Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro dies at age 90

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Fox News:

Longtime Cuban leader Fidel Castro, the bearded, cigar-smoking Communist revolutionary who infuriated the United States, inspired both loyalty and loathing from his countrymen and maintained an iron grip on Cuban politics for almost 50 years, died Friday at the age of 90.

 

Castro, who was the only leader most of his countrymen ever knew, outlasted 11 US presidents since he first took power in 1959.

 

Castro had been in declining health for years – he continued to spew his anti-American tirades almost until the end.

 

In October, 2014, Castro reprinted a New York Times editorial in state-run media that argued that the U.S. embargo on Cuba should end. The editorial ran almost verbatim, omitting one line about Cuba’s release of political prisoners.

 

In 2012 he wrote an opinion piece for a state-run media outlet in which he branded the Republican presidential primary race "the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance" the world has ever seen.

 

And just to show how much his volatile presence lingered in American politics, despite officially handing over power to his brother Raul in 2008, Castro also was the subject of a question during a Republican candidates' debate in Tampa, Fla. that same month.

 

When Mitt Romney was asked the first thing he would do as president if he found out Castro was dead, he replied, "Well first of all, you thank heavens that Fidel Castro has returned to his maker and will be sent to another land."

 

When it was his turn to answer, Newt Gingrich said, "I don't think that Fidel is going to meet his maker. I think he's going to go to the other place."

________

 

History won't absolve him, the worms will dissolve him. Goodbye, and good riddance.

[Valin]

Only the wrong survive
Scott Johnson
Nov. 26 2016

The peaceful death of the brutal Communist butcher and dictator at the ripe old age of 90 cannot help but trouble those of us who would like to believe in the hand of providence in history. Celebrated by the left, by the mainstream media (but then I repeat myself) and by fools all over the world, Castro was a truly evil tyrant. His death couldn’t come too soon. It came too late. Way, way too late. As will his brother’s.

(Snip)

 

In his New York Sun editorial “Fidel Castro’s last cigar,” Seth Lipsky gives us Castro’s death imagined in Elliott Banfield’s famed cartoon. This says it all. Fidel Castro, RIH (rot in hell).

 

[Valin]

[Valin]

[Valin]

[Draggingtree]

Fabiola Santiago

November 26, 2016 9:37 AM

 

There is no RIP for Fidel Castro in Miami. Just good riddance

 

By Fabiola Santiago

fsantiago@miamiherald.com

 

The tyrant is dead.

 

I have to say it to believe it.

 

Al fin

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/fabiola-santiago/article117216323.html

[Draggingtree]

Ode(s) To A Dead Guy —OregonMuse

 

Masks are coming off all over. One of the most repressive and bloodthirsty tyrants that the Western Hemisphere has ever seen has finally exited this world and gone on to his reward in the next, and you can learn a lot about people by how they responded.

For example, here is the statement by President Obama:

 

At this time of Fidel Castro's passing, we extend a hand of friendship to the Cuban people. We know that this moment fills Cubans - in Cuba and in the United States - with powerful emotions, recalling the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation. History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him.

 

From this, someone who has never heard of Obama before can conclude that he is a cowardly little . All he can say about a murderous psychopath who spent most of his life increasing the suffering of the Cuban people is that he had "enormous impact"? I mean, really, what is he afraid of? Is there some massive pro-Castro voting bloc that Obama doesn't want to risk offending?

So, too, Jimmy Carter:

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/367058.php

[Draggingtree]

Castro Death Marks the ‘End of a Long, Horrifying Chapter’

Cuban-American members of Congress toast the end of a legacy of oppression and tyranny

November 26, 2016

by Kathryn Blackhurst | Updated 26 Nov 2016 at 11:30 AM

 

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro, the communist revolutionary who held control over the country for nearly 50 years, died Friday at age 90.

 

The Marxist-Leninist nationalist rose to power in 1959 after exile in Mexico and imprisonment at the hands of the dictator former president, Fulgencio Batista. When Castro led his rebel army to victory, he promised Cubans relief from dictatorial policies of repression choking the country and promised to bring about democracy. But Castro soon broke those promises and maintained a tight grip over Cuba for nearly 50 years until health problems forced him to relinquish power permanently to his younger brother, Raul, in 2008.

 

“The day that the people, both inside the island and out, have waited for has arrived: A tyrant is dead and a new beginning can dawn on the last remaining communist bastion of the Western hemisphere.”

“The passing of the dictator marks the end of a long, horrifying chapter in #Cuba’s history.

http://www.lifezette.com/polizette/castro-death-marks-end-long-horrifying-chapter/

[Valin]

Fidel Castro and dead utopianism
George Will
Published Nov. 28, 2016

With the end of Fidel Castro's nasty life Friday, we can hope, if not reasonably expect, to have seen the last of charismatic totalitarians worshiped by political pilgrims from open societies. Experience suggests there will always be tyranny tourists in flight from what they consider the boring banality of bourgeois society and eager for the excitement of sojourns in "progressive" despotisms that they are free to admire and then leave.

 

During the 1930s, there were many apologists for Joseph Stalin's brutalities, which he committed in the name of building a workers' paradise fit for an improved humanity. The apologists complacently said, "You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs." To which George Orwell acidly replied: "Where's the omelet?" With Castro, the problem was lemonade.

 

(Snip)

[Valin]

 

Against All Hope: A Memoir of Life in Castro's Gulag

 

Against All Hope is Armando Valladares' account of over twenty years in Fidel Castro's tropical gulag. Arrested in 1960 for being philosophically and religiously opposed to communism, Valladares was not released until 1982, by which time he had become one of the world's most celebrated "prisoners of conscience." Interned all those years at the infamous Isla de Pinos prison (from whose windows he watched the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion), Valladares suffered endless days of violence, putrid food and squalid living conditions, while listening to Castro's firing squads eliminating "counter revolutionaries" in the courtyard below his cell. Valladares survived by prayer and by writing poetry whose publication in Europe brought his case to the attention of international figures such as French President Francois Mitterand and to human rights organizations whose constant pressure on the Castro regime finally led to his release.

 

 

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Do Yourself A Favor.....Read.

[Valin]

[Draggingtree]

Fidel Castro: Into the Dustbin

View all posts from this blog

 

By:Srdja Trifkovic | November 27, 2016

In the early years of the second half of the 20th century, some time between Stalin’s death in March 1953 and the Hungarian uprising in October 1956, it had ceased to be fashionable for Western leftist intellectuals to be uncritically supportive of the late Soviet dictator and his bloody legacy. The search was on for a communist role model with, well, not necessarily “a human face,” but rather a dashing personality that could appeal to the bourgeois bohemians of la Rive Gauche, Hampstead, and the Upper East Side.

 

In Britain, a whole generation of scholars coming into their prime at that time (William Deakin, Elisabeth Barker, Basil Davidson, Phyllis Auty, Stephen Clissold, etc.) devoted their careers to the construction of the myth of Josip Broz Tito. The Yugoslav dictator was portrayed as a fearless wartime resistance leader who dared say no to Stalin in 1948, and thereafter proceeded to build a “multiethnic socialist society” based on “workers’ self-management” at home and “non-alignment” abroad.

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/fidel-castro-into-the-dustbin/

[Draggingtree]

November 28, 2016 By Fausta Leave a Comment

Cuba: Increased repression following Fidel’s death

 

For the first time in 13 years, the Ladies in White did not march on a Sunday

 

The Ladies in White say the decision is to avoid tensions.

 

They have reason to worry,

 

Group leader Berta Soler told the Agence France-Presse news agency that they didn’t expect much to change in Cuban politics in the near future, as Castro’s brother Raul continues to lead the country. He took over when Fidel Castro fell ill in 2006.

 

“It will be the same Cuba with one dictator instead of two. The dictator Fidel Castro died and the dictator Raul Castro remains,” said Soler.

 

Dissidents also laid low in Santiago de Cuba, the eastern city where Castro’s ashes will be laid to rest next Sunday.

 

“We won’t conduct any actions against the regime in the streets in the next days, especially out of concern for the repression we could face,” said former prisoner Jose Daniel Ferrer.

http://faustasblog.com/2016/11/cuba-increased-repression-following-fidels-death/

[Valin]

Some blacks applaud Castro legacy of racial equality
Corey Williams, Associated Press
Monday, November 28, 2016

DETROIT (AP) — The Fidel Castro that Sam Riddle and many other African-Americans admired was not the revolutionary dictator who plunged Cuba into economic ruin and held the island nation in an iron grip. To them, he was a freedom fighter who cared about improving the lives of all Cubans, regardless of race.

Castro, who died Friday at age 90, sought out black leaders. He met with Malcolm X in 1960 in Harlem, New York's most celebrated black neighborhood. He also had a close relationship with South Africa's Nelson Mandela. "It was Fidel who fought for the human rights for black Cubans," said Riddle, political director of the Michigan Chapter of the National Action Network. "Many Cubans are as black as any black who worked the fields of Mississippi or lived in Harlem. He believed in medical care and education for his people."

The dictator's efforts to achieve racial equality mean he "will never be a monster" to his many admirers, Riddle added. "To me, he's the essence of humanity."

 

(Snip)

 

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[Valin]

Cubans wait to pay their last respects to Fidel Castro in Havana on Monday. Photograph: Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images

 

 

You may Notice they are all wearing the same shirt.

 

Almost like a uniform or something, but that can't be Fidel was a man of the people.

[Draggingtree]

Just Saying

 

The US has been trying to assassinate Castro for 57 years;

Trump is elected, and he's dead in three weeks.