even given that, they do way better than most latin american "free" nations.

>His most notable achievement with regards to Africa was sending soldiers to extend the life of wars.

Let's not go into which country, besides Germany and USSR, started more wars, meddled in more places, held more peopls down by installing friendly dictators in power, and caused more hurt in the 20th/21st century...

[refurb]

That's more because of the embargo than anything Cubans did.

The embargo was with the US. Other countries (as long as the company doesn't do business in the US) were free to trade with Cuba.

Sure the embargo didn't help, but the poor state of the Cuba economy mostly lies at the feet of the Castro.

[grzm]

Thanks for the feedback, though please note that I'm only attempting to civilly rephrase my parent's comment, not my own position. :)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13042013

[friendlygrammar]

>That's more because of the embargo than anything Cubans did

I just have to ask, does communism require trading with capitalist nations to be successful? Because there are many nations under embargo by the US that are significantly more prosperous.

But clearly, when Marx was talking about a communist revolution he clearly meant that you should allow yourself to be exploited by your nearest capitalist neighbor.

[mynameisvlad]

> does communism require trading with capitalist nations to be successful?

You keep on going back to this. No, they don't. But an island nation does. It's ridiculously hard to produce literally all the things your country needs when it's 100x smaller than the US, and it's even harder when you have no land borders. Trading with other nations becomes ridiculously important at that point.

[realusername]

When you are an island, you HAVE to trade, you can be capitalist, communist or even monarchist, at some point you need goods from other places.